Dandee

Hi RP fans, I am sorry to read that Tihiy dropped the project. But I would be even more sorry if the Revolutions Pack would die because of it. I strongly believe in giving people a low-tech alternative to the virus and spyware infected crap we are given these days. I think Windows 98 is the Volkswagen of Operating Systems (MacOS being the Porsche). So I would like to continue the project. But my approach will be different from Tihiy's. I want to use the "stub" approach. This means creating a second User32.dll which is linked to all the functions contained in the original User32.dll. This makes it possible to override all of the windowing functions and use the RP9 resources for skinning. This approach has two major advantages: 1. It's clean, meaning I don't have to find (and debug) all the different callback functions and hooks, like Tihiy had to do. 2. It's portable to Windows 2000. At least I think it is. Of course, a stub dll will be reported as being a virus, so maybe the whole approach will become questionable. In fact, I already created a prototype, using MinGW and some Assembler code to "jump" to the original User32 functions. This works beautifully, and I already got the basic skinning and alpha blending working. There's a problem, though. If I use and test the dll during run-time everything works as expected (it even works on an XP machine). But if I try to boot Win98 with the stub dll in place, it crashes, giving me the following error: 0D at 64D84558 (MUTEX_LEVEL_NUMBER_VIOLATION) If I look this up on Google, I find some sites mentioning a "priority inversion". The strange thing is that in the bootlog file, I can see that my User32.dll loaded and unloaded successfully, but when trying to load the fonts, Win98 crashes with this error. I am a very experienced Win32 programmer, writing programs in Delphi and "pure api". I think I can pull it off, and I want to take a shot at it. But I also know that booting the new dll is the bottle-neck. If I can get it to boot, I will put in my time. So Tihiy, can you advise on this? Is it even possible? I'm sure you had to solve this kind of problem for your kernel32 project. Dandee.

Can you show us a screen shot of your explorer? Anyway, take a look at the following key, using regedit.exe: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\explorer\Desktop\NameSpace There should be entries like "{450d8fba-ad25-11d0-98a8-0800361b1103}". If they have "DefaultIcon" subkeys, these should be removed, because they override the system defaults. Delete the "DefaultIcon" subkeys only! Otherwise your Desktop will be empty.

I'm sorry to have to say this, but it looks terrible! I am *not* enjoying it. The system buttons (top of window) are not vertically centered. The Push buttons should be round rectangles, not oval. The scroll bars are cut off on all sides. Selected text is obscured by the selection color (Explorer adress bar) I know it is a lot of work (ask Tihiy), but it does not have to be finished all at once, so don't add half-baked elements, only those which are really finished.

Ahhh, me likes! Keep up the good work.

Hi Tihiy, hi group, I solved the mask-problem. The masks in the 32-bit icons where inversed. Download my new version of the Mac OSX icons at: http://www.baut.nl/downloads/RP9-Icons.zip (11 MB) It's not completely finished yet. Update will follow soon... By the way, I was hoping somebody could make us a matching skin. @Svenne: do you have time/interest? I have a BMP screen shot file to start with (I have no Mac ): http://www.baut.nl/downloads/Tiger-blue-and-graphite.bmp

Too bad. I'll redo icon loader to ignore icon mask at all. Meanwhile you can try to fix your icons; unfortunately i'm not aware of automatic method to fix icon mask. OK, thanks for the quick reply. I was not aware that some of the masks are broken. I'll try to fix them.

Nope. It was never supported. I checked it again, and it seems you're right. But the reason why I came up with it is because I'm working on an icon-port of Mac OSX (yes!). The XP and Vista icons show proper, but somehow the Mac-icons don't (see first screen shot). If I downgrade to RP 9.5.0, the Mac icons show right again (second screen shot), although the little folder icons in the Explorer tree still don't. You can download the image resources I used from http://rp9.win98.nl/Test-OSX.zip

You got the extended icon pack from me (http://www.baut.nl/downloads/RP9-Icons.zip). The Shell Icon BPP - thing has been an issue for several times since the development of UberSkin. I made the "IconSkanner" application (included in my icon pack) to scan for icon locations, and then show them in a list. If I want the icons to be displayed correctly in every system, I create an imagelist like this: ImageList_Create(IconX, IconY, ILC_COLORDDB + ILC_MASK, 1024, 1024) ILC_COLORDDB is for using the Shell Icon BPP value. Setting this flag works very well, also in XP and Vista. I think it was since RP 9.5.0 that I had to force it to ILC_COLOR32 or the icons would not be displayed correctly. In my latest version I set the ImageList_Create flag back to ILC_COLORDB. If you re-download the pack and start IconSkan.exe, you can see the result. Maybe Tihiy could look into this...

Happy newyear, y'all! It's for FE too. And other (previous) fixes are there too ofc. OK, I installed the Q320798 update. Everything works fine now. And you install RP9 huh. Yes, but RP is irresistably cool (on multiple levels...)

Preferably not. The Q320798 update seems to be for SE systems, and fixes problems with Korean web pages. I have First Edition, no KernelEx, kernel32 version 4.10.1998. It is my development system, I'd like to keep it as original as possible. Strange though, the problem wasn't there before.

Bug report: After installing v. 9.7.1 icons are no longer skinned. Setup : Win98 FE, IE6 Some icons work, but most icons are reverted to their Win98 versions. Anyone else who has this?

I forgot to say that the file has to have the extension ".reg".

Copy below text into a file and execute it. Then change themes to refresh. REGEDIT4 ; Alle computers in het netwerk weergeven [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\CLSID\{208D2C60-3AEA-1069-A2D7-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon] @="C:\\WINDOWS\\SYSTEM\\shell32.dll,17" ; De inhoud van uw computer weergeven [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\CLASSES\CLSID\{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D}\DefaultIcon] @="explorer.exe,0"

Well, ClearType is not so smooth. Which program you're printing from? I tried both firefox and Windows WordPad. Is it possible to restrict ClearType to draw on the screen Device Context only?

Is ClearType enabled? Try removing ctras.dll from your system. The text prints fine with ClearType turned off in RPConfig.

Hi Tihiy, I found a strange bug. If I print something on a Win98 machine without RP, the result is as expected. If I do the same on a machine with RP, it looks garbled. I included scans of the two cases. http://www.baut.nl/rp9-print-a.jpg http://www.baut.nl/rp9-print-b.jpg Dandee Note to the MSFN admins: I was not able to upload the images, using SeaMonkey 1.1.18 or FireFox 2.0.0.4. And dont't tell me to upgrade. Uploading is a very simple process. It works on even the most ancient browsers. I can see that you used a very nasty (java) work-around. I know someone who would call this an abomination. ;-)

Hi t6ti00, I removed the systemicons.reg backup mechanism from the installer som time ago. Maybe downloading and installing the latest version fixes the problem: http://www.baut.nl/downloads/RP9-Icons.zip Dandee

Are you sure registry key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics\Shell Icon BPP Has the value "32"?

1) Latest comctl32.dll.2) Updates for taskbar code. Also i'm in love with browseui.dll. 1) The latest comctl32.dll is included in your RP9Updates pack 2) Ah.

Hi Tihiy, I have a minimal Windows 98 installed (Win98 FE Lite, IE4), because I do a lot of video conversion with mencoder/ffmpeg to create Flash movies. While viewing my videos, I have to stick to IE4, because IE5 and higher suck away a lot of CPU power. Although I have only IE4 installed, RP9 works beautifully (see screenshot). I circled the diffences with RP9 on a IE6 system. The drawback is that I have to install IE5 first, then install RP9, and revert to IE4 again. Otherwise I get an error during RP9 installation because the z7 module in your installer needs BROWSEUI.DLL, wich is part of IE5. Why do you recommend to have IE6 installed anyway? If I want to view "modern" websites, I would have to install IE8. But I use FireFox for that. Windows itself does not need BROWSEUI.DLL. It's only for IE5 and up, because M$ had to separate the browser from the operating system. Dandee

Thanks! It's not the scroll arrows, but the thumb itself which is not showing up.

The version number is on the properties tab of the RP8.dll. Also, I'd like it if some of the uberskin themes are updated. dlb (Crystal), marxo (Ubuntu), where are you guys???

If I bring up the Ctrl-Alt-Del dialog and try to move it, the system freezes and I have to reboot.

Did y'all remove the MDGx GDI fix from your computers? Tihiy states in his post that it's not needed anymore.

Hi Tihiy, The thumbnails show mangled. BTW, I noticed that dragging and dropping in explorer is superstable now. In the previous version 9.1.0 there was some flickering going on. I like it, because I use the explorer very often. Thanks! Dandee