NoelC

ModernFrame.dll might be partially working and screwing things up. I'd remove it from the AppInit_DLLs registry key if I were you, until Big Muscle makes a compatible version. -Noel

It's been a while, but as I recall I had to copy the 32 bit game files from a Win 7 system, put a CardGames.dll found in the WIn 7 system32 folder in the folder with the game, and patch the executable per instructions on howtogeek.com or some place like that. It was a very small patch. A quick search turned up this... I think these are the instructions I followed: http://www.howtogeek.com/122145/what-happened-to-solitaire-and-minesweeper-in-windows-8/ -Noel

But wouldn't it be cool to be able to talk things over with the tech all around you instead of just controlling it? For example, arguing with a thermostellar bomb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29pPZQ77cmI -Noel

What did you do to get double caption buttons? Making Modern Apps conform to the desktop theme doesn't seem to me doable at all at the moment. ModernFrame.dll simply didn't work when I tried it. Perhaps Big Muscle will have something that better integrates the Modern Apps when the software is released, though in my world Modern Apps won't see use so I don't care much. I suppose it's just barely possible build 10162 will be the general release, but who can say? Seems like they have to have the build done somewhat in advance of the Big Day, or it'll go out without any testing at all. -Noel

Wildly inflated is the key... I have a couple of nearly indestructible watches that have solar cells in the face and sync themselves to the atomic time signals of WWVB every night. There are many features such as interval timers and counters and multiple time zones and ... available via the 5 buttons arranged around the sides. They do virtually everything you could want a watch to do, and they keep on doing it. I think they each cost something like $40. The Dick Tracy cover made me LOL because it seems so very apropo... Perpetrator right in front of him, committing a crime, and he's distracted by his wearable tech instead of taking interest in the reality of the moment. The world breaks down if no one is actually doing anything useful. -Noel

I did a clean install a few weeks ago from the build 10130 ISO and it was a bit under 13 GB. -Noel

Logically speaking you're right. For some reason that one has never shown up for me on my Win 7 system. -Noel

Microsoft has duped the press into talking about the substance of the design, when it's clearly just a stepping stone. Throwing away everything done in the past can only mean one thing: Microsoft is trying to reset the clock so they can start over and have another couple of decades of success like they had with Windows. They just don't have the talent to do it right. -Noel

By the way, excluding the Metro/Modern ApplicationFrameHost abomination there are at least 3 title bar sizes I've observed, depending on what window is opened... This matters more now that Microsoft is painting the caption buttons at the height of the title bar. -Noel

I just brought up the Settings App (which DOES run with UAC off, thanks for pointing that out) more than 10 times in a row, and explored all the sections. No problems seen, it was absolutely stable. It's possible you have an issue that's specific to your system (e.g., because of your particular display driver or something), or that one of the Apps you run and that I am not running somehow triggers it. I am seeing a few entries in the Reliability Monitor for failures of the Windows Shell Experience Host, but they don't seem to manifest on the desktop as DWM crashes, but rather the opening of an extra Explorer window now and then. It doesn't reset the desktop like a DWM crash would. -Noel

I have no experience with Modern apps but for desktop applications exclusively I find it works reliably, and can be used to facilitate a theme atlas replacement. Since it's not fully compatible with the latest build there are occasional cosmetic problems - you can sometimes see artifacts in the translucent areas. The UxThemeSignatureBypass DLLs seem to work, though all I use them for is getting the proper caption coloring for the title bars on ribbon-enabled windows. -Noel

Well, having unpinned everything from within Quick access and unchecked all the boxes, it can't ever occupy more than one line in the display, so that makes it fairly easy to ignore for now. Maybe by release time Microsoft will make it capable of being removed. I can only imagine the thinking of people who believe users are too stupid to be given control of what they see and do not see on their displays. Perhaps the service department gets too many calls from people who somehow hide things they didn't mean to, then call Microsoft for help on restoring them. One thing I find irritating with the Win 10 builds is that they reset a lot of tweaks whenever they install themselves. I've taken to writing batch files with SetACL and REG commands to re-do my preferred tweaks after each installation. -Noel P.S., Another option, building on your idea of doing something at run time, would be to ask Ivo Beltchev to see if he can hook the right parts of Explorer to eliminate Quick access. That's right up the alley of what Classic Shell does. I'm heading over to his forum...

Thanks ssn650, I'll definitely look into that tool. I wouldn't mind being able to run Modern Apps but honestly, weighing the balance, the ongoing irritation of being blocked here and there from doing what I need to do is more important to me - and so far in my testing even though they're now able to run in windows there aren't any I want to run. the only useful one I've seen so far is the Weather App, and I can get every bit of what it does from Weather.com. I know this makes me not in the norm. To each his own. Given the more recent success I've been having running with UAC disabled, I'm going to go back to trying to run with a local account again too. I suspect Microsoft is finding that these things are important to other business users as well, and are scared of leaving behind their enterprise user base. Business people don't need the toys. They need things that facilitate their work. -Noel

Just to follow up, I worked WIndows 10 hard all day today doing software development and testing. Notably I ran ZERO Modern Apps (I had UAC disabled). The system hung together perfectly. No DWM crashes. -Noel

Thanks for sharing your technique. I have a set of tools called Send To Toys that does pretty much the same thing as you describe by adding a "Folder" entry to the Send To context menu, and I do use that occasionally, but I've not left behind the tried and true drag/drop when it's convenient. I actually got Quick access to disappear on its own, by using the "Clear" function in the Folder Options dialog, but that only lasts for that instance of File Explorer. The next window to start up shows it again. So close, yet so far. -Noel

Do you still have ModernFrame.dll installed? That's not working at the moment for me, so I've removed it from my AppInit_DLLs registry value. Perhaps when/if Microsoft publishes symbols for the current build I'll try it again. -Noel

Why? How about dragging and dropping to move a file or folder to a different folder? Usually I drag from the files pane, but the Quick access attribute change breaks all that. As with every feature, either you use it and find the loss of functionality a problem, or you don't do it and you don't miss it. I happen to use that feature, so I'm still looking for a good way to rid the Explorer pane of Quick access altogether, without negative side effects. I wish Microsoft would just respect their own System.IsPinnedToNameSpaceTree registry setting. -Noel

Try just changing the "Configure Automatic Updates" setting in gpedit.msc to Disabled. I'm not getting nagged and it only updates when I tell it to go check for updates. I figure I'll hear about any important updates while browsing forums online. -Noel

What are you doing when you see crashes? I ask because I'm not seeing any - though to be fair I'm not doing that much with Windows 10 at the moment. Have you provided debug logs and mini-dumps to Big Muscle? Perhaps it's time for me to do another immersive test, where I make the VM full-screen across all my monitors and use it for my daily work for a while. Regarding reporting inconsistency in rendering window borders with a hacked-in Aero Glass tool to Microsoft... LOL They'd rejoice that they're causing Big Muscle trouble. -Noel

DHJohns, since you've hidden the Quick access root namespace, can you drag and drop into a folder in the Navigation pane? I haven't been able to find a way to eliminate Quick access without unacceptable side effects. -Noel

Nice thought, but unfortunately no, not possible to compensate. If I move the side borders/shadows inward by 1 pixel the semi-transparent area remains but I lose the light colored edges I've added for definition on a dark background. Microsoft is compositing the solid edge resources there, but the blur simply isn't extending out the whole way. Here's a comparative screen grab with the edges in the normal positions... Since you found the code that shortens the space on an inactive window, can you change it on the fly to render the proper size? If this is the worst thing we have to live with when Win 10 releases, it'll probably be possible to ignore, at least for folks like me who prefer small frame margin values. -Noel P.S., since the problem is with the blur, and not the composited resource for the edge, there is no problem visible if the edge resources are made fully opaque.

Different parts of the atlas shades the different parts of the borders. I don't think my theme atlas gives different shading on different sides, though. Of course the offset in the drop shadow is intentional. I was doing some additional experimentation and found that while I could control the opacity that third pixel out from the left edge of the client area, the drop shadow resource is still composited starting at the 4th pixel, so there's no compensation in the theme atlas that I can come up with other than to maybe make that one column of pixels a little more opaque to partially hide the problem. I suspect Microsoft just made a mistake in the implementation. I can't see much utility in making active vs. inactive windows different sized by one pixel on each side. It does kind of say that their whole "borderless" concept is pretty much a hack job. Unfortunately Microsoft might not be interested in correcting any of this, since with (nearly) borderless windows it makes little difference. You might ultimately want to try to work around it. With FrameMargin 2 it's not very noticeable, especially on a dark background. -Noel P.S., After working to try to perfect this theme atlas, I happened to notice how imperfect the old Win 7 theme is. Pixel perfection has always apparently been a hard thing to achieve.

It's not "turnkey", no - to run Aero Glass with Win 10 you still need to be prepared to get down and dirty with the tech. It's possible that with the right tools assembled in the right folder, you can (mostly) just use the Aero Glass GUI tool, but you need to get just the right versions of the tools from the right places, understand how the Aero Glass tool works, and use the right combinations of settings. I'd be lying if I said I haven't done registry editing to get it all to function. Honestly, running Win 10 / anything is probably not yet a "turnkey" proposition at this point. -Noel

Enigma96, there's a test version of Aero Glass for Windows 10130 and newer. It doesn't work perfectly with build 10162, but passably well as you can see from my screen grabs above. Big Muscle, perhaps what you were saying is that Microsoft made a mistake in DWM. Even with the stock theme atlas that comes with Win 10 only two pixels are blurred on inactive windows. In any case, I'll try to work around it as best I can. -Noel

Thanks. I'll go through it again to see if I can spot an incompatibility. None jumped out at me before. -Noel