Tom's Guide | Tom's Hardware | Tom's Games
 |
 |
 |
I am trying to get rid of the annoying "feature" of Windows 98 SE which animates tooltips. This behavior can easily be seen by hovering the mouse over the Start button or any systray icon (among numerous other things.) I am using 98lite's feature to swap the shell of 98 with the more efficient explorer from Windows 95, but it does not appear to impact the way tooltips are displayed.
I know for certain that it is possible to override this behavior. Previous versions of Windows (95 and NT) simply did not support tooltip animation out of the box. Later versions of Windows can override this in the registry with the UserPreferencemask setting located in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. However, Windows 98 SE seems to ignore almost anything I try to change here.
I can temporarily fix this problem by swapping out Win 98 SE's COMCTL32.DLL with one from Win 95 OSR2. Unfortunately, this prevents me from ever using the Display Properties on the desktop (among other things.)
Does anyone know a way to disable tooltip animation permanently? I don't mind changing a registry setting or hex editing COMCTL32.DLL (or possibly USER32.DLL, I suspect.) Thanks in advance if anyone can solve this little riddle.
The MS KB article does not apply in this case, since I already have no tooltips for the Minimize, Maximize, and Close buttons. I am not trying to disable tooltips altogether; I just want the animations disabled so that they pop up instantaneously, just as they do in Windows 95 and NT (and in newer versions with all the eye candy turned off.)
Unfortunately there is no option in TweakUI for me to disable tooltips on Windows 98 SE, as noted in the Tips section:
The "Tooltip animation" check-box enables the sliding animation when a tooltip appears.
This is a per-user setting, not support by all platforms.
I strongly suspect that I must edit the COMCTL32.DLL to fix this, since old versions of the dll do not animate tooltips at all. Any other ideas?
0 
'not having had this problem... (thus far) perhaps secure an earlier version of the dll and load it over the current one?
0
trvlr,
RTFM [read the first msg]
He's already done that. And done his research.
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.M2
0
Yes... I was thinking of '98 versions... (badly worded response on my part...).
He refers to a '95 version... there are other ('98) versions too...? Has he tried one of those (from '98)?
I have seen inummerable posts/references about assorted versions of this dll, to say nothing of a dll that "appears" to be the same but isn't. It installs alongside it, then allows some items to run OK and others not...; occasionaly this "near" miss version replaces the original (correct) version completely deletes the correct version and really causes problems...
0
I have the following versions of COMCTL32.DLL at the moment:
4.70 (default version from Win 95 OSR2)
4.72.2106.4
4.72.3110.1
5.80 (default version from Win 98 SE, before adding 98lite)I like version 4.70 since it does not animate tooltips. However, I sacrifice the ability to use Display Properties and some other things. Anything from 4.72 on up adds annoying features, including the infamous animated tooltips. I do not have a copy of 4.71, though, which might be what I need....
In the meantime, I have modified 4.72 to make Windows believe it is 5.80, thereby preventing any future application installations from trying to "upgrade" it. I still have the annoying animated tooltips, though. If anyone knows where I can find a copy of 4.71 or how to make the necessary modifications to any version (preferably 4.72), I'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks again.
0
The one I have is:
5.00.2614.3500
Dunno if that's any better, or even different, but you're welcome to it.
If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.M2
0
It might be worth a try, but I highly doubt that any version between 4.72 and 5.80 would lack animated tooltips, since both 4.72 and 5.80 have them. If you have the option to disable animation of tooltips on Win 98 SE with that dll installed, then I'll be more than happy to give it a try.
0
Out of the box 95 and NT don't have the Windows Desktop Update where 98 does so that's where I would look first. Unless I got something confused, the problem seems to me to be more your version of shell32.dll which is practically the whole part and parcel of the Windows Desktop Update. Any version less than 4.72.3612.1700 of shell32.dll should be the ticket as that version starts with the Windows Desktop Update written into it. Out of the box 95b should have 4.00.1111 version. As I recall 98lite keeps the 98 shell32.dll file and uses it as well. Which means trying to substitute 95 shell32.dll file for 98 one in boot to DOS mode manually. I found it my win95_17.cab file, your mileage may differ.
4.70 version of comctl32.dll comes from ie 3.02. 4.72 comes from ie 4.01 so you would be looking for plain ie 4.00? Was there such a critter? I haven't seen any versions of ie between 3.02 and 4.01 myself.
You also might want to try Shellexview which purports to show and be able to disable shell functions. Perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree, wouldn't be the first time for that either.
http://www.snapfiles.com/download/dlshellexview.html
Lee
0
Thank you for the information. I tried the program in the link you provided, but it does not appear to be able to disable specific functions like animated tooltips (unless I am missing something.) I will definitely have to investigate shell32.dll. It appears that 98lite keeps 98's version of the dll as shell32.w98 and uses the shell32.dll from Win 95b. Both are called for various tasks, and I have noticed shell32.w98 referenced in some program crashes.
As far as IE versions, yes there was an IE 4.00 but it was extremely buggy and not uninstallable (if that is a word.) I suspect that it may contain version 4.71 of COMCTL32.DLL, but I definitely do not want to install that browser to get the dll if I can help it. I suppose I could load that on a junk PC, though and copy that dll over. That is, assuming this is the version of the dll I need....
0  |
 Dell optiplex bootup prob...
|
network card
|
This post is quite old and has been locked from receiving new replies. Please create a new posting instead.
| Ads by Google |
