I've been using Litestep for a while now and I've had issues with it and XP I thought would be fixed sooner or later but no one seems to notice it, and nothing's been done with each new Indiestep build. I got two problems:

1) The VWM is screwed. No matter which vwm module I use, it does the exact same thing (in fact most external vwm apps do this with XP as well). The problem is that maximised windows have the temperament of remaining sticky most of the time. They just follow me around whatever their sticky state is and whichever vwm module I use. What's up with this and why hasn't anyone fixed it? All the XP installs I've done have this prob.

2) Have you noticed the shutdown time? There's like a 20 second pause of no disk activity or anything (just waiting) during the message "Saving Settings...". This is not true when using explorer, the saving settings screen only takes less than half a second. So I thought this might just be M$ being a b*tch, doing this with any custom shell since it did this with the latest build of Geoshell as well. Then, one day, I went against my anti-$hareware morals and gave Aston a try. The saving settings screen took less than half a second, just like in explorer, so guess it can't be just coz of a custom shell. Has anyone had a look into this issue? Why does XP wait for like 20 seconds?

thx,
eXp

btw. for 2. I did check this "Windows XP slow shutdown" thread but the issue there seems to be caused by the installation of some M$ hotfix. Not the case for me... it's just a clean install of XP 5.1.2600

1) We don't know what's up, and that's why we haven't fixed it.
see this thread, there's a longer and more informative one somewhere, but I couldn't find it.

2) there's also another thread on this, but no solution there...

1) I also read this one. No solution tho... arg!

2) yea... that was the one I read.

thx,
eXp

1) Looking in that thread about Style XP, don't the older versions just hack the uxtheme.dll file so that MS can't say: "screw you, it's not one of our skins"? I later versions load up an app just like the WinBlinds and hogs up resource. Does anyone know how the NView app from NVidia or the Powertoys VWM works? Those don't seem to exhibit these symptoms tho their implementation and idea of what a VWM is, is truly quite lacking.

2) Do you know if your have WinXP set to clear the swap file on shutdown?? If so that can cause extreamly long shutdowns.

2) Nope... I've got a permanent swapfile set at 300MB min and max defragged and chucked to the front of the drive. I've checked the system log files and there's nothing unusual happening there (unlike the unable to save registry problem in the other thread). Also, if it's just clearing the swap file (or "pagefile" or "whatever-other-file" M$'s naming scheme wants to call it next), I'm pretty sure it'll exhibit this behaviour using explorer or Aston as well, not only in LS. Is no one else using XP experiencing this?

thx