WindowBlinds 5 Startup Problems

It sounds like WindowBlinds is not correctly installed on your PC.

Can you please post a directory listing of your WB directory including filesizes.

I have uninstalled/reinstalled numerous times, installed on a clean installation, yet still get the same messages. Any way here are the list, I screenshot them from explorer including the file versions to speed things up a bit.

Screenshot 1Link

Screenshot 2Link

Now can you use regedit and show us the contents of the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon\Notify\WBSrv key please.

Not sure why there is like 3 posts with the same content above, I only submited once. Any ways, heres the screenshot of the registry neil Link

Thanks, for reply.

I have the same exact problem!

I have the same problem too!

However, I have found that I can install and run the app without reboot if I disable ALL my security apps (AVG 7.1 Pro, Zone Alarm Pro, SpySweeper, RegDefen, SpyCatcher, WinPatro). Unfortunately, I can only get through one reboot before WB reverts back to insisting that I reboot. If I disable all the apps that I mentioned and do repair installation, I can run it again (without reboot). One thing worthy of note in this is that I get a completely unhelpful error message every time I install that informs me that there has been an error and I should try again from an account with admin privileges. NB that I DO have full admin privileges and have verified this a number of times. I click "ok" to clear the error and installation continues. What's non-helpful about the error message is that there is no indication as to what part of the registry I don't have access to, so I can't go looking at specific keys to see if I need to change privileges on them.

Note, too, that when I'm using WindowBlinds the System Information tab from the configuration dialog reports that all systems are go and that WB is correctly installed.

Finally, I've checked the registry key that was suggested earlier and it doesn't exist in my registry... Hmmmmm... just checked it and I didn't have read/write permission for the "notify" part (what is it, a branch, node?). I've changed that and will do a complete uninstall/reinstall and report back.

Thanks,

Mike

Bummed. I successfully installed WB 5 without the installation error mentioned above and rebooted as instructed. I was delighted when my machine booted up into the default WB theme (?). Anyway, tweaked everything back to where I had had it the last time and thought "Hmm. Better reboot to see if it's working". Nope. Booted back into Windows Classic and trying to run WB resulted in the installation dialog popping up informing me that I must first reboot my computer.

Back to the drawing board.

PS I STILL don't have the WBSrv key in my registry...

I've just confirmed that I do have wbsrv.dll in my Windowblinds folder. It's 172KB and file version 5.0.0.1

Could you e-mail [email protected] directly with a saved copy of your HKCU\SOFTWARE\STARDOCK\WindowBlinds registry keys (save from regedit)

I had the same problem and now it says that I have maximum activations and I cannot get anyone to reset so that I can try to get WB5 to work! Any suggestions anyone?

I have the same problem, at least I think it is the same. When I start XP in safe mode WB5 pops up asking me to reboot, when I try to start it.
And when I start windows the normal way nothing works anymore, the WB5 process takes all the CPU but wont run. When I end this process I can't get anything to run at all.
I've checked msconfig for a .cmd file but can't find it. For now I can only uninstall and hope anyone can come up with a solution.

Chris

Me too! My excitement overwhelms me.

chris: do you have activewords running?

Also what process uses all the cpu?  Do you mean wbconfig uses 100% cpu when you manually run it or ?

Hi Neil,

I'm not Chris but I do have a separate thread in ObjectDesktop (it got misplaced when I posted it) about AW and WB 5. When I have WB 5 running (after shutting down all my security apps - see above) AW does not play nice with WB. CPU usage pegs at 100% and it is usually the AWFeedback.exe file that is the culprit (does this right from boot). When other AW apps get in on the act CPU usage is spread among them and still pegged at 100%. I've had a bug report in with AW about this but they can't replicate the problem. I suspect that they are testing with WB 4.x, though...

Mike

Neil, I have just sent the relevant email.

Thanks.

Hi Neil,

I do not have activewords running. And when I start up Windows the cpu is 100% it is at first divided between wbconfig.exe (it auto-loads on startup) and NitroBoot.exe. When I end both these processes the cpu drops to normal (0-2%). But when I try to start two other programs, like stardock central and notepad the cpu goes to 100% again. Then I can see the notepad thingy in the startbar but I can't get the actual program window. If I try to open one program only the cpu goes to 63% but the program still refuses to load.
If I turn of the computer I also get the messages that TrueImageMonitor (an Acronis program) and MXO Auto Loader (for my external Maxtor HD) won't run.
In safe mode everything works again but when I try to start WindowBlinds I keep getting the message that it needs a reboot before it will work.

When I installed WindowBlinds I got the message that it was added to the startup list. So I thought of disabling WindowBlinds from starting up through msconfig or the NitroBoot window but the strange thing is that it doesn't show up in there??!!
So I don't know how to prevent it from auto-loading.

Chris

I too have had problems after loading windowblinds 5. It seemed ok on the first restart after loading and I applied the Vista XP skin. At the end of the session the computer shut down normally. Next time I went to start the computer it got so far with the wallpaper and taskbar showing on screen but explorer.exe never seemed to finish loading. If I put my mouse pointer over the taskbar it showed the "egg timer" constantly but nothing ever happened - I went and left it for half an hour but no change. The only way I could get my system to start was by doing a system restore to before windowblinds was loaded. Weirdly, had no problems whatsoever with the beta versions, only with the final release. The system is an Iridium laptop with 2.4 P4 processor 512 RAM and ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 graphics.

I notice the Vista XP skin has disappeared from the windowblinds section on the site, has there been a problem with this particular skin rather than windowblinds itself?

FYI if you have problems you can always boot into safe mode.

Any information on the problems and the .reg file I sent ya??

Yeah, I booted into safe mode in order to run system restore.

"When I install WB5, I get the usual pop-up asking me to reboot my system, but when I reboot, I get the same again."

This same exact thing happens to me as well!

Aaaarggh! Tried reinstalling from SDC and almost exactly the same symptoms straight from the restart after installation. The desktop looks to be there but it is almost as though it is a "picture" of the desktop with no interoperability with the mouse - nothing happens when I click on start button, shortcuts or even right clicking on desktop. All I am able to do is to press control+alt+delete to bring up task manager so that I can restart from its shutdown menu, go into safe mode on restart and run system restore to the point just before I installed. I am afraid that whatever changes were made between the last beta version and the final release has stuffed it as far as my system is concerned. Is there anywhere I can download the last beta version from? That ran perfectly. I haven't got it archived as I did my yearly "spring clean" last weekend and formatted the drive and put a sparkling new installation of XP on my machine and downloaded and applied all service packs etc from windows update. Following loading up a few programs I even did a defragment before downloading SDC. I am extremely dis-chuffed to put it mildly!

Aaaarggh! Tried reinstalling from SDC and almost exactly the same symptoms straight from the restart after installation. The desktop looks to be there but it is almost as though it is a "picture" of the desktop with no interoperability with the mouse - nothing happens when I click on start button, shortcuts or even right clicking on desktop. All I am able to do is to press control+alt+delete to bring up task manager so that I can restart from its shutdown menu, go into safe mode on restart and run system restore to the point just before I installed. I am afraid that whatever changes were made between the last beta version and the final release has stuffed it as far as my system is concerned. Is there anywhere I can download the last beta version from? That ran perfectly. I haven't got it archived as I did my yearly "spring clean" last weekend and formatted the drive and put a sparkling new installation of XP on my machine and downloaded and applied all service packs etc from windows update. Following loading up a few programs I even did a defragment before downloading SDC. I am extremely dis-chuffed to put it mildly!

sorry, got taken to an error page after posting the first time and I didn't know it had gone on first time. Oops.

Just so you know, if windows jams at the start because of WindowBlinds restart it in Safe Mode With Networking Options Enabled that way you can uninstall WindowBlinds through SDC. This safes a painfull system restore.