WindowBlinds 5 Startup Problems

Wednesday, November 30, 2005 by Andrew Robinson | Discussion: WindowBlinds

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. If I try and launch through StarDock central, the same happens again. Have I missed something here somwhere?

My system is:

AMD Athlon XP 3200+
1.5 GIG DDR400
Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB
Windows XP SP2 (Fully Updated)

Any help is appreciated.

[ Update ]

I have read a few of similar problems here, looked for .CMD in MSCONFIG, yet thats not listed.
145 Reply 88 Referrals
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Neil Banfield
Reply #1 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 2:19 PM

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

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


andyr2005
Reply #2 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:21 PM
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

Neil Banfield
Reply #3 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 4:53 PM
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.

andyr2005
Reply #4 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 5:30 PM
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.

shine
Reply #5 Wednesday, November 30, 2005 7:31 PM
I have the same exact problem!

Tofino
Reply #6 Thursday, December 1, 2005 12:28 AM

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


Tofino
Reply #7 Thursday, December 1, 2005 1:24 AM

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...


Tofino
Reply #8 Thursday, December 1, 2005 9:01 AM
I've just confirmed that I do have wbsrv.dll in my Windowblinds folder. It's 172KB and file version 5.0.0.1

Neil Banfield
Reply #9 Thursday, December 1, 2005 9:27 AM

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


BrendaW
Reply #10 Thursday, December 1, 2005 1:09 PM
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?

_chris_
Reply #11 Thursday, December 1, 2005 1:37 PM
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

essenceoftao
Reply #12 Thursday, December 1, 2005 2:06 PM
Me too! My excitement overwhelms me.

Neil Banfield
Reply #13 Thursday, December 1, 2005 4:54 PM

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 ?


Tofino
Reply #14 Thursday, December 1, 2005 6:12 PM
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

andyr2005
Reply #15 Thursday, December 1, 2005 6:30 PM
Neil, I have just sent the relevant email.

Thanks.

_chris_
Reply #16 Friday, December 2, 2005 4:42 AM
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

Flannelmeister
Reply #17 Friday, December 2, 2005 5:07 AM
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?

Neil Banfield
Reply #18 Friday, December 2, 2005 6:04 AM
FYI if you have problems you can always boot into safe mode.

andyr2005
Reply #19 Friday, December 2, 2005 7:45 AM
Any information on the problems and the .reg file I sent ya??

Flannelmeister
Reply #20 Friday, December 2, 2005 10:24 AM


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

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