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Since it's just cosmetical I'd say it's better to ignore it and concentrate on fixing the functional problems. BTW, even the fixed one has some aliasing.

There's nothing quite like more in-place reinstalls of the OS.

Unfortunate.

mayoko: If I understand what you're saying: "Search Pane" appears also when you use the stock, unmodified, AltTab.dll. It actually appears in the "classic" style of the switcher rather than the modern one. It's triggered by some games. If that's the case, this modification will not help. The fact that "Desktop" was removed doesn't mean it can remove arbitrary programs, and anyway the classic style switcher is not handled by AltTab.dll. Noel: Not putting the icons over the thumbnails is a good decision. But I still find the thumbnails a hindrance, and their size makes it worse than before. Also the dynamic grid layout makes it very messy looking. Hopefully there's an built-in way to tweak these things?

The wonders of technology...

Aren't they still huge, so practically covering the whole screen?

mayoko, does it show "Search Pane" in the modern style switcher also with the original AltTab.dll? The modified one shouldn't affect it in any way. Did you try deleting HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\AltTabSettings? I haven't tried W10 so far. No "Desktop" is a start, but aren't there still thumbnails, even larger than before? Or am I thinking of another switching mechanism?

So that 700MB November update changed AltTab.dll? I was planning on applying that update already, might as well do it now. So here's the updated thing. Seems okay, but there were more changes in AltTab.dll this time, so maybe unexpected consequences will come up. But so far so good. I'm not sure how it will help with what you're seeing. If a game causes strange behavior with the stock AltTab.dll, it's going to keep on doing that. CleanAltTab_win812_x64.zip

Microsoft's sharing implementation always sucked. I'm still waiting for a 3rd party alternative, with full integration.

Thanks. Today I noticed KB3000850 is back. It's been promoted to "important" rather than "optional", and it's now dated March/2. Haven't noticed that currency update. Maybe checking what file(s) it changes will provide a clue to why the reboot.

Still haven't installed it. When I checked for updates today, this 700MB optional update was no longer listed. Anyone encountered this?

You should try asking in programming forums. Or even StackExchange.

The first time I encountered it I spent time trying to understand what this Intel thing is. My conclusion was that it's a VNC-like remote control including BIOS screens and power on/off control. Maybe also remote wiping. But it also requires BIOS support, which isn't present here as far as I can tell.

Nothing like "features" in drivers. Hopefully there's an easy way to disable it. I don't see anything majorly wrong in the Intel drivers (HD 4000), besides the ugly Metro design for the settings utility, and having multiple EXEs with unclear purpose running in the background. Both awkward GUIs and junk running in the background are common problems in AMD and Nvidia drivers, so Intel are in good company.

I do! Did it once. I downloaded, manually from the MS Update Catalog, a driver for the Intel MEI, which is a part of Intel's AMT, which is a strange Intel something that doesn't do anything useful, and as far as I could tell, specifically on the laptop I needed it for, it does absolutely nothing at all. The normal Intel drivers for it are large and add a lot of junk. The driver on MS's site is 50K and it also removes the exclamation point icon from Device Manager.

Stupidity is how Microsoft are handling Win8's ISO distribution and updating.

Very strange. Are you sure? How did you find it's the drivers? If there's no option in the settings to disable it, maybe try asking in the Intel forums. The forum software sucks, but there are Intel guys over there.

I tried Win 8.1 in a VM, running similar resolutions, but using VirtualBox's "guest additions". I don't see such a problem. Does it happen with other software, like Windows' calc.exe? How did you get Virtual PC to be non-maximized if the window button is disabled? fb2k looks okay there, no? Did you try updating Windows? I've tested on Windows 8.1 updated to about mid-2014 (includes at least the first big update).

Did you install that skin, or whatever it is? It looks very non-standard, including that taskbar to the right of the screen. How did it look after a clean install? Also, at least for desktop use, I think the minimum required resolution for Windows 8 is 1024x768.

Thanks. That's shorter than what I always used to get there: "control userpasswords2".

He just wanted to check what's the ISO he already has.

I'd calculate an MD5 or SHA1 for the ISO and search the web. Are there original ISOs with multiple interface languages?

I use "Open With". (That counts as Metro, right? )

Isn't that mainly for touchscreens?

I don't have much indexed (90K files it claims). Searches generally take <1sec, at least in the Metro pane. When Explorer search acts stupid, like when you start searching in an unindexed directory, instead of first showing indexed results and those from the current directory, it starts crunching the disk and only after a while starts listing something. I would expect the search indexer to be relatively free of bugs, and to be able to detect corruption if it happens. While you can never expect the situation to be perfect, unless I have specific reasons to believe a tool is unreliable I start by assuming it works. I haven't analyzed the indexer's behavior in depth so maybe I'm missing something, but so far in Win8 I didn't encounter unusual results. I'm not talking about indexing of the contents of files. I don't know how Windows handles it, so I don't use it. Anyway, I don't have %windir% indexed. But really, if you don't want to use Windows's indexer use another file indexer. You like the maximize performance, so I don't understand why you're okay with a 14 second delay on a simple filename search. There's nothing inherently unreliable in indexing. This forum wouldn't work well at all without it.