JorgeA

What's been fixed and what's still broken in Windows 10 Good rundown of Win10 issues. Meanwhile, a commenter on Woody's website put together a fairly depressing compendium of problems that users have been encountering: --JorgeA

Thanks. Sending shortly. --JorgeA

E-mail notifications have stopped again since the server move. Anything I can do to restore them at my end? --JorgeA

You can remove Cortana from Windows 10, but it's tricky Also check out a pair of on-point comments below the main article from user Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. --JorgeA

That's an interesting point, vinifera. Wonder how (or even if) the market-share websites make this distinction. --JorgeA

So, just to make sure I understand -- you disabled AeroGlass, then uninstalled it, and then reinstalled it? Any additional in-between steps involved? No reboots? Thanks! --JorgeA

Yeah, it looks like posts submitted on Monday were lost. And once again, e-mail notifications of subscribed threads have stopped. --JorgeA

I tried to post over in Windows 10 Deeper Impressions earlier today, and I was asked to please wait " -17540 seconds " before submitting. --JorgeA

This reminds me of an old (1985 or so) Sunday edition of the American comic strip "Ziggy." Ziggy wakes up one morning and turns on his computer, which starts nagging him about all sorts of things. "Did you brush you teeth today?! Did you remember to take out the garbage last night? You need to iron those clothes, you look a mess!!" That sort of thing... In the last panel, Ziggy turns to the reader and says, "I guess that's why they call it a personal computer!" --JorgeA

All very well put, including the parts I didn't quote. What you said jibes with my view of it, which is that the fancy electronics are simply that much more that can break. Now of course you don't need the inside camera or the outside monitor screen for the fridge to keep performing its most important functions, but in that case it's fair to ask what, exactly, you as the customer paid that extra $4000 or $5000 for. --JorgeA

The main reason is that I didn't know that there was a new version. When the AU was installed over 1511, Classic Shell was removed and my next action was to go into the Downloads directory to install CS again from there. --JorgeA

That's very interesting, thanks! One trend that stands out for me is that Win7 and Win10 usage seem to have stabilized since the end of July: http://gs.statcounter.com/#desktop-os-ww-daily-20160512-20160910 Curiously, if you go to that page and hover the mouse pointer over the graphs, the Win10 and Win7 lines both flatten out almost completely right around the July 29-August 2 period when the "free" updowngrade offer expired and the Anniversary Update became available. --JorgeA

FWIW, I'm running Classic Shell version 4.2.5 on the Win10 AU. --JorgeA

Smart Refrigerators: The Value Proposition Isn't Apparent Yet Good questions all. This is a cool application that I could jump on wholeheartedly if the information were to live exclusively on my own devices, instead of being sent to other people's servers. That should not be so difficult to accomplish. In the fridge scenario, for instance, you could use NFC technology to transfer your refrigerator's findings directly to your phone, which would then draw up a list of what you need to buy today. No need to get Microsoft's or Apple's or Samsung's servers involved. Otherwise, my reaction to this sort of thing is MYOFB. --JorgeA

Windows 10 usage continues its steady climb, but Windows 7 is holding steady: [source: https://netmarketshare.com/report.aspx?qprid=11&qptimeframe=M&qpsp=201&qpnp=11&qpch=350&qpdisplay=111111111111110&qpdt=1&qpct=4&qpcustomb=0&qpcid=fw1035560&qpf=1] Despite this year's push by Microsoft to nudge or trick users into installing Windows 10, Win7 share is barely one-half of one percent less than it was five months ago. One possible explanation is that almost as many XP/Vista users are migrating to Win7 as 7 users are moving to 10. --JorgeA

Speaking of XP-era features, check this out: How to have the Windows XP-style Quick Launch bar in Windows 10 Pretty neat, eh? --JorgeA

Worse yet, you try to hit the brakes to avoid the crash but at that moment "Windows 10 Auto" disables the controls with an overlay that you need to reboot to install some Updates, would you like to do it now or do it later tonight... --JorgeA

I'll have to go back into Win10 and check which version of Classic Shell is in there. (It was a busy week.) --JorgeA

Thank you @Klamatiel and @NoelC for the info, things are much clearer now. Great idea, that's the first real use I will have for the virtual desktop feature! --JorgeA

I'm finally on the Anniversary Update. Before installing it (over 1511), I took the recommended precautions of disabling aerohost.exe in Task Scheduler and moving the contents of the Aero Glass folder to a different location. Once the AU was done setting itself up, I downloaded the new Aero Glass experimental build and extracted the files to the Aero Glass folder. Two windows are being opened and I'm hoping that the experts here can describe what they are: I am especially curious about that "Microsoft.Windows.Explorer" window, it doesn't look like any Windows Explorer window I've ever seen. And, in any case, I thought Microsoft had renamed Windows Explorer to File Explorer? Aside from that, what do the contents we see in the screenshot mean? --JorgeA

After months and years of official denials, the path for Microsoft to change Windows to a subscription basis is coming out of the fog. Revealed by none less than the most prominent MSFT apologist in cyberspace: Microsoft's new business model for Windows 10: Pay to play The idea seems to be to make the Home and Pro editions so limited and restricted that customers will feel compelled to fork over more $$$ to get the new $7/month Enterprise version, just to reclaim the features and the level of control over their own PCs that we previously enjoyed on those less-expensive editions. This of course allows Microsoft to deny that they're actually turning Windows into a subscription service: they're simply going to make it so annoying to run "free" Windows that people will gladly pay a monthly fee to get rid of the annoyances. --JorgeA

Finally got to install the Anniversary Update over the weekend. The 8GadgetPack needed to be "repaired" in order to work on the new version of Windows 10, and Classic Shell needed to be reinstalled so that I could use the real Start Menu. Windows 10 AU declared two applications to be "incompatible": the Microsoft Network Monitor (version 3.4) and... Classic Shell. This time it went so far as to open the browser to a Microsoft Web page that declared, Well yes, Classic Shell could be viewed as a danger -- that is, to Microsoft's total control of users' PCs, not to those PCs themselves. Now here's a couple of oddities. The MS Network Monitor was not uninstalled, its icon was still there on the Desktop, and clicking on it brought up the program in what seemed to be a perfectly normal way. And clicking on the Classic Shell setup file didn't do anything. However, renaming the file to something other than "ClassicShell" made it possible to launch the setup and get Classic Shell back. All of my CS settings from before the AU were still as I had put them. I'm running Windows 10 Pro under the Windows Insider Program. Installing the AU required going through the privacy settings all over again; while most of the settings were left as I had set them, there were a few new ones to deal with. And of course I had to run through the UWP crapps, eliminating as many as I could. This time around, it looks like it's possible to uninstall fewer of them than before. The good news, though, is that I'm still getting local-only search in the Cortana search bar. This was a little surprising, as I thought I'd read somewhere that you can no longer disable Web search in Cortana. One other immediate impression: the blinding whiteness continues to spread. For example, in the Settings app that's replacing many Control Panel functions, the background used to be a dingy gray and now it's white. More observations if and as I come across them. --JorgeA

Ahhh -- that's it, you found the key to the whole thing, jaclaz: not only is Microsoft installing into Windows crapware games like Candy Crush, it's turning Windows itself into a game!! Opening a file, entering data, and typing an e-mail will no longer be a boring, predictable experience: soon, using Windows will become an exciting quest that will earn you Microsoft rewards points!!! Just hunt and find where the back arrow or the Minimize button are today, and you too can start climbing you way to the top of the leader board! --JorgeA

"Telemetry would show" that mouse activity on the screen suddenly shot up astronomically as people desperately tried to figure out where to click and drag stuff. Company mouthpieces would then boast of the "increased engagement" that Windows 10 had generated among users. --JorgeA

Totally agree! --JorgeA