I've installed Xtreme for the first time - and I'm not liking it.

First and most importantly, WITHOUT ASKING it immediately REPLACED my 27" and 17" wallpaper image, more currently known as background, of the Battlestar Gallactica cast emulating The Last Supper, with some imitation of XP's Bliss.

1. How do I reverse this presumptuous replacement? (I don't know that I still have the BSG graphic!)
....1a Has a backup been made of my original? (Undo.)

Furthermore, the installation process was a mixture of contradictions, contortions and surprises:

2. The company name is Winstep, and the products are named:
....2a Nexus
....2b Nexus Ultimate
....2c Winstep Xtreme

3. The folder the programs go into is C:\Program Files\Nexus\

4. At the conclusion of Xtreme's installation, lying in the Start menu at the first level was a new anonymous lone link called 'NextSTART'. =8-O
....4a What of that? Why? What should I assume it is?

5. Inside the Nexus [sic] sub-menu (the older name, of the less functional program) is the Company-name/Major_program name: WinstepXtreme.exe
....5a ..as if you would find Program Files\Wordpad\MicrosoftProg.exe

6. Wondering what NextSTART (an apparently unrelated link) was, when it started it immediately began, if memory serves, attempting to 'unlock themes', which were responded to with the 'No to All' choice.
….6a The readme says nothing about what execution will do without permission.

7. I claim that nothing should be done irrevocably in I.T. when it is conceivably possible to reverse it.
....7a And littered around the forums of the internet are injunctions by users everywhere that nothing should be done WITHOUT WARNING AND/OR PERMISSION.
....7b I find it very annoying that Xtreme has presumed to change my background without asking!
….7c I can see nothing in Xtreme's configuration window that suggests it can reverse my background change.
....7d Has Xtreme made a backup of my own, desired, preferred background, and of how it was configured?
....7e If not, how do I revert to my own background when I may not have the original graphic to hand?
......7ei Will I have to perform a System Restore to put my machine back the way it was before this peremptory action was taken?
….7f Xtreme has been closed now, but will it presume to impose the bastardised Bliss the next time and every time I invoke it? How can I tell?
….7g How can I inhibit its changing my background when I move from my administrator account to my work-a-day standard user account?
……7gi Has it already presumed to autoexecute in my other accounts, before I am able to take precautions to preserve my desired choices...?
……7gii Running Xtreme in a VM won't easily reveal that.

8. What is the unpacking process that appears without warning or instruction at first execution?
….8a What information would I normally be expected to have to know to answer the 'unpack' questions?
….8b Should I have known about it before attempting an install/start, and, if so, where would have I read about these unannounced actions?

9. I notice that the installation routine has made no attempt at detecting that I speak English and only English, adding extra files and folders for other languages.
….9a Why do programmers do this?
….9b Is there a 'Delete' list?

10. What else is Xtreme going to do to my system that is irreversible within its capabilities?
....10a I would normally expect a program to start innocuously and then OFFER to implement itself by changing things.
……10ai I presume then I would have an active Help reference that I could use to inform myself of what I should expect.

Xtremely disappointed.

You chose to install a desktop enhancement program which clearly changes your User Interface and you're complaining because it changed your wallpaper without asking first?!

Your wallpaper hasn't gone anywhere. It's right there where it was the last time you chose that particular bitmap as your wallpaper, so just change back to it manually if that is what you want.

Wallpapers in Winstep Xtreme are an important part of a theme. In fact, a good wallpaper can make an average theme great and a bad wallpaper can break an excellent theme. All themes in Winstep Xtreme have a matching wallpaper hand-picked by that theme's author for that particular theme.

If wallpapers where not changed by default, each theme would lose a very important part of it's initial impact.

So, when you change a theme, you also change the wallpaper. It's really no big deal, since the original wallpaper is not 'deleted' or 'removed' from your system, as you seem to think.

This said, you can easily prevent Winstep Xtreme from changing wallpapers by setting the 'Prevent themes from changing your current wallpaper' setting in the General tab of WorkShelf and NextSTART Preferences.



Please check THIS page, which is the Nexus page on the Winstep web site. Notice the application titles listed there? They are 'Winstep Nexus' and 'Winstep Nexus Ultimate', so it seems to me you were simply not paying too much attention.

Windows is also called 'Microsoft Windows', but most people simply call it 'Windows'.



No. The default folder is actually C:\Program Files\Winstep\



It's clear what you did here. First you installed the free version of Nexus (and changed the installer's default path from Winstep to Nexus) and then you installed Winstep Xtreme on top of Nexus.

As it happens, Nexus, Nexus Ultimate and Winstep Xtreme are all 'different levels' of the same application (please read THIS product comparison page for a better understanding on how the three products related to one another).

As such, they share a lot of the same data, including themes. When you installed Winstep Xtreme on top of a previous Nexus installation (i.e.; without uninstalling Nexus first) and run it for the first time, it detected that some of the themes it needed to install were already present.

That being so, it asked for your confirmation to overwrite them (unlike changing wallpapers, overwriting a theme would remove any changes a user might have made to that theme in the mean time, so here asking for confirmation *is* important).



Please read the 'Winstep Xtreme Overview' section of the Winstep Xtreme page on the Winstep web site.

It clearly explains that Winstep Xtreme is a *suite* of *different* applications and lists what those applications are and what they do.

Quoting from that section:

"An integrated workspace environment, Winstep Xtreme is a powerful suite of desktop enhancement utilities that merge incredible usability and performance with breathtaking eye candy. The Winstep Xtreme suite includes the following applications:

...

NextSTART:
NextSTART is the menu system - and takes care of all your task management needs as well.

Menus are great for accessing infrequently used files and system related commands that aren't easily reachable in the file system or that have no readily user-recognizable graphic representation. The task management part of NextSTART allows you to efficiently organize and manipulate running tasks and windows."

I don't think it's fair to complain about this when it's clear you dived straight into an application like Xtreme without doing your homework first, sorry.



Winstep Xtreme does not change anything in your system. Getting back to 'normal' Windows is a simple question of exiting Xtreme, and the only thing that remains is the wallpaper, which, as I already said, you can quickly change back to whatever it was previously.



I remember not so long ago a great uproar about a certain UAC prompt that asked permission from the user to do anything that required admin rights. There was even a Mac commercial making fun of Windows Vista because of it.

So, no, you should not ask for permission to do every little tiny bitty thing... that will only piss users off. In general, you should only ask for permission if it is something you cannot revert, of course, which, as I said already, is definitely not the case of changing your wallpaper.



Yes, I noticed that already.

Unfortunately this is a case of 'can't please everybody'.



Can I ask you something? *How* did you put that background as your wallpaper in the first place? I'm sure you were not using the default Window's wallpaper when you run Xtreme, right?

In that case, just change back to it in the same way you originally set it as your wallpaper.



No need to make a backup of your background since the file is still in the same folder you saved it to when you first got it.

When you switch wallpapers, you do not *replace* the original image with a new one, you just *select* a different background from a list of available backgrounds/images. I hope you understand the difference?

Assuming you are running Windows 7, just go to the Windows Control Panel, click on Personalization, click on Desktop Background at the bottom, click on the Browse button then navigate to the folder where the bitmap you were using as the previous wallpaper is stored.

Unfortunately Microsoft made a mess of switching Wallpapers, it was a lot easier and less troublesome in XP.



Obviously, no.



Winstep Xtreme only changes wallpapers when you switch themes or you run it for the first time. As I said above, you can prevent this from happening by setting the appropriate option in the General tab of NextSTART and WorkShelf Preferences.



You can only do that after it initializes for your current account, because each account has separate settings from the others. Unfortunately it *will* change your background every time you run it for the first time in a new account.

On the other hand, switching back to your previous wallpaper and preventing Xtreme from changing your wallpaper again is easy.



It should NOT auto-execute in your other accounts, but please let me know if it does.



Already explained above. It was unpacking the themes and it only happened because you installed Xtreme on top of Nexus.



Just *read* what the dialog says before pressing a button.



Actually, the program does auto-detect what language you are using.

As for why do programmers do this, answer me this then: what if I have an English version of Windows (like so many people do) but I would prefer Nexus/Xtreme to run in my native language (Portuguese). I wouldn't be able to do that if all the 'unnecessary' (from your point of view) language files had been automatically deleted, would I?

The language files really don't take a lot of space on your hard drive, so deleting them would be more trouble than it's worth it. Let them be.



I hope that by now you already understood Xtreme did NOTHING to your system that is irreversible.



You'll probably hate me for saying this, but you should have started by reading the Winstep Xtreme product page on the Winstep web site.

There is also this FAQ HERE, also accessible by clicking the Help button on the Preferences screen of the applications themselves.

Hope this helps.

Incidentally... I just googled "Battlestar Galactica Last Supper" and the first link got me this:



...and that 'cost' me 10 seconds of 'research'...
Come on...

same here less than 10 seconds to search for and download. though i would personally use walls from the original series, and not from that #$%^ soap opera syfy called a show.

Wow what a rant, and what a very full comprehensive answer! As a new user, its good to see 'questions' (!!!) so clearly and quickly answered.
Thanks for what I think is a great program

Point me to the one suited to a 2550 x 1440 screen would you chucky's?
The Reimagined Series was much too subtle for some, exemplified by the simmering battle the USAsians are about to have in their presidential race: exploring the perpetual verities exhibited in the human condition. BSG-TRS took the wham and pow much further. Try it again.
But there's more; read on.

Come on? Come on, there's further to go...
Which graphic did I use for my fairly large screen, skagon, the one stretched around the edges, and where did I store my copy, and under what name? Is it online, nearline or offline?
It's bigger than this, of course: should every program be entitled to change things in a user's 'desktop' that it can't change back? Should we be prepared to be sent down a rabbit-hole chasing unannounced reversals for EVERY program we install, just because the author has written his own interface rules? Not where I come from. Fairly strict guidelines for our GUI exist, for the benefit of all. Jobs did it for the Mac, and now Apple has passed Exxon Mobile as the company with the greatest market value. There's got to be something in that.
Next you'll be arguing that programs needn't come with an uninstall routine. I'd advocate not.

personally this thread needs to be closed. phred is only posting to basically hear himself. as for the claim their being substance to the new bsg series DON"T make me f'in laugh. it has no more substance than most of the mindless drivel syfy puts out. i'm out of this thread.

I agree. He got his chance to vent, and I replied to his rant - not much else to say.

Thread closed.