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Vistapack 2.6 released


damian666

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Hi D,

I read from your homepage that you want to start work on the next Windows 7 pack. I'm not sure if you will still be updating Vista 2.6, but if you are, I have a few more suggestions.

The Log Off dialog has been fixed but I notice that the Turn Off dialog hasn't. The Cancel button needs to be moved up a little. This is how my msgina.dll - 20100 dialog reads:

20100 DIALOGEX 0, 0, 208, 122
STYLE DS_SYSMODAL | DS_SETFOREGROUND | WS_POPUP | WS_BORDER
CAPTION ""
LANGUAGE LANG_ENGLISH, SUBLANG_ENGLISH_US
FONT 8, "MS Shell Dlg"
{
CONTROL "Cancel", 2, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 151, 93, 40, 12
CONTROL "Flag", 20101, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 176, 0, 32, 26
CONTROL "Turn off computer", 20102, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 7, 0, 162, 26
CONTROL "&Stand By", 20104, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 36, 49, 22, 20
CONTROL "T&urn Off", 20103, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 93, 49, 22, 20
CONTROL "&Restart", 20105, BUTTON, BS_OWNERDRAW | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_TABSTOP, 150, 49, 22, 20
CONTROL "&Hibernate", 20106, BUTTON, BS_PUSHBUTTON | BS_NOTIFY | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE, 30093, 30049, 22, 20
CONTROL "", 20108, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 22, 73, 50, 8
CONTROL "", 20107, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 79, 73, 50, 8
CONTROL "", 20109, STATIC, SS_OWNERDRAW | WS_CHILD | WS_VISIBLE | WS_DISABLED, 136, 73, 50, 8
}

When the computer boots, your new startup banner shows. If you watch how the original banner shows, it slowly fades in. Your version flashes on then off and then fades in. You need to set every color in your ntoskrnl.exe (or ntkrnlmp.exe or ntkrnlpa.exe, whichever you are modding) bitmap 1 in the palette to black.

Really, Windows ignors the bitmaps internal palette and uses its own anyway. That is why you can change the bitmap image to anything you like but the colors are always wrong. Also the reason why, when you look at the original with reshacker, it looks all black.

A while back, I posted my boot screen that looks like a flying, blue glass window; I had to hack the ntoskrnl.exe file and substitute the standard palette with my new colors. I guess that MS really doesn't want anyone to do this because they even reverse the RGB order to BGR.

Edited by Squeeto
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hi friend ^^ whats up with you?

all well i hope? long time no spoke man...

thanx for that, i will integrate it. and yes, i will be updating this too.

untill the new pack is ready, which is going to be a long time ^^

i am allmost done with the updater which will install those updates ^^

do you know how i can set the palette in ntoskrnl? maybe a certain hexedit?

Damian666

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Irfanview can do it.

The bitmap should be 16 color already, so in Irfanview, select Image - Palette - Edit Palette...

Double Click to edit.

You probably know (maybe use) Irfanview; it is a good,well known freeware app.

All is well with me and my family. Always so busy though.

I do pop in here once and a while to visit the progress. Good work as always.

I see that you have some great helpers too.

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Hey Damian,

Congrats on new pack. I'll test it soon on Virtual Machine, since I don't use XP anymore. What I'm interested in is, how did you fixed the bug with IE7 and update loop? What was the cause of that problem?

Cheers ;)

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Hey, thanks for the work on this.

I'm an avid tweaker/optimizer so I thought I'd give Vistapack 2.6 a whirl on my computer. I have Windows 2000 SP4, IE 6.

In short, things didn't work perfectly. After installation, I got a script error 216 when starting the computer. Also, IE and Opera 9.62 failed to start.

Thankfully, after restoring files and running the uninstaller, repairing IE and re-installing Opera, most things are back in order. However, the icons in my "save as" dialog are now corrupt. Any ideas on how I can restore this?

[EDIT] Oh yes, one more thing: The image that replaced the login graphic did not fully fill the available space horizontally; there was some white space to the right. I THINK this might be due to the fact that my screen settings are set to display at 120 dpi. I've seen this before when trying a different login graphic replacer.

[EDIT] After playing around with the "effects" icon selection in display properties, I've concluded this "corruption" is probably an artifact of my chosen system color and was not influenced by the Vistapack install attempt.

post-218582-1226727238_thumb.jpg

Edited by wammie
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hi mara, well, since IE7 has a lot of stuff allready vista-ish... i could take out a lot of stuff.

this fixed it, now its not so heavely modified, which makes it that it gets detected as not modified, and thus needs no update.

@wammie

hi man, try to see if deadalus is still installed, and if so... take it out, OR see if teh color depth is correctly set to 32bit.

also desktop bpp must be 32bpp.

that can cause it too, and yes... higher dpi does that i am afraid...

Damian666

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Some avis are bigger, not only those in shell32, and I think It's simpler for XP manage a dll smaller than bigger, the quality appears the same.

For instance, cscui is a dll about 400 KB in size and VP puts in a 4MB AVI resource (original is 12 KB), in my opinion is shocking, if you google for it, seach for a video...

I don't want to be annoying, but there are a lot of avi's out of here and we can replace the bigger avis with smaller, preserving the quality, and I guess it isn't a hard job, 5 minutes...

Do you think this idea is so bad?

Edited by kontini
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2 things:

Will the first post heading be updated?

Vistapack 2.5

The new version has arrived!!

But more importantly are there any command line switches for the installer and/or the installed program?

EDIT:

I tried the /S switch under W2K but it throws up an AutoIt error (some missing line?).

Edited by Kurt_Aust
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Re previous post:

Installing under Windows 2000 using the /S switch results in an AutoIt error, something about a missing line.

More importantly, it doesn't work with limited user accounts. It appears that some needed files are written to the profile of the administrator that installed VistaPack which limited account users do not have permission to access.

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@kontine, no i was just asking why :D

@kurt

i will check out the commandline options.

but using it on a non-admin account???

ofcourse not, you cant do that when installing stuff like this man...

it needs full rights, it needs to patch a lot of files remember?

Damian666

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I know you can't install it from a non-admin account, I'm not quite as stupid as I look (close but not quite).

What I want to be able to do is use the VistaPack effects from a non-admin account once it is installed.

Even if that is not possible, I think it would be better if the start menu shortcuts were created in the AllUsers profile so that administrators other than the one that installed it can get their bling on.

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@kontini

cool man... :D

you willing to help then? i remember myself fixing the shell32 ones, and man... that was a bitchy work man...

@kurt

aaah, now i get it...

well, that should be able to work... thanx for the suggestion man. :)

Damian666

Edited by damian666
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