[WildBill]

damian666, on Sep 5 2008, 03:06 AM, said:

well, for that i can only say one thing...
go to WPC , and seek out the member Alexnrs, he is making something too, which involves this.
if someone would know, its him...

check it out, and ask him for help, thats my best advice in this matter, i can only call gdi and brushes and dc's in autoit, which wont help you a lot in this matter so

good luck man.

Damian666

I took a look but didn't see anything that would help me. I eventually gave up on trying to do custom marshalling of COM objects and built some simple shared-memory classes using CreateFileMapping, MapViewOfFile, etc, and Windows mutexes to synchronize process access. I have that portion working pretty well now, though I can see that I'll have to optimize it at some point with a subclass that supports dirty rectangles.

It's been a long, slow slog getting GDI to play nice, but one GDI message at a time I'm slowly getting there. I have alpha-blended borders and window contents painting on my D3D surface, though the background is still black since I haven't put in any effort yet into getting the window background onto a texture. I've put some thought into it, though, and I don't think that part will be too hard. The real trick is keeping GDI from interfering with my screen painting while letting it route messages to windows. Nailing window dragging down has been a real chore, but once I found that WM_SYSCOMMAND was the culprit, it came into place. At this point I'm concentrating on getting mouse messages working smoothly.

An evil thought has been at the back of my mind...if I can get all this working, I'll have a Direct3D surface for a window background -- I wonder if that will let me make use of Vista .dreams files? I don't know anything about them, but my understanding is that they let you have animated backgrounds. I have no idea if it will be possible, but since the desktop background will be a separate D3D texture, it seems to me that some interesting things should be possible. I don't suppose anyone has any info on what are in .dreams files?

In terms of the non-D3D effort, I've made lots of little improvements, and also added support for some animated elements (start button, window borders (non-alpha-blended), scroll bars, task buttons, and buttons).

This post has been edited by WildBill: 10 September 2008 - 09:29 PM

[Meados]

I have fixed the cpu problem with True Trans. I installed it (lateste version 0.9.4.0). And now it work like a charm without burning my cpu.

Please update it in your pack.

I am just wondering how to update my start menu, since the Tclock don't work in my system.

[damian666]

well, to be honest... tahts why i am going to take it out i think...
its unstable for a lot of people

damian666

[Smiley89]

Now this is weird: after updating my Avira AntiVir Free Edition, a message pops out when I try to execute Vistapack.exe:




I'm sure this is a False Positive, because I get the same message when I try to unpack the installer. I should send a report to Avira, but I don't know where!

For all those who get the same message, just put C:\Program Files\Vistapack XP\Vistapack.exe in Configure > Scanner > Scan > Exception > "File objects to be omitted for the scanner" and in Configure > Guard > Scan > Exception > "File objects to be omitted for the Guard", and Vistapack.exe in Configure > Guard > Scan > Exception > "Processes to be omitted for the Guard".

This isn't really a bug, but I think it's useful to report.

PS I'm really looking forward to Vistapack 2.6!

[damian666]

yeah... sadly but true...
autoit is flagged as virus by almost all AV's.

so yeah, false positive

Damian666

[godan]

So any word on when 2.6 might come out?

[damian666]

well, i am in testing stage of my 2000 version, and after that comes the xp version testfase so...

but a timeline? NO

Damian666

[Ninho]

Greetings, Damian666 !

Trying Vistapack on Win 2k SP4. Having a problem :=( unfortunately, on every reboot,
windows wants to run R:\TEMP\refresher.exe and fails (because R: is a ramdisk, duh).

I guess the refresher in question would be the one under : D:\PROGRAMS\Vistapack 2000\Tools,

but... why does the system keep looking for it on R:\TEMP (I couldn't find a registry entry or inifile
with that reference in it !) ?

And more importantly, how do I change it to fetching the refresher from the right location,
assuming it is needed at all of course ?

Thank you very much

[damian666]

hmm... well it runs the refresher after every reload, so there is a fault to begin with...
something is not patched right, hence the reload, and refresh.

but why is it looking for a ramdrive??? did you install from there???

the registry place i use is a runonce entry, not a simple run on start one, thats why you cant find it.
but a fix?hmm... i need to know more , how come it chooses your ramdrive, i never saw that before...

@squeeto Hi man

Damian666

[Ninho]

Quote

but why is it looking for a ramdrive??? did you install from there???

Yes indeed. I couldn't imagine the installer would memorise it being run from the Ramdisk and
try to run something from there after a reboot. Admittedly /I/ was shortsighted, let's say fifty-fifty ;=)

Quote

the registry place i use is a runonce entry, not a simple run on start one, thats why you cant find it.

I had noticed that runonce thing and deleted it using regedit, do you recreate it on occasions ?

But why do you insist on running the refresher from that temporary path instead of where the software
is installed ? Alright I guess you now have enough information to help me clear the issue.

Thanks again !

[damian666]

i run it from there, because i use the same function on uninstall...
i cant run it from the tools folder, because it is uninstalled then, so i copy it to temp.

that way i dont have to write seperate functions for the same thing...

only fix i can give ATM, is switch of the reloader in the options tab, that will end your irratations

just run it manually after a update and your fine, only then you will see thatmessage.
i will see if i can get that behavior out for next version.

Thanx for reporting man

Damian666

[thydreamwalker]

VistaPack2.5 LooksGreat on W2KAdvSrv.......,but maybe make TrueTransparency an "option-with an uninstaller?"for users thanks :<There's a NT Tweak,NT RegAnalyzer Program for W2K and it seems to help when its used with problem area's in Win2000;*Though,it's a USB-FlashDrive Program from U3 LaunchPad for Sandisk Products http://u3.sandisk.com/

[Ninho]

damian666, on Sep 30 2008, 09:06 AM, said:

only fix i can give ATM, is switch of the reloader in the options tab, that will end your irratations

just run it manually after a update and your fine, only then you will see thatmessage.
i will see if i can get that behavior out for next version.

Thanx for reporting man

You're welcome Damian. The solution for me was to restore files, uninstall pack and then reinstall it from a non volatile location. However even after that, I have uninstalled again 'cause for some reason several of the file patches do not succeed on my system whatever and I don't want it badly enough to take the time to debug this. I have seen enough of it that I can say, nice job ! I'll remember to try the next version, for sure, and oh! I have kept the nice screen background image. Can we download the original image, without the MS Windows logo and version ?

--
Ninho

[okram98pive]

Hi,
I've to report some other possibly bug, or maybe it's just a not so successful integration in my source. Using the i386 patching option, I've noticed that the bitmap in the "scheduled tasks" wizard is not displayed (using reshacker I can see that the image is replaced, but is not displayed running the apps). The resource is located in the mstask.dll. Also, I've noticed that the bitmap in the wiaacmgr.dll folder are with blue and green gradient.

[Smiley89]

This is strange... I'm pretty sure this problem has been reported in previous versions, but I thought it had been fixed in 2.5.

Anyway... The "New partition" Wizard doesn't show the bitmap correctly:


Another thing I recently noticed, the the Windows Logo in "About Windows" is a little stretched... I found that these bitmaps are in shell32.dll (147.bmp and 149.bmp).

There is a correct bitmap of the same format (413x72) in msgina.dll (128.bmp), but i think the text "2002-2007" is too close to the logo. I can try make a better one if you want... But I see that you're testing 2.6 right now, maybe you want to wait 2.7 for this?



PS Sometimes Imageshack really drives me MAD

This post has been edited by Smiley89: 30 September 2008 - 02:51 PM

[damian666]

well, testing yes, to late to include fixes? no.
testing is for finding this stuff, and take them out.

so your welcome to make me one, if you can...
and what file is that dialog in? the one thats to low i mean?

i really want to take out all bugs, because if i am correct, this is going ot be the last large update i will ever do of the vistapack.
not because i quit, but because the beta of windows 7 is almost here so you feel him right?

we are going to get a windows 7 pack after this

so to all, please report as much as possible, so we have a steady base to build the new pack on

what features? yeah, would you like to know

Damian666

[okram98pive]

damian666, on Sep 30 2008, 11:37 PM, said:

well, testing yes, to late to include fixes? no.
testing is for finding this stuff, and take them out.

so your welcome to make me one, if you can...
and what file is that dialog in? the one thats to low i mean?

For the "partition wizard", maybe the problem is located in some bitmap of the "dmdlgs.dll" resources. And I don't know how this file is used, but you can check also the bitmap in the "srrstr.dll"? Thanks.

[Smiley89]

The too long bitmaps in "New Partition" wizard are in dmdlgs.dll, as okram98pive suggested.

For the logo in "About Windows", i made two versions: a generic "Windows XP" logo for all editions, and one with dedicated logos (Embedded, Home, Professional).

This is the generic one:


And these are the different editions:






I made one zip file for each edition with all the bitmaps needed to be replaced (they're both on SkyDrive).
Generic
Dedicated (Home, Professional, Embedded)

PS I removed the 2002-2007 text, so it's not necessary to change the date once a year (and IMHO because it looks better)
PPS I posted the full-size images because I think they're small enough... correct me if I'm wrong

This post has been edited by Smiley89: 01 October 2008 - 04:48 AM

[CBC]

Just rebuilt my PC, & decided to try out this pack. Installed normally & the look of it is VERY nice.
However, I wanted to revert back to the non-custom font, but when I tried to run the VistaPack.exe to select uninstall custom font, it got an error msg & it would not open. So then I decided to uninstall it & reinstall to see if that fixes it, but after uninstallation, & a reboot, I am seeing everything as it was before! Same font start & logoff screens, etc
Nlited XPPro, SP3 etc.
I assumed like the BricoPacks, that there would be a config option.

Thanks for any help, am hoping to solve the problem & reinstall.

[damian666]

hmm... so you tell me there is nothing uninstalled??? O.o

what AV where you running? most AV's block autoit scripts you know...

and uninstall of the font should work without problems man... thats just a simple case of regentry and filecopy...
nothing fance or anything so...

hmm, some more info please...

Damian666

@smiley, like wauw man, those are nice
thanx alot

This post has been edited by damian666: 02 October 2008 - 01:34 AM