Jonathan Marston

Join Date 11/2004

Stardock - (one of) the most annoying software companies...ever

Their software's so cool...if only it worked right

I love Stardock's software. I've used the trial versions off and on for the last few years, but I never bought it until recently because...well...I always ended up having problems with certain programs, or I got tired of it slowing down my computer.

A couple months ago I gave the latest WindowBlinds a try, and I was impressed. It was fast, complete, and seemed to finally be solid enough for everyday use. So I went ahead and purchased Object Desktop. I was happy...for awhile. Eventually, though, I was let down again. I started noticing certain situations where WindowBlinds would mess things up, slow down, etc. (certain web sites, PhotoShop...). It was annoying, but I decided to work around it.

Well...last week I updated WB to the latest version, and it's been hell on my computer ever since. Every time I start up, processes would lock (usually explorer.exe), and I'd have to sit there in task manager and fight it for 15 minutes before I could use my computer. Eventually things would settle down, and it would run fine...until the next reboot.

I tried disabling WB...no good. Thinking maybe it wasn't WB, I ran a spyware scan; nope, not the problem. HiJackThis? Didn't find anything...I tried everything I could think of...until tonight I got so fed up I just uninstalled every single Stardock app on my computer. Guess what...my computer's running like new again.

Yes...Stardock is [edited]one of[/edited] the most annoying software companies...ever. Their software is so cool...if only it worked right...all the time...not just most of the time.

I'll probably wait a few more months before reinstalling anything Stardock...maybe they'll get it right by then...

Edited title for accuracy

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I guess I'm lucky. I run a lot of Stardock stuff on my computer, and it never hurts anything.

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LittleBearJason

Join Date 11/2004

+11

Funny. I dont have a problem with Windowblinds 5. Are you just speaking for yourself or speaking out for others as well?

Have you worked with technical support on this to troubleshoot?

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I've been new to this whole desktopx thing for a while. And my machine is, well not the best,but not the worst either. I have a celeron processor (333 ghz) and I have only 20gigs of storage, with only about 11 gigs of space left. I too have the occasional problem. But I manage to get the help I need right here. of coarse things slow down a bit, but I'll run a registry cleaner and disk clean-up utility and things work fine. I keep my machine clean. So I guess I'm saying desktopx is an amazing product. everything works fine if I don't run everything at once.just what I need at the time,(and sometimes the ones I don't).It just takes talking to some of the great people here at wincustomize. I have never had anything serious happen to my system. so maybe an upgrade to your system may be at hand.

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I had NO problems until I recently purchased the upgrade to WindowBlinds. Now if I have it loaded..Explorer crashes...period.

Guess I wasted my money...and sure wish this bug was fixed before the product was put out. I am very unhappy...now I use no Window Blinds.

Is that right?

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Hey there. I know what you're going through as my earlier experience of Desktop X had me going through a range of frustrations as it somehow altered system scripts/codes and rendered programs like Norton Virus scan and Microsoft Outlook and Word unusable. Now I still don't know why the program was doing that but like you, I had used WinBlinds shareware for a time and I liked the look of it over boring windows...so I thought I'd give OD a go as I liked the look of some of the themes and it's unique functionality. Anyway, after experiencing the aforementioned problems and having no luck with SD support I decided to not use it and just use WinBlinds...which rarely caused me system probs. So I left it for just over a year and decided to give it another go and had same probs so I tried to get a refund as I only used OD a bit and I just wanted to use WB...but I missed the refund time and I was pretty pissed that I paid for this software and it just caused system and other software problems. Some of the solutions provided required inordinate amounts of time to try and solve it as well.

So I left it again resigned to my lot with OD...time went on and Desktop X was updated and XP service pack 2 was released and I had another go as I was feeling bored and curious to see whether anything had changed. Surprisingly, it worked pretty well. Some themes caused some problems but the majority worked well. I'm pretty happy with it at the moment and for me, the Aero theme has worked consistently well. Also WB5 is the best WinBlinds I've tried...now if SD - while providing a good response turnaround and putting in a lot of work into getting there software working well - could make subscription renewals a little more pocket friendly...there's not much difference between buying the product and the renewal.

Good luck...I obviously have no solutions but I understand your disappointment and frustration.

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I really like the look of the new WB....but looks like if I am going to use it..I will have to go back to the old one. I do have an email into support...

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Chasbo

Join Date 01/2005

+1046

Jonathan Marston: What kind of setup do you have? Maybe you don't have enough machine or you haven't properly installed. There could be a lot of other things going on your machine that could cause these problems. Have you tried to contact Stardock support to sort out the problems? This isn't rocket science but at the same time if you don't know what you're doing you can run into trouble. I have only had trouble one time and that was with the first release of IP3 but being patient and paying attention to the advice I found in the forums solved that problem. I admit I was angry and frustrated for a time too. I learned from that experience and now I have faith in Stardock. I've found lately that any trouble I have with my machine was caused by adware problems. It's very important to keep the machine clean. Look through the forums for threads that are similiar to the same type of problems you have had. I'll bet that if you do you'll find solutions to your problems.

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kona0197

Join Date 02/2003

+86

A couple months ago I gave the latest WindowBlinds a try, and I was impressed. It was fast, complete, and seemed to finally be solid enough for everyday use.

I use WB just about everyday and have so for the last few years with NO problems. Sounds like you need to look into more memory or better hardware.

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I've been using WB sinse 3.x, I've have no problems with it.

The only things that cause problems with windows, is the amount of stuff people have in their startup, Ive see screenshots of peoples desktops with 20 or more icons in the systray, all they do is slow your system down. As for photoshop, it is slow anyway, It loads every single thing you MIGHT need when it starts, what do you expect.

So you got the whold object desktop, no doubt you enabled everything, so you have a whole bunch of software trying to load on startup, did you try NOT yousing them all at once, find wich one of the programs has the proble, rather than blaming them ALL?

stardock has had a lot of happy customers for a lot of years, and im still one of them.

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Jafo

Join Date 03/2001

+1845

WB5, like any 'new' software attracts its share of detractors...people with anecdotal instances of things 'going wrong'....but in my instance I even loaded/installed the proggy which, BTW is intended as an adjunct/enhancement to the Explorer.exe Windows shell GUI, under an alien shell, namely Litestep.

If anything was going to go 'wrong' it SHOULD have, with me....but it didn't. My deduction from that is that WB5 is not so much the cause of 'grief' but maybe the highlighter of a pre-existing condition.

Some have narrowed it down to an issue with Icon Packager...but others presume [in error] that it is the fault of the last thing installed, when it's more likely to be down to that 'accident-waiting-to-happen' configuration of something else.

Too many people have had a painless WB5 install to allow the blame [by others] to be pointed legitimately at it as the cause for their grief.

All software installs have the potential to create conflict....and when they are examined closely it's often found to be down to something well outside WB's sphere of influence or realistic expectations thereof.

Example...last time Windows Update failed totally for me....was NOT a MS issue...it was wholely a Symantec issue.

Food for thought...

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c242

Join Date 03/2001

+382

Also my experience is that many people fiddle with these kinds of programs that have no clue with vitally important
functions of their computer (mustn't be You !). Also they are tending to blame the wrong apps for problems that lie elsewhere.

I can't believe I did only have luck to not have had problems with WB in years now. And I have a bunch of other software running here...

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Corky_O

Join Date 04/2004

Stardock is the most annoying software company

Uh.....if your account reflects your true age, then I would say this is a bold statement for someone that young.

Correct testing of a program is done with all other programs and OS in the default state - in other words, nothing but your firewall and anti-virus loaded during the install and use of said program.

This will tell you whether the program conflicts on that platform. After that, you would load other programs and see if there is a compatibility issue between those programs and the one you are testing.

If an issue is found, you must look at both (or all) of the loaded programs for the fault, not just the one you are testing.

Remember that "Theme" awareness in programs is a fairly recent concept, and not all programs focus on the quality when skinned.

BTW - WB 5, IP 3. and ObjectDock+ 1.2 running on XP Pro with a lot of other softwares = no issues.

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There have been significant numbers of users having problems with WB 5, notably multi-user machines and explorer crashes. That said, there's been much discussion and solutions provided on these forums.

Very little effort is required to look for this, probably not much more than jumping on line to complain and certainly much less than a long drawn out battle.

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1.6 GHz Pentium 4 M
2GB RAM
Intel 915GM Video

This is my machine from work. I'll admit I have alot of stuff running on it, but only because it is essential to my job (hence the 2GB RAM my company gave me).

I realize that skinning is by no means a simple task, especially for non theme-aware apps, but when I started having problems I disabled WB. The only Stardock apps that should have actually been running were IP, and the Open/Save dialog extender, and it was still messing up my computer.

I also don't doubt that there are many people who use Stardock apps every day without a hitch. More power to you. I wish I could be so lucky.

So you got the whold object desktop, no doubt you enabled everything, so you have a whole bunch of software trying to load on startup, did you try NOT yousing them all at once, find wich one of the programs has the proble, rather than blaming them ALL?

That paragraph is so full of assumptions I probably shouldn't qualify it with an answer, but here goes anyway. No, I did not enable everything at once. I had alot more installed, but as I said above, I had 3 apps running, WB, IP, and the dialog extender (I don't remember the name off hand). I disabled WB, no go. AFAIK, there isn't any way to 'disable' IP besides going back to default icons (does it even load anything on startup?), and the dialog extender seemed insignificant. Yes, I realize you really can't rule anything out without testing it, but hey, I get impatient when I can't even open the start menu on boot up. I had already disabled the SDMCP.exe process, because it had caused problems for me in the past. So the only option left was to uninstall. And it worked.

Uh.....if your account reflects your true age, then I would say this is a bold statement for someone that young.

Ah yes...the "you're too young to know anything, so forget your opinion" argument. My mom uses the same thing all the time. As for the rest of your suggestions, they're all very true. However, who has time for that? I have to actually get work done on this thing, I can't go and do a reinstall of Windows, then reinstall each app one by one just to see what is conflicting with Stardock apps. I got OD so I wouldn't have to stare at the same tired desktop while working, not to become a beta tester.

I had always had trouble with Stardock apps on my Desktop machine as well (Athlon XP 1700+, 1GB RAM, Radeon 9500 Pro). Install Stardock apps = problems, uninstall = everything's fine. That seems to be pretty conclusive testing to me.

And for the record, I did not say Stardock is the most annoying company because I think they're a bad company, or that I don't like there software. On the contrary, they make some of the coolest software ever, with nothing like it in existence. And although my original comment may have been somewhat overstated, it is extremely annoying to have something so cool right in front of you, but not be able to use it.

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funny thing about stardock programs, they seam to help my PC run better, go figure...

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If it works when you uninstall and doesn't when you install you must be using the programs incorrectly.

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For me Startup is a little slow.

So i just go make a cup of tea when i come back

all ready, then i leave it on all day till i go to bed!!

But it runs great all day

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i use IconPackager, WB5, Object dock plus and cursor xp all at the same time. does not slow my machine down...
lucky me...

my specs:

Intel p4 2.8Ghz
768 MB RAM
120GB HD
80 GB HD
ATI 9600 128 MB

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That is corect when i downloaded wb5. I upgraded it from wb4 . It didnt apply any skins . so i uninstralled the whole wb and reinsraled again it applied skins for about a another day and no more skins applied so i did the same operation again but nothing they must have check it for buggs and so on .

plese stardock do something Email

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LittleBearJason

Join Date 11/2004

+11

And for the record, I did not say Stardock is the most annoying company

Hmmm But what about this title?

Stardock - the most annoying software company...ever

Conflict of interest and or opinion ?

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Stardock applications integrate more than most applications do (by definition almost).

IP and Enhanced dialog more than some and less than others.

Reading the threads here it's the "power users" that have the most trouble with Stardock products. I think that's because other "stuff" is conflicting.

Most developers start with compatability "out of the box", common hardware and software. Then they start spreading out. Stardock takes the next step of haveing very open betas for OD users. And with that feedback they can start tweaking.

There are always going to be conflicts, sometimes it's Stardocks issue and sometimes it's the OS or other app that Stardock exposes. Those are just the breaks.

Stardock has annoyed me a few times in the past. But they have made those annoyances go away too.

I suggest you take a few deep breaths, contact support (maybe try to find a phone number if email is failing you), roll back to 4.6 (you archived before upgrading, right?), ask for a refund if you feel you deserve it, remember it's just a computer, and find something else to be happy about (http://www.klenkefamily.net/blog/2005/05/on-being-happy.htm).

Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central

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I have been using WB for years now...no problems. I have PLENTY of memory(1 GIG)...and all the resources I need, and then some.

All was perfect until I upgraded the WB this week.

I am having ALL sorts of problems now. Even my Yahoo Messenger won't stay open anymore.

I know what I know....and that is that is is the new WB causing the problems.

I am on my computer many hours per day..and have not had a bit of problem until the upgrade.

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OH...and I contacted support. Have yet to hear back...

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Hmmm But what about this title?

You could try reading the entire sentence:

And for the record, I did not say Stardock is the most annoying company because I think they're a bad company, or that I don't like their software.

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Fuzzy Logic

Join Date 05/2002

+493

You appear to have a short memory. The title of this thread is: "Stardock - the most annoying software company...ever"

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