NoelC

Well, to make things quicker, if it's a place you go often you could put a shortcut on your desktop with the command line: C:\Windows\explorer.exe /expand,%USERPROFILE%\Documents Personally I've found just opening an Explorer window up to C:\ then navigating to my Users\NoelC folder as needed to be generally convenient enough, especially when I don't have to hunt around amongst a dozen root namespaces in the Navigation pane. -Noel

Looks like Windows 10 Enterprise will be the only version to seriously consider, then. I suspected as much. -Noel

People keep telling me I'm missing points. I'm not missing anything. I'm telling you that - based on my experience running Windows operating systems for years and maintaining stability and performance - you don't need to compact, defragment, or otherwise optimize your registry in order for it to continue to work and continue to deliver reasonable performance. Thus, in my view a registry defragger is no different than a registry cleaner. It's simply unnecessary and it comes with substantial risk. -Noel

Well, it's all about running Windows, and NO LONGER about facilitating users' work. Jorge, that's Big Muscle's software at work. He's got a prototype tool that even makes the title bars of Win 10 Metrotard Apps kind of fit the theme. And when done, doesn't it look a helluva lot more integrated? Unfortuantely it doesn't make the vertical size match, though, and that's exacerbated a bit because I've reduced the size of the title bars on normal windows. -Noel

Well, I'm all for maximizing performance. I just do it in different ways. It really seems to me mucking around with the structure of the central database that runs everything is just asking for trouble - especially since Microsoft does a lot of its own maintenance at various times (go through the big list of scheduled jobs in a brand new system some time). I'm particularly sensitive to the whole "registry cleaner" genre, because it's the kind of thing that has made its own market where no need really existed. It's certain that more people have gotten themselves into trouble than have tuned up their systems with such junkware (not applying that to any particular product). Microsoft is admittedly evil, but in this particular case I don't think they're actively trying to block people from using "registry optimization" software for no reason. Do yourself a favor: Ignore registry cleaners and invest in SSD storage if you want to see REAL performance gains. Many things will become much more responsive. I'm here to tell you from a lot of experience that you really, really don't need to "defrag", "optimize", or "clean" your registry in order to have an efficient running Windows system virtually for forever. -Noel

Well, it makes some sense that the real folders on the disk would show in your %USERPROFILE% folder. They put some hidden junctions in there for compatibility with older software (e.g., that looks for the folder "My Documents" instead of "Documents"), but you don't normally see those. How hard are subfolders under your %USERPROFILE% folder to ignore? That seems very different to me than having to work around a bunch of useless stuff that always shows up in the root namespace of the Navigation pane. This is how I like it to show when it starts. Note that only This PC and Network are showing. I do understand your points - I also tend to use my own folders instead of those "prescribed" by Microsoft to try to make using Windows more "Unix-like". And I also fully understand that different things bother different people, who use Windows in different ways. -Noel

There was, but Microsoft has already stated it won't work for long, if it even still does. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/insider/forum/insider_wintp-insider_update/warning-disabling-the-new-windows-update-ui-may/dc846517-eca0-4960-b0ff-1eb7227223f5 -Noel

Well, someone will figure out how to tame Windows Update, you can be sure of that. For Win 8.1 I have everything about Windows Update set to disabled, and a little scheduled app called WUNotify that checks once a day and notifies me if updates become available, and auto-installs the ONE update I do want always auto-installed: New Defender definitions. The details of that are not important; just that it's almost certain to become possible to control one's own system once the dust settles on the release of Win 10. I've just been testing 10074 with EnableLUA set to 0 and I must say, it's all working better than I thought it would. If Microsoft changed nothing else (and considering I haven't nearly tested it enough to be sure) I could probably live with this as a replacement for Win 8.1 on my main workstation. -Noel

I personally see no problem with hiding them and never having them show. Thanks for reminding me... I need to apply the settings to hide "Quick Access" and "OneDrive" as well. I haven't done that yet on this install. Right now I'm running Win 10 build 10074 with UAC fully disabled. Everything I want to use seems to work. And as an added bonus a number of extraneous things like "searchui.exe" (i.e., the ridiculous Cortana) just don't start. Better and better. There are still a few things starting, such as WSHost.exe ("Store Broker") and ApplicationFrameHost.exe, that I need to see if I can thwart. -Noel

I'm just curious... Why do you think you need to "optimize your registry"? What goes wrong if you don't? -Noel

Heh, the very definition of "Metrotard". Someone who can operate a web browser and needs Windows for not much else. That term is really starting to grow on me. The scene comes to mind in Idiocracy where Dr. Lexus (Justin Long) is explaining how his wife was considered "tarded" but is now an airline pilot. -Noel

Classic Shell solves some of the problems. Another thing that solves a lot of Explorer glitches is to just not use Libraries AT ALL. The Libraries abstraction changes the timing and there are some very short timeouts buried in Explorer that cause problems such as failing to update the display after a file is changed or deleted. Use only real disk folders, and back it with high performance hardware, and those problems disappear. -Noel

Who said they "love Metro"? As far as reprogramming Windows from the inside out... Good luck with that. If Microsoft - even though their programmers are nothing special - really wants something bundled, you'll never circumvent it. It's a proprietary system. They control the sources. We get to guess at what they're doing. For what it's worth I ran Win 10 10074 for about a day with UAC fully disabled. It *can* be done. And you get the added feature that the Metro Apps are disabled. Unfortunately, Microsoft has blurred the line and now some basic things don't work with UAC disabled. Whether in the end there'll be enough configurability left to make it feasible to run without UAC is still an open question, and will be forever considering they're going to be delivering new functionality via Windows Update whenever the hell they want. -Noel

Maybe not all you'd like, but there is still the possibility of just replacing the theme atlas with Big Muscle's Aero Glass toolset... -Noel

Right! Without being able to know what it means, I regarded "my advertising ID" as the tip of an iceberg I most certainly don't want to run into. Thus it only makes sense to disallow it. -Noel

Sounds like you really need to try Classic Shell. -Noel

I make a point to try to figure out what features can be disabled/removed, and it's simply impossible to know at this point how Windows 10 will respond to component removal. It's not hard to imagine Microsoft requiring the content delivery mechanism to remain in place in order for the Apps to even basically function. After all, for example, no one ever figured out how to make Apps run without UAC enabled. -Noel

And no pop-up blocker in sight. I wonder what a "News App" can provide that a browser cannot. It seems there is no desire to "test" the content delivery mechanism until AFTER a large number of people have "upgraded". -Noel

I've fooled around with the color selection in the Aero Glass GUI a LOT and I just can't seem to get a good balance of strong color AND a lot of translucency. The key is to be able to make a dark yet saturated appearance. I may not have expressed that very well up above. I'm not looking for bright blue, but deep blue. It's not a very big deal; what I've shown above for my current settings is acceptable, and I know that I could always tweak the theme atlas a little bit to add more color (similar to what I did recently when the user-selected color wasn't being used at all. I just thought maybe that if I'm craving more color maybe others are too. For what it's worth, it seems to be a common stumbling block with glass rendering. For example, Photoshop's 3D rendering tool also suffers from almost the same problem - it's been traditionally impossible to specify materials colors that emulate deeply colored glass. The best I could ever get from it was a very light blue colored marble, or clear glass with a colored backing (i.e., faking it). -Noel

What I'd like: At one time as I recall it was possible to get more deeply colored (e.g., dark blue) title bars; I'm not sure how, maybe you were multiplying the colors instead of adding them. What I'd like to get is a dark, deep almost electric blue color with a quite translucent overall appearance. About the best I can do with today's code is this: What I'd like to see is more like... Also, assuming you'd like to hear about ModernFrame.dll here as well... It'd be great if you could return the title text writing in the proper theme color to ModernFrame. I prefer white text and the current version with build 10074, just shows black or dark gray text.

Well, the work I do that I've found specifically to be improved as the versions march on is code for high performance graphics operations. We saw an improvement in speed in some critical areas when we moved to VS 2013. Things like __vectorcall have helped us a lot. I've found the upgrades of Visual Studio since VS 2005 to be fairly painless, TBH. Even though Microsoft attempts to upgrade the projects automatically, one DOES have to review ALL the settings since there are always new ones. But, as with many things, the devil can be in the details. Our focus is not your focus. -Noel

And sometimes people just "use" forums to achieve their goals without contributing anything. -Noel

Simply that things are not getting better. Recently I installed a Win 7 system on a new server (mainly because I got the server cheap without OS or disks, and had a Win 7 x64 license not being used). It takes installing a fresh Win 7 to really drive home the degradations that have been pushed on us with the newer versions. -Noel

Well, as I mentioned in the original post of this thread, I have not actually achieved a successful link with it yet. My comments were based on prior versions, which - yes - did improve efficiency of the running code, incrementally. My comments about IsWindows10OrGreater() were a bit facetious, though regarding GetVersionInfoEx()... It lies to you (as part of providing an automatic compatibility environment) unless you manifest your software to explicitly state that you know Windows 10. It's not really a bad overall philosophy, but when the OS starts claiming to know more than you do about what you want when you ask what version it is, it's just more of the same of what Microsoft is becoming. And yes, my code already uses IsWindowsVersionOrGreater() in a loop to determine what the REAL OS version number is for reporting, even if it's not yet manifested for the very latest and greatest. -Noel

Improvements to the compiler may yield more efficient executables as you mentioned. Some of us write software that taxes even the most powerful computers. And they are keeping pace with evolving language standards. Another reason is to have the latest Windows SDK, so as to have access to API changes (of which, admittedly, there have been very few). We wouldn't want to miss out on having access to that all important new function IsWindows10OrGreater(). Lastly, they DO make improvements to the implementation of the IDE itself, some of which actually make it easier to develop more complex software. By the way, you should know that Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition is free. And I don't even see any places for ads. -Noel And oh by the way, yes, it's all so we can draw the most awesome compasses.