wincustomize.com

[Jayce]

Some programs on here I'm a little unsure of. Are they healthy to use? Or can they be harmful to your Windows system? I read a lot that some other bootskin programs alter the Windows kernel or whatever, which can harm it. However this program (entitled bootskin on this site) says it does not touch the kernel and it's safe, blah blah.

I'm also looking at sysmetrix here. I'm just not sure. Are these safe to use? What about skins? Skins I'm sure are safe to use but do they use up additional room?


Ex. Windows Explorer uses x-amount of ram to run. Let's say it uses 10 megs JUST for comparison reasons, cause I have no idea what it uses. Let's say that a skin uses 5 megs to run. If I'm using a skin, is it overall using 15 megs of ram to run? (Explorer + skin)

ORRRRRRRRRRR.............................

Am I only using 5 megs to run it? Does the skin actually replace Explorer?

 

[Apokalipse]

they will take up more RAM. if not the theme itself, the program used to implememt the theme.

 

[Jayce]

they will take up more RAM. if not the theme itself, the program used to implememt the theme.

What's strange there is no additional program running in the task manager.

When I spoke to my buddy who uses WindowBlinds (skin program from wincustomize.com) he said his icon shows in the corner. Mine does not. We assumed I had a newer version than he did...

How much more ram? Is this something that I could run even on a 128 meg setup and not even notice it? Or does it take a huge chunk of ram to run?

 

[office politics]

task manager's process list will show you how much ram a process uses. you'll need to identify the process the theme affects. I've never heard of bootskin before but i assume its similar to a replacing the windows shell. I would think that explorer.exe would be affected or even replaced with its own exe. You'd have to have a clean install and check the memory load. Then install the bootskin/shell and check the memory load.

 

[Todd0]

bootskin just creates a new line in your boot.ini file, or actually it might edit it. i forget, but yeh thats all it does. so it shouldnt lag your computer, if you only got like a visual style, i think windows can do some of them without an additional program, depending on wat file type it is.

 

[Jayce]

I wasn't suspecting bootskin to lag my computer, because bootskin is what causes the bootup logo to appear instead of windows. I had no doubt that that thing would not cause lag on me.

I'm questioning whether new skins (windowblinds) would cause any lag, though... They are WBA files or something, the skin I'm using is 1.6 meg. *shrugs*

Back to bootskin, sure it may just create another line or edit it to make the image appear, but is this "safe" for the computer? As I stated above, I read that other programs adjust some kernel which isn't really smart, but this program (bootskin) does not, deeming it much safer. Just wanted to see what users thought...

edit - I did a restore to 2 days ago. This uninstalled WindowBlinds and BootSkin. For the hell of it, I left BootSkin uninstalled so I'll just stare at the pretty Windows XP load screen for 8 whopping seconds when I boot up. Now, after I reloaded WindowBlinds and chose my skin, NOW WindowBlinds runs ALL the time. Like if I shut it off, the skin leaves too.

I was comparing some numbers. Without WindowBlinds running and my usual startup programs running, I had about 804 megs free on ram. After I started WindowBlinds, I was running at like 796 megs free. I assume 8 megs worth being used on a program like this wouldn't effect anything. I would assume I could easily use this on a 128 meg system and not even notice.... Right?

edit again - who knows, now I'm not sure what to think. I sat here again and figured I'd try this once more so I watched my available space that was unused by the ram, wrote that number down, shut off WindowBlinds, wrote that number down, started it up again, wrote that number down, etc. Almost all of them are the same now. Maybe WindowBlinds takes even less space to run than I thought?