ATI X1900 XTX and Window Blinds 5.01

'Lo all

I upgraded my motherboard and graphics card last week and did a complete format and reinstall of windows afetr that. About this time Window Blinds was updated to 5.01 from 5.00 or whatever the number is.

Since this time I can't load any skins properly and I'm basically having major problems with this software. What happens is that I can load a theme and it changes the entire desktop as normal, at this point everything looks fine. I then reboot and the theme has gone back to standard windows luna, except there are elements of the theme I tried to load still aparent - like the window close / minimise buttons are smaller than normal luna but are still the normal luna colours. The task bar is enlarged so much so that any system tray icons are very pixelated and the name of the day appears under the time.

If I then load window blinds control pannel and try to apply the skin again nothing happens apart from the title bar of the windows blinds control pannel turns invisible.

I've tried to track down the problem as best I can, I started by doing another format and reinstall, but I have the same result. I've tried going back from cat 6.3 to cat 6.2 drivers as someone said it may make a difference. But that also did nothing, however the thing to note was that when I had uninstalled the ati software and had no gfx drivers installed I was able to load a theme and restart as many times as I liked and it was still drawing the theme correctly.

So has anyone got any ideas? It sounds to me like a gfx driver or specific problem with the X1900 XTX cards. I had a X850 XT PE before and it was totally fine. So it's either the gfc card not working with the software, or possibly the update to window blinds?

Ideas?

Nick

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Hmmm - I have exactly the same problem. I had not really diagnosed it because just got used to it not working right. But now I only have about 4 days left on my subscription and decided to actually look to see if there were any answers. I tried everything (not starting all kinds of services and stuff) but it does seem to have started when I got my ATI x1900xtx a few months ago, which can only use catalyst 6.2 or greater. I am currently running 6.2 and have not tried the 6.3's yet. This month old post makes me worry that even upgrading to 6.3 won't help and I want to stay away from the 6.4's due to some bad press about them. Unfortunately the 6.5's probably won't be out until after my subscription lapses.

Any else have issues with WB 5.01, x1900xtx, and Catalyst 6.2 or 6.3? Maybe I can try to find WB 5.0 or something to download and give that a try. Man, I love my windowblinds - but now they look exactly as described in the post above.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

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If you can hang in there a little longer...until Neil Banfield has seen this thread....he may be able to shed some light on it...

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Neil Banfield

Join Date 04/2001

+1104

I have heard of this before and it was being caused by the user disabling the themes service and then running Styler Toolbar. If you have done this, then turn the themes service back on (with WB disabled), and manually switch to Windows Classic.

It is interesting that both of you have 1900XTX cards though.

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No - the Theme service is running and I don't even know what the "Styler Toolbar" is!!!

I have completely uninstalled and removed every registry key (

) that had stardock or windowblinds in it - since I had tried complete uninstalls before and it acted the same.

I am wondering if it is not a problem/conflict with the ATI driver (in my case, cat 6.2), the card (x190xtx), and Windowblinds. On my fresh HD test installs for Cat 6.3 and 6.4 (I like to do a test install on a fresh HD before I install a new driver - just to see what it messes up) I did not see this - but I didn't run too long. My x64 load seems to be working okay - but I think it has the 6.4 drivers. Its just that I hate to screw up ever-so-important

gaming by installing new video drivers that may not be as good. I know I could do a fresh install, but I have done that too many times with my "real" system and have to call MS each time to reactivate. So I am trying to find the least-painful way to resolve this!

I will definitely wait around for any ideas or suggestions. I have had Windowblinds since the 3.x days - early 2002! Its worth the wait to see if there is a fix.

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