Recent betas draw poorly / crash under Stardock WindowBlinds

[inghamc]

I use Stardock's WindowBlinds 6.1 (http://www.stardock.com/products/windowblinds/), which makes the Windows UI skinnable, allowing users to radically change its look & feel (e.g. make it look like Mac OSX, Vista, something out of the movies, etc.).

Some software apps I use don't always draw/refresh well after moving or resizing them under WindowBlinds, requiring me to roll/unroll them to force a redraw and see their properly rendered window contents. Until I updated from 6.80.027 to 6.80.0114, XYPlorer was in this category. With the recent info panel enhancements, XYPlorer's behavior under WindowBlinds is much worse, and I get frequent crashes, especially when resizing the info panel using the vertical separator from the tree/category panels:

Error 480 (000001E0)
Desc Can't create AutoRedraw image
Dll 0
Proc ViewFirst

Source XYplorer
XY ver 6.80.0114
OS WinXP (Service Pack 2)
Date 3/18/2008 1:54:22 PM

I can workaround by disabling skinning on XYPlorer windows, but to try to convince you to care enough about my problem to look into it, I would argue that:

1. Stardock is a well-established software company with fairly close ties to Microsoft (i.e. they're not fly-by-night), and WindowBlinds has a large and enthusiastic user base.

2. The customer profile of a Windows UI tweaker and a customizable Windows Explorer replacement must have a lot of overlap. Though my Beta Club Forum search for "stardock" comes up empty, surely there must be other WindowsBlinds users out there?

To provide additional information, I tried to find some application developer-targeted troubleshooting info on Stardock's websites and forums, but was unsuccessful. I submitted a support request for this type of information and will of course follow up with anything useful I get.

Finally, assuming you don't have the software but have the interest, I'd be happy to buy you a $19.95 WindowBlinds license (or pay you $20 towards an ObjectDesktop license, which includes lots of other cool stuff) to enable/entice you to test/troubleshoot XYPlorer under WindowBlinds, and have fun customizing Windows! pm me and it's yours (disclaimer: offer is for Donald Lessau only).

Thanks Don!

[admin]

Thanks for the info (and the offer). I'll check into that.

[admin]

Error 480 (000001E0)
Desc Can't create AutoRedraw image
Dll 0
Proc ViewFirst

Is it always this error?

[RalphM]

Could it be, that recent betas (9.70.0028...0042) are prone to Error 480 again?

A couple times a day the MDBU stops working and produces an error 480 before crashing.
The same happens with the Full Screen Preview (F11).

[admin]

Could it be, that recent betas (9.70.0028...0042) are prone to Error 480 again?

A couple times a day the MDBU stops working and produces an error 480 before crashing.
The same happens with the Full Screen Preview (F11).

Really?? Can you counter-check with 9.70.0000, please?

[RalphM]

Really?? Can you counter-check with 9.70.0000, please?

Just checked with a fresh 9.70.0000 copy and could reproduce it even there!?
I previewed a couple of Jpg's (all about 400kB in size) on IP Preview and by MDBU, then hit F11 on a random one and got the error 480 followed by a bye XY.

[admin]

Really?? Can you counter-check with 9.70.0000, please?

Just checked with a fresh 9.70.0000 copy and could reproduce it even there!?
I previewed a couple of Jpg's (all about 400kB in size) on IP Preview and by MDBU, then hit F11 on a random one and got the error 480 followed by a bye XY.

This error is generally caused by lack of RAM. Apparently something in your system is eating RAM recently.

I will fix the crash, but I cannot fix the RAM problem.

[RalphM]

Couldn't think of any program that's eating lots of RAM and was installed recently.
Checking Task Manager didn't reveal anything unusual either.
So let's hope, that if you fix the crash, all will be well again.

I'm gonna check it out on my PC at home as well...

[admin]

A reboot of Windows might help as well...

[RalphM]

My work computer is rebooted daily, so this isn't likely to help.
I'm running RAM-intensive apps on that computer as 3D-CAD (Catia V5), but there haven't been any changes on that behalf in the last six months at least.
So I'm still at loss to explain why XY just started to crash on previews in the past couple weeks...

[admin]

My work computer is rebooted daily, so this isn't likely to help.
I'm running RAM-intensive apps on that computer as 3D-CAD (Catia V5), but there haven't been any changes on that behalf in the last six months at least.
So I'm still at loss to explain why XY just started to crash on previews in the past couple weeks...

Well, same here: there have not been any changes in this area.

[RalphM]

Well, at least XY doesn't crash anymore after error 480 and after hitting Esc the gray window of the Full Screen Preview on my second (primary) screen vanishes too. Meaning XY is usable again apart from MDBU and Full Screen Preview that won't work at all after the error 480.

What makes me believe that XY is to blame for the error is that restarting XY solves the problem for a while (i.e. exactly the same files work with MDBU and FSP)???

Task Manager just after the error

hc_270_1.jpg (119.84 KiB) Viewed 2352 times

FSP -> error 480

hc_269_1.jpg (126.18 KiB) Viewed 2352 times

First MDBU -> No work, then FSP -> error 480

hc_268_1.jpg (119.29 KiB) Viewed 2352 times

[admin]

How large are these images (in pixels)?

[RalphM]

Not too big, but see for yourself...

hc_271.jpg (52.49 KiB) Viewed 2345 times

hc_272.jpg (47.49 KiB) Viewed 2345 times

[admin]

Not big indeed. I can see much larger files (4460 x 3175) without any issue.

Since you can reproduce it with older XY versions, it's clear that XY is not the (only) culprit. Something changed in your system.