tintin67

Join Date 11/2004

Two general questions: 1) Updating Master Skins

...and 2) porting Visual Styles to Win7

Hello there,

I have two general questions:

1) I have purchased several Master Skins - but they are all for XP/Vista and I'm running Win7 64-bit now. Is it possible to simply update these skins (if available) or would I have to purchase the Win7-Version?

2) I've been using Visual Styles for a while when I couldn't get WindowBlinds to work on my system (it's running now !) Some of these styles are good work - I'd like to port a few of them to WindowBlinds 7 for my personal use (if I get permission, of course). is there a way to do that? I know that you could import XP-VS in SkinStudio 6 and I know that there is a stand-alone tool to port XP-Styles to WB 7. Is there a way to convert Win7 (or Vista) Visual Styles to .wba?

Thank you!

windowblinds

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DrJBHL

Join Date 04/2002

+4247

1. I've never seen a Master charge for an update (if prepared separately). I have seen skin updates with the 7 version being sold. If the skin you purchased falls under that category I'd contact (email/pm) the Master separately with proof of purchase.

2. There is a conversion utility for msstyles or maybe visual styles to windowblinds but I think it's an old utility, not sure it's been updated, nor if you can use it with Win7 or WB7....were I in your position, I'd email stardock tech support.

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LightStar

Join Date 12/2002

+1599

What Doc says is right, the conversion utility to convert visual styles to Windowblinds only works with Windows XP visual styles (.msstyles) though, and it has a few bugs during the conversion process that must be corrected manually in SkinStudio afterward. From that point though you could probably use SkinStudio also to update everything to work in Windows Vista or Windows 7. I have done it myself already.

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Thanks to both of you!

I've tried the conversion utility myself and I used to port a few XP-msstyles with SkinStudio 6, but SkinStudio 7 doesn't seem to offer an option to do that. Maybe it's too complicated with Vista or Win 7 msstyles. Well, as long as there isn't an easy way to import visual styles, I think I have to do without, since I'm no expert at skinning at all.

@DrJBHL Yes, thanks, it's a good idea to contact the master (and so obvious that I don't know why I didn't think about it myself )

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DrJBHL

Join Date 04/2002

+4247

So nice to see a polite post, and be able (at least try) to help. LightStar is a skinner of considerable repute, and what he says is generally 24K, so I'd go by that.

Glad to have helped with the other problem...

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Cameochi

Join Date 03/2009

+32

Here is what I tried recently - and it worked for me. I saved the original receipt with the download link for the blind. I clicked on it and it let me download the latest version with no problem. Since I bought the skin fairly recently, it was downloaded from the new web site so my solution might not work if you've had the skin for awhile and downloaded it from the old site. Still, if you have the original download link, it might be worth a try.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1845

I'd like to port a few of them to WindowBlinds 7 for my personal use (if I get permission, of course).

"personal use" [meaning staying on your own computer - not uploaded anywhere] won't need 'permission'. That's only required if you subsequently wish to distribute your handiwork....

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Island Dog

Join Date 06/2003

+1048

You can find your registrations and links to download here - http://forums.impulsedriven.com/account/regs

You can also enter your e-mail at the Stardock Support page and all your registration info will be sent to you.

https://www.stardock.com/support/

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Thanks everybody!

@Cameochi: Thank you, clever idea! (and again: just why didn't I think about this myself, I wonder... I'm saving all my Stardock receipts in a special folder in Thunderbird and I'm backing up Thunderbird regularly, so everything is there... the only explanation I have is that I'm elsewhere with my mind at the moment, the FIFA World Cup for example and the second semi-finale match tonight ) By the way, you will get the updated version for older skins as well when clicking the link on the stardock receipt, I tried it with MikeB314's Sirus-Blind.

@Jafo: Thank you, too, and yes, I know that as long as I use or in this case modify other peoples art only for myself I won't need permission. But I also had in mind to maybe upload a ported VS here if the results (of my attempts) would have been good enough - some of these msstyles are really good work, though they are not as complete as WindowBlinds skins (and I somehow doubt that my skills would have sufficed to complete a ported VS in a way that it would have made a Blind good enough to share, but in that case I'd have asked for permission of course...).

@Island Dog: Great, thanks, this link is just what I needed (and Cameochi's idea is working as well, of course). I have to admit I forgot how well organized Stardock is...

@DrJBHL:

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