OT: Windows Optimization?

AgentZero · #1 October 31st, 2004, 08:44 PM

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 · #2 October 31st, 2004, 10:46 PM

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 · #3 November 1st, 2004, 08:53 PM

Quote:

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 · #4 November 1st, 2004, 09:04 PM

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.

AgentZero · #5 November 1st, 2004, 09:10 PM

tasks-0.92b, shortcut2-2.0.2 and hotkey-2.0 are apparently the ones that are lacking. I'll try popping things into theme.rc and see what happens...

Will · #6 November 2nd, 2004, 02:48 AM

Looks like it might be a problem with naming... ie, tasks-0.92b.dll might need to be something along the lines of tasks-0.9.dll, or vice versa. Might want to check that the file names already existing in theme.rc (do a quick Ctrl-F on tasks, shortcut, hotkey, respectively) and see that the names in there match the actual file names of the *.dlls you have installed. If they're different, you probably want to rename the files, since there is a possibility the filename is referenced somewhere else, and you don't want to track down that entry in all the config files

AgentZero · #7 November 3rd, 2004, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Will said:
Looks like it might be a problem with naming... ie, tasks-0.92b.dll might need to be something along the lines of tasks-0.9.dll, or vice versa. Might want to check that the file names already existing in theme.rc (do a quick Ctrl-F on tasks, shortcut, hotkey, respectively) and see that the names in there match the actual file names of the *.dlls you have installed. If they're different, you probably want to rename the files, since there is a possibility the filename is referenced somewhere else, and you don't want to track down that entry in all the config files

Thanks. Things seem to be working ok now. Problem was, when I didn't have a module that a theme needed, it brought up a window where you could download the modules and have them automatically installed, but whenever I used it the system would hang, so I was trying to install them manually. Turns out the problem was with Download Accelerator (DAP). Something about it caused the system to freeze, because as soon as I reinstalled it, the modules downloaded and installed fine. I still think there's a problem with Explorer.exe because LiteStep uses it as the File Manager, and whenever I try to use it I get into trouble.
Does anyone know if there's a 3rd party program that can do what explorer.exe does in terms of navigating the file system, without acutually using explorer.exe. Please let me know & then I can finally be (more or less) free of the MicroSoft yoke.