Frogboy Administrators Posted December 18, 2005 Administrators Share Posted December 18, 2005 WindowBlinds 5 has production activation in the full version. Simply put, a user who purchases the program downloads it from say Stardock Central and it activates it for you. It's pretty painless. However, some people to avoid paying for the program cracked the initial activation and re-distributed their crack on the net where other people could download the crack as well. That activation crack had a flaw, however. When the first backup activation checks came into play (starting yesterday) it caused the machine to have some significant issues. No data loss, but title bars and borders and such are all black and performance is severely affected. In a nutshell, users running the cracked version will find that WindowBlinds 5 is unable to load any bitmaps. This is caused by the way the crack was made apparently. Those who are angry should contact the people who made the crack for tech support. Legitimate users of WindowBlinds are not affected by this at all. A couple of key points: 1) WindowBlinds does not modify any files on your computer. 2) Stardock had nothing to do with the crack, we wish people would not crack our software and we can't stop people from stealing our software. It just so happens in this case, the people who chose to download and install the crack are now suffering for having downloaded and installed illicit files. 3) Someone affected by this can uninstall WindowBlinds and the problem will go away. 4) Stardock provides a trial version of WindowBlinds at http://www.windowblinds.net. That is what it's for. 5) Installing a legitimate version of WindowBlinds 5 will fix the problem also. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azusa Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 hackers and programmers will find away thats for sure Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
epple Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Bad crack..happens all the time. Not that I would know anything about that tho.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted December 18, 2005 Author Administrators Share Posted December 18, 2005 hackers and programmers will find away thats for sure Certainly. Just don't blame Stardock if the downloaded crack hoses up your computer later on because they "missed" something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMarsten Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Bad crack..happens all the time. Not that I would know anything about that tho.. Your on methiodon now? :o Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azusa Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Certainly. Just don't blame Stardock if the downloaded crack hoses up your computer later on because they "missed" something. i know but with the current exchange rate ill be buying full ODT package cheaply Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JustGeorge Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 My ass crack is messed up. Hope warez kiddies fix that soon! :) j/k BTW, Does WB import MS Styles for you or do you have to have the whole OD suite to do that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marke Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 hackers and programmers will find away thats for sure thats the first thing. second is that the program will get a group of haters. better let people use it with crack and be glad and buy it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NienorGT Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Well said FrogBoy. I'm tired of all this thing now... BTW, Does WB import MS Styles for you or do you have to have the whole OD suite to do that? You need SkinStudio for that purpose.It's pretty easy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sn00pie Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 About time, real men stick to visual styles. :p (Y) JK!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Montage Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 The saddest part about all this is that it will fuel the fire of idiots who just sit and say "Windowblinds slows down computers and is unstable". This arguement (often based on trying a previous version to 4) is such bunkem, yet will be added to because these people hear about this issue and feel Stardock is at fault. Personally I don't use WB as I am content with MS themes. But I have used it before and had nothing bad to say about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lasker Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 why windowblinds does not implement the same tryout technology found in adobe products? their trials are hard to impossible to crack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MrBear5587 Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 [RANT]Im glad the people who decided not to support stardock's work, and get a crappy warez version now have problems. It's all they deserve. In fact, It's a damn shame their entire hard drive wasn't wiped. Maybe that would make people learn. As it's already been mentioned in this thread, the chances are that the problems caused by using the warez version will give Stardock some bad publicity - which is just ridiculous. It's not as if WB is expensive, the pricing for OD is great for what you get. I have a legit OD subscription and WB5 is 100% stable, excellent software. The less cheapskates we have who elect to use the Warez version, the better WB will become. Quite frankly people have got some nerve to post about problems on both Neowin and the Stardock forums, complaining to/about Stardock when they haven't paid for the software. And before anyone says, you don't need the Warez version to trial anything - Stardock have trials.[/RANT] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User6060 Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Your on methiodon now? :o Methadone is for heroin addicts. ;) not crack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
_I am Reptar Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Doesn't matter what they put in it, it will always be cracked. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beastage Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 bah ... instead of breaking the program they should have used the activation thingy to track down IP's of warez users all they will get now are new working cracks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andrew Lyle Global Moderator Posted December 18, 2005 Global Moderator Share Posted December 18, 2005 Doesn't matter what they put in it, it will always be cracked. exactly.. microsoft puts millions of dollars into research and systems to make windows uncrackable. but i still see tuns of pirated stuff around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azusa Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 wait something just hit me wont someone just make a keygen for it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frogboy Administrators Posted December 18, 2005 Author Administrators Share Posted December 18, 2005 Someone will certainly crack WindowBlinds 5 (again). Of course, when people go to look for the cracks it'll be intermixed with the 84,000 or whatever cracks that hose people's GUIs. I suspect the next crack will work as well as the last one. After all, this crack worked so well.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMarsten Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 Methadone is for heroin addicts. ;) not crack. actually methadone is used to ease people off many drugs including crack .. if you check pubmed you can find scientific journals on it ... o so this isn't completely off topic ... Those Crazy Stardockers .. docking .. stars :huh: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RadishTM Veteran Posted December 18, 2005 Veteran Share Posted December 18, 2005 It's quite funny that the majority of people saying it will be cracked have been warned for posting warez in the past. Radish? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JohnMarsten Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 It's quite funny that the majority of people saying it will be cracked have been warned for posting warez in the past. Radish? That is actually pretty funny .. but they are right, it will be cracked again Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
x-scratch Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 windowblinds works great here didnt need to use a crack i upgraded when i got paid runs & looks great people who need to use a crack is either cheap & cant afford it or they afraid to ask mommy & daddy for a legit copy btw its been cracked again saw it a gaming forum Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nwBen Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 It's quite funny that the majority of people saying it will be cracked have been warned for posting warez in the past. Radish? Why is that funny? It's pretty much inevitable. Face it - almost everything gets cracked nowadays. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
User6060 Posted December 18, 2005 Share Posted December 18, 2005 actually methadone is used to ease people off many drugs including crack .. if you check pubmed you can find scientific journals on it ... o so this isn't completely off topic ... Those Crazy Stardockers .. docking .. stars :huh: more off topicness hmm didn't know i assumed because it affects opiod receptors it was only used to treat herion/opium/morphine addictions back on topic...ness it probably will be cracked again and its hard to say whether the same effects will be reproduced, it all boils down to how good the crackers are and how many tricks stardock put up the WB5 sleve. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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