Nice!!!  So close now.   I still dream of the return of glass explorer backgrounds.  

Don't know if it's just me, but I installed this on Windows 7 and Windows 10 and all is well. On Windows 8.1 though it prevents you from opening explorer, and any other window. If you load the original skin though, everything works, load a different WB skin, major problems doing anything and any skin takes a looooooooooooong time to load. So I went back to the previous beta and all is well.

Were we supposed to do anything special before installing this beta?

No need to do anything different.

I will note that the blur (in the preset sub-skin) will ONLY work with Win10 Anniversary Edition (and higher).  It will not work with Win8.

I'm with Tom here, the new update killed explorer.exe in 8.1. No windows would open. Went back to the previous beta.

Not seeing that here on 32 or 64 bit Windows 8.1

What else are you running which might interact with Explorer?  Any other Stardock products installed?

Well, on my Windows 8.1 I am using the following products: CursorFX, IconPackager, ShadowFX (maybe that's the culprit?), Start 8 and Windowblinds, all latest versions/betas, (except Windowblinds of course). I am also running ObjectDock v1.9 Free.

This is on my laptop Win 8.1 Pro 64 bit. Fences, Start 8, Cursor FX, Icon Packager and Shadow FX are the Stardock programs.

I uninstalled WindowBlinds, rebooted and installed the v10.4.6 beta and rebooted. Applied Naked Noir skin. Took a long time to apply, I would say about 2 or 3 minutes. Everything looked fine but if I put the cursor over the Task bar it would show busy and the start menu wouldn't open. Tried to open My Computer the cursor would show busy for about a minute then stop. No window would open then I noticed the cpu was pinned at 100%. I pressed ALT, Ctrl, Delete and brought up the Task Manager and there was nothing that was showing me why the cpu was so high. I tried to restart Windows Explorer but the button did nothing. So I rebooted from ALT, Ctrl, Delete it loaded fine but still had the same problems as above. Rebooted again and pressed Ctrl to shut off WB and did the uninstall-reinstall with v10.0.7 and it's fine.

Do you have any other apps always running? (shell extensions, UltraMon, DisplayFusion, docks etc)

No it's kind of bare. I am using Window's Defender as an AV and everythings up to date. 

Just installed this latest beta.  Using the default Windows 10 style along with Start 10 I'm getting the blur, but I can't access WindowBlinds settings.  I can open the UI and browse styles, wallpaper, and "About", but if I click Settings the UI hangs and eventually says unresponsive.  Oddly I can click "Advanced" and "Per application" under Settings and access those options.  I was also able to apply a WindowBlinds skins without a problem.  

Hmm.  That would suggest it is getting blocked querying something from elsewhere.  Did you uninstall WB, reboot and then install the new version?

Another issue with Windowblinds 10 (all releases) is that even though you set the Default sub-styles for Windows 7 / 8 / 10 in SkinStudio, WB10 no longer defaults to the sub-style for the OS you are on. You have to manually select the OS sub-style.

We've slipstreamed a fix into WindowBlinds for Windows 8.1, 64 bit.

It would be best if you uninstalled, downloaded the new build (same version number and what-not), and then reinstalled.  Reboot in between to be safe.

After you reboot, verify you don't crash (and check out the ribbon in Explorer)

And thanks for testing our betas!

Runs great on Windows 8.1 now, thanks for the quick fix! 

Oops, I installed over the top - is that likely to bork it?  I'll try uninstalling/rebooting/installing again and see if that clears it.