Hi Damian, great job, now the battery icon is OK but if you want I've better and tested BMPs... (attached)
I repeat (as I've written in your guestbook) that the italian folder for "Program files" is "Programmi".
Also I've translated the timedate.cpl resources (attached) so italian translation will be complete. Bye

Hey damian,

Why are you having this problem with Program Files? Shouldn't be there some macro that you can use for program files. For example if you use AutoIt to make your patcher there is @ProgramFilesDir macro that will always read you correctly Program Files.

Cheers

Damian666,
Moreover I'd like you check (but probably they are your choices):
1)icon 46 of shell32.dll, (I suggest to replace with icon 101 of explorer.exe)
2)icon 4 of wuaucpl.cpl, (I suggest to replace with 4 of wucltui.dll)
3)icon 16 (and probably 20) of msoeres.dll.

Bye

By the way, it is bitmap 16 of this file. It's the image used for the folders on the left panel, but in OE6 these resources are displayed in 16 colour and they appear grey. Maybe, the choice is to mantain the XP default, that are kindly ugly, but not a gray square (the problem is limited to left panel, cause in the right windows these icon are correctly displayed).

Hi kontini,
Are you on Win2k or XP?
My XP only displays the battery pics in 16 color so I made these bmps:

What happened to the WMP and Movie Maker icons?

EDIT. Nevermind, I figured out what happened.

What are the proper proceedures to update from one release to the next? If I restore the original files, Isn't there a risk of losing a WU-patched file or something?

Good question, outback...
but no, no risk.
i made it so that when a file is updated and the fileversion is greater then the one in the backup folder, it will first copy it there and then use that for the patching.
that way you keep the newest file on restore
so, its cool, and about updating, i am checking if i can make it so that the user dont have to uninstall and install.
when i finish it, you can just install over the old version.
BUT, its not done yet, so plesae wait for me ok?

@kontini, thanx man for the heads up.
i will check the icons, but they indeed are my own taste interpretation
so i dont promise anything
thanx for the translations man.
and i totally forgot the entry in the guestbook...
oh and about the outlook bmp's, forget it man, it is limited to 16bit color so its a no go, trust me , i tried

@ mara, the ini that is supplied with tclock3 is ready made so it has to be correct, i dont use autoit for that one, yet...

@ squeeto, i wil check the bmp you and kontini made, and will see which works better, thanx man

damian666

I'm on XP and I've tested the attached batmeter.dll and the bmps are better that those in the pack.
Msoeres.dll: 16 bit colors but without a purple background, please!

P.S. Another little thing: Winntbbu background is too "white" so the text during setup is unreadable.

ok, man, the ones squeeto made i presume?
and you tried the setup patch huh, like the rest of the winntbbu?
its a first try so...
i will check out the background , thanx for your help man

damian666

Yes, squeeto's batmeter.dll.zip.
Yes, I've tested the setup, everything is OK, even if 1x1 pixel bmps are too green the other resources are beautiful.

Nice pack, as usual Damian. But... is it my imagination or the installer has lost the feature to "force reload" files???

EDIT

timedate.cpl is screwed with this version (2 dialogs missing) and Vistadrive doesn't work fine for me (2 hard drive missing icons in my system).

Hello damian666.For a few days in last weeks I have been testing your vista-2000 pack and I have encountered something strange.It is long to explain and dificult to understand.
I have "extracted" the pack(not installed) and searching Resource dir and I have encountered that there are many reshacker script that have all bmp and ico to patch the file.But not all referenced file exist in the directory.They are missing.Well OK.
After that,I have installed the pack(at first time not patching the system files) and searching the same directorys where I see the missing files,I have encountered the missing files!!??,BUT,this files creates during install???(I think,perhaps a routing that you have implementing to create this files during the installation process) are WRONG.Some of them are a bmp or ico repeated in the same directory,other,in different directory.Some of them,well,OK,are right,but other no.
For example,a few dirs,with the "extracted"(not install) resource script and a Vista 2000 pack installation dirs whit OK/WRONG?? files:
-appwiz.cpl
-modify "Resources\appwiz.cpl\1502.ico", ICONGROUP, 1502, -Don´t exist -Created same as 1500.ico -WRONG??
-modify "Resources\appwiz.cpl\5003.bmp", BITMAP, 5003, -Don´t exist - Created same as 5002.bmp -WRONG??

-browseui.dll
-modify "Resources\browseui.dll\268.bmp", BITMAP, 268, -Don´t exist - Created same as 267.bmp -This is OK but 267.bmp will be without color.
-modify "Resources\browseui.dll\279.bmp", BITMAP, 279, -Don´t exist - Created same as 278.bmp -This is OK but 278.bmp will be without color.
-certmgr.dll
-modify "Resources\certmgr.dll\255.bmp", BITMAP, 255, -Don´exist - Created as same 252 or 254 BMP-I think 252,254 and 255 are WRONG.252 and 255 have to be the same but at 32x32 and 254 at 16x16.

-ciadmin.dll
-modify "Resources\ciadmin.dll\406.bmp", BITMAP, 406, -Don´t exist - Created as same 404.bmp -WRONG??,don´t exist in Vista.

-cleanmgr.exe
-modify "Resources\cleanmgr.exe\113.ico", ICONGROUP, 113, -Don´t exist - Created as same as....???-104 and 113 will be the same than 104.ico;111.ico in "extracted" dir is WRONG,but when patch the system this icon isn´t used,patch whit the correct one,I think, but I don´t understand it.

-cmmon32.exe
-modify "Resources\cmmon32.exe\101.ico", ICONGROUP, 101, -Don´t exist icons in this dir but create a new one in system patched(this icon don´t exist in Vista,I think),but where this new icon is?

-cmstp.exe
-modify "Resources\cmstp.exe\107.ico", ICONGROUP, 107, -Same as above

-comuid.dll
-modify "Resources\comuid.dll\328.bmp", BITMAP, 328, -Don´t exist -Created as same as 327.bmp more small-I think this is OK
-modify "Resources\comuid.dll\332.ico", ICONGROUP, 332, -Don´t exist-Created a new one?? that is OK but where is it?

-cryptui.dll
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\307.bmp", BITMAP, 307, -Don´t exist-Creates a new one from 302.bmp but smaller.But OK
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\313.bmp", BITMAP, 313, -Don´t exist-Creates a new one from...??,is OK but It aren´t from Vista.Are yours,isn´t it?
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\314.bmp", BITMAP, 314, -Same as above
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\315.bmp", BITMAP, 315, -Same as above
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\3416.ico", ICONGROUP, 3416, -Don ´t exist and create one same as 3414.ico,but I think that this time the error comes from Vista because in it,this two icons are the same,but in W2000 are diferent,and I think that they would be diferent.
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\4103.bmp", BITMAP, 4103, -Same case as 313,314,315 Bitmap.
-modify "Resources\cryptui.dll\4999.ico", ICONGROUP, 4999, -Don´t exist and create a new one same as 3410.ico,but this can be OK

-cscui.dll
-modify "Resources\cscui.dll\1208.ico", ICONGROUP, 1208, -Don´t exist,create new one based in .....?Can be OK?.

-dataclen.dll
-modify "Resources\dataclen.dll\100.ico", ICONGROUP, 100, -Don´t exist and create one same as 104.ico in cleanmgr.exe??? that can be OK

-deskperf.dll
-modify "Resources\deskperf.dll\100.ico", ICONGROUP, 100, -Same as avobe but I don´t know where is this file??.In W2000 it is similar to the display control applet in control panel.

-dmdskres.dll
-modify "Resources\dmdskres.dll\360.ico", ICONGROUP, 360,
-modify "Resources\dmdskres.dll\364.ico", ICONGROUP, 364,
-modify "Resources\dmdskres.dll\377.ico", ICONGROUP, 377, -This 3 files are the same case,the file don´t exist,created,and the files are correct,but where are the files from?

-dsuiext.dll
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4100.ico", ICONGROUP, 4100, -And this 7 files the same,don´t exist,creates new ones
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4114.ico", ICONGROUP, 4114, -based in 4096,4099 and 4111 whit the error that in
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4116.ico", ICONGROUP, 4116, -w2000 4099.ico is diferent from 4114 and 4116,and
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4122.ico", ICONGROUP, 4122, -4130 is not the same as 4100,4122 and 4125(these 3
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4125.ico", ICONGROUP, 4125, -are closed and 4130 is open)
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4130.ico", ICONGROUP, 4130,
-modify "Resources\dsuiext.dll\4132.ico", ICONGROUP, 4132,


UUUFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.Very complicated really.Well,the really question,apart than a file is or not,How it is posible that if the resouce file neded to parche a system file don´t exit in a "extracted"(not installed)dir,when we make a install of the pack, the lost archives appear???.

Yes I know,this is a very long post and perhaps it isn´t very clear.Sorry so much.I´m from Spain and Translator engines are very poor to splain it clearly.

The vistapack should be installed and not extracted (there is no reason to do this). It's the installer packager that removes duplicate files (for smaller size) and rebuilds them during setup, so everything it's Ok.

Yes,I think that it ´s OK,this is a very good job and my intencion is help damian666 to correct errors,bug,mistakes,encounter new ico and bmb...,to
do Vista Pack much better.My question is because I have encountered icons in a installation of Vista Pack that perhaps don´t correspond to the correct one.I think that,if it is made for the installer itself ,well,the installer allocate the incorrect target file name,and if it is made at the first stage of constructing the installation,assigning manually the duplicated files to destination file ico or bmp,well,this is OK,this is not a mistake.That ´s all.

That is not problem with this pack. It's problem with vista drive. If you have more then 2 partitions Vistadrive will display only these two.

Cheers

I'm using the 2K version and it looks fantastic. However i think i'm gonna uninstall it because i can't stand the random icon corruption. Tihiy's Revolutions Pack should be really bug-free or left out from this, IMHO.

Great job.

RPL2K is necessary because it provides 32-bit icons to Windows 2000. System would look really bad with new icons and without RPL2K.

@ xibad, thanx man... but the vdrive does not work for you?
thats strange, can you investigate for me , and the reshacker log of your timedate .cpl please...
and about the force reloader, it is gone , but will be back on next version and a update function too man

@jose, dont extract the pack man, thats why its not found, simple as that dude

@ dave.net, if you dont like the way rpl2k works, ask tihiy to continue development man...

bye bye guys

damian666

I knew that. I was beta-testing RP when it came out in February 2007.



Actually I did several times. Don't get me wrong, Damian, your pack is really GREAT. It's just (in my opinion) RP is a little buggy to be the "heart" of a customization pack. You should call out for programmers to develop a replacement. i'd do it myself if I could but i'm no progammer .

This is constructive criticism, man. I'm just triyng to help.

i know man, i also asked tihiy, but for soem reason, he doesnt even reply man.
he is to busy or something.
and i know its buggy, but we need to do with it i think...

but thanx for the upbuilding critisism man.

damian666

Yeah, I've just checked the 98/98SE/ME forum and Tihiy seems to be really busy there with his Uberskin/ RP8.

By the way, it looks impressive.

yeah, well on the WPC forums, i saw a guy who has made it possible for nt4 toi use 32bit icons, maybe we can let him port it or something?

i will see what i can do man... but dont expect miracles dude

damian666

Well, back on topic. I noticed you used large icons in the startmenu. Why? Did you do this on purpose? These icons should be 24px images inside a 32px grid, not actual 32px images. Take a close look at win2k's original shell32.dll and you'll see those icons numbered from 20 to 28 are a tad smaller than the rest. Right now they look too close to each other because images are larger than they should be.

so, umm, what numbers are we talking about exactly?
or can you show me, it is not done on purpose, and i can recall you talking about it earlyer huh?
maybe you can make them?

damian666

Check your PM.

Hi Damian and all vistapack users,
I have had an issue, but this is only for knowledge.
I've installed AutoIt but I get a Windows error message when I start the editor (and other autoit tools).
Error advises there is a problem with comctl32.dll so then I replaced that file and now everything is OK. Bye

Damian,
The dl for the 2.3 XP version comes up with an error for me.


edit:
Never mind. Third time I tried it came through.

Hi Damian,

I got Vistapack 2.3! Great piece of work! I have one issue though. It has to do with the fact that my 17" flatscreen wants to run at 1280 X 1024 else it looks really wierd. To view that without a magnifying glass I have to set "large fonts"(125 DPI) in Control Panel/Display/Settings/Advanced/DPI setting:. When I do that the start menu looses the cute user picture. Actually a bit of the bottom of the picture is about a half inch to the left of it's window. Going back to "normal size" (96 DPI) makes the picture appear where it belongs except I can't read anything without a magnifier. I scanned the forums here but found nothing about this issue. Is there a way I can fix this? Has anyone else had this problem?
I've attached a bit of a screen shot. Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

@kontine, thats weird dude, i have installed autoit always, the patcher is made with it!!!
and i never have any trouble whatsoever....
so thats really weird man?????
i will try to see if i can find a solution, but thats going to be hard when you dont see that error yourself.

@sombahd, hm, i think its just not made for that resolution man.
its the fault of the visual style, only workaround is trying another one...
let me now if you find one, and i will check that one, to maybe include it in the pack ok?

damian666

sombahd,

I run the same resolution on one of my boxes and it looks fine. Maybe try uninstalling... set everything to default then re apply?

Squeeto- I had the same prob... try the skydrive mirror if you have a prob again.

Hello,

I was just wondering about one thing regarding this pack and that is:

I as a user of a Window 2000 OS that has been stripped with FDV windows reducer fileset have had some problems running this makeover. It installs without any erros that would actually abort the install, but after the reboot needed for the OS to reload dlls and whatever else has been changed, my explorer.exe just wont start itself. I was wondering if anyone else has had similar problems? And is there maybe a workaround?

Thank you and best regards,

knofix

Hi Damian,

Well, I have bad news and I have good news. The bad news is that I tried Vishal Gupta's VistaVG and BricoPack Vista Inspiriat Ultimate and both have the start menu icon and user pic alignment problem with font DPI at 120. I used an XPSP2 machine for these tests because Inspiriat's info insisted it would not work with SP3. The good news is that when I tried Vista Transform (VTP801) it allowed me to choose font DPI and the start menu alignment problem was GONE! The bad news, for me, is that VTP801 did not otherwise work as well as Vistapack does. It locked up frequently. Also I think I broke their website because right after I had downloaded the thing their website went off line and has been down all day! It does seem to be available from a lot of other sites though. More bad news is that of the three only VTP801 seems to allow patching source files like Vistapack does. I've made several slimmed down, unattended install, SP3 rc2 slipstreamed, CDs using Vistapack patched source files and they work marveleously So Damian, please check out VTP801 and see if you can you include a font DPI selector in Vistapack. Please

Soambah

thanks!

@ knofix, well, did you install Tclock3?
because thats the main explorer crasher in the pack.
it has to be exactly right for your system, or it wont work you know...

try that and let me know.

@adrian, no thanx man

@sombahd, i wil check it out, but dont promise anything man...


@ beerman, hi dude, finally got here huh?

damian666

Hey damian666

No, I did not use tclock3. (nothing @ extras was installed). Anyway It was a fresh clean install of win2k intended for testing purposes only.

Ill do it again and post some logs, maybe those will shed some light on the matter. Anyway thanks for the swift reply.

Best regards

knofix

ok, do that and i will see in too it man

damian666

Just installed it and V2.3 didnt crash . The last time I did that I used some older version (not sure). Anyway besides some strange looking icons everything seems to be working like a charm. pic & log allthough, the log is now unnecesary, since it works.

Superb work, ive even noticed a source (i386) patcher, and thats one nifty feature.

Thanks and best regards

knofix

aaah, yes, i see...
for some reason, the shortcut overlay is changed in a weird paper one...
thats stupid????
i never ever saw that when testing...
i will check it out man.

and about that on the desktop, it is because 2000 not tells apps to use 32bit icons.
because they are not there normally.
in the next version i will include a 32bit forcer, which makes any exe use 32bit icons.
you can also do it yourself if you want to try.
just put a file in the exe dir and rename it to : explorer.exe.32bitimgl.
this would be the name for explorer, and would force explorer to show 32bit icons even in tray.
but that one is always installed so.
just replace explorer with your exe name and your done.

damian666

You rock

@ BeerMan

Thanks for the tip but I had done a fresh install of SP2 slipstreamed XPpro. At default the DPI is 96. I Installed Vistapack 2.3. It looked fine till I changed DPI from 96 to 120. I uninstalled Vistapack 2.3. changed DPI to 120 and reinstalled Vistapack 2.3. The result was the same. Are you running SP2? Anyhow, the problem is not with viewing resizable font. The issue is with OS applets whose geometry and font sizes are apparently hard coded and which are apparently replaced or patched when DPI 120 is selected. When you tell the OS to set DPI 120 it asks for the CD and uses a file named "dosapp.fon". The same thing happens when you go back to 96 DPI.

I've attached a pic of the display properties applet at 120 DPI vs 96 DPI. Display resolution is set to 1208X1024 as per instructions from the mfgr Princeton Graphics. That's the native (best) resolution of the flat screen. No other display settings were changed only the DPI. In the attached pic you can see that the at 96 DPI the entire applet is smaller and more of the characters in the text run into one another then at 120 DPI. Look at the "Appearence" tabs at 6X. The "A" is connected to the "p" at 96 DPI but not at 120 DPI. This makes small text appear smudged in applets at 96 DPI.

@ damian

I've noticed that the the position of the user pic seems to be the only issue. Can you tell me which file (dll, exe, etc) controls the position where that pic is displayed and where in the code to look for the positioning data? Maybe I could patch it myself and if I get it to work I'd be glad to share the patch here for the apparently small minority of us who want/need to actually use the high resolutions of our flat screens. Btw, I have the same issue at 120 DPI on an Asus M3N laptop at it's optimal resolution (1024X768).

Soambah

Hello,

i've installed the vistapack 2.3 everything looks ok, except when i restart the computer, every desktop icons stay together. if if have some desktop icons in upper corner, others in lower corner or else, every time i restart the computer the icons will became together, one after another.
Anyone knows whats the problem. And this occurs when the rebuild icon cache overs.

Thanks,
Pedro Varela

thats due to the iconcache refresher man, cant be helped for now, sorry

damian666

btw, if you look for the startmenu icon, its in the visual style man.
and i suck at that so...

let me know if you find it man.

damian666

I think I used something like IconRestorer when that happened to me. Not sure the one I found thru google is the same one I used but it added a right click menu item to the recycle bin to save and restore icon positions.

Worked fine

Cheers

Hi, damian

RE - Vistapack at 120 DPI. I did some more testing.
Abbreviations: VP=Vistapack, vtp=Vista Transform Pack v801
Below is a summary of remaining 120 DPI issues. I've attached a rar archive containing a modded style sheet from vpt
(Windows\Resources\Themes\Windows Aero\Shell\Aero Task\shellstyle.dll). This one positions the user pic correctly at 120 DPI. I replaced it's pukey green task bar with the cool black one from the "Black" VP stylesheet.

First I used VP on the "i386" and made a bootable installation CD without any 3rd party apps. Then, I did a fresh install. At 96 DPI every thing looked fine. 120 DPI there is the user pic alignment problem. I installed the "Windows Aero" theme from vpt. It solved the 120 DPI problem with the start menu but it has other quirks that need fixing. I'd like to have elements of both VP and vpt in a single theme for 120 DPI. Is that something you could do? Like maybe include "120DPI" style sheet folders in the VP theme?

Current Issues:
1) At 120 DPI, In VP the user pic is outside of and to the left of the frame above the start menu. It's ok in vpt.
2) At both 96 and 120 DPI, the "Black" VP color scheme has no "View workgroup computers" in the task bar but vpt does.
3) vpt's "Orb" start button alignment sucks - it cuts off the top of the "Orb". VP locates the orb better.
4) Mouse "hover", file names are black and unreadable (bad) in vpt but they're white (good) in VP.
5) In vpt's "AeroTask",window control "hot spots" are misaligned. "minimize" is completely off to the left of the button.
6) Neither vpt nor VP shows recently used programs in the left (white) pane of the start menu.
This may be a gpedit thing, or an "unattended" OS installation issue unrelated to either visual style - needs more testing.
7) Neither VP nor vpt allow files to be draged and dropped into folders. Has anyone seen this before?

I could try editing HTML in the style sheet's UIFILE but I'm clueless as to the naming convention. Can you refer me to a site
that explains this?

Thanks,
Soambah

hi man, thanx for testing this man...
BUT, i stink at visual styles, so if you know anyone that can do that, plesae do
i will check it out though, and see what i can do ok?

damian666

Hi damian,

Well...I'm in the same boat with you vis a vis Visual Styles. I design storage and disaster recovery stuff. I'm a babe in the "graphics" woods especially since Micro$haft's theme code seems to have been reverse engineered only by those guys who built "Style Builder". I'll get that and see if I can make it do what I want, but I'd rather just change some code in the "shellstyle.dll". I'm an old time assembly programmer and all this gui software feels like "drive by wire" programming. The problem is I havn't been able to find an explaination of how the "shellstyle.dll" works. There's something that looks like code in the "UIFILE" in the "stylesheet.dll". I ran bits of it thru an htlm decoder and found what looked like the graphics for the "minimize", "restore", and "close" buttons that are in the upper right corners of windows. I'm clueless as to how the rest of it works and everybody I know says it's MS proprietary stuff. Maybe somebody who knows something about this will run across this post and reply with some pithy information . Thanks for offering to look at it a bit yourself. I'll let you know when/if I come up with something.

Soambah

Try Microsoft's Layout.dll (free) file, which is included in the Windows NT Resource Kit.

1. Copy layout.dll to XP's WINDOWS\system32 directory
2. Double click LAYOUT.REG to make changes to your registry
3. Right click desktop, 'Arrange Icons By', uncheck 'Auto Arrange' and 'Align to Grid'
4. Go to your desktop and arrange the icons as you like
5. Right click on My Computer or the Recycle Bin and select 'Save Desktop Icon Layout'

Icons still move but when you want the positions restored to the saved,
right click on My Computer or Recycle Bin again and select 'Restore Desktop Icon Layout'.

If you log out and back in, the icon positions will stay.

aaah, thanx squeeto, thats a good tip.
What to do without you huh

thanx

damian666

Hi damian,

Well... It's been a little hectic around here and I have not yet played with Style Builder but I did fix a minor issue. Some of us like to use the "Classic" Start Menu and I noticed that the vertical OS name bar on the left edge of the menu is still the old 16 bit yucky black and blue one that M$ pit there. I surfed around a bit and not finding anything I thru together the attached bitmap for explorer's bitmap 167. I installed it and it looks much better! Oops! it says "Vista"...