I've been using Stardock for ages and was using a DeskScape on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit when I had a disk crash. I have all my data back and a new, bigger, faster HD on a new SATA 3 card and everything is slicker than ever before. But when I finally found my old desktop, a dream of a rotating Earth with night lights, I can't get it to take on Windows 7. When I click on "Apply to my desktop" I get a flicker of the background image but that's it.
I may have done something by trying to install a dream with Desktop X. That causes Windows Explorer to crash twice, then lose the desktop.
I checked and Windows Update has already applied KB2670838. I run WU regularly, let it run at night, and keep the computer quite thoroughly up-to-date. Video card is GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB 128-bit (rebranded by ASUS as model EN8600GTS). Motherboard is ASUS DSGC-DW with two E5335s (E5450s coming!).
Is there something that I need to install? Should I un-install DeskScapes 8 and re-install? Did I jiggle the registry in a disturbing manner with Desktop X and a dream?
Looks like you might try uninstalling that
https://forums.wincustomize.com/440714/page/1/#3326986
Since I'm not a developer and don't have Visual Studio 2012 on my machine, there should be no problem, but I'll try it. If it doesn't help, I can always get it back with WU. Watch this space for ten minutes.
No joy. In fact, no change at all. WU says it's an optional update but I'm putting it back because there seems to be a noticeable slowdown and tenancy to pause with the browser. I'll restart to complete the process now, then run the registry cleanup in Norton 360. Other ideas?
I don't see a process called dwm.exe but I do have a Desktop Window Manager Session service, which was started. I re-started it. Still no joy. There is a Stardock Deskscapes 8 service that is started, too.
Understand that I had this dream working for months on my old HD. I have a fresh system install on a new HD that won't take a dream. I have tried a couple of other dream files too and none of them will load as the desktop. I haven't tried to load them as the screen saver. I have my computer tun off the monitor when I'm away from the computer.
Only what's in that thread-
Reply 4 says IE10 installs the same things the KB update installs, so if you've got IE10 installed you might try rolling that back to IE9 as well as uninstalling the KB.
Reply 12 says someone also had luck uninstalling and reinstalling Silverlight.
There's always video card drivers. If you can install the same version you had working before that might be good, or else the current ones. I do remember seeing someone had a problem with a particular NVidia version relatively recently with deskscapes and went back to a prior version, but I don't know which version that was and didn't mark the thread.
Do any of the dreams that ship with Deskscapes run?
I'm also wondering if you have any mpg codecs installed yet. Perhaps previously you had a dvd player etc software installed which was providing them and you don't have it installed yet.
I'm running with the same WU-supported video drivers for my aging mid-line video card that I was before the crash. The card is old (NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600 GTS) and the drivers are stable.
It may be the codecs. I got a prompt this afternoon that I didn't have QuickTime installed. What codecs do we need? I have Nero 12 installed but I haven't started it yet. I did start it just now, and it didn't install any new codecs, it just wanted me to register again, which I did. I had to turn off the firewall for it to do that, which gave me the idea to turn off the firewall and virus checker to see if that would unlock DeskScapes 8 - it did not.
The registry cleanup turned up the usual from a bunch of fresh installations, a few entries pointing to missing DLLs in temporary locations for installation to other versions of Windows (XP, NT4, etc.), pointing to files in the TMP folder that are gone now. There were a couple of references to one of those {<128 bits in hex>} folders and programs that wasn't there anymore, probably because I UN-installed a thing or two. But no smoking gun there, either.
I have tried some of the other dreams that come with DeskScape 8. I'm getting the Windows Explorer double-crash with Architecture 5 and a couple of others. Most of them just blink and nothing else happens. I went back to the single-frame Windows 7 default installation desktop and no change. I went back to Windows' Landscapes with Rotating Text screen saver, which I have set to fade to black (turn off the monitor) after a few minutes.
Nero has an introductory video and I have watched a couple of YouTube videos so MPG is there, probably all of the common MPEG codecs.
Well, it seems to have something to do with Silverlight. I un-installed Silverlight and DeskScapes 8 did effect a change: to all deep black. I waited, but no image, still or moving, ever loaded. I booted, and got the same black desktop.
I didn't have IE 10, at least in the last couple of boots, because WU installed IE 10 when I used it to re-install Silverlight. It's possible that IE 10 was uprooted when I uninstalled Silverlight.
Re-installing Silverlight didn't change anything. The Windows theme manager shows the desktop as black, but the location is the DeskScapes 8 folder. I used the Windows theme manager to go back to the Landscapes slide show. Then, I tried DeskScpaes 8 again and got the same twitch but no change in desktop.
That's it for tonight, folks. I have an early start tomorrow. Perhaps some thinking on my end will help, and you experts have a lot of data from tonight's fun. I'll check in late tomorrow afternoon.
I hope you like my avatar. It's an old picture of a lop-eared Chihuahua that I always liked. I'll change it to something more interesting when I get a chance.
I forgot to mention that when I put in my first dream, DeskScapes asked "You must have an active desktop to use a dream. Would you like to convert to an active desktop?" I'm not getting this now.
Barring other inputs before I get back this afternoon, I'll um-install IE 10, Silverlight, and KB2670838 all at the same time and try again. Anyone that has any idea whether the "active desktop" concept is relevant today, please chip in before mid-afternoon.
Silverlight won't un-install with IE 10 installed. I'm un-installing IE 10 and KB2670838 first.
There is a security update for Silverlight, KB2847559, that must be un-installed to allow un-installation of Silverlight. I'm also going to un-install DeskScapes 8 and re-install it before I try again.
It turns out that the Silverlight security update, KB2847669, appears on the WU list of updates, but on the screen of "Uniinstall an update" it does NOT appear, and Silverlight will not un-install with it in place. So, I un-installed DeskScapes 8 and re-installed it and tried again.
Desktop Earth, my target dream, goes instantly to the black screen but there is no Earth, rotating or not. EarthligtsV2 by stephenvw installs and works for a second or two, but then I get the Windows Explorer double-crash and the animation goes away. Likewise, Planktonic by ChaNinja installs with animation for a second or two, then the double crash and the image stays but the animation stops. If you do this two or thee times, the double crash goes away but you can't get anything except the black screen until you reboot. Rebooting with the Rotating Earth dream in place has no effect.
It appears that DeskScapes 8 is operating properly and that there is nothing wrong with the dream files, but that the animation is crashing. I suspect that some maintenance operation left it without enough stack/heap/whatever space to deal with the size of a full-screen animation, no matter how slowly and carefully planned to avoid consuming computer resources.
I'm out of ideas. I'll go back to a simple slide show desktop until this sorts itself out. I'll try again about once a week to watch for progress. Anyone with ideas pleas post here; I'll get an e-mail when anyone posts to this Topic.
One last tidbit. I looked at the desktop with the Rotating Earth dream in the Windows Personalization window, and find that it is a 23 X 22 pixel, 24-bit (color) bitmap. It's all black, so whatever selection I use in image fitting, Center, Fill, etc. I get an all-black screen. Pathname is
C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Object Desktop\DeskScapes8\deskscapes.bmp
I change the background color to white, and, viola, there is that little black square in the center of a white screen. It seems that the animation crash is happening when one tile is written for the desktop image. Since that tile is all black, it's probably the corner, the first tile written.
Probably best at this point for you to follow the instructions in Reply 1 here:
https://forums.wincustomize.com/446186/page/1/#3377501
Include a link to this thread. Sorry this didn't work for you.
Done. I browsed a bit in some of the material. I see what may be a smoking gun in some discrepancies in ExpectedFrameCount in 2013-08-25 01.00.02.433 Foral.Assessment (Recent).WinSAT.xml
After submitting an amazing set of system logs from http://sd.stardock.com/SDSupportTool.exe to support@stardock.com last night as instructed by DaveRI, I got a reply by email this morning from Customer Care to install an update to DirectX from Microsoft at
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=35
which solved the problem. Interestingly enough, it threw a copy of Microsoft-s Malicious Software Removal Tool at me which didn't install because it was the 32-bit version first, but since I run WU every night I'm sure I have it up-to-date anyway.
I have my DeskScapes 8 desktops back. Thank you for your support. I actually enjoyed the forensics before we went to the gurus, too.
OO
Glad you got it going. Thanks for posting the Microsoft link.
That was some seriously excellent turn-around time from Support
The problem was the fresh OS installation that didn't have the current DirectX installed. I find this puzzling because I would have thought that Microsoft considered DirectX an optional but critical support technology on the order of Silverlight, perhaps more so because it integrates with firmware in most graphics cards these days. And, I'm quite diligent about running MS Update whenever I have a new installation and I want WU to check for old Microsoft distributable modules, and, hey, I have an NVIDIA GEFORCE 6800 which uses hardware DirectX support. It was there is suppose but it was too old.
Apparently they passed it to a Stardock guru that knew all the modules involved with displaying dreams and he went right to my vast selection of logs to check versions, he saw it, and put it on his checklist for this morning.
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