JorgeA

FWIW the same dialog box showed up for me when I was installing 10586 over my borked Win10 system yesterday. Looked exactly the same as yours. --JorgeA

^^ OMG, really?!? @big muscle's gonna have to quit his real job and take up reworking Aero Glass fulltime just to keep up with the never-ending stream of new builds. This is actually making me feel nostalgic for the bad old days of Ballmer. --JorgeA

Oh, I just got it!!!! ROFL BTW I ended up reinstalling Windows 10 because of the dreaded "CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED" error. Lucky me, now I get to revisit all the fun I had adjusting settings, tweaking the UI, setting up applications and uninstalling apps. --JorgeA

--JorgeA

Just as an illustration of how asinine is the idea of removing features that "only a small percentage of people use," let's say that Windows has 100 features or functions that "only" five percent of customers use. (Probably way too small a number, but this is simply to illustrate the point.) Now, let's say that Microsoft managers decide to remove those little-used features/functions to end up with the lowest common denominator -- an OS focusing on the "popular" features, you might say. Who cares about these small minorities, we're shooting for the broadest possible appeal. Uh-huh. Do the math: 0.95^100 = ~0.0059. If you remove 100 features, you will end up with a Windows OS that fills the needs of less than six-tenths of ONE PERCENT of your users. Yeah, real wide appeal. An exaggeration? OK, let's say you set the threshold at 1%: remove a single feature valued by just 1% and you'll still be good for 99% of your users. Remove 100 such features, and -- all of a sudden you're below 36%. Almost two-thirds of your users are ticked off at you. Smart (not!). Oh, and that's before we factor in the addition of features/functions that are actively UNwanted by sizable portions of your audience, like Metro apps, telemetry, and forced automatic updates. Of course some of these will also be welcomed by sizable numbers of users, but if experience teaches us anything, it is that providing something new that's welcome typically doesn't make up for taking away something that's wanted. --JorgeA

For help with the license and watermark, @bigmuscle is the go-to guy. Based on my reading around this subforum, though, I wouldn't expect the watermark to disappear necessarily after a donation. Now as for installing the 506 build, read the fifth (long) post in this thread. Make sure to contact @NoelC for any updated instructions; he's very active here on MSFN and eager to help. The process of installing Aero Glass is not user-friendly and if it were me, I'd wait until there's a new official Aero Glass release with installer. Good luck, and tell us how things work out for you. --JorgeA

With respect to Aero Glass not working on 10586, here's a post from another thread in this subforum, including an explanation and a suggestion. Hope it helps. --JorgeA

In a PC World review of big Black Friday tech deals, one of the items had this little tidbit in the description: So these "Universal" apps aren't quite so universal... ...not that you'd have much use for any of 'em, anyway. --JorgeA

^^ So that's yet another thing they copied (imitated) from Apple? I'm going to have to check it out. --JorgeA

Dedoimedo does a nice (but brief) hands-on comparison of the new Settings app and the regular Control Panel, using the Autoplay function as an example: Windows 10 & Control Panel - Going away? * There's that phrase again. My emphasis. --JorgeA

^^ That's a good question. I'd be surprised if there were a contract or agreement somewhere between Microsoft and third-party software vendors, that gave Microsoft the right to uninstall third-party programs at will. --JorgeA

I know I would seriously consider buying a PC with Linux preinstalled. Either that or one with no OS. For the vendor, the key will be to offer a Linux installation that's as ready as can be to play nice with Windows documents and with Windows PCs on the same network. --JorgeA

Another excellent set of emprical data, Noel. Those of us who are still on the Insiders Forum can link to these charts the next time a Win10 fanboi claims that Aero Glass was removed to improve performance. Maybe for the sake of completeness you can give the specs of the machine(s) that these tests were run on. --JorgeA

The bad news is making its way around the tech press: Windows 10 uninstalling user programs without permission Hmm, under the "beautiful mansion" analogy of Windows 10, I suppose this means that when the contractor renovates your home (sends out a new build), he assigns himself the right to remove your perfectly working furniture and appliances at his own discretion. --JorgeA

One new thing that worries me is that Windows 7 may be made obsolete even before it officially reaches EOS. This is already happening with Vista -- I reported in the Deeper Impressions thread that one AV vendor is using the shift from SHA-1 to SHA-2 as a reason (excuse) not to support Vista in the newest version of their software... and this is a year-and-a-half before Vista reaches EOS in 2017. Moreover, they are ending support for current versions of the software and will stop sending out definitions files for them next spring. This has become possible because, reportedly, Microsoft has no plans to issue updates to Vista that will enable it to accept certificates for the new SHA-2 standard. Who knows how many other software vendors will follow suit and leave Vista users stranded on old unsupported versions of software. So the question becomes: what other developments (if any) are there on the horizon, that would give Microsoft an opportunity to make Win7 obsolete well before its time? And what are the chances that they would in fact take advantage of such an opportunity to leave Win7 users in the lurch? Windows 7 users could need to decide what to replace it with, years before they plan to. --JorgeA

Noel, what you just put up there is a model of what a Windows 10 analysis post should be. Thank you -- and congratulations!! This is the sort of fact-filled reporting that could get you banned on the Windows Insiders forum. I look forward to seeing the results of your ongoing tests. --JorgeA

Thanks, Noel, this must be the thread you have in mind. I'll checkit out and see if there's anything there that I can use in this case. --JorgeA

It sure does. You know, in the more than two decades that I've been using Windows (I was a DOS guy until the mid-'90s), this is the first time that a Windows installation has gone completely kaput on me. I've had hard disk failures and BSODs galore in my time, but never before now a case where the Windows OS failed irretrievably. Noel, if by the Windows Recovery Environment you mean the blue-background screens that offer you choices such as which OS to boot, whether to go into Advanced options, Reset the PC, and the like -- then yes, I can get into that. Since Friday's disaster, typically this involves trying a normal boot, having it fail with the "critical process died" message, and then rebooting at which point it starts "diagnosing" the PC and eventually offers a choice to either restart or try other options. --JorgeA P.S. Does Windows keep logs anywhere of how things go in a bootup process? I found a file in some folder named "Srt" that records when the computer booted up and whether the process was successful, but it doesnt't give reasons for when they fail, only that they did fail.

Glad that little tidbit helped! Any ideas as to what I could do either to investigate what happened, or to rescue the system? --JorgeA

The beautiful edifice of Windows 10 came crashing down on me Friday afternoon. Don't know what happened, but I rebooted into Win10, only to be greeted by a blue screen announcing that a CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED and inviting me to look that up on the Internet. There was no alphanumerical error code and, of course, no useful information to be found on the Internet for such a vague statement. This is a really nasty one. Startup Repair didn't work, I couldn't boot into Safe Mode, and even Reset failed. I tried running an SFC /SCANNOW via the troubleshooting DOS box, but while it ran and found integrity violations, it told me at the end of the scan that it couldn't proceed with the repairs. I don't know what else there is to do. No, I didn't have a backup image -- after all, it is merely a tertiary, test system -- and the "upgrade" to 10586 stupidly reset System Restore back to Off. I think I've had quite enough of this piece of cr*p. It was already getting tiresome, having to recheck settings and tweak countless things after every new build; this one in addition introduced the need to reinstall certain programs which it claimed were "incompatible" but which worked just fine once they got reinstalled. The Win10 fanbois no longer have the excuse that "this is only beta software": we're on live TV now. Anything else one might try to rescue the existing Win10 installation, or is the only option to download 10240 and start from scratch? --JorgeA

So let me ask you this: suppose that, one morning, you woke up to discover that the doorknobs had all been moved to the opposite edge of the door and were located five inches off the floor; that your stereo system had been replaced by a tinny transistor radio and your windows were now as opaque as the walls; and that cameras were installed to watch everywhere that you go in your home, what you do there and for how long -- would you "embrace" this "change"? --JorgeA

This is a really good possibility. Telemetry is one of the best things about Windows 10. It really is what is happening with computing right now. We will see more, and more automatic communication between our computers, and the data servers, so information is available to us much more seamlessly than any time in the past. I read all the time of people who try to disable it, but it is a hopeless battle, analogous to trying to keep the tide from coming in. I am enjoying the telemetry, but then again, I embrace change. I embrace improvement in my daily experience. If a change leads to improvement of a welcome kind, then great. Thus far, Windows 10 presents me with a net worsening of my computing experience. When Microsoft introduced Windows Explorer, the Taskbar, and the Start Menu after Windows 3.x, I ran with these new features and never looked back: they represented such an improvement in usability that there was no comparison to what there was before. That was welcome change. There were not enough countervailing factors in the opposite direction to change my assessment. When I got my first Vista computer, Aero Glass turned out to be such a stunning esthetic improvement over the opaque visuals of everything that came before it, that I ran with it and never looked back. That was welcome change. There were not enough countervailing factors to tip my decision the other way. So I, too, can say that "I embrace change" -- if and when it represents what I consider a worthwhile improvement. Windows 8.x and 10 have introduced nothing that I'm interested in and many elements that I actively dislike, while removing features that I loved from the very beginning. --JorgeA

FWIW, here's what the HitmanPro.Alert developer said in explanation about the kernel change: What do you think? --JorgeA

Microsoft yanks latest Windows 10 release from its download server Wonder what the heck happened here. One thing is for certain, and that is that all of the above factors make the "up"grade experience considerably harder and more inconvenient. --JorgeA UPDATE: Reading about this on another website, it looks like the sentiment just expressed is widespread. One selection from many:

Don't know about Steam OS, but according to NoelC's tests, Windows 10 doesn't even outperform Windows 7 in most categories. --JorgeA