I need help with Abracadabra!

E-mail [email protected]

Thanks Beastatron will save the link for any future problems. I couldn't find a Customer Service link at Pixtudio.

OC:WinStyles is killing CursorXP for me,whats it doing to you?

Friends At Pixtudio Customer Service

I downloaded Abracadabra skin suite on Sunday 22/Saturday 23 and installed the Thememanager. The next day I started to install the program skins and when I tried to install the Rainleander skin I lost control of the Computer. I then tried to reboot but the system kept on rebooting with a message of abnormal program termination. Then began to reboot again and again. To the point; it had something to do with the installer of the skin suite. Fortunately I have Roxio Goback and reverted my system back to when Abacadabra wasn't installed. This fixed the problem of the bad install. My system does have a Norton firewall and anti-virus running. I checked the Abaracadabra file for virus' before installing it and nothing showed up. Everything I download is scanned.
Unfortunately, when GoBack reverts a system it does a too thourough job and I lost my Abacadabra skin suite, some ATI upgrades, but importantly I lost my BMT receipts for my purchase. As a purchaser of 5 or 6 suites already I would appreciate a new Abracadabra download number and a receipt. I don't know what went wrong with the install; however I had a similiar problem with the TOONS skin suite which were minor.

Thanks For Any Help
Martin L.E. Gulledge
(Old Crab) at WC
[email protected]

It would be my guess that it is something particular or parcular about your system OC. I also downloaded the Abracadabra suite Sunday. I didn't have any real problem with it. (It did take me some tweaking to get the Object Bar portion at the bottom at my screen to work correctely)I tried it for a while and it is a nice suite. I prefer PixOS though and eventually reverted back to it. (PixOS is awesome and it will be a while before Pixtudio or anyone else for that matter will be able to top it.) However like most people I like to experiment with different suites and get tired of the same suite day after day. So now I am able to rotate between Toon-XP, PixOS, and Abracadabra. (Not to mention many other fine suites from WinCustomize like CopperDeckII for example)
Just as a footnote, I never was able to get Logika from Pixtudio to work correctly (which I purchased some time ago) on my system. So maybe some suites are just not able to function on some systems??

OC, next time something like that happens try this first, ok?

bootup and press F8 before windows loads...
select safe mode...

Boot into Safe mode and then uninstall what you installed, if it will not let you...

run regedit and do a search for Pixtudio, and or in this instance Abracadabra...

then delete the regitry entries that deal with the offending program... But do not delete the registry entery pointing to the save compressed file ( abracadabra.zip, dxtheme, etc)

then reboot and it should fix the problem without doing th go back and loosing everything that was done after the restore point in Go Back....

also, you might attempt to reboot into " the last known good configuration"

boot up press F8 before windows loads and select the "boot up last known good configuration" wording might be a bit different but it will be obvious which one I mean...

worth a try to avoid bad things...

Just to throw my two cents in, I purchased Abracadabra a couple of days ago and I haven't had a single problem of any kind with any part of it... go figure..

I install it when it came out and all was fine till I loaded rainlander then all hell broke lose. My system would not shut down at all and when I booted up this morning it came up as administrator. I was able to fix this but damn what a scare.

Well maybe it's because I don't use Rainlender that I haven't had any problems....

Old Crab: First of all, our support email adress is [email protected] and it is included in the HTML instalation guide, but I understabd that you lost it, right?

Also, I never got the email you copied here on the board and please note that all the emails sent to pixtudio@pixtduio are forwarded to me too.

Your report is scaring, extremily because after a good number of downloaded suite, the amount of problems report is near to zero and about the Railendar skin, yours is the first one.

I am sorry for the inconvenience and dont worry, we will do everything to fix the situation.

BTW, you have mail

Thanks for all for your explanations and all. Treetog has kindly sent my registration # back to me and I'm now re-dl'ing the Abracadabra file. Treetog my email with MSN and Outlook 2K is really messed up. I've had te resort to OE6 or MSN 8 's tawdry Mail proggie. As far as really explaining what went wrong I can't say. However I will not repeat it; hopefully. I'll instead open each folder individually and install from there. Once again thank you for your help, all of you especially Treetog. >

I was just about to install rainlendar for the first time, good thing I opted to look in the message board first...I think I will pass for now.

If Rainlendar is the issue, what version are those of you who had problems using? I had no problems on my laptop using version .15. I'm just wondering if it might be a version issue that's contributing to the problem.

I would be pretty surprised if there was a problem with the Rainlendar skin. More likely it's a problem with the custom version of the ThemeManager (WinStyles) that is being used. If I remember correctly there were also reports of people having problems using this installer/thememanager with the PixOS suite. Just a thought ... late

three_4me: Abracadabra is using a brand new HTML installer (made by Alexandrie). We didn't get one single complaint about it, it is working 100% perfect!

As soon as we have some time, we will turn all the suites to use the same one.

Ahh, I wasn't aware, thanks for the info. I should've tried it out before I said anything. I've never actually used any of the installers for the suites that have been released, I prefer the unzip and manual install approach, just a control thing I my part I guess.

Thanks for keeping me straight.

By the way, can I say again that this is just an excellent suite!

OC just got his renewed Abracadabra suite from Pixtudio. I will open and install everything the Old-Fashioned way. From what I've seen the icon suite is worth the money. As well as the Blinds. Thanks again Treetog for your help, as is well known - if something goes wrong it'll only happen to the Old Crab.

i bet one cradle of beer that the Rainlendar.ini file contains hardcoded paths.

as long as people have Rainlendar installed in the same directory as the skin creator (c:\program files\rainlendar\ on English systems) that is no problem. as soon at Rainlendar is in different directory (all non English systems for example) you´ll get problems.

i doubt it´s your mistake Old Crab. i post about that every now and then, but hardly anyone listens

I have rainlendar installed to F:\Programs\Rainlendar
I have had no problem with the Abracadabra suite other then the object bar not working at first (and I think that had nothing to do with Abracadabra suite).
Just adding my two cents.

I use WinXP Pro on an Intel Pentium 4 Processor 2.8GHz w/1 gig of memory and a 120 gig hard drive partition into 4 equal parts. Also have the 128MB NVIDIA GeForce4 Ti-4600G with TV Out.

The only suite I've ever had any real problem with is the Logika suite not expanding to 1280x1024 res correctly.

/me hopes that the above information will help the techies analize the problems that Old Crab is having with his system.

OC, don't leave out the CursorXP part of the suite, they are sweet... (pun intended)...