NoelC

Sorry, I wasn't clear. That was on my Win 7 system. -Noel

*** I have no objections to moving any or all of this information. It's easy enough to find. *** Speaking of upgrading things that are perfectly working... I had ATI Catalyst 14.12 ("Omega") drivers up to a couple of days ago. ATI released a later version, 15.7, so I tried it (I actually need to know what these guys are doing, as I write software that uses OpenGL on PCs). What did I gain? Nothing that I can sense. What did I lose? I now have a few niggling little problems I didn't have before. I'm really, seriously considering downgrading back to the version that simply didn't fail at all. -Noel

They must be re-releasing it with "improvements" so that people not completely on top of things will get the GWX update. How could you not want to "upgrade" to Windows 10? It's free so it has to be a good value, right? And today I got KB3065987 - a slightly different? update for the Windows Update client? Stuff is definitely getting weird. -Noel

Not seeing any problems here with mine. What's it doing wrong for you? Based on the number of problems you've been reporting that others don't seem to have, I suggest it may be getting to be time for you to do a clean installation. I did a clean install at 10130. -Noel

So you would invite the hardened criminal into your house and ask him to only sit in the living room and not get up? Seems wrong somehow. -Noel

Never underestimate what patches they could push out with Windows Update right after the big download. Maybe even with it if you're slow to jump on the bandwagon. I'd already have bought you a beer long ago if we were on the same side of the world. -Noel

Well... Could be the user base isn't as stupid as they give us credit for and a whole bunch of people will just not upgrade... -Noel

Every indication I can see is that working from a local account will NOT be well-supported. What does that mean? It is possible to install windows with either a local account or a Microsoft account, and it is possible to switch your Microsoft account to a local account. The link in build 10166 that says "Sign in with a local account instead" is your path to that. But I don't sense that Microsoft has put any effort into ensuring that using the system with a local account will be viable. If anything, just the opposite. This represents a change from all prior systems, and frankly I think this is going to cause widespread rebellion amongst enterprises. I don't remember where I read it, but they've said at least once that you won't be upgraded to the released version via Windows Update if you're not using your Microsoft account. That may have been a one-time thing, I'm not sure. I've tried running with a local account, and a lot of things just didn't work. As a geek who knows my way around the system, I was able to overcome virtually all of them that mattered to me, but I doubt that will be a viable approach for someone with less knowledge/experience, or for someone expecting to use all the new stuff. Once the dust settles I'll be writing it up in my next release of my book. You won't have Cortana, possibly the search function will be broken somewhat in general, and I imagine there will be ongoing problems with Apps. It's just the kind of thing someone who wants to concentrate on ONLY using the desktop might really like, but most others will feel they're missing out on the "new" gee-whiz functionality. The Borg mantra applies. -Noel

I can't answer because in all cases I thwarted it before it got in. I had to do it several times, as Microsoft has made it show up in the list AGAIN, after hiding it. -Noel

I'm betting on 10240. I suspect Microsoft internally built the released version 10240, two days ago, incremented up to 10500 to start on the next work, post release. My money, for the English US build, is on: 10240.16384.150709-1700.th1_CLIENTPRO_RET_x64fre_en-us.esd -Noel

I'm just imagining it as a "too expensive to ever try washing it" coffee cup. Ugh. While I agree that the (attempted) integration of 3rd party drivers is a source of much strife, we can't let Microsoft off the hook that easily. Their software is bloated and clunky, as though programmed by 1st year high school students - not professionals with inside knowledge of how the system works and the proper experience to be building the system for everyone. There are, for example, subsystems that allow you to have the system check your software for resource leaks. Yet we see to this day the system itself leak resources as time goes on. It's getting better, but it's not perfect. There are settings that will cause it to emit warnings for every "unsafe" system call you make, yet every Windows Update delivers security fix after security fix showing vulnerabilities where buffers can be corrupted or data inserted in ways that can result in "an attacker running arbitrary code" on your system. -Noel

I test primarily in VMware Virtual Machines. Last clean install was 10130, since the system having been upgraded from earlier versions was pretty screwed up. I strongly suggest, when the release comes out, that EVERYONE should do backups of all their data and do a FULL, CLEAN install of Win 10 onto an empty partition. It's just another of Microsoft's fantasies that an entire operating system can upgrade an existing one in place. Anyone who knows anything about operating systems would say that's just a ridiculous idea. Other than we geeks, the public, of course, does not enjoy installing operating systems (and worse, all their applications and data) and would rather never have to do so. There have been many builds released simply because Microsoft wants the public to do the maximum possible testing of each new set of software they integrate. At this point in the project I'm sure all the developers (development teams) are finishing their projects and merging their work into the master baseline at a fast pace. Consider: We're seeing visible changes in functionality even up to the current builds. With a General Availability release just weeks away, that means Microsoft isn't "freezing" the baseline and doing their own system testing, but rather leaving that up to the world to do for them. Essentially it says that we cannot expect serious quality in the released product until WELL after the initial release. Not that this hasn't always been true (ever hear the "wait until service pack 1" sentiment amongst professionals?). -Noel

It's no great surprise, but I thought I'd mention that I've upgraded to ATI Catalyst 15.7, released a few days ago, and find Aero Glass for Win 8 to work just fine with it. Jury's still out on whether I'm getting a better or worse experience on the desktop with Catalyst 15.7. Some things may be slower, and GDI window text seems to flicker more with it than with the 14.12 Omega driver. But I can see no problems with the glass effects at all. -Noel

Big Muscle some time ago added a feature to his UxThemeSignatureBypass DLLs to cause the caption to be drawn with the appropriate color. See also: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173794-when-will-ribbon-support-be-added/ -Noel

Can you post an image to show what you mean? I use reduced size borders / title bars myself with the Aero 7 v2 theme and my own replacement theme atlas... http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/ThemedDesktop.png This is the registry file I use to set those sizes up... -Noel

--JorgeA As a daily user of Visual Studio, with its "machine-assisted coding", doing C / C++ work I can honestly say that: 1) as compared to prior technology it does actually help you to write better code more quickly 2) that said, it's still quite possible to code absolute crap with it - humans know no bounds in that regard 3) Visual Studio itself has plenty of bugs in it, though they're not usually Earthshaking 4) it can be downright disconcerting to constantly have all manner of "helpful" things constantly popping in front of you while you're working - it can definitely be overdone. Fortunately that stuff is configurable - if you can find it - and dialing it back to less than ludicrous levels is possible. Not long ago we upgraded all of our software baselines to use the /Wall switch (which turns on every conceivable warning and is not the default). With one product it did help us find 3 bona fide minor coding bugs (out of 14,000 new warnings) in a quarter million lines of code. Those bugs had escaped notice and had actually been in several product releases. Am I happy to have had to correct thousands of warnings to find 3 bugs? I suppose... At least it's picky as hell now about getting any new code just right. I don't know how complex Windows source code is. My guess would be it has hundreds of millions of lines of code, and I doubt very seriously they are going through the exercises we did above. If Windows itself compiles entirely without warnings I'm a monkey's uncle. No doubt they "manage" such things, with some bureaucrat deciding on a level of quality that's "acceptable". -Noel

Watch out for the latest set of updates! Some that I had hidden reappeared today on my Win 8.1 system, including KB3035583 - the GWX shill update, and KB2976978 - diagnostics to run on our systems to help Microsoft determine compatibility with Win 10. They are now re-hidden again here. Definitely have to keep frosty regarding watching what Microsoft proposes installing from now on. A new one, KB3065988, has appeared. It claims to update the Windows Update process. Sounds like it might be a good thing to install, but I definitely need to research that one further. Anyone have more info on it yet? -Noel

More bad parts and an unprecedented number of tweaks and augmentations, yes - but it IS possible. Maybe it's because the 3rd party developers are stronger now that Win 8.1 can be molded into goodness. Simply said, the things Microsoft wrecked can be worked around to the point where it's actually very good. It's probably a Good Thing, as I'll most likely be running it for a while. I envision the kernel and window dressing as two different parts. Up to the early 2010s there were still some folks with real talent engineering the kernel, and long-running projects came to fruition. The kernel hasn't changed very much, implying the people engineering it have just given up or retired, and the window dressing is changing for the worse - WAY worse - implying the dolt application programmers there have taken over and think they can make an OS. Only the gaming aspects of the newest system seem to have any strong engineering backing them. So far with Win 10 it's NOT possible - with any level of effort or expertise - to make it the best OS ever. It's not even possible to make it as good as the systems that have come before. Even once the desktop is tamed (via many of the same tweaks and augments that work for Win 8.1 and some new ones) it's less efficient to do the same things. Plus Windows Update now kills the tweaks, which have to be remade, quite regularly. Just saying it's good doesn't make it so. I'm afraid Microsoft's "perception is reality", "customers are stupid", "there's one born every minute", "you will be assimilated" stance isn't going to fly when the rubber meets the road. "Break it" thinking only works if the talent is available to "remake it" better than it was. -Noel

A reasonable rule of thumb to gauge SSD wearout is to multiply drive capacity by 1000. Worry about wearout when about that much data has been written to the drive. Then you can use a tool to read the raw SMART data - such as the OCZ Toolbox - to read the lifetime write count, divide it into the number above, and determine how far along toward wearout a drive is. The most used of them I found was about 2% of the way toward wearout, meaning it had 98% of its life left. -Noel

That would be a nice, traditional thought but Microsoft has promised Win 10 will not be static. We can hope that the (as jaclaz puts it) the Good Microsoft Guys will not modify DWM and its related components as much or as often, but I see no reason why they won't since they seem to have identified software that seeks to change the system as "bad", and they know their changes wear down those who seek to have Windows work otherwise. That being said, 10166 seems to work just the same as 10162 did for me. Perhaps they ARE slowing down their rate of change. -Noel

Some parts of that I disagree with: 1. "(still completely failing to work productively)" Win 8.1 aka NT6 SP7 does NOT completely fail to work productively. One cannot measure an OS in a vacuum as in "what's delivered out of the box", but rather how well it can be tweaked and augmented into something that is useful and delivers value. Win 8.1 does deliver value - unprecedented value - IF you do the right things to it. What it does NOT do IMO - and for this part I agree with you entirely - is deliver any new value whatsoever in the Metro/Modern aspect. WITHOUT Metro/Modern and WITH 3rd party software (which also improves older OSs) it is a pretty much the best version of NT that has ever been built. I wonder how many folks use it without any hint of Metro/Modern as I do. I paid for a full license on disc (then paid again when that b**ch Microsoft dropped me through the MCE trap door and charged me another $99). My wife does agree with you that I am not in my right mind. Win 8.1 delivers value. You just need to learn how to get it while avoiding the bad parts (which has been true of every OS Microsoft has ever made). 2. "a further failed attempt to regain some sanity" (speaking of Win 10) Uh, no. Not even close. That's just what Microsoft says. For the things that matter, such as the restoral of a Start Menu to Windows 10 or the resurrection of Aero Glass, the efforts are so pitiful and hollow that it does not classify as an "attempt". It is BS, plain and simple. For example, they restored "Windows 7 Backup". What does that name tell you? They're just going to be eliminating it again down the line after they finally get bunches of people off Windows 7. The massive acts of "throwing good money after bad" that Microsoft have been doing - furthering Metro/Modern and the App Store, trying to herd sheeple, without doing ANYTHING substantive to the OS itself to improve it - cannot be considered in any way to "regain" anything. All it does is lose ground against its predecessors while loudly proclaiming that the emperor has new clothes. I've done the work that few others have at this point. I've tweaked and augmented Windows 10 until it rolled over and said Uncle, and still it is no better in ANY measurable way than Win 8.1 or 7, and in fact is slower (while claiming loudly - you guessed it - to be faster) at doing basic things such as file I/O. -Noel

Just a "think outside the box" kind of comment... SSDs aren't terribly expensive any more. In fact, there are several VERY good models from a few years back that can be found on e.g., eBay for even less than new ones, and they're usually not used to even a small fraction of their expected life. OCZ Vertex 3 models of various sizes come to mind. I recently picked up three of them at the 120 GB size for under $50 each. These are still good drives, even by today's standards. I have a total of six 480 GB Vertex 3 models and three 120 GB models myself, with zero problems. At those kinds of prices you could consider making more space available by improving your hardware rather than by compressing existing files and potentially letting yourself in for future headaches. In my experience NTFS compression is pretty slow when it comes to actually accessing the files. This is not a strong recommendation - just a thought. -Noel

Geez, do you realize this means they actually think Win 10 is viable as is? Somehow in the recesses of my mind the conceptual thought "the gulf between their dreams and reality" keeps presenting itself. -Noel

Yes, I understood that what I wrote is not exactly what dhjohns was looking for. It's just that sometimes seemingly loosely related information can lead one to have a light bulb go on. One of the great powers of the internet is that discussion often sparks understanding. Since someone had mentioned the Win 7 internet games I figured I'd mention the non-internet games for completeness, and to add the knowledge that the hack applies to Win 10 as well. -Noel

Today AMD released their first WHQL display driver update in 7 months - Catalyst 15.7 to succeed the 14.12 release of the "Omega" driver set. Of course, there have been beta versions since then. Since I've had zero display problems since December, I think I might just hold off on upgrading for a while at least. It's hard to argue with a perfect record of reliability, and nothing seems to be running too slowly for me. Note that I'm not going to immediately upgrade my system from Win 8.1. If you're planning to move up to Win 10 you might want to consider this driver, as they claim it will be Win 10 compatible. -Noel