WindowBlinds 6.1 Now Available

By Zoomba Posted May 7, 2008 14:03:21External Link

Stardock is excited to announce the release of WindowBlinds 6.1 today. WindowBlinds is the easiest, and safest way to change the complete look and feel of both Windows Vista and XP by applying one of thousands of visual styles that are available.

These visual styles can change just about every element of the Windows user interface from the Start menu, task bar, title bar, push buttons, scrollbars, and nearly everything else in Windows.

The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to current customers as a free update, and users can upgrade either through Stardock Central or the Impulse preview. The WindowBlinds 6.1 release includes the following updates:

Several maintenance and performance tweaks.
Option to force start button to the middle of skins.
Explorer background feature.

The Explorer Background feature allows users to change the background of their explorer, along with the background color and opacity. There are 30 different background textures to choose from, including a "no texture" option that lets you set just the color and transparency of the Explorer background.

WindowBlinds has a free download available for evaluation, and is $19.95 for the full enhanced version. WindowBlinds is also part of the Object Desktop suite of desktop enhancements.

Link: WindowBlinds

+50 Karma 49 Replies 19 Referrals

updated without a hitch

Happened to me too... I reinstall wb and it seems to work fine now.

Thanks V....Maybe I'll give that a try.

Option to force start button to the middle of skins.

Images............, IIIMAGES PLEASE!!!!

..or i wont update

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The WindowBlinds 6.1 update is available to current customers as a free update, and users can upgrade either through Stardock Central or the Impulse preview.

I have switched to using Impulse for downloading updates, the WB update has not shown up there yet, it is showing up in SDC.

Do I cause myself problems by using SDC to download this update or should I just wait for it to show up in Impulse? Or because of the difference between SDC and Impulse do I all ready have the update and don't know it?

The fix was to clear out the XML folder, close Impulse, restart Impulse and the WB update was there.

Option to force start button to the middle of skins.

Images............, IIIMAGES PLEASE!!!! ..or i wont update

Was gonna say that myself. Pics 4 proof.

i also had the problem of not being able to open the config window after updating, opened SDC and it reported that windowblinds wasn't even installed, i ran the update again, rebooted again and everything went back to normal. It's now reporting the correct version in the system info tab on WBconfig to. yay

I wonder why the standalone setup file is so much larger (at 23 Mb) than the one for version 6.02 (at 17 Mb)? There doesn't seem to be that much more stuff in it.

This is exactly what happened in my case also.

Updated thru Impulse...no problems. Seems that everyone reporting this issue updated thru SDC. Just an observation.

I updated through Impulse (Slowwww) first and wbconfig.exe could not be found. So I ran SDC and the update was there. I did the update through SDC and WB launched fine.

Update- Tried this yet again. Same issue. Rebooted, but then let it install through sdc (although the files/folder was there anyway) After 2nd install, rebooted, wbconfig in sys tray was able to start...but.... All of my darned skins were lost! I had 4 total after all of that.

Explorer Backgrounds finally work in XP, but there some limitations. You can only choose the images which came with the program. Unlike Vista, which can use any BMP or PNG image. I tried applying an image for the first time in XP, and my computer rebooted automatically without warning. After rebooting, voila, it's there.

Now Windowblinds should not only allow ANY image to be used as an explorer background, but also allow other image file types to be supported such as JPG and TIFF. I hope to see an enhancement to this feature in the future.

Well after a few tries I got WB6.1 to run. I ran the update from Impulse and that didn't go exactly as planned. I told it that I wanna reboot later, which I usually do with any programs or updates that needs a reboot. So after manually reboot, WB tells me I gotta reboot again. Did that. Same thing happens. I tell it to go to Process mode or something and it doesn't work. I uninstalled it, reboot, installed WB6.1, and it runs. Then rebooted once more to make sure everything runs and is loaded/installed correctly and it seems to be smooth sailing from there. Now I have another problem... but that's for a different product altogether so I'll post that elsewhere. I can't comment on the new features in 6.1 but so far so good. Now if I can just get Windows to load my wallpaper correctly... (I want my Horo background dang it!)

Option to force start button to the middle of skins. Like vista default skin, if use doublesized taskbar, not overlay.....
How to set that?

my advise on this latest update is to stear well clear of it.i experienced most of the above problems,but in the end had to do a restore to get W/Bs to work again.Not very impressed with SDC at the moment.

Option to force start button to the middle of skins. Like vista default skin, if use doublesized taskbar, not overlay.....How to set that?

after reinstall, figured that, cool feature

New Start button feature on my current WIP. Great Job Neil

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New Start button feature on my current WIP. Great Job Neil [URL=http://imageshack.us]This image has been resized. Click this bar to view the full image. The original image is sized 482x551.[/URL]

your current wip awesome !

This was not a fun upgrade. I did the upgrade through SDC, and I lost wbconfig. I figured that had to be some kind of bug, so I checked this post and found out I wasn't alone. I opened SDC again and saw that it showed that WB wasn't even installed, so I installed it, then rebooted. When the WB configuration window opened after rebooting, I'd apparently lost all of my skins, only 4 were showing. I was just about beside myself, because I had so many skins, and I didn't want to spend hours reinstalling them. So I decided to take a chance and I uninstalled WB, rebooted, then reinstalled WB. The good news is that this install was much different from the first, it took a lot longer and seemed to be doing everything it needed to do. Then I rebooted again, the configuration window came up, and voila, all of my skins were now visible. But none of them would load right...I still basically had Windows Classic showing, no matter what I did and which skin I tried applying. I had a moment of wondering if this upgrade was making WB useful for only Vista (I am a stubborn gal who's holding onto XP until I have no choice), so decided to do a System Restore and roll everything back. I only had a System Checkpoint to choose from, so I told System Restore to roll back to that checkpoint. When it rebooted, it told me it couldn't restore anything because there had been no changes to my computer. But suddenly WB was working just fine. I opened SDC and saw that I did indeed have the most recent version installed. So breathed a sigh of relief, and it looks like everything is okay. But boy oh boy, this upgrade was a MESS to get through. Other people who see this thread before upgrading might want to wait until the bugs are worked out.

Rutabaga64,I agree with all you say about your attempts to upgrade to this latest version of W/Bs,i went through all that trauma trying to upgrade on my vista PC. I dont see many replies from stardock over these issues, its obvious from the posts that all is not well with this upgrade. I second your closing comments about not upgrading till all the bugs are worked out.

When it rebooted, it told me it couldn't restore anything because there had been no changes to my computer

Do you have Norton antivirus? Norton has to be turned off for the system restore to work. The new Norton protects itself and doesn't allow any changes to be made. If you have Norton let me know through this thread and I'll write how to turn it off in case you need to use system restore again.

Man...this was a bear of an update! First, I updated on my laptop...went off without a hitch. So, I thought....yea! Then I did the update on my desktop...what a mess! The first go around, all I had was the original windows classic and a message that the wbconfig.exe couldn't be found. All of my skins were lost in action. I rebooted a few times to no avail. So, then I decide to restore my previous version. At, first, it wouldn't restore...but, eventually, I got it to restore. Had to reboot several times to get my blind to display properly. When all was well, I thought I would try again to update. So, I went to SDC and it showed that 6.1 was already installed...but, in wbconfig, it showed 6.03. So, I bit the bullet, and unistalled WB altogether and rebooted. Then came back to SDC, and re-installed WB. The skins were all there, so I thought..yea! Well, applied a skin, and all I got was the classic version of it. So, I rebooted again, and this time, the skin loaded properly! Whew! I sure hope Stardock takes a look at this, and fixes whatever is broken with the update process!

So, I rebooted again, and this time, the skin loaded properly! Whew! I sure hope Stardock takes a look at this, and fixes whatever is broken with the update process!

Well, I spoke too soon! When I went to change to a different skin, it crashed my computer! So, I have gone back to the previous version of WB 6...and, will not try to update again until Stardock fixes whatever is wrong here.

Still having issues myself with this. My above post explains. Basically....update wb, then wbconfig cannot be found. Cannot be started,etc. So, reboot, redo, then it can be found, but then all of my blinds/skins are missing, as in gone. Uninstall and then reinstall, same thing.