Yvo was away on holiday and I have been busy working on a major software release at work. Yvo will be back somewhere this morning and my software was released yesterday. What does this all mean? Well, we’ll be here to finally reply to some forum posts and blog comments. I’m leaving in a few minutes on a small family trip, but will be back in the afternoon, Yvo might want to grab some sleep first (he’s been flying through the night), but you can expect to see some replies today.
Yvo is currently working, or rather, he was before he left, on the setup of the new VistaGlazz. I’ll be working on the problems some of you guys apparently had.
Good, it is still Saturday. We’ve modified some code and everything seems to work like it should. Beta3 will be able to fix 32bit SP1 systems that have been patched with VistaGlazz 1. VistaGlazz should identify your system as “patchable” (as opposed to “original” for untouched systems). If VistaGlazz identifies your system as corrupt or if you encounter any other problem, please let us know.
We do not have a solution for 64bit SP1 systems that are patched with VistaGlazz 1 yet, since that problem is a little bit more complex.
Download VistaGlazz SP1 beta3 now!
(Remember download it to disk first, do not run it from your browser)
So far we’ve only seen rundll32 problems after patching a VistaSP1 system with the original VistaGlazz, using the “patch anyway” option. It seems somewhat unlikely that anybody did in fact use the “patch anyway” option from the old VG on their SP1 system, but we want to be sure that this is not the cause of the rundll32 problems. You can expect a new beta release in the next few days that’ll address that specific point.
Update 2008/05/21:
We ran into some problems while creating a fix for the 64bit systems suffering from the problem described above. Yvo patched his 64bit Vista with VG 1.0 using the patch anyway option, so we could see firsthand what that would lead to. Apparently Vista didn’t like it. While Vista32 just throws some rundll32 errors, Vista64 will no longer boot in normal mode. A trip to safe mode and some file copying via the command prompt is what it took to restore things. We’ve not decided yet on what the best way is to help those of you running Vista64 and suffering from these kind of problems.
Long story short: It’s taking a little bit longer than expected. Though we will probably have a new version ready by Friday, we really want to perform some tests before uploading it to our site. Expect a new release somewhere Saturday.
In the meanwhile: If there is anyone with rundll32-problems that didn’t use the patch anyway of VG 1.0, please let us know exactly what steps you took that led to your problems. This way you will help us in identifying what went wrong and may lead to a fix for this problem.
Though beta2 seems to work for most of you, there are still people suffering from some rundll32 related problems. So far we still haven’t been able to reproduce the described problem, but hopefully we will be able to do so.
There are some other issues we want to address in the upcoming release, being:
-> Version information in the app - Currently not available and it would definitely help you to identify which version of VG you’re using
-> Liability waiver at app startup - Apparently it is deemed a little aggressive and annoying, so we might remove it altogether or make it a onetime only thing
-> Restore points - Some people, especially those using beta1, had some “Vista kind of like died on me, now what?” moments, so we’re considering to add a ‘Create Restore Point before playing with VG’ option
You might also have noticed a slight, erm, “change” in the look and feel of our site. WordPress released an update and our skin is not yet compatible with this update. Currently we’re waiting for our friends at K2 to release their new WordPress 2.5 compatible skin. Please bear with us as that release is due in the near future.
All right, this one should work a lot better for you guys running 32bit. I tested it on a VirtualPC and this one seems to work just fine on Vista32SP1. We also included a restore for those of you with screwed up systems after running the beta1. Please note that if your system is FrankenGlazzed, beta2 will accuse your system files of being corrupt. While this is true, just click on the “patch anyway” button and reboot.
I installed a Vista32RTM on my VirtualPC, patched it using VistaGlazz 1.0 and then upgraded to SP1. Next I ran beta1 and experienced the whole ‘Vista is in pain, please wait while it keeps flipping styles’ problem. After this, I ran beta2, used “patch anyway” and rebooted, everything was fine after that. I unpatched to get to the SP1 original state and then repatched to ensure patching would work good for the clean SP1 versions. I experienced no problems at all, so I’m pretty sure everything works well.
Again, please do not feel obliged to download and use this beta as we will probably release a final (fully tested) version including a setup somewhere this week. We still need to run a full test to cover all scenarios so we can be sure it works 100%.
Download VistaGlazz SP1 beta2 now!