Transparent Clock

[Pureabc]

I have windows 2000 and the clock is not showing.

The clock icon showed in the system tray, but no image on the desktop.

Anybody has this problem?

[netmaestro]

The clock requires gdiplus.dll, which is not included in Windows 2000. It is redistributable, so you should have no trouble finding it.

Here's a link where you can get it:

http://www.dlldump.com/download-dll-fil ... nload.html

Just drop it in your \Windows\System32 folder and the clock should work fine.

[netmaestro]

Update: There is a new pair of menu items, "Remember Settings" and "Forget Settings". If you select "Remember Settings", all the customizable settings for the clock will be saved and the clock will start with Windows with these settings applied. "Forget Settings" will cause the program to forget the settings for the clock. You can save one set of settings for as many clocks at once as you like, as long as they are all set to different city names. One of the clocks can have an empty city name. One thing to note: if you have a clock set as say, "Sydney", and you have saved settings for it, if you then change the city name or offset to something else, your settings for clock "Sydney" will be automatically forgotten (you will get a messsagebox telling you this). This is to prevent no-longer-existing clocks from being remembered.

You can check the registry key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\"Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" to see the list of remembered clocks.

People using this feature, please give it a workout and see if I've missed anything, I tested quite a bit but you never know. Thanks!

[yrreti]

Netmaestro

Something happened with the Enable Stay on Top with this upgrade as it's not working?
Although I haven't restarted yet, the rest seems to work okay.

Thank you very much for your excellent clock.
yrreti

PS: I like your frog too

[netmaestro]

Sorry! Fixed now.

[yrreti]

Wow your fast

Thanks,
yrreti

[netmaestro]

I had an inquiry from a W2000 user who couldn't run the clock. I originally thought it was caused by the lack of gdiplus.dll, however it turns out that the timeSetEvent_() API I'm using is not supported in W2000. So I rewrote the timing routine to use functions that should be supported in W2000, taking care to ensure that CPU usage doesn't go up. I think I have it, could people who have access to W2000 please test? Link is in first post. Thanks!

[Finjogi]

w2000 version works fine on my w2000

[netmaestro]

Good to hear. Does it use any CPU?

[Finjogi]

Not too much, about 3% at most. 0-4% without clock, 0-7% with clock.

[netmaestro]

You need to open your taskmanager to the process list and see what's showing on the TransparentClock line item.

[Pureabc]

Win2000 version works!

And taskmanager reports of 0% usage on the TransparentClock line item.

Great looking clock. Thanks.

[Flype]

hello netmaestro,

on my xp sp2 - amd athlon xp 2800+

i get about between 0 and 5%

but if i zoom the clock at the maximum, i get 31%.

[netmaestro]

@Flype: Thanks for the feedback, could I ask you for a favor? If you're getting CPU usage, could you download both versions of TransparentClock and compare to see if one uses less? They both use different timing mechanisms. I appreciate any help you can give me on this as I can't test myself. I get 0% usage for both.

[Flype]

no problem.


but sorry it's exactly the same for both progs.

but the w2000 version as you can verify on the screenshot is less memory consuming (about 500kb saved).