Please Read this if your UI is black and painting slowly

Published on December 17, 2005 By Neil Banfield In WindowBlinds

If you have installed a pirate copy (AKA cracked) version of WindowBlinds 5, please be aware that the crack is faulty and WindowBlinds will cease to function correctly on your computer.

To fix this you just need to uninstall WB and if you wish install a purchased copy of WB, or the trial.

To uninstall, you can either wait for your computer to login, unload WB (either using wbconfig, display properties, or from a command prompt calling WBLOAD UNLOAD) and then uninstall WB. Or you can boot into safe mode & uninstall WB from there.

Your computer has not been harmed in anyway. Whoever made the crack did a poor job and patched out code that causes WindowBlinds to no longer be able to paint bitmaps (so title bars, borders, everything will be black).

Comments (Page 8)

106

zero_tek

on Jan 19, 2006

here ya go.

sorry it is so big.

107

starkers

on Jan 20, 2006

I have the paid for version of WB 5, installed via SDC, but occasionally my UI is black and paints slowly, but this is usually after a major install/reinstall or update of a program that requires a reeboot. It only lasts for a few seconds (10-15), then everything returns to normal...at next and subsequent reboots WB loads as normal, quickly, efficiently, etc.
I'm guessing that it's because WB 5 is more integrated into the OS and adjustments are being made at bootup to accomodate the changes, etc???

108

zero_tek

on Jan 20, 2006

Any solutions for this. It is a pain in the butt to work for 30 mins and have my ui turn to mush. There has to be something that I can do. Let me know. Thanks.
anthony

109

Bichur

on Jan 28, 2006

did you try a roll back to 77.77 on the drivers?

110

Vossler

on Jan 30, 2006

With regards to the cracking issue. Stardock are essentially in the business of user experience improvement, not product use protection. So Stardock will expend some resources (maybe) in anti cracking projects as it is in their best interest to make it more difficult.

It will never be impossible for someone to break it, but the more sophisticated the solution will ensure a smaller pool of potential crackers are capabale of breaking through it.

There are more then enough individuals and companies around that are able to provide the technology or experience stardock needs to ensure they stay on top of their core products rather then ancillery necessity.

So basically with crackers I am not really of an opinion on them as i don't know any. People who use cracks, a bit of a differant story. Unfortunately it can be a little difficult to quantify their effect at times as the actual conversion from a trial to a registered user is affected by a lot more then simply cracks.

But still increasing subscriptions by 20% after preventing cracking for a substantial amount of time would be a boon for any company.

And to the people who used a bad crack and came here for support, you guys will take anything for free wont you.

111

dragonmage

on Jan 30, 2006

I have a different problem with the last two betas my WB doesnt go black it goes white.
When I went from .009 to .010 it worked fine for a week or so then went white. I went back to .009 it worked fine , I went to .011 same thing happened so I went back to .010 and so far no problem, go figure...

112

Hitchhiker0427

on Feb 02, 2006

About the 6600 and rolling back drivers, are there any plans to fix this problem in WB? Because I get this problems occasionally, but I am unable to roll-back the drivers. The older drivers cause havok with my dual-core processor. Thanks.

113

Neil Banfield

on Feb 03, 2006

If different drivers fix it then I am sorry to say its something nvidia will probably need to fix from their end. Most likely their drivers are leaking something over time.

114

Hitchhiker0427

on Feb 03, 2006

oh well. It's just that every set of drivers over 77.77 gives me this problem. I'm currently using the latest beta drivers, because the latest "stable" drivers conflict with a couple of other probgrams besides WB. It doesn't seem like they're gonna fix it anytime soon though.

115

Mangyrat

on Feb 14, 2006

OK i have a problem of WB not working in XP64. it works fine when i boot to xphome.

kinda strange i got it to work buy clicking on the only ico i could see my computer.

then it would draw the rest of icons and the task bar would be missing some of my start up items even WB was missing from the tray.

but its screweing up my sys things like system restore, defrag, even my add/remove in control panel was missing and a few other parts of xp are messed up.

but i boot in to safe mode and remove WB and everything is working again?

and befor you say anything yep i tryed the free ver, the hacked ver and the retail ver last.

i can get the old ver to install and works fine but ver 5 is broken in xp64 lol after all this i see that you can remove WB from the Star dock center. any ideas i relay would like it working in xp64?

opet 170 amd and microsoft 2x patch/hot fix

evga 7800 gt driver 81.98

2 gig A-data ddr 3200

biostar Tforce4 sli

116

Jafo

on Feb 14, 2006

and befor you say anything yep i tryed the free ver, the hacked ver and the retail ver last.

I'd say that is very likely your problem....vestages of the 'prior installs' are probably messing with your current situation/install....and my money would be on the 'hacked ver' as you call it.

When people 'hack' a program, the user, for some quaint obscure reason seems to have faith that the 'hacker' actually knows what they are doing.

Mostly they do not.

Hacking, by its very nature is fraught with danger....and doing so to a program that integrates so closely with the OS/GUI is simply asking for trouble.

It is not overkill to suggest you do a full reformat....and install that 'retail ver' ONLY, as you would then be running a legitimate system devoid of extraneous 'hacker' issues.

117

Mangyrat

on Feb 14, 2006

hm this is a new install around 2 week old i rarely use this os XP64 i just wanted to test out WB in it.

i might try a repair install but as for formating and reinstalling.

i think i see where the problem is in xp64 you have Program Files (x86) and Program Files folders and the @#$%*&# cracked ver installed in both some how so it left parts in it. it was my fault i tryed running the ver 4 and the cracked one in 32bit compatability mode when installing.

ill take a look at the regestery later on but i think i can get it working buy striping out the leftover junk in Program Files (x86) and Program Files

thanx for getting me thinking. i had to reinstall the cracked ver and watch where it installed to to see the problem

118

Jafo

on Feb 14, 2006

i had to reinstall the cracked ver and watch where it installed to to see the problem

the 'cracked' ver will likely break system dll's causing the OS to fail. Until you permanently and totally eradicate ALL traces of the 'crack' you can look forward to enjoying system failures.

Essentially you get what you pay for.

Pay nothing....and you get nothing-but-grief.

You also will not get much in the way of sympathy OR support, not from a site which is funded by the Company whose product was 'cracked'.

If you have purchased the full Windowblinds proggy then the only logical solution is to install that ONLY.

...and in the meantime send off a note of thanks to the hacker who screwed your computer. I'm sure he will be chuffed.

119

Mangyrat

on Feb 14, 2006

hold on now i was not looking for sympathy i was looking for some ideas on how to make it work.

im so used to haveing to patch a game or app to make it work i try almost anything even cracks

i pay for my apps and games i tryed the cracked version out of desperation trying to get it to work in xp64 i had the payed for ver working and still working on the same sys just under a diferetn OS. my problem was with the old freeware install when i went with ver 5 that came with the package.

granted installing the cracked ver made things worse. but i had a problem to start with.

the new skins would load but when i rebooted it lost the icons desktop was showing the wallpaper and a few icons but not all, not the problems others were haveing with blank desktop or realy slow loading. mine was missing things.

120

Mangyrat

on Feb 14, 2006

i still find it strange that WB only efects the following program. everything else works and when i uninstall WB they all work.

windows messenger
hyper terminal
remote conections
sound recorder
volume control
backup
system restore
disk deframeter

when i get the time ill restor the ghosted image of the drive and see if its still broken and if so its a bad install of xp64 from the start.

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