[damian666]

no way...? O.o

thats weird, well i am glad it worked out for you

have fun man

Damian666

[mara-]

damian, I was doing some heavy resource modifications on my XP install, which included applying your pack. But, I noticed that you use modifype.exe with you VistaPack which is not compatible with Vista. I was patching the XP CD with your patcher when I noticed this. So, you might consider replacing modifype with pechecksum.exe so your patcher is compatible with Vista. It is also command line tool and is has slightly different command line usage:

pechecksum.exe -c <filepath>

Cheers

This post has been edited by mara-: 03 December 2008 - 06:10 AM

[damian666]

lol, look who is still alive ^^

well, IF i go to vista, i will use that, thanx ^^
although i maybe go to the anolis framework, much less work for me

Damian666

[Jamochawoke]

Hey Damian I love your Vistapack for Win2k!

I am having 2 very specific problems though. I just did a clean install of Win2k Service Pack 4 and then updated all my drivers and windows update.

Then I installed Vistapack. Everything works great except:

1) The taskbar doesn't display correctly after install. All it did was grey out the normal Win2k taskbar. How do I get that fancy Vista taskbar to display? I tried uninstalling, rebooting, installing, rebooting and still no dice.

2) I transferred the My Documents folder I had saved on a seperate hard drive before doing the clean Win2k install. Then I noticed that all the "My ----" folders that had unique icons turned into your standard "Windows doesn't know what this file is" icon except for My Music which just turned into the default file folder. Any Way I can fix that?

Here's a screenshot showing both problems:

[damian666]

nice, not the errors, but the report is very nice.
thats something i can work with ^^.

1./ the "fancy" taskbar is done by a program called Tclock, but due to it having some compatibility issues, i dont install that by default, nor
do i link to it in the program.
its a advanced feature sort of speak, it is present in the installation, look in the vistapack folder, and then extra's.
you can run it from there, but it needs some work to get it up and runnning mind you.
when executed, your clock will vanish, try to find the exact spot it should be , and look for a Tclock popup text, there you right click
and choose options or something like that.

look tru the tabs, and see if ya can find the import setings, the settings file is located in the same dir as the Tclock program.
applying that will get you started, rest is up to you. just play around with it

2./ the second problem, is a weird one... i know of the folders in the browse dialog disapearing, or turning black, but this one...
****...

my guess is that it is due to daedalus, the new 32bit engine that i introduced in this version...

How to install:

Uninstall any previous version
Make sure your desktop is in 32-bit colors mode
Copy the binaries to "%systemroot%\system32"
Change in the registry: HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop\WindowMetrics, "Shell Icon BPP" to 32
Click Start->Run and then type "daedsrvc -i"
REBOOT (do not relogin, REBOOT)
Clear your shell icon cache

How to uninstall:

Click Start->Run and then type "daedsrvc -u"
Change in the registry: HKCU\ControlPanel\Desktop\WindowMetrics, "Shell Icon BPP" back to 16 (optional)
REBOOT (not relogin, REBOOT)
Delete the binaries (optional)
Clear your shell icon cache


there you see the way to uninstall it, try that, and let me know if it has any effect.
that way we can make sure we have the thing causing it.

thanx for trying, and not flipping out ^^

Damian666

This post has been edited by damian666: 15 December 2008 - 01:55 AM

[Jamochawoke]

Well, somehow I really messed it up and beings it was a clean install I just re-installed Win2K and repatched.

I then installed Vistapack again and everything worked fine (although I had to refresh the iconcache a few times to get them to show, was strange I found the refresher program buried in my temp files under my administrator account).

The icons turning into the universal "windows does not recognize" icon seems to be a bug in all windows if I recall correctly when you drag a stored My Documents folder over a new one. So it's nothing to do with your program specifically. I preemptively fixed it by just dragging the folder contents instead of the folder itself on this install. For some reason it has to do with them being Windows system files or somesuch.

Now about tclock. I loaded up your En- preset file and all it did was turn the entire thing black and transparent. For some reason it wouldn't show the Start button or any windows/dividers. The only thing I could seem to change was how the clock was displayed. Very strange UI for a program like that, was definitely hard to follow. I haven't figured out how to work it still so I don't know what to do. I noticed there's a segment to upload a windowblinds skin. Is there a Vista skin I could use with it and would it even work with win2k (I know windowblinds had alot of problems on win2k, but apparently Tclock is just using the skin to apply settings...)? This program just confuses me greatly so I just let it unload after reboot. Could you possibly write how you got it to look like yours? Like what buttons you pressed in what order?

Everything else seems to be running fine. If I can get the taskbar to skin properly I might try messing with the icon settings in Win2K to see if I can get some more interesting ones(been working on modding a few glassy ones from a Vista skin from an old dock program I have). Not to knock yours of course, they are extremely well done; sometimes I just like changing colors around for icons for different schemes.

This post has been edited by Jamochawoke: 15 December 2008 - 05:32 PM

[damian666]

well, good that ya fixed it. ^^

and now you know why Tclock is not installed by default
its a b***h to work with, trust me, i know...

you can check if full skinning is enabled, and run through the options one by one to see if ya can enable some
stuff.

oh, and dont use a windows blinds skin, just dont... trust me on that.

as i said before, it needs a lot of playing with the options, and i cant even start to write a full guide on it, would
take me ages

Damian666

[Jamochawoke]

Maybe I should wait until the guy making Tclock releases his new version. He said it was a million times better than 3.5. So let's hope it comes out awesome and at least a little bit more user friendly!

[damian666]

yeah, i allready told him it was crap to work with

the GUI is so messy, it took me a whole day getting it just right.

Damian666

[prebenandre]

I have downloaded your new vistapack version 2.6 and I have experienced problems with the CD Patch option.
After I have installed Windows XP with SP3 and Vistapack 2.6 integrated, the screen turns black. It doesn't complete the installation and the only way out of this is to reinstall with the original/another XP CD.
The problem occur after bootscreen and before the final wizard (when you create user accounts).
This problem has occured using VirtualBox (Virtual computer) since I don't want to risk such failures on my own computer.

Do you know what the problem is?

This post has been edited by prebenandre: 19 December 2008 - 11:46 AM

[mara-]

prebenandre, on Dec 19 2008, 06:43 PM, said:

I have downloaded your new vistapack version 2.6 and I have experienced problems with the CD Patch option.
After I have installed Windows XP with SP3 and Vistapack 2.6 integrated, the screen turns black. It doesn't complete the installation and the only way out of this is to reinstall with the original/another XP CD.
The problem occur after bootscreen and before the final wizard (when you create user accounts).
This problem has occured using VirtualBox (Virtual computer) since I don't want to risk such failures on my own computer.

Do you know what the problem is?

Disable Windows File Protection (SFC) using nLite, or some other software if you can find it.

Cheers

This post has been edited by mara-: 19 December 2008 - 02:17 PM

[Kurt_Aust]

I decided to take another look at getting my bling on under a limited account (post 206/208). It seems that the only problem lies in the fact that some necessary files are installed into the profile of the administrator that installed Vistapack (only tested under W2K).

It's pretty easy for another Administrator class account to get all the pretty effects, one only has to execute the following command (after installing, before rebooting):

Copy "%UserProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\Vistapack\Vistapack.lnk" "%AllUsersProfile%\Start Menu\Programs\"

Which makes the program link available to all users.


To get it to work for a limited account, one first has to install SubInACL to %SystemRoot%, then execute the following command (after installing, before rebooting):

SubInACL /file "%UserProfile%\Local Settings\Temp\Refresher.exe" /grant=everyone=r

Which gives everyone read access to Refresher.exe. SubInACL is an great utility as it makes it feasible to run as a limited user, see here (for W2K get the files from this post).

When you login to a new, unblinged (is that a word?) account, it will have the standard W2K look and feel, but when you run Vistapack it will say that the effects are already applied. No problem, just uninstall and reinstall the effects you want (I like all but Tbar personally).

The only problem I have now is the AutoIt error on silent install.

[damian666]

lol, good find man very nice job.

and about the autoit error...
when the new anolis, or XPize is released, old damian is proberly migrating to that.

only downfall... it needs .net2 to run.
but it will be much cleaner and better then autoit.
it will even support X64 files

but nothing is decided, just wait for it.

Damian666

[prebenandre]

mara-, on Dec 19 2008, 09:17 PM, said:

prebenandre, on Dec 19 2008, 06:43 PM, said:

I have downloaded your new vistapack version 2.6 and I have experienced problems with the CD Patch option.
After I have installed Windows XP with SP3 and Vistapack 2.6 integrated, the screen turns black. It doesn't complete the installation and the only way out of this is to reinstall with the original/another XP CD.
The problem occur after bootscreen and before the final wizard (when you create user accounts).
This problem has occured using VirtualBox (Virtual computer) since I don't want to risk such failures on my own computer.

Do you know what the problem is?

Disable Windows File Protection (SFC) using nLite, or some other software if you can find it.

Cheers

Thanks, I hope this will fix the problem.

[BookWorm]

Ok, now how do I get it to work?

I downloaded and installed Vistapack 2.6. It changed my desktop icons to Vista style witch I hate (I have everything customized, so I changed all that back) got rid of the dial up networking icon on the taskbar so I have no idea what ie is doing (if anything) and that's all.

I clicked "install Tbar" and nothing happened.

My taskbar, toolbar, status bar, scroll bars, menu bars, office toolbar, etc., are not changed, everything looks like Windows 2000 unless I turn on TrueTrans, but I don't like TrueTrans.

I want it to look like the screenshots, exept for the colors, whitch I assume are still changeable.

[damian666]

you hate vista, but try to use vistapack... hmmm...

sorry, you have to look further then.

Damian666

[BookWorm]

> you hate vista,

You weren't paying attention, were you? I said:

>>my desktop icons to Vista style witch I hate

Maybe I wasn't very clear about that, but I was pretty clear when I said:

>>My taskbar, toolbar, status bar, scroll bars, menu bars, office toolbar, etc., are not changed, everything looks like
>>Windows 2000 unless I turn on TrueTrans, but I don't like TrueTrans.

>>I want it to look like the screenshots, exept for the colors, whitch I assume are still changeable.

I want the stuff around the windows to look like the screenshots you posted. Many (not all) vista Icons look cheap and detail free, and resemble those Jell-O "jiglers" Mr. Cosby used to advertize. I prefer the icons from the '9x "plus" themes, and other downloadable themes.

The rest of Vista can look very nice with the right colors.

[damian666]

well, 2000 is not gonna look like that without some skinning engine man, e.g. TT

without that, simply forget it to be honest, it wont ever come close...

Damian666

[BookWorm]

> well, 2000 is not gonna look like that without some skinning engine man,

Then why do you post screenshots claiming Vistapack will make 2000 look like that?

> e.g. TT

What's "TT"?

[okstatefan69]

damian, will this work with windows xp64 bit?