[help] windowfx2 not working right

Ever since I got my amd64 processor winfx is very buggy. When i turn everything off on it except shadows, it still doesnt work right. The shadows arent even applied, not a single window has shadows whatsoever. Not to mention when expanding and contrasting my system tray it makes it VERY slow, and when i open say My Computer, or firefox, when it appears on the taskbar is appears very slowly. It generally kills my pc when it comes to opening applications.

I have no idea why. it says Both Constant Alpha Blending and Per Pixel Alpha blending are accelerated by my drivers. I have the second most recent drivers, I could try an update, not likely to work. I have also tried previous drivers before these, and no luck with that either.

If anyone knows whats wrong, it would be greatly appreciated!!

Thanks in advance!

-Asty

EDIT: Drivers updated, still no difference.

#302197

same here bro. when i switch to amd athlon 64 processor. but i discovered just lately that only explorer.exe and its menu don't have a shadow and transparent.

the animation, fade and etc. works in some apps. except for the explorer.exe.

and also it slow down loading explorer.exe. that's why i switch to looca and bzfinder.

#302202

It worked for some apps? I dont get a shadow period, even in apps like miranda.

#302203

Do me a favor. Hit Ctrl + Alt + Del. Does it show taskmgr.exe taking up 98 or 99 CPU?

Then take a look at this thread. The problem was unresolved. It must be an issue with the Athlon 64 because that's apparently what I have in my laptop (despite the specs for the laptop saying it's an AthlonXP, the drivers that came with it are Athlon64 drivers).

#302226

It did spike, but not 100% full cpu usage, it jumped around, 25%, 40%, 35%, 51%...etc

#302316

Again WindowFx troubles. When will Stardock upgrade anyways? It's about time. When was version 1.12 released? Anyways had comparable lag with my AMD64 (3500+).

Which i found very dissapointing since my former pc ancient k6-2 (450) did not lag,

while it's 3dfx GPU didn't even support constant alpha blending & per pixel alpha blending.

Anyways it was solved by disabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP). No problems eversince. Why don't you try?

#302407

Anyways it was solved by disabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP). No problems eversince. Why don't you try?

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I LOVE YOU!

That worked perfectly man. I've been looking to solve this problem for so long and now it's finally working again!! woooohooooooo!!

#302435

This really works!!!! O_O

I've also had this problem since november... and I gave up... I can't believe it... just deactivating the DEP and my Athlon64 sings with WinFX

Thank you!!!!

#302464

oh~ i always think it was my ATI problem~

anyway thank you very much!

#302465

oh~ i always think it was my ATI problem~

anyway thank you very much!

lol... I also thought that winfx doesn't like my Radeon 9800

#302468

Again WindowFx troubles. When will Stardock upgrade anyways? It's about time. When was version 1.12 released? Anyways had comparable lag with my AMD64 (3500+).

Which i found very dissapointing since my former pc ancient k6-2 (450) did not lag,

while it's 3dfx GPU didn't even support constant alpha blending & per pixel alpha blending.

Anyways it was solved by disabling Data Execution Prevention (DEP). No problems eversince. Why don't you try?

Oh man, thank you so much, greatly appreciated!!!

#302530

Good to hear turning off DEP worked for you too guys.

I thought DEP would be a speed improvement; I mean

partially hardware-based antivirus protection through the amd64 CPU.

But all I got was lag all over the system. :mad:

Is it just me, or do you guys have simmiliar experiances with it?

Back to topic.

Only question remains. Why does one have to turn off DEP as a whole through boot.ini,

and is including WindowFX to the exclusion list (system properties-->advanced-->performance settings-->DEP) not sufficient?

#302901

Only question remains. Why does one have to turn off DEP as a whole through boot.ini,

and is including WindowFX to the exclusion list (system properties-->advanced-->performance settings-->DEP) not sufficient?

Glad you asked. I tried that first and it DID NOT work. Only disabling it through boot.ini did. Who the hell knows...I didn't even know what DEP in the first place. All I know is that WindowFX runs like a dream and that you are my hero.

#302909

Good to hear turning off DEP worked for you too guys.

I thought DEP would be a speed improvement; I mean

partially hardware-based antivirus protection through the amd64 CPU.

DEP is no virus protection on its own - it's only a way to prevent the nasty side-effects of certain overflows.

But all I got was lag all over the system. :mad:

Is it just me, or do you guys have simmiliar experiances with it?

Back to topic.

Only question remains. Why does one have to turn off DEP as a whole through boot.ini,

and is including WindowFX to the exclusion list (system properties-->advanced-->performance settings-->DEP) not sufficient?

WinFX uses a technique called 'hooking' to load a DLL into each process to get access to that process' recources, like windows and to be able to monitor windows creation, movement etc...

WindowFX.exe loads this DLL into every process, but once it's loaded into another process it becomes actually a part of the process-space of that other process. if you disable DEP for windowfx.exe only, it will still load its DLL into these processes which are protected by DEP.

Example: to shadow the taskbar, the DLL is loaded into explorer.exe's process-space. Since this is a vital file (it's the main shell for windows), it's protected by DEP, thus the DLL is protected too.

I think winfx is using an old version of the WTL library, which is using a technique called thunking. This thunking does exactly that thing which DEP tries to prevent. However, in this case there is no intention to cause harm. I suspect MS from adding an app-compatibility 'hack' for applications using this old library, and thus slowing things down.

#302914

ah the God himself explains it. I think I'm a little wiser now. (not really...I'm too brilliant already)

#302921

DEP is no virus protection on its own - it's only a way to prevent the nasty side-effects of certain overflows.

My question was if DEP slows down every AMD64 system or just mine? Because I would think that (partly)hardware based protection would be faster that software, or isn't it?!?

Example: to shadow the taskbar, the DLL is loaded into explorer.exe's process-space. Since this is a vital file (it's the main shell for windows), it's protected by DEP, thus the DLL is protected too.

I think winfx is using an old version of the WTL library, which is using a technique called thunking. This thunking does exactly that thing which DEP tries to prevent. However, in this case there is no intention to cause harm. I suspect MS from adding an app-compatibility 'hack' for applications using this old library, and thus slowing things down.

#302935

I think WindowFX does not shadow the taskbar on purpose (not because it can't be done). It's simply to give people a reason to get (buy) ObjectBar.

#303025

.... It does for me, 2.21... you need stardock central to update it, its a beta

#304353