OT: Windows Optimization?

[Aiken]

Heh, the only Windows compatible OS I know is DOS...

[Will]

AgentZero said:
Just a side note from someone who admittedly failed first-year computer science, but if it's possible to make Windows-compatible applications, should it not be possible to make a Windows-compatible operating system?

Technically, it could be done. But the details involved are way too huge for any entity (even Microsoft) to deal with. The big deal with Windows is that damn near everything is backwards compatible, so stuff that runs in Win9x usually runs in WinXP, and some stuff that runs in Win3.x does, and some old DOS programs even run under XP. The problem comes in when Microsoft kept "undocumented features", aka bugs, in the backwards compatibility code, since some applications used these in their programs. I don't know of any specific examples, but imagine something like passing NULL pointers to a file system function gave you the data from the Last time the function was used instead of returning an error... a lot of stuff like that was used by "programmers" because it worked at the time, even if it wasn't necessarily correct. Pile up about 15-20 years of that, and making an emulator that does all of that stuff is... well, impossible. Wine and its ilk are getting close, but I don't think they'll get there.

[AgentZero]

Thanks guys. I've taken your advice (mostly) to heart, and the ol' girl seems to be running nicely again. But Will, you mentioned LiteStep, which I was looking at, but I haven't really had any luck getting it to work and there seems to be a dearth of helpful information out there. So any assistance you can provide would be much appreciated.

[AgentZero]

Sorry. Just realized I should have been a bit more clear than saying 'it doesn't work'. I downloaded the installer off www.litestep.net ran it, then rebooted. Everything seems to load properly, but clicking/double clicking desktop icons doesn't seem to do much and if I click any of the buttons on the taskbar, the system freezes. I know I probably forgot something or didn't do something I should have, but given the trouble I'm having finding documentation, this isn't really surprising.

BTW, I'm currently looking for a decent replacement to Windows Media Player, so any suggestions are welcome.

[Fyron]

Media Player Classic

It was originally based off of WMP 6.4 or something, so it has a nice clean interface. Fully featured media player.

[Will]

Yes, the LiteStep general documentation is fairly lacking... although the internal documentation for themes and such is decent.

I'm not sure what the problem you've been encountering could be. It might just be problems getting used to the interface. IIRC, double-clicking files on the desktop should launch them with the default application. The buttons on the taskbar, for the default theme, are usually set to the default installation paths for certain applications, the globe being Internet Explorer for left click, AIM for right click, the text pad being Notepad for left click, MSPaint for right click, and the file cabinet being a Explorer window (file manager) for left click, and the command prompt for right click. The triangle of circles icon (the LiteStep logo) and right clicking on the desktop gives the analogue of the start menu, right clicking on the LiteStep icon launches the file manager to the installed folder of LiteStep.

The trick of going to the task manager works with LiteStep as well. So if things hang, you can Ctrl-Alt-Del, and kill LiteStep, then use New Task to launch either explorer or litestep.

Also, I used the installer found on this site, and I think it has some basic customization stuff in the installer, as well as a few plugins. It might be basically the same thing, but you never know.

Oh, and I think when I first started using LiteStep, I had some problems with the resource monitor plugin. When I took it out, a lot of problems went away.

[AgentZero]

Thanks, Fyron. That Media Player's actually really good. It was able to play a few movies that the Windows player couldn't. Will, I've got LiteStep up and running now, and things seem to be working quite nicely. I did actually download the installer from the same site as you, but once I reinstalled it things started humming along nicely. All bow before the mighty power of the reinstall! One thing I'm having trouble with is figuring out exactly how to install modules. The theme I'm running at the moment keeps telling me I need to install certain modules in order for it to work properly. I've downloaded them, but none of them have any documentation on how one actually installs them. Little help?

Aside from that, though, it's running pretty nicely. There's still a bit of a lag when I first boot up, but it's dropped from about 5 minutes to 30 seconds to a minute, max. If I were a MS advertising exec, I'd say LiteStep increased the performance of my computer 5-10 times. ;-)

[Will]

For most of the plugins, you just need to get the *.dll file for the plugin, and put it in a plugin directory, called modules, IIRC. Some have some extra setup that you need to do, and usually come with an installer or some basic docs saying what you need to do. This page should get you started, let me know if you need anything more specific.

[AgentZero]

For most of the plugins, you just need to get the *.dll file for the plugin, and put it in a plugin directory, called modules

OK, but then what? One module had that actually had installation instructions said open the Setup.rc, and add the line LoadModule "c:\litestep\modulename.dll" then Recycle. Did all this but when I try to load a Theme, it still says I need to install the modules I just supposedly installed. This is the only real problem I've having, everything else is running great.

[Will]

Are you sure it's setup.rc? I'm looking through an older backup I have, and the closest thing I see that would load modules is the theme.rc file. I'd probably be able to help more if I knew the specific module.