WindowBlinds does all sorts of nasty things to the Windows drawing engine. That's how it does what it does. Crazy in-driver hooks that intercept system API calls and whatnot. The list of applications that have had problems with it is miles long (including, at least in the past, things like Acronis True Image, VLC Player, all the Adobe applications, Firefox, Chrome, and so on and so forth). Generally, it doesn't behave well with applications (like MC and the others I listed above) that use their own drawing engine rather than the "regular" ones like Windows Forms and WPF. Because MC is cross platform, this is not likely to change, and I think it would be up to the StarDock folks to fix their flaky implementation. They do exactly that with popular applications (that's how Chrome and Firefox and the rest of them I listed above work, because they're popular enough that StarDock "works around" the issues themselves).
Unfortunately, it seems that JRiver is also using their own UI Framework to build their installer. That makes sense, of course (work with what you know, and don't re-invent the wheel,
especially when you already re-invented it once), but it also means that WindowBlinds freaks out
even with the installer.
To be clear, I'm not suggesting that the StarDock product is crappy, just that it is what it is, and for as long as I can remember, that application was meddlesome with some apps. That's why they have their whole exceptions system.
If you add exceptions to WindowBlinds to prevent it from interfering with MC's UI, you can run them side-by-side. Unfortunately, adding an exception to the installer (which changes each time a new version comes out) isn't so simple. The easiest solution is to just shut WindowBlinds down before you launch the MC installer. That'll let it install fine, and then once installed, you can re-launch WindowBlinds and go on your merry way. Here's another guy who reported the same thing:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=89427.0You could also try writing to the StarDock folks. I've never used their products (the fancy chrome isn't worth this kind of hassle all the time), but I've heard they're pretty responsive, and will probably take a look. I'm sure JRiver would even be happy to help out if they don't ask for too much, and if they reach out.
But, much like the Anti-Virus situation It is
their thing that is broken, and up to
them to fix it. If a huge majority of JRiver's customers all used WindowBlinds (if it was overwhelmingly pervasive) maybe the math would be different (thankfully that isn't the case).
