For those that are after a free paint program or just want to try out something different:

Project Dogwaffle is a paint program which also includes animation features. I am no graphic-artist, and I have not enough experience to rate this program, but I think it is worth a try (especially at this price).  [e digicons]:)[/e]

About 10 days ago I suddenly lost all folder and drive icons in third party applications. At the time this happened I did not install any new software. The last install of new software was UT3 using Impulse, which happened about 5 days prior. The computer has been rebooted several times since the install of UT3 before the icons dissappeared.




Current situation:

The following icons do not show up in all third-party applications but show up normally in all Window components (see picture).

- drives - I have changed the icon of my C-drive with IconPackager just shortly after I lost the icons.
- folders - notice how the one that is clicked/highlighted (Users) shows correctly in FreeCommander? This happens to all folders I click on. The Boot-folder shows up correctly all the time without me having to click on it.
- ini-files
- txt-files

This goes for all icon-sizes, not just the small ones.



My System:

Vista64bit Ultimate SP1 up-to-date, double-boot with Ubuntu on second physical Hard-drive but Boot-loader (GRUB) on Vista drive.
Kaspersky InternetSecurity 2009



This is what I have done to solve the problem so far (not successful):

- used Revo uninstaller to uninstall - reboot - re-install FreeCommander: It was only then that I realized that all the other third-party apps had lost their icons too.

- downloaded and installed the trial-version of TotalCommander to check whether a newly installed programm would suffer from the same problem: it did.

- used the 'Rebuild Icon Cache' the 'Rebuild icons' and 'Rebuild shell-icons' in IconPackager. The shell icon rebuild didn't seem to do anything at all (it asked me to choose the programs, but when I clicked on ok I had no feedback what-so-ever and no apparent HD-activity)

- Uninstalled IconPackager - rebooted - re-installed IconPackager all using Impulse and used the three 'rebuild'-buttons again.

- used the ODNT-zapper to uninstall IconPackager and rebuilt my IconCache manually by deleting IconCache.db (and emptying the Recycle Bin), and rebooting. (strangely enough; IconPackager showed as still being installed in Revo-uninstaller after that, so I uninstalled it again from within Revo) - I had never installed a stand-alone Version of IconPackager?

- checked file-associations in Vista for the affected files/folders. They seem to be ok.

- added FreeCommander and other third-Party apps to the exclusion/ignore-list of Kaspersky. Unloaded Kaspersky (and checked in Taskmanager that it was really gone). Note: when browsing from within Kaspersky itself, the Icons are gone too!

- uninstalled SP1 - rebooted - re-installed SP1: I did that in the hopes that a corrupt shell32.dll would be the culprit (SP1 replaces/updates shell32.dll).



The following Programs auto-update on my system:

Kaspersky
Impulse



What could possibly prevent all third-party applications from accessing shell32.dll correctly? Please, please tell me it's a service that has stopped running, or something similar easy to fix.
I really don't want to do a complete format - re-install of Vista, as I have just spend most of a week downloading and installing UT3 (and no, I do not yet trust the archive feature of Impulse).

Anyone have any ideas???   :)

I just went to the "Private Messages" page and noticed the following:

- My allowed messages have been reduced from 100 to 50.

- I have deleted all but 7 messages in the inbox and 4 messages in the sent-box, and I have emptied the "trash" folder, but the page claims that I now have 23 of 50 messages stored.  :)

I presume that the powers behind WC are currently working on some of the features (thanks for the nice "new replies" and "new post" signs!), so this is definitively not a complaint-thread.

I am just soooo happly WC doesn't handle my statistics. I don't think I would be able to publish anything in any of the peer-reviewed papers.  ;p

Keep up the good work!  :CONGRAT: 

I have to admit, I thought I didn't miss WindowBlinds. Really, after switching to Vista64 earlier this year I thought that Aero looked cool and that I didn't really feel the need to customize my desktop anymore. And I didn't! The longer it took for WB to get Vista64 ready, the less I missed it.

When yesterday I noticed that the newest update to WB included V64 compatibility, I thought hard whether I really wanted to install it or not. Did I really need it? Would it mess with my system? Would it really work? After much deliberation I thought "oh, what the hell, I have a current subscription, might as well try it out..", then took the plunge, fired up SDC and installed WB. I also browsed through WC, downloading the few Vista-ready skins available just to be all set up for the big moment....

Ahhhhhh, my system looks sooooo much better! The sleek Taskbar, the well designed, crisp buttons, the colour-combinations........, I guess I missed WB after all...

Thanks to Nakor and the WB-team...

I have the problem that DeskScape refuses to install, since it claims that DreamScene by Microsoft is not installed even though it is.

Vista Ultimate 64bit OEM, UAC is turned off.
"DreamScene Preview" is installed and shows under "installed Extras"

I uninstalled DreamScene > rebooted > downloaded and installed DreamScene through the WindowsVista updater again > rebooted

...and still DeskScape claims it can't find DreamScene and won't install.

??? Am I missing something?

Sigh, my HD on my Laptop is on it's way out. I have had that suspicion for a while now (strange "scratching" noises coming from the HD, little Errors popping up here and there, (small) loss of data), but I just got confirmation with SMART telling me during Boot that I have to back-up and replace it NOW.

I can't affort a new Laptop at the moment, so I want to back up all my data and buy a new HD. I didn't have Norton Gost, when this computer was new and I don't have a "fresh" full backup anywhere, but I still have the original recovery discs that came with the notebook. I therefore would like to start from scratch with a clean install rather than copying the current software with all it's little errors and problems to the new HD.

Now, it isn't a big deal to back up all my skins and Personal Files (I have an external HD to do that), but I have a couple of questions about certain programs:

- WinXP (Home): Is there a way to back up all those updates (incl SP2 and NET-framework) so I don't have to download them again?

- Firefox: How do I back-up and restore my Bookmarks, Extensions and Skins there?
- Thunderbird: How can I back-up and restore my Extensions, Mails and Address-List?

These are my main concens at the moment. Any help would be appreciated.

Hi there,

I still have the problem that I can't log into the discussion panel aka. forum from within SDC. The cause of this was that I had to change my email-address for all my apps as well as for my WC subscription. This happened without a problem and I can access the WC forum from the WC-page without any problems, but I just can't access the forums from within SDC anymore, since it just doesn't log me in anymore (I get the ads and it won't let me add a comment). Unfortunately there is no obvious place in SDC which lets you change your login information for the forums (there is only for the Stardock.net account and for each of the apps).

Is there a way to log into the forums from within SDC? Which file/reg-key do I have to adjust/delete in order to get logged in correctly?

.... I really don't like the very unfriendly and unpractiable setup of the WC-forums on the Webpage and always preferred the simple, easy to overview setup in SDC.

I have wanted to write this for a while now, and I am finally going to do it.

As you all might know, Stardock support has in the past been critisised by a lot of disgruntled customers and also by regulars (including me) on this forum.

I don't know how many of you have recently visited the support forum, but things have changed big-time there. For about the last month or so Mike (milksama)as an official representative of Stardock has visited the boards every single day and answered most unresolved threads. This has changed the feeling of the support forum quite a bit. People with problems now get the impression their issues are taken seriously (even though it migth not be resolved immediately), and aggression and frustration on the support forum are kept at a minimum.

Thank you so much Stardock for implementing this change and thank you Mike for doing such a great job!!

andre2015, I tried to reply to your thread (about 10 times) but somehow it seems to be broken and none of my replies show up so I try and answer your question this way.


Arrrggghhhhh, I just posted a reply here and it disappeared!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let's try this again.

If the themes you downloaded have the extension .CurXPTheme then all you have to do is double-click on the downloaded file and it should install.

If the theme you downloaded has the extension .zip then you will have to unzip the file first.

1)if the resulting folder contains one ore more .CurXPTheme files then double click on them to install.

2) if the resulting folder contains a heap of .png files plus others then change the extension of the original (zipped) folder from .zip to .CurXPTheme (right click and 'rename') and double-click on it to install.

To see your extensions open Windows Explorere > Tools > Folder Options > View > and untick "hide extenstions for known file types". P.S. I just noticed that I can't post anywhere. I guess I will just go down ot Club "Arrrgggh" and use the punch-bag there for a while :LOL:

Hi all,

I am currently trying to assemble my first set of cursors for CursorXP. My problem is that I seem to have a hard time assembling the (transparent) png's together on a single file for the animations.

How do you space the (transparent!!) png's correctly so that the cursor doesn't shimmy all over the place during animations?

I have been trying to use the screen callipers, but that didn't help either. Is there a trick how it can be done easily and exactly, or is there a program out there which facilitates this process?