JorgeA

The July issue of Maximum PC offers a couple of Registry tweaks to nudge the Win10 UI in a Win7 direction by bringing back the "classic" versions of the volume control and the clock: First, the volume control. Browse to HKLM --> SOFTWARE --> --> Microsoft --> Windows NT --> CurrentVersion, then create a key called "MTCUVC" under "CurrentVersion." From here, create a new DWORD value called "EnableMtcUvc," and set its value to 0. To restore the Windows 7 classic UI for both Date and Time, and Battery, browse to HKLM --> SOFTWARE --> Microsoft --> Windows --> CurrentVersion --> ImmersiveShell. Restore the UIs by creating two DWORD values called "UseWin32TrayClockExperience" and "UseWin32BatteryFlyout" respectively, then set their values to 1. I can confirm that these yield the desired results, making the use of Win10 just a little bit less annoying. The magazine further suggests a way to go back to balloon notifications (replacing the big, dark slideout notifications) by going to HKCU --> CURRENT USER --> SOFTWARE --> Policies --> Microsoft --> Windows --> Explorer, then creating a new DWORD value called "EnableLegacyBalloonNotifications" with a value of 1. However, I don't have that key on my Win10 installation, and creating it didn't seem to do anything. (It's entirely possible I did something wrong.) My question, though, is: How did they discover that they could do this, as well as how to do it? How would anybody think of creating those particular keys with those specific names? --JorgeA

That sounds about as bad as the Windows Insider forums. I had posts "edited" out of all recognition by moderators, and @NoelC got sent into exile a couple of times. The last time I checked (and I can't even remember when that was), the Insider forum was a barren wasteland of tiny technical questions, but no discussions of the "big" issues. The sort of stuff you might have read in a local Soviet newspaper around 1975. I would have expected Channel 9 to be more professional about this. But I guess the infection has spread to the whole company. No doubt at some point they'll talk about the lack of complaints about Win10 on Microsoft forums, and use that to boast how everybody's now happy with the new OS. --JorgeA

Huh, I didn't know it was possible to run IE from anywhere other than the Program Files folder. Learned something new tonight! --JorgeA P.S. My experience with Ghostery has been pretty good. My only gripe is that the UI before the current one was easier to navigate and to understand. But what do I know, I like having lots of options and information set out in front of me.

IMHO the NSA is a good enough focus of attention. --JorgeA

Just in time for Microsoft to make its big push for mobile-oriented Windows 10: People are spending much less time on social media apps: Report New company slogan: Microsoft -- Fighting the Last WarTM --JorgeA

A commenter down in the discussion section for The Register's post on that seeming "no choice" Win10 downgrade, offers this interesting advice to avoid the GWX nag: --JorgeA

Great idea! What was the name of the process that you killed in Task Manager? Readers discovering this thread may find it useful to know what to look for. --JorgeA

I wonder how terrible of an "untimely upgrade" outcome it would take for Microsoft to finally back off on its downgrade campaign. A hostage rescue gone bad? An airplane flight getting ready for landing? Doubtlessly the lawyers would find a way to blame the victim somehow. "He clicked to accept the EULA at some point" or similar drivel. As if everyone should have to stop to ponder Microsoft's impenetrable, interminable prose just because the brats in Redmond decided it would be a good idea. --JorgeA

That wouldn't be such a bad thing, but of course MSFT isn't willing to take the chance that customers will find Win7 superior and just stay there. I have Win7 and Win10 Pro (free Insiders license) dual-booting on a laptop and the machine spends 90% of its time in 7. --JorgeA

Agreed on their built-in excuses for things that may go "wrong." But regarding the contents of that latest version of the Win10 downgrade dialog box, please see this. Who knows, it might be a random process that gives Microsoft plausible deniability while sneaking in a few million more Win10 installations, but the bottom line is that, as of that writing, the phenomenon had yet to be publicly reproduced. --JorgeA

Guys, let's remember that we are all (or most of us) on the same side here with regard to the topic of the thread, which is Windows 10. From this thread's perspective, it doesn't matter if you think that XP or 7 or Windows 2.0 is the best Windows OS that Microsoft has produced: we still dislike the direction that the company took with Win10, for such a large number of possible reasons! How about taking any disagreements we might have about other operating systems, to new threads in their respective MSFN sections? --JorgeA

^^ LOL --JorgeA

That sure is interesting. It gives the lie to those who claim that Windows 10 is faster than Windows 7. By the laws of physics, it cannot possibly be, considering the number of tasks that it's weighed down with. --JorgeA

Meanwhile, for those who don't want to risk testing the accuracy of The Register's report, there's yet another tool to prevent the Windows 10 downgrade. --JorgeA

The accuracy of this report has come into question: Time will tell. --JorgeA

This merits a comment of its own. So the company, after getting raked through the coals for offering the public the misleading choice of that red X to cancel the downgrade process that actually meant you were approving said process, has responded by... removing choice altogether. Unf%^&ingbelievable. They're like the Terminator, singlemindedly pursuing their programmed objective without regard or consideration for the havoc they're wreaking on others. All MSFT top executives and middle managers should be taken to live in North Korea for a year or two, so that they might regain an appreciation for the value of respecting the choices of other people. --JorgeA UPDATE: Check this out, which came in as I was preparing the above post.

Wow, you really have done your homework. I wouldn't know what to do about half (at least) of the jobs listed there. My hat's off to you. Two things I noticed are that your 8.1 list is about twice as long as the one for 7, and that the ratio of disabled tasks to ready or running tasks is much closer to 1 for Win8.1 than for Win7. --JorgeA

Another tech blogger joins the crowd slamming MSFT's tactics: Microsoft, don’t be evil Lots more hard-hitting commentary in that post. And that, by a self-professed Win10 fan. --JorgeA

The "mobile" rationale for wrecking Windows keeps crumbling: More evidence emerges that smartphone market is saturated and so, Microsoft cuts another 1,850 jobs, takes $950 million charge in its phone hardware business --JorgeA

Noel, that is an amazing update strategy. I'll bet it's as close to a 100% safe approach as it is possible to get when it comes to Windows Updates nowadays. That said, I'm curious as to the reason for disabling the Windows Update service and,on top of that, blocking the servers in the firewall. Should we distrust Microsoft to honor the UI setting to "never check for updates"? --JorgeA

To adapt a phrase from @xpclient, my neighbor's getting Win10 "was not my idea." I merely came in once the deed was done, as a sort of fireman. --JorgeA

Be careful, be very careful with those updates, even for older OSes. Microsoft ain't what it used to be. In the last couple of weeks I've run into two sets of MAJOR problems with updates from Microsoft. My neighbor, whom I'd assisted in setting up a Windows 10 PC, installed some Office 2016 updates late last week and they broke his Outlook. The program would crash instantly on launch. He tried scanpst and sfc /scannow and they didn't help. A Web search turned up various exotic suggestions such as creating a new Outlook profile and whatnot, but I had him do a System Restore (from my own experience with the Insider builds I knew to tell him to turn it on, as incredibly in Win10 it's off by default) and he got his Outlook working again, but now he's leery of ever installing any new Office updates for fear that they'll break his software again. And this is on a brand-new PC with freshly installed software. And personally, some update from the May batch (probably a .NET Framework update) royally screwed up my Vista laptop. First it BSOD'd, then after a visit to System Repair with the installation DVD it would only go into Safe Mode. Eventually I got it back to some semblance of normalcy, but now (1) Aero Glass is still broken; (2) the Intel graphics driver keeps crashing (and no newer ones exist); (3) after every reboot it claims that I need to install the monitor (!); and finally, (4) it now takes 5-6 hours to find and install new updates. (In the effort to fix the graphics issues, I uninstalled every version of the .NET Framework that was on the laptop, as well as all of the patches from May, and am now slowly reinstalling all the .NET Framework patches one by one, save for the ones from May of course.) All of this worked just fine before May's Patch Tuesday (and I did wait to install in case reports of problems cropped up). Oh, and I tried several different FixIts from MS Support, none of which ever succeeded in installing itself, let alone in fixing the problem. Ultimately, I'll probably need to reinstall Vista from scratch. --JorgeA

Not sure what you mean. @Agorima is showing what appears to be a full-screen, maximized XP Explorer window (Classic theme) with 9 rows of 18 icons each. I'm showing a full-screen maximized Vista Explorer window (Aero theme) with 9 rows of 18 icons each. How are they not comparable? I wanted to understand what Agorima was talking about, so I tried it out in Vista, and was a little surprised that it seemed to be possible to duplicate in Vista what he did in XP. (BTW I'm not arguing for the sake of arguing, I'm sincerely curious. ) --JorgeA

U.S. government agencies are still using Windows 3.1, floppy disks and 1970s computers The funny thing is... my first reaction to the headline was, "What a bunch of fools!", but then I read down to the following: ...and suddenly it didn't sound so foolish or ridiculous: 99.99 percent uptime translates to less than an hour of downtime per year -- that is, approximately one hour every 59.5 weeks. Can our modern Windows systems (let alone Windows 10 systems ) boast that they go out of service for an average of one minute a week? --JorgeA

Touché. My "favorite" one is the BSOD which now says, idiotically, "Oops! Something went wrong" with a sad emoticon. My reaction always is, "You don't say, genius!" Windows used to be a professional/business OS that respected the user and didn't talk down to him (or her). Now it addresses the user condescendingly with this colloquial language. I can picture the Windows developers seeing themselves as patting the head of the cretin they imagine they're addressing with this kind of talk. "There, there, it'll be all right, don't you worry my little one! Mama Microsoft will make sure everything's taken care of." --JorgeA