The State of Stardock Customization Software
Stardock Forums
It pains me to write this. I mean no disrespect to the company or its engineers. I am, however, quite upset.
I am a long-time user of Stardock Software and have been subscribed to Object Desktop for several years. I have always loved the customizations the software allowed a user to have at their fingertips to make Windows a spiffier place. Not so sure that is the case any longer. It might be due to the rapid pace of change of the Microsoft product itself, I don't know.
What I do know is that I recently did a clean installation of my PC's OS - Windows 10 Creators Update 64-bit.
Spent alot of time reinstalling software & files. Put Object Desktop on and began installing Stardock items. I posted about this in another thread and received no inquiries or feedbck from support. The culprits seem to be Icon Packager and/or Windows Blinds. Pretty sure the former is the main problem. However, after a SECOND CLEAN WINDOWS INSTALL, I tried anew. Same result. I tried uninstalling Icon Packager - rebooting - and the problems remained.
What are they?
- Taskbar becomes unresponsive
- Had to use PowerShell to get into Control Panel to uninstall Blinds
- Start ---> Settings is unresponsive
- All live tiles are blank
- Fences disappeared completely; just icons all over the place
- Edge will not work --- opens to a black page with not favorites, extensions, or anything. Just a bare frame. I am using Chrome right now
- Photo App is broken
- the list goes on
Mind you, this is a SECOND run-through. Happened identically both times. This time, I tried a restore point made just before I started installing Blinds & Icon Packager. Helped, but far from where it should be. The system is acting very much like it is infected with a virus, However, in both cases, problems arose immediately following the installation of Icon Packager. And, Malwarebytes has run completely clean scans. As has Windows Defender.
BEWARE!
I am trying to avoid a 3rd clean install, but it is looking like I may have to.
All that said, I am wondering if I should just abandon the product at this point. Fences I find the most useful. ShadowFX, simple as it is, adds another little touch to a Windows color scheme. I like SpaceMonger to find out at a glance where my "space mongers" are.
Everything else? Increasingly less useful. The products are not keeping up. Blinds & Icon Packager I have already addressed, but:
- Start10 was great for Windows 8, but now, with the return of Windows Start Button and if you like the live tiles, I don't see any benefit to using it.
- FX causes too many dizzy spells from all the wobbles & smoke & moving parts. I have stopped using that.
- Deskscapes is outdated unless you want to use a Vista like animated-desktop
- Never could find a good way to utilize Tiles
I don't know, alot of it is personal preference. I think alot, too, is Stardock's inability to keep up in a timely fashion with Windows changing. What I know is that twice now, with clean installations of Windows, Stardock has apparently ruined hours of hard work getting my system to run like I like it to.
Don't know what to do at this point - other than reinstalling Windows one more time and leaving most of Stardock off my machine