After I uninstalled LiteStep most of my links and shotcuts and programs in general will either not work completly, or will only work somewhat. For instance Outlook Express will open, check my email, but it will not display the small 3rd window where you can read the emails, it wont let me open them either. Also, IE will open fine, but it will not goto my homepage, it will not open webpages, and it overall just doesnt work.

I considered doing a system recovery (I'm using XP Pro) and when I tried to click Help & Support in my start menu windows could not open this program "This program failed to initialize properly (Oxc000000005)" So I had to dig around and find system restore in C:\WINDOWS\System32\Restore\ and even the file in there will look like its loading (Cursor with an hourglass) and then do nothing, it doesnt open a new task or process or anything.

I believe Litestep severly screwed with my registry settings for nearly all native Windows Applications and didn't set them back upon the uninstall process. Any idea on what I can do to fix this huge mess? I can't even get on the www from that computer except for IRC, I saw somewhere something about reinstalling IE and it would fix it, but I cant get on the www to download it, much less even think that would work for ALL registry entries of all native windows applications.

All in all this REALLY sucks, my computer is nothing more than a paperweight right now, and I'm none too happy about it.

Well...I can assure you that I run all those applications under LS without an issue. I can also assure you that other people in the community do the same. Now...to fix your problem go to this thread and undo everything you did with the install app.

Yes, they ran fine in litestep, the thing is, this is after I uninstalled it, I am using explorer now and basically nothing but 3rd party software works...

It appears all my registry settings for those programs were changed to suit LiteStep, but not changed back when I uninstalled. I didn't simply delete Litestep, I ran the uninstall.exe and when I restarted Explorer loaded fine, but none of the native Windows applications work correctly or at all...

litestep doesn't change registry settings for programs, only for which shell will be used.

Well any idea what's going on then?
All I did was install LiteStep, added a theme, found it to be kind of buggy and wanted to try it again later, so I ran the uninstall.exe, restarted my computer and then nothing works.

I can't even open the system restore application to roll it back. All my files either give me "This program failed to initialize properly (Oxc000000005)" or just do not function in the least respect of how they should.

The above error looks like a memory problem, is there anything in LiteStep that messes with memory assignment settings? Outlook will open for me, but as soon as a 2x click an e-mail to open it it says there is not enough memory, which isnt true because only about 100/384megs are being used at any given moment (And that's the high number).

I believe "(Oxc000000005)" is a memory assignment hex number... I saw previous threads about LiteStep and memory leaks, albeit this isn't the same problem... Ugh I don't know where I'm going with this...

Any help at all? I saw an old post about a previous Litestep build on windows 98 that would do this to explorer, but it said it doesnt happen in XP/NT so there is no need to worry about it, which apparently isn't the case...

Do you think re-installing LiteStep, and un-installing it via cmd will fix my reg settings? Or prehaps un-do wtf ever happened when I uninstalled in the first place?

Forgive me for my ignorance, I really don't know all the "under the hood" stuff about LiteStep, but is it at all possible that a theme can change reg settings?

no, a theme can not change reg settings. well, maybe if the theme designer was trying to be an a$$ and mess up people's machines, but I doubt that.
you can try re-installing then un-installing, but I've never heard of litestep messing with someone's pc like that. are you sure you didn't install any other programs, or updates of any kind?

Yeah I don't think the designer would of done that, others had used the theme and liked it, and it worked fine under LiteStep, so I doubt it was anything malicious...

I did Install SoundCard drivers that tweaked LiteStep while installing... I don't mean tweak settings, it just made it act funny/buggy while it was running the installer, and that's why I uninstalled it...

I wonder if it was some insane runtime error between the driver installation and LiteStep running as the shell... Hrmm... When I get home I'll remove my soundcard, uninstall the drivers (If I can access them), and see what that does, this is all crazyness though.

Actually come to think of it, when the automater-hardware detection came on litestep didnt load... This must be some kind of error with litestep and windows automated hardware detection/installation.

I'll mess with it when I go home and post if I make any head-way.

Thanks...!

I got it. And thanks for reminding me, albeit I do feel dumb for not thinking of it in the first place. It does appear to be an error with the hardware detection wizard and litestep, or perhaps the theme I was using, It caused LiteStep to crash, and I kept on installing my sound card.

I'm guessing with the sound card installing without a shell made for some wacky registry settings and thusly made alot of things broken.

I was able to uninstall the drivers, get system restore working and bring the system back to a normal state.

Maybe I should warn people about installing new hardware in XP with LiteStep to not continue with instalation if the shell crashes.

Thanks again!
*heart*
-John

I won't even install software with LS running let alone hardware. I know what LS does and LS doesn't interfere with anything per-say; however, applications make calls to parts of the explorer shell when installing sometimes and it breaks things. Its strange how some devices interfere with others, just the other day I found out my parallel port media drive interferes with Nero, not my CD-Burner...just Nero.

lol, yeah it honestly didnt even cross my mind... But now that I think about it, it makes a WHOLE lot of sense.

Thanks again guys!

no prob, happy to steer you in the right direction.