Give Windows Vista the Millennium Group treatment with our new Vista Sidebar Gadget

[ethsnafu]

Sounds like a plan :)

I am going to experiment with Photoshop a little to explore what limitations size poses for what I have in mind. As soon as I have some digital sketches of my ideas I will open a thread in the staff forum for you to have a look at them.

Best wishes,

Eth

[Guest Watts]

I downloaded the sidebar thing and it's great however my computer was given to me by my father and it says "Welcome Mark". I have gone into the system controls and re-named the computer Jared and it still says "Welcome Mark". Not sure what to do now.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Watts

[The Old Man]

Hi Jared, thanks for trying it out.

The gadget uses a system variable that contains the User Name of the current User Account being used (as seen and selected in the Window's Log In screen with a little picture). Have you renamed your User Account to your father's name in the Control Panel, or did you mean you had renamed the computer's name? If so its the User Name Account you need to change, not the computer's name.

Regards,

Graham

[Guest Watts]

I am the administrator and from what I can see everything else is in my name as well. When I start up it says "Jared" and I enter my password. The side bar still says Mark though even though his name is nowhere to be found. I Googled the problem and there seems to be other people having this problem too.

Edited December 2, 2008 by Watts

[The Old Man]

My laptop is about to die, but I tried it on my laptop running XP this afternoon, and it still says the same, Graham for me, even though mu user account name is different. So I checked and my copy of Windows is registered to Graham, that may be where its coming from.

[Guest Watts]

Ah Ha. Mine would have been registered under his name. That might be it.

[The Old Man]

Hi Jared,

I asked the experts about this over at the Hobby Lounge and its a kind of Windows bug. Basically they said that the User Name system variable picks up the name from the actual path of the user's profile, as stored on the hard drive when the account was created, instead of taking it from the name used for the actual User Account which would make far more sense. Therefore the only way to change the name afterwards would be to create a new Windows User Account with your Dad's name and then install the gadget whilst logged into his new account, as opposed to renaming your account into his name.

Hope this makes sense, but it may not be worth the hassle. It was useful to find out why the name doesn't change though!

Just to test the theory, I opened up my C:\Windows\Users folder and found it contained a folder with my name, this contains My Documents, My Pictures etc.

I then went to the Control Panel and changed the name of my User Account. When I looked in the folder, that folder name hadn't changed from Graham to Homer Simpson. Pretty daft!

[Guest Watts]

Frickin' Vista! Junk. Oh well, thanks for your help.

[The Old Man]

LOL! Roll on Windows 7!

[Guest Charger]

I just installed this gadged on Windows 7 and it's working great! This is a cool one!