Great work, Tihiy! Although I have migrated to XP a long time ago I still have this older PC I love playing arround with, and Windows 2000 is its main OS.
Now I have one question: does Windows 2000 Revolutions Pack enable the use of 32-bit alpha-blended icons in the system tray as well or we still have to patch explorer.exe to get anything better than 16 colors?

It depends.

You can patch explorer.exe OR you can create explorer.exe.32bitimgl file in %systemroot% and you will have 32-bit icon it tray then.

Thanks Thihy here it works !!! Did you contact the author of tclock3 to implement the taskbar skinning into rp7(for win2k)?

Sorry for my ignorance: what's a explorer.exe.32bitimgl file? How can I create it? Is it simply a blank text file with that name?

:s

Yes, it's a simple txt file.

(And no .txt extension, of course)

Same here, and I am using ATI (Radeon X1950 Pro).

Outpost tray icon is wrecked (as are Nero install icons) and I have folders of XP icons that all have very jagged black edges. Strangely, a couple of icons in the control panel seem to be displaying correctly, but I may be mistaken as I can't be sure how they looked before (I did not pay them that much attention).

I have cleared icon cache, unregistered DLL and re-registered, but it's still the same unfortunately.

I've noticed that you CAN'T check "show icons with all possible colors" in desktop properties. When you register this dll, that box is unchecked. Have you re-checked it after applying the dll register?

You'd set ShellIconBPP back to 16 instead of 32, actually disabling Win2K Revolutions Pack

hi guys, i have asked tihiy if i can use it in my vista2000 pack and has give me a ok.
so check out the thread under windows customisation.
there is going to be an update today.
oh and tihiy, would it be a good idea if we"you, wildbill, and me" work together to make a hell of a pack for 2000?!
let me know if you like that, just pm me.

damian666

Hrm, explorer.exe seems to be an either/or thing, since I have a hacked .exe and it doesn't appear to work. That's a shame.

Do I need to do anything specific to get it to work with alt-tab?

Any updates coming soon?

I don't have time/inspiration.
Any specific ideas?

Not really besides the alt-tab dialog and those small issues. The patch does what it says and that's ok.


Edit:

One thing i'd like to see in w2k is a better thumbnail view, similar to xp's, where the big folder icons are useful to preview what's inside

Maybe you could include an installer that automatically uninstalls previous versions and create *.exe.32bitimgl files for explorer.exe (more colorful sysem tray + 32-bit icons in folder options dialog) and for taskmgr.exe.

EDIT: installer could create cleanmgr.exe.32bitimgl as well

Is there a Winrar icon that doesn't show up as just a box or a way to make it display? I've tried making the .exe.32bitimgl files with some success except for this.

If I try to associate a file-type with an application by right clicking on a document, selecting 'Open With...', select a program, check 'Always use this program to open these files' and click 'OK' - the document's icon is screwed up.
Look at the file called 'sample' below. The second image is the 'Properties' dialog for a similar file. It is as if a small transparent image has been placed on top of the icon. The third image - same procedure when done in XP.

Any idea why this is happening?

Click to view attachment

This is problem similar to shortcut arrows.
Notice that Shell is combining 32-bit and not 32-bit image. In such case, it is impossible to determine what result is (because non 32-bit image has zero alpha channel in 32-bit color space -> it will become transparent).
It is possible to workaround this by forcing resulting alpha-channel white, however, if i'm to implement this, you'll lose alpha blending video card acceleration (i don't want to).
It may be possible to work around this directly in Shell in future versions.

In the case of shortcut arrows all you had to do was use a 32-bit arrow and problem solved. Not so in this case. I tried replacing the background icon with the original 16-colour 2k icon and that didn't work either. In this case the background icon became transparent as well.

So how is XP implementing this - since in the example I provided 'keynote.exe' only had a 32x32 16-colour icon. Does XP convert the lower bit-depth icon into a 32-bit image before combining it with the background icon?


Hope this counts as inspiration/specific idea

hi tihiy, what about the treeview in mapoptions, and other places?
maybe thats an idea to implement?
also netshell uses some sort of strange way to show icons.
look in to that also?

btw, its the best thing that ever happened to win2k!!!

damian666

Where?

well the folderoprtions in the explorer window.
youo know, extra's\folderoptions.
there the icons are in 16bit i think.
and in the display properties, when you select a wallpaper.
also in 16bit.

damian666

If you mean those icons under the General tab, they can be changed with reshacker. If you mean the "View" tab (there is a list showing some ugly folder icons at the bottom) then i don't know.

Regarding display properties: every single inch of that applet is fugly as hell.

To improve the icons in the "Folder Options" dialog create an empty file in C:\WINNT (where Win2000 is installed) and rename it to explorer.exe.32bitimgl.

Then I guess all applets -including display properties- could be forced to display 32-bit icons by using system32/rundll32.exe.32bitimgl. Is that correct?

It doesn't seem to work for display properties. Maybe it doesn't use ImageLists to store and paint their icons...

Tihiy: could you take another look at Miranda if you get the chance? The .32bitimgl method was working originally but something that's changed in the meantime appears to have broken it partly, at least for me. The same chat dialog only has correct icons on mouseover, while some parts of the UI don't seem to draw correctly, though I'm not sure why.

Cheers!

You haven't specified which Miranda version should be checked: the stable 0.6.x branch, or the development 0.7.x one?

Checked last 0.7.x version and did work for me.

However, i can think one reason: IF those icons are painted over WHITE (window) color, then they may have broken shadow.
This limitation is because of some complicated matters and is candidate for next [if there is] version.

Please note that some parts from Windows 98 Revolutions for 2000 Revolutions too, for example
Add/Remove programs applet replacement tool
http://tihiy.ahanix.org/programs.zip

Try and be impressed

Well it's not white; off-white, but not actual white. However, that does appear to be the issue, as per the attached picture - if I change to, say, Slate colour scheme or anything similarly darker, it's no longer there.

I've seen the Add/Remove Programs previously and quite like it, but I haven't noticed anywhere whether there's any way to make it replace the standard one automatically? That would be nice - currently I'm using Safarp which adds a control panel item, and then disabling the original one in tweakui, which i presume should be possible with this as well.

Good news boys and girls!


W'2000 Revolutions Pack 2.0 is coming.


New:
- Explorer Toolbar with 32-bit icons and disabled icon shading

Fixed:
- Problems with icons drawn on white (window) color
- Toolbar 16-colored disabled icons were sometimes weird

RP Installer:
- Easy install/upgrade/uninstall
- File patching (yea, i didn't want to, but some changes must be made)
- Silent install & slipstreaming (possibly)

Hi again, the Windows 2000 Revolutions Pack 2.0 will need the W2K English? or the language will be neutral?
PS:Again, sorry, my bad english.

Revolutions Pack for Windows 2000 is designed to be language neutral. This is goal for all versions.

In fact, 2.0 is ready BUT! There is file replace issue. It fails to replace system file even if I specify to do this before startup
It works if started in Safe Mode, but it is not comfortable. I'll release it after finding way ASAP.

Have you tried Replacer?

Any chance of a manual-replacement version?

W'2000 Revolutions Pack 2.0 released for testing <see later post>
WARNING: NOT main-system safe until is properly tested. Dunno how new file replacer will work
Install:
0) If 1.x versions were installed not in \windows\system32 directory, then you must unregister it. Or manually clean AppInit_DLLs [Google] key.
1) Run setuprp.exe, click Install.
2) Reboot.
3) PROFIT!
Back up is in \system32: browseui.bak and comdlg32.bak

Uninstall: In add/remove programs.

hi tihiy, testting it for you tonight...
any changes in the rpl2k.dll?
or just the installer thats new?
and once again i ask you, why not team up?

please let me know!

damian666

I've written what's changed.
You'll have to write installer routines for rpl2k.dll now yourself, or use my installer.

Where's screenshot i've been asking for?

ok thats fair enough...
well i have some here but they are for someone so they contain comment and stuff.
but they are clear enough...
so here





This is with my vistapack applied!
i use your rpl2k.dll for the icons, great fix btw!
i also use wildbill's tclock, but it has to many bugs to use all the time
but im sure it will get better!

so now want to make a f*cking nice pack for 2000?

please let me know man.

oh and a question, new installer routines?
cant i just regsvr it anymore?

damian666

Damian, your toolbar buttons look distorted. Why is that?


Thanks for the update, Tihiy. I'll test the patch right away.

Tihiy: mostly looking good, but a couple of further issues have cropped up. Firstly, there's now magic pink in the taskbar/start menu properties (see first pic); and full colour icons in the navbar are corrupted (see pic 2 - though oddly enough not in Office, which seems to ignore these settings completely).

Thanks for your continued efforts!

Updated RP 2.0 attached to this post
- Fixed "magic pink" issue
- Added setuprp.exe /q switch for silent install

What is the system requeriments for the Windows 2000 Revolutions Pack 2.0?
This system is compatible?
AMD K6-II 450Mhz
128 MB RAM

All you need is a video card with support for 32-bit color depth.

Well, RP'2000 is designed to be as low resource-intensive as possible.
Memory usage will grow because 32-bit icon resources will consume more memory themselves.

All you need is good enough video card which is able to handle 32-bit images (with alpha-blend acceleration recommended).

128 MB is enough if you have enough free ram for W'2000 to work.

@Tihiy, did you read my thread "cX2K..."?

Your Pack adds some nice resources and good featues i want including into newer versions of mine!

Happy Easter,
Chris

I noticed some delay in my messenger tray icons updating. I don't remember this happening with older versions of RP. Could it be the explorer.exe.32bitimgl file?

BTW, there's a bug in places bar as Targaff noticed.

No, this can be really bug. How to reproduce it?
Which messenger should i run? How to make tray icons rapidly updating?


Is it constant? I can't reproduce it. 99 of 100 times this dialog opening everything is ok.

I'm running version 7.0.0816 (yes, older but faster
Delay appears as soon as you log in (i.e. the "not signed in" icon" remains there for the first minute you are online)



Seems to be constant here.