CharlotteTheHarlot

Fully agree.

Like lemmings leaping off the cliff ... Ballmer claims Win 8 sales strong, WinPhone to follow ( UK Register 2012-10-30 ) Microsoft Sells 4 Million Copies of Windows 8 ( Tom's Hardware 2012-10-30 ) Microsoft: four million Windows 8 upgrades sold in four days ( TechSpot 2012-10-30 ) Microsoft: Four million Windows 8 upgrades so far ( NeoWin 2012-10-30 ) Microsoft sold 4 million Windows 8 upgrades in three days ( Ars Technica 2012-10-30 ) Yay, a third of one percent of the 1.3 billion Windows users rushed to turn their computer into a Crapple-like toy. Team B&S must be so proud. I guess it is pretty much to expected at that much lower ( and more realistic ) price point anyway. But not everyone is fawning over it ... Windows 8 Is a Desktop Disaster ( Matthew Murray PC Magazine 2012-10-27 ) Dvorak pretty much mirrors what many of us have said here, that the RT version of Windows 8 uses extremely deceptive naming to the average computer purchaser ... Playing With Microsoft's Surface ( John C. Dvorak PC Magazine 2012-10-29 ) EDIT: added links

Metro has gotten its new name, officially ... Microsoft Design Language is the new "Metro" ( NeoWin 2012-10-29 ) I WONDER WHY THEY DIDN'T JUST USE THE MORE OBVIOUS NAME: MICROSOFT SHOUT, OR MICROSOFT YELL, OR MICROSOFT CAPSLOCK, OR MICROSOFT CAPITALS OR MICROSOFT WHATEVER. err sorry about that. I mean why didn't they just use the more obvious name: Microsoft SHOUT, or Microsoft YELL, or Microsoft CAPSLOCK, or Microsoft CAPITALS or Microsoft whatever. ~sigh~ ( image from Brand New, can't find any at Microsoft, did they scrub them? ) Anyway, I'm still calling it Metro, or Vistro. P.S. Just an FYI, if anyone is reading the articles at NeoWin over the past week you should note that they have been too busy to fill out the <TITLE> tags on their pages. The default placeholder is: Where unprofessional journalism looks better, For real! I am not making this up. Consequently, if you choose to save any of these webpages using the same title tags, you can save exactly one before getting filename collisions ( are you sure you want to overwrite? ). I know they are very busy pumping out the endless Windows 8 fluff pieces, but that is above and beyond the call of amateurism. Someone wake up Steven. EDIT: updated image URL, and again.

Apropos of the Function Key fiasco mentioned above, Microsoft has managed to complicate things further by having different key labels on the "upgrade" version of the surface keyboard they call the "Type Cover". The one mentioned previously above is called the "Touch Cover" and is the colorful one seen in the commercials. They apparently work identically, possibly requiring the ALT+FN+F-Key combination ( according to Anandtech ), but they sensibly decided to place labels on the better keyboard ... "Touch Cover" ( left ) and "Type Cover" ( right ) ( images from Anandtech ) If you look close you can see the Function Key labels on the top row of keys, labels that for some reason are missing on the other keyboard. As I said I haven't yet seen one of these things so I have been checking out all the hands-on reviews. Amazingly, only Anandtech and PC Magazine have even mentioned the Function Keys. Anandtech describes ALT+FN+F-Key as the procedure while PC Magazine has a different description ... ... which sounds like the "Touch Cover" actually uses the typical laptop ( and PCjr ) method while implying that the "Type Cover" does not. So now I'm not sure how it works. ~sigh~ Anyway, if you are interested in the reviews, here are a few I've read so far ... Innovative tablet stranded in an app desert ( CNet 2012-10-23 ) Microsoft Surface with Windows RT ( PC Magazine 2012-10-23 ) Surface tablet's touch cover is ZX81 REBORN ( UK Register 2012-10-26 ) Microsoft Surface review ( The Verge 2012-10-23 ) Review: Surface RT, Microsoft's bid for a 'thing' of its own ( PC World 2012-10-23 ) EDIT: updated image URLs, and again

Have you been in the BIOS yet? This is what most Gigabyte motherboards pre-UEFI look like ... If instead that is UEFI, here is a thread that shows lots of pictures from the BIOS ... Gigabyte B75M-D3H Motherboard Sandy Bridge Review I have been trying to find a picture of the AHCI/Sata setting. This might be it ...

.-. --- - ..-. .-.. -- .- ---

In yet a further devolution of discoverability, Microsoft lowers the bar into new territory as seen in Anandtech's Microsoft Surface Review. In describing the keyboard he specifically writes ... ( image from Anandtech ) I haven't seen a Surface yet in person so these reviews are all I have at the moment. Am I reading this right? It is not just a FN+F-key but it is ALT+FN+F-Key? So to press F4 it means ALT+FN+F4 or more precisely on this Surface: ALT+FN+Unlabeled key with a little play/pause icon? Is this correct? So if that is F4 what would be ALT-F4? This got through the development stage without someone saying something? Penny Wise and Pound Foolish. Boy does this bring back bad memories from 1983 to 1984 when IBM thought it was a good idea to invent the PCjr toy keyboard with it's FN+F-Key arrangement ( which now appears to be easier than the ALT+FN+F Surface idea ). They took a real beating on this and it is what helped to classify that computer as a toy. I thought that disaster was behind us until it started popping up again on laptops and smaller devices over the past decade or so. ( don't even get me started on the wandering DEL and PAGE keys and various shapes and sizes for ENTER and SHIFT ). I wonder if anyone has tried over the phone to have the customer press a certain F-KEY combination when their keyboard has the FN modifier. How about walking them through F8 at bootup to catch the startup screen. I guess using a triple combination CTL+SHIFT+F-Key is pretty much out the window. ( image from Mike's PCjr page ) EDIT: updated image URLs, and again

Exactly. ProcExp is a must. And by the way, it is not just necessary to see the process ("image") name, but also the full path! Case in point is SvcHost.exe on Windows 7. Seeing 10 instances of this in Task Manager does not help anyone to spot an infection. But seeing the full path and then spotting one running from C:\Windows where it should not be will tell you something very important. The author of ProcExp, Mark Russinovich, has given us so many "Select Columns" choices in Process Explorer ( which is now officially a Microsoft program ), that I have to wonder just who were those folks demanding improvements in Windows task manager in the first place and why exactly? Listing that as some kind of selling point for Windows 8 makes someone a complete n00b. It is similar to the alleged speedier bootup times. Once you account for hybrid hibernate and reduced services why wouldn't it boot a little faster! Besides, this really exposes the person as a serial-tasker, ( think of the command: START /w ) one who sits and waits for something to finish before moving on to the next. They apparently press the computer power button and wait impatiently for the bootup to complete so they can then click something, rather than multitasking by pressing the power button 20 seconds before you need to use it and getting a cup of coffee while it boots. There is so much irony and hypocrisy in Windows 8 lovers on the one hand saying: "it has much faster boot times!". and then on the other hand telling us: "There is no need to shutdown the PC!" or "Apps don't need to be closed!" when rationalizing the hidden "close app" and "shutdown". Clearly these two "improvements", bootup time and task manager were, pardon the pun, Windows Dressing to help convince n00bs that there are improvements to help justify this abomination.

Almost forgot, from that posted link at PC WORLD ... Imagine the gall of someone connected with MSIE saying Windows XP is "lowest common denominator". That really takes the cake. MSIE has been the world's leading malware facilitator .

Let us pause to remember the birthday of a perfectly fine operating system, one that Microsoft and the Generation Xbox cult has chosen not just to ignore, but also to badmouth and criticize mercilessly ... My personal experience was managing roll-outs of new PC's and upgrades of some older ones beginning in November of that year. These were not fun times for the faint of heart because there were many issues going on simultaneously. All the computers were still plain 100 MHz SDRAM which was bad enough because 1 GB was not even an option. It was more like 2 or 3 slots of 128 MB or 256 MB DIMMs for a total of 384 or 512 or 768 total! Windows XP really needed at least 512 MB to run smoothly. We also had the rather serious problem of using a non 48-bit LBA Windows XP ( sometimes on older machines with a non 48-bit LBA BIOS ) just as harddrives were crossing the various size boundaries. It wasn't until SP1 that things became safe with respect to data storage, so large drives crossing the 128+ GB barrier without risk was solved. Updated BIOS's eliminated the need to fiddle with CHS since Auto-Detect finally worked correctly. This whole thing was a bad memory thankfully left in the rear-view mirror of history. Probably the worst thing of all was the fact that as usual, Microsoft was releasing an Operating System built and tested on expensive cutting edge hardware that wasn't yet present in the average workplace. Intel had just switched over to Pentium 4, and that very first Willamette generation sucked bad. Not to mention the fact that frequencies were just barely into the 1.3 GHz range on single-core CPUs. The bulk of that limited power was used up managing the screen elements ( themes and effects ) and also on the huge list of services compared to previous releases that we now had to deal with. Most damaging was disk indexing and which soon became the first thing to disable on a system. System Restore didn't help much but was often required in the work environment. The consequences of an under-powered computer using Windows XP could be seen in the lags from pressing the Start Button and waiting for menus to finally popup In my opinion, things were not at all smooth until late-2004, after SP2 and after Intel had most of their processors well over 2 GHz and some over 3 GHz with their Northwoods and Prescotts. Let's not forget to mention AMD's Athlon XP which in itself was an extraordinary CPU that fit perfectly underneath this operating system. By this time we were well into the DDR era and DDR-2 was becoming available and running with 1 or even 2 GB of DDR RAM was simple and effective. This is really when computers running Windows XP began to shine. And shine they did from this point forward. As the dual-core and quad-core era approached Windows XP got a second and third wind, becoming as fast on that hardware as Win98se is on the earlier generation. Of course Microsoft was already plotting to destroy this satisfying era and were already in the process of continuing their tradition of building an OS designed for hardware for ~3 years into the future with Longhorn/Vista set for release "at any moment" but actually two more years away. But that's off-topic for this day. Happy Birthday! At least one reputable site remembered ... Windows XP turns 11, still not dead yet ( PC World 2012-10-25 ) EDIT: typo, clarity, updated image URLs, and again

Confirmed. The GenuineCheck.exe when ran on your local computer is working again. ( This program returns a code that you can paste into a Microsoft download page when necessary). Congratulations to whoever bent the ear of someone at Microsoft.

A few alternative views. Ummm, for those who are fretting or keeping track, since the Windows 8 launch is underway estimated ratio of positive articles to negative is probably 100:1. Microsoft Surface With Windows RT is DOA ( Sascha Segan PC Magazine 2012-10-24 ) Windows 8 Looks Suspiciously Like a Slot Machine ( John C. Dvorak PC Magazine 2012-10-25 ) Dvorak has a tongue-in-cheek, but perfectly plausible theory that the overall design of Windows 8 Metro with constantly updating tiles is a ripoff of the principle used on modern gaming slot machines ( slots, video poker, etc ) which use little tricks to get people's attention as you linger around them. Having spent years in both Las Vegas and Atlantic City I can attest to this. They are designed to attract at a primal level. When there is an idle games, after a period of time certain items like cards or objects begin to animate, but not all of them. It is like in nature where a predator like a cat sees a little movement in a large field of view that grabs their attention. People are certainly drawn to these machines even if only to watch the animation play out and to see what happens next. Dvorak speculates the softies spend a little too much time in Las Vegas but that it really is apropos considering how much of a gamble they are taking. This one is absolutely fabulous ... Microsoft's 'official' Windows 8 Survival Guide leaks ( Andrew Orlowski UK Register 2012-10-25 ) Hands down winner. Best thing yet written on Windows 8! Clever, witty, brilliant. And that is just a small tease. Be sure to read through the comments and be amazed that some folks still couldn't figure it out. Microsoft's paid force of sleeper agent astro-turfers and fake commenters have been activated this week and an article like this one easily blows their cover.

--JorgeA Confusion factor has never been higher. One of the things I've gone on about is the deception of showing people swiping their screens with no disclaimer ever shown: "Swiping requires a Touch-Screen Monitor". That might sound silly to us techie types, but the Windows 8 lovers are the same type of people that push for warnings on cigarette packs and other similar cases of obvious-ness. There really will be people buying Windows 8 because they believe their computer will suddenly work like their smartphone, take that to the bank. Without a clear disclaimer Microsoft is complicit in a fraud. Exactly the kind that the FTC terrorizes other companies and products over. They will deserve what happens regardless of their modified EULA.

What would the 'Sky Is Falling' look like in your opinion? Dissected and taken individually any thing can be tossed off as "The sky isn't falling". It is the sum total of events that matter, not the magnitude of any individual event. Slow-cooking frogs never know what hit them until it is too late. About service packs, if Microsoft doesn't commit to a new practice of allowing direct downloads of refreshed media, to all parties ( not just Softies and Technetters ), well I see no way to spin this as a good thing. It will mean every install of Windows 7 until 2020 ( or whatever year ) will be an install of files dating from March 2010 ( SP1 ) or in many cases Summer 2009 ( RTM ). And those computers will stay with those files until they phone home and tie up your router for quite a long time. A cynical person might think Microsoft has embedded advertising in the Windows Update page and they are drumming up clicks by eliminating single-file downloads of an entire service pack / rollup. More logical people know that this ( if it is true ) would be the most nakedly brazen assertion of planned obsolescence they have yet perpetrated.

Still nothing official, but the rumor is certainly kicking up a storm. I'm keeping my powder dry until something official, a quote from an identifiable softie is confirmed. Just in the past year we have seen the Metro name fiasco ( somehow the lawyers managed to not do their job for 3 years ), their complete deafness and arrogance allowing the killing of the Start Menu and Aero Glass on Windows 8 and the accidental removal of the browser ballot on EU versions of Windows which might lead to billions in fines. ( What do you got to do to get fired by the board of directors there anyway? ) But if this rumor of discontinuing service packs ( particularly rollups ) really comes true there is gonna be a sh*tstorm. It would rank up there with one of the dumbest ideas I ever heard. The comments are not kind so far ... Report: No Service Pack 2 for Windows 7 ( Tom's Hardware 2012-10-24 ) Microsoft won't release Service Pack 2 for Windows 7 ( TechSpot 2012-10-24 ) Microsoft: No plans for Windows 7 Service Pack 2 ( NeoWin 2012-10-24 )

Interesting article that attempts to itemize many of the battlefields that Microsoft has been fighting on. Microsoft at War: Grading Redmond’s Battle Record ( TechSpot 2012-10-25 ) I'd say a few battles were left out, particularly from the early days, conflicts with Apple, Lotus, and IBM of course. The future hasn't been written yet but certainly the current one named as #7 is much bigger than described. It is the big one. Microsoft has declared war on the personal computer, it's most loyal customers and developers, and on Windows ( note the plural ) itself. If this Windows 7 service pack controversy is proved true, I expect many more people will now wake up to find that although they started out using software and operating system created by Microsoft, they suddenly are pawns to MicroApple. Anyone left that still doesn't get it are simply slow cooking frogs. Steve Jobs did not die. He is haunting the halls of Redmond, possessing the mind and body of Steve Sinofsky.

Ready in what way? Because it seems anything BUT ready to me! All good points CoffeeFiend. Just to be clear, that article is obviously the opinion of the Register, not me. It is to be expected as they are kinda the opposite of NeoWin, far more pro-Linux and Open-Source. It is a fun read but mostly speculation since there are no real numbers from Canonical that can be used to gauge adoption progress. As I said, the interesting thing will be if they get a few high-profile companies to consider switching and then Microsoft moves to quash it and gets themselves into a legal predicament ( not far-fetched considering the incredible management mis-steps lately with the Metro naming fiasco and the latest browser ballot oversight just to name two ). Microsoft could easily do something here that would open up severe ant-trust implications by crushing even the possibility of a tiny bit of competition. My main point is that even a couple of meaningless mainstream Windows to Linux "switchers" would be massively magnified in the press and on Wall Street and would be great entertainment as well. Having said that, you make great points. In the past decade, or 15 years even, Linux has seemingly made no real progress on addressing end-users and the purchasers responsible for company-wide roll-outs. There is a solid back-end used on many servers and larger systems, but the various factions still turn a nearly blind-eye to the user-facing front-end. It will take quite an effort to address this, and even though there has been some progress on Ubuntu and a few other distros, the general approach is one of anti-Windows and that recipe simply fails in the "mainstream". As it stands now with the "cloud" hype, we just might ironically devolve back to original mainframe-terminal model with Linux on the back-end and Metro madness dumbing down the front. Microsoft will have themselves to blame with their inexplicable efforts to not only cripple the desktops of the end-user, but also pollute the interface of server editions. These are strange times indeed.

Yep, Thurrott is a piece of work. No bigger shill can be found at any price anywhere at any time. Is “Microsoft design style” the final name for Metro? ( NeoWin 2012-10-21 ) Another day, another possible name for Metro. Honestly, I just can't believe anyone started calling it "Modern UI" with a straight face. I guess it never occurred to them to just use Metropolitan. Anyway, it doesn't really matter what they want to call it, the problem is more than a name. That problem is that this gigantic move was underway for at least three years and they never bothered to secure rights for "Metro" at any point along the way. Either that or the legal eagles were saying all along: "Don't worry, the name is safe". In either case there is the clear indication of upper management level incompetence. But that is hardly news at all. Best Buy prices Lumia 920 at $149 and HTC 8X at $99, accepting pre-orders now ( NeoWin 2012-10-21 ) Those are subsidized 2-year contract prices and they are confirmed by a screenshot at Best Buy. The fine print says $599 for non-activated, but that may just be a comparison style sales pitch because they have no screenshot of the phone at that price that can be added to the cart. Those Nokia phones are all missing now at Best Buy anyway, only the HTC remains and again the only option is with the contract, no purchase offers without. Hence, I would not count on that $599 being the firm retail price. The carrier of course, exclusively, is AT&T and they get you for 2-years. How wonderful! Canonical to Windows XP cliff-clingers: Ubuntu safety net's ready... now jump ( UK Register 2012-10-18 ) What's happening is that they are lobbying the UK Government and others to replace sunsetting Windows XP workstations with Ubuntu. It's a smart move for Canonical but they report no numbers for a means of comparison. There is one angle that the article doesn't touch upon, and that is the "Heads I Win, Tails You Lose" aspect of this for Canonical. You see, it could get real interesting if some of the clients bit and decided to switch over and then Microsoft swoops in and makes them an offer they can't refuse. Then the poop would hit the fan on the anti-trust anti-competitive front. However, if they do lose any Windows clients to Linux, no matter how few, it will be magnified a hundred-fold in the Tech press and on Wall Street and might be the snowflake that starts the snowball rolling down the hill. Ironically, once you have 90%+ domination of a market, there is only one place to go, eventually.

All thee of those packages contain plain files, no installers, that's great. But unlike the Vista Aero package ( it only has proper "theme" files ), both of the "Longhorn" packages have patched Explorer.exe's and a couple of DLL's. They're probably okay since it is a very popular site and they have a bunch of positive comments. I don't have time to scan them right now but you can send them up individually ( Jotti - VirScan - VirusTotal ) for peace of mind. Actually I now see that the Longhorn M7 R2 Nightly package has a lot of system files, while the Longhorn Revealed only has three. You can easily make a list of the files to be replaced, feed it to WinRar and it will make an archive with your originals for safekeeping. EDIT: not required for transparency obviously on Win7

And no-one would have known it was you if you hadn't blabbed. I posted that link and quote without identifying the person. The point was the contrast between this thread of people genuinely wondering whether they will produce sp2 ( let alone sp3 through sp5 out to 2020 or whatever year they actually kill Win7 ), and the tone over there where the Windows 8 fanatics hypnotized by Metro reflexively toss out comments like "I say good ...!". Anyway, whether you wrote it or not is beside the point, the logic of: "Waiting years for a cumulative pack of fixes is a waste of bandwidth every time you install Windows." has so many holes in it, I don't know where to start. Service Packs are the exact opposite of a "waste of bandwidth" precisely because one download gets applied to many computers. It is the most minimal use of "downloading" possible. The only way to use less bandwidth is to borrow someone else's download. In stark contrast, re-installing Windows on 5 computers and allowing each of them to phone home and update individually is the very problem solved by Service Packs in the first place. And I'm not even addressing the issue of a single rolled-up Service Pack vs. 100 or more separate Windows updates, the former done in a single pass, the latter requiring multiple reboots and certain ordering and prerequisites and even extra wasted disk space since recent Windows versions automatically make restore points for tiny updates, some as small as an optional display INF or mouse driver. To summarize, imagine two identical Sp0 computers. One gets Sp1 from a local file, the other is connected to Windows Update. Guess which will not only take longer, reboot more, and use up far more space from restore points? And this is assuming the online Service Pack install actually completes without errors since it has to deal with various Antivirus, Firewall, and permissions. Finally, the comment ignores even more refined solutions such as slipstreaming service packs or tossing the original Sp0 media and using a refreshed Sp1 image. In short, that comment couldn't be any more wrong if it tried. Service Packs are good. Not bad. Canceling Service Packs would be bad, not good, as the quoted comment said. P.S. The Ballmer Award is in the mail, so whoever wrote the original comment should sign for it and enjoy it.

vinifera, Thanks for the info. I will watch out for packs that include files with extensions other than .msstyle, and check out UXSTYLE. A question about what you said -- is it not really allowed to install themes that patch EXPLORER.EXE or other system files? --JorgeA The safest thing is to just not run any EXE setups from a skin/theme/wallpaper/etc site. At least one of those, maybe WinCustomize ( but don't quote me ) distributes some of the resources in EXE setups.They drop some relatively harmless adware or toolbars or make you first download a "downloader" ( unnecessary of course ). I am certain that every one of the EXE's can be unpacked or disassembled to pull out the necessary files. If you see one let me know the link and I will try to unpack it and tell you what they did. I would not expect any virus scanner ( online or offline ) to be 100% trustworthy on these files. So play it safe and never run them, a theme or other resource is not worth the risk.

I wish you would ( go into details ). It sounds like Redmond and their Licensing agreements are pushing right up against private property issues. This is the same as saying they can't change the wallpaper. Of course Microsoft couldn't care less if OEM's install reams of crapware for support, toolbars, docks, backup, assistants, cloud, antivirus trials and games. I guess that is good crapware. Functional Start-Menu's are bad crapware. The OEM's should not only revolt, but shut down their support lines and forward all the Windows 8 Metro questions right to Microsoft. Everything in that bold section is a direct challenge to who owns the frickin' computer in the first place, and it is not Microsoft even though they think they do. This OEM backroom licensing thing needs to be challenged, adjudicated, and destroyed. It is how they established the giant monopoly in the first place, the same monopoly they are now clearly trying to squeeze and exploit. And as for the anti-class action lawsuit changes, well I can't wait for the European courts to pick the new EULA apart. It will set some nice precedents for our courts over here. Like I said many times, Microsoft is really sticking their neck out, really far. They are only recently out from underneath the last DOJ action and judgment, and are operating in the clear for the first time in a long while and they seem hell-bent on corporate suicide. Apple-envy is mental illness. Well if that's the official word here I'll abide by it and stop. I got nothing against NeoWin or Steven and I think they have done pretty good work all things considered. My recent disgust with the (F-word) children over-running the place is the fact that they have far out-done the Apple sycophants of the 1980's, by far. It is embarrassing, and hypocritical because they are making the iSheep look like mature adults. Is "MicroZombies" okay you think? Usually when I post the two or three "negative" articles I mention the very fact that it is the two or three out of one or two DOZEN fluff pieces. That ratio isn't overwhelming enough already? We should leave these stories buried in the Windows 8 avalanche I guess. P.S. I got first dibs on that bolded word upthread! See below ... Microsoft Windows 8 : Fast and Fluid Experience! (like Diarrhea) © ™ ®

I meant what if you ( as Admin ) changed security on a test file or test folder to "deny" for standard users for READ, LIST, TRAVERSE, etc ( special permissions ), and then logged in as standard user and tried indexing and searching those files/folders. Not important, but just curious if Everything Search bypassed ACL's. One of the big problems with standard FIND programs ( including Windows Search ) is getting different results depending on what account it is running under. Although, having the indexer and search engine GUI run elevated might alleviate it to some degree, or perhaps it already runs elevated. I don't know, just spinning my wheels since I never ran that program.

Ahh, name-only indexing. Cool. That would explain the $MFT usage ( and the speed! ). When you need content searching just do good old brute force. Have you ever tried to use it on a standard account? I also wonder if the indexer or the search function would return the name of a test file with "deny" on everything.

FYI, that thing mentioning IrfanView and RegCompact was just so that others could try to reproduce the problem. It first popped up when I was testing RegCompact and getting screenshots ( see here ). Most likely there are other combinations of running software that will cause ProcExp to crash as it starts up. That particular combination mentioned above was routinely reproducible but I am sure there are others. What happened is that Mark ( the author ) was recompiling the System Internals applications and was in the process of switching over to VS2008 ( see here ) which killed off Win9x for good. Process Explorer was at v11.12 when it became official but it is clear from looking at the increasing filesizes above ( see v10.10 ) that he was already in the process changing over around the summer of 2006 when Microsoft assimilated the company, adding new #includes which showed up in the compiled EXE's as Microsoft EULA's and other stuff. The large bloat is partially from that and also from the fact that he was creating dual 32-64 bit hybrids ( a good thing ). There was also some GUI tweaks occurring most noticeable in FileMon and RegMon between versions 6 and 7 which caused some problems. So there are at least three or four influences in play. Interestingly, some people apparently have no problems with ProcExp v10.xx in Win9x. So it may be case-by-case dependent on other variables we have yet to isolate.