transparent windows and borders

[Guest]

Over at a friends house who has Lynx installed on his machine. I liked the
dark semi-transparent windows. So, I am trying to emulate that on my Window
XP Media Center Edition (without installing Window Blinds or some other
registry wrecking software package). The dark part was easy. Display
Properties /Appearance/Color Schemes/ and set it to one of the High Contrast
settings. Looked all over Google for a registry hack to make all windows
semi-transparent but found nothing. Also the 3d borders around all the
windows and are giving me a headache! Need to turn them off or at least
another color - but the Display Properties/Advanced does not accommodate for
these tweaks. Any ideas, suggestions, reg hacks, etc would be GREAT! Thanks
in advance.

 

[Malke]

Over at a friends house who has Lynx installed on his machine. I liked
the dark semi-transparent windows. So, I am trying to emulate that on
my Window XP Media Center Edition (without installing Window Blinds or
some other registry wrecking software package). The dark part was
easy. Display Properties /Appearance/Color Schemes/ and set it to one
of the High Contrast settings. Looked all over Google for a registry
hack to make all windows semi-transparent but found nothing. Also the
3d borders around all the windows and are giving me a headache! Need
to turn them off or at least another color - but the Display
Properties/Advanced does not accommodate for these tweaks. Any ideas,
suggestions, reg hacks, etc would be GREAT! Thanks in advance.

I think you mean that your friend is running a Linux operating system
(Lynx is a text-only web browser). The graphical user interface in
Linux is provided by a window manager; there are many window managers
for Linux. Windows does not use a window manager and there is no way to
do what you want without third-party software. You mentioned
WindowBlinds and that is a good one.

Of course, you could always try Linux. ;-)

Malke

 

[Guest]

Forgive my ignorance. Only ever worked with Windows.

I have tried most of the major desktop mod titles out there. They all seem
to be serious resource hogs. It takes almost 3 minutes to load Windows on my
Dell XPS after I installed those programs! I am still suffering significant
performance hits even after uninstalling them. So I wanted to do it myself
with native Windows capabilities.

There isn't a reg hack that sets the transparency of a window or changes the
color of a window's border?

 

[Malke]

Forgive my ignorance. Only ever worked with Windows.

I have tried most of the major desktop mod titles out there. They all
seem to be serious resource hogs. It takes almost 3 minutes to load
Windows on my Dell XPS after I installed those programs! I am still
suffering significant performance hits even after uninstalling them.
So I wanted to do it myself with native Windows capabilities.

There isn't a reg hack that sets the transparency of a window or
changes the color of a window's border?

I believe you can change the color of a window's border without going
into the registry. Go to the Display applet>Appearances tab and click
on Advanced. This will get you to where you can change the aspects of
many visual elements in the same way since Windows 95. I believe this
will change your theme to Classic Windows. There is no setting for
transparency. I believe that Vista will have that capability.

Malke

 

[Nightowl]

I have tried most of the major desktop mod titles out there. They all seem
to be serious resource hogs. It takes almost 3 minutes to load Windows on my
Dell XPS after I installed those programs! I am still suffering significant
performance hits even after uninstalling them.

That is very strange, especially on a high-powered machine like yours,
but I can't help thinking something else must be wrong. I use
WindowBlinds sometimes when I feel like a change and don't find it
resource-hogging at all, and my computer boots up in 45 seconds. This is
a four-year-old Dell Dimension 4300, Pentium 4, 1.70GHz, 512MB RAM.

 

[Guest]

It could be something else indead. I have spent a lot of time using many
different diagnistic software packages trying to find out - but to no avail.
Any ideas to find out what is causing the performance hit? After all,
WindowBlinds has been uninstalled for a few weeks now...

 

[Guest]

Tried that - and your right. I have been able to change most of the visual
elements but not the 3d border around each window and the window's
transparency. It's anoying to be able to tweak some elements but not others.

 

[Malke]

It could be something else indead. I have spent a lot of time using
many different diagnistic software packages trying to find out - but
to no avail. Any ideas to find out what is causing the performance
hit? After all, WindowBlinds has been uninstalled for a few weeks
now...

Sure. First make sure the computer is 100% virus/malware-free:
http://www.elephantboycomputers.com/page2.html#Removing_Malware

Optimize startup:
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar/slowcom.htm
http://aumha.org/a/health.htm - Take Out the Trash (section 4)

And use clean-boot troubleshooting:
Clean Boot - http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=310353
and How to Troubleshoot By Using the Msconfig Utility in Windows XP -
http://support.microsoft.com/?id=310560

Malke

 

[Nightowl]

It could be something else indead. I have spent a lot of time using many
different diagnistic software packages trying to find out - but to no avail.
Any ideas to find out what is causing the performance hit? After all,
WindowBlinds has been uninstalled for a few weeks now...

Hi Dragon

I'm afraid I don't know much about startup and performance problems,
but I'm sure there will be others here who do. I'd encourage you to post
a new thread about it and hope you get some answers.

Good luck!

 

[Guest]

Malke had a few suggestions that I am going to try but I will also try your
suggestion. Thanks.

 

[Guest]

Thank you very much. Will do all that you suggest and let you know the
results.