NoelC

I'm surprised at your willingness to hand over administrative access to all your data to Microsoft. How do you reconcile that decision against the fact that they're being overtly devious lately, as well as messing things that were already working up left and right? Not that they couldn't drop load something through Windows Update and get data from all of us, even those with a local account, if they really wanted it. But just handing it over freely seems extreme to me. To each his own. -Noel

Nice of those guys to carry a sign to tell the enemy where to aim... -Noel

Who's running a purely computerized lotto? The respectable lottos I know of have physical air-floated balls and bonded witnesses to the drawing. For the computerized games, it seems to me the chance of a random person choosing the very same numbers that the "fix" will choose is just as good as any other. You'd just have to share the prize with the hacker of the day. -Noel

Hard to believe he's willing to stand up and just flat out continue to deceive like that, and claim ignorance of "how to write an article". It's finally come to the day when ignorance is considered an improvement over what they're actually doing. Sigh. Just so it's clear to others exactly what's being talked about, joscon has said in the linked blog article, "This update is applicable to your systems even if you're not planning to migrate to Windows 10, so don't think you can skip it. It rolls out today as an Important class release." Don't think indeed. The linked page it points to, with that "complete listing of the issues" gives very little more info: Somehow I don't think I'll be un-hiding that update based on what we've seen so far. -Noel

I'm not critical of your comment at all, Dave, but I wonder whether it might be an indication that companies like Microsoft and others doing "ridiculously quick release cycles" are changing "the new normal" to be one in which poor quality software is sent out to the world the second the engineers are done with it, without being quite sure of what it does. It's a bad trend. Frankly my hat's off to Ivo for being quality-conscious and rolling out the new Classic Shell version out conservatively. Sure, some folks are anxious to get new stuff (hence my post), but the stuff has to be actually good too for the general user population, and when it's really complex it just takes time to be sure of that. -Noel

For me the feedback box was already on the page. -Noel

Wow, does that sound like someone desperate to turn lemons to lemonade or what? How is it I have never heard that old data takes longer to read on any SSD before? For what it's worth, I just tried copying a big 1+ GB file that's been on my SSD array since 2012, when I initially set my array up, and it copied at a speed that implies the above is not correct. Though the time difference shows 1 second, the delay seemed to be a bit less than 1 second, which is just about what I should be seeing. I really hate it when marketing people make up "facts" to suit their own motives. -Noel

Microsoft has clearly been pushing setting up Windows with a cloud account. We see it in the fact that increasingly difficult shenanigans are needed to figure out how to set up a system with a local account. From what I'm reading the process has changed to become even more obscure. The increasing difficulty implies to me, as with other things we've seen Microsoft do during previews, that the capability to set up and run long-term with a local account is being systematically eliminated. Clearly they DON'T want us setting up new systems with local accounts. But is it going further than that? Will it become impossible to do by release-time? Will perhaps running with a local account be considered a temporary-only condition just for transitioning after upgrades? Do you think people, including business, will all just cave in and set up with a Microsoft account, or does this truly mark the end of using Windows "Home" or "Pro" for anything other than frivolity? If the latter, what's happening with the Enterprise edition that will make it different? -Noel

Yes, I will only ever use a local account. As of pretty late last night I didn't see any evidence that people were being offered 10061 over on the Microsoft forums, and there's nothing on the Windows Blog. Apparently we're talking about a mistake, not a real fast ring release? -Noel

Check the Protection Plus 5 SDK by SoftwareKey. You integrate their library into your application to gain activation services and their SOLO server product (which either you can run or you can have them run) serves downloads, licensing, etc. -Noel

I wonder if the software workaround seeks to minimize the shuffling of internal structure data - ideally writing the same data back to the same flash blocks again. If not, there's some (admittedly small) additional risk that something could go wrong. In my experience there are only a small number of people in the world who care enough about details to create software that's actually perfect - and with a device controller that has to handle literally terabytes of data in real time, manage the allocations of flash blocks, move data around for garbage collection, make wear-leveling decisions, etc., perfection isn't really an option. It's a necessity. -Noel

LOL Beware of Geeks bearing gifts! -Noel

You're right - most folks will probably trash their current computer hardware long before actually wearing out their SSDs (though frankly they still really shouldn't have to have to manage software to rewrite their data regularly). Anecdotal data: I just bought a couple of used ones to augment my existing array. They're not being made any more but I wanted to get the identical model, which was made from 2011-2013 I believe. I checked the lifetime writes setting in the SMART parameters. The more used one had had some 17 TB written to it. Using fairly conservative numbers, the lifetime write load these particular drives should support before wearout should be about 500 Terabytes. Looking at the numbers since, my load on these drives in 11 days of use has been about 50 GB / day - and actually most of that is the data I originally copied to them - daily write loads are quite a bit less. Projecting forward, even at 50 GB/day, that places the projected wearout date at roughly 27 years from now. -Noel

You have put your finger RIGHT upon the fundamental problem. I will point out (again) that systems are by default set to automatically install updates. How many have changed the defaults? A grand majority of folks still implicitly trust Microsoft to do right by them. As well they should - Microsoft has delivered a decent operating system in the past, and for not too much money. So... The real question that remains to be answered is, as you have aptly put it: Microsoft seems just arrogant enough lately that it might not be the former. -Noel

The registry is essentially just a database, which Windows uses to guide its operations. Adding and removing entries from that database is pretty straightforward, but you're right in being cautious; the registry editor allows you to do most anything, and you should understand before doing any registry edits yourself. It's possible to craft a .reg file (or another script) that would remove those entries. But it's really the kind of thing that ought to have a control panel-like applet to manage. I know Big Muscle has developed one for the Aero Glass tool; perhaps he's working on one for this as well. -Noel

Interesting. I'm not seeing 10061 on Windows Update in build 10049. And what's that registry fix doing? Switching branches to an inner ring? Mine shows fbl_impressive, not fbl_awesome1501. Interesting to see the different branch names on this site: http://ms-vnext.net/Win10esds/ -Noel

Well, I was smart enough not to buy into Vista on the very day it was released. Which nicely hints at the importance of THIS conversation. -Noel

Thanks for the follow-up, Andre. And thank you also for requesting the feature. I don't have any more instances of WUDFHost running on my Win 8.1 workstation, but I do have some running in my Win 10 test system that I haven't investigated yet, and this plug-in has identified three drivers: -Noel

So the solution is So the manufacturer's solution is one that increases the write load on the drive, effectively wearing it out more quickly. Presumably so you'll need to buy another Samsung SSD. -Noel

There are gamers who grew up and are influencing Microsoft from the inside. Apparently they'd rather play than work. Nice gig if you can get it, but at the cost of the entire world's computing capability? -Noel

I'm far from perfect, but that has nothing to do with Vista, which was a fine system when tweaked, augmented, and tuned up. -Noel

Perhaps he's looking to install Skype for Desktop. -Noel

No obvious problems, but I don't run Apps much. Specifically what are you seeing happen? Note that BigMuscle's ModernFrame.dll doesn't work with 10049. I've removed that from the list of AppInit_DLLs on the general principle that it might cause a problem. -Noel Edit: I just tried opening a fair number of them. Besides their being relatively ugly, nothing went wrong... P.S., I also installed the Aero7 theme on a Win 8.1 VM and got it working perfectly. I need to test a while with it but I might migrate my main workstation off of just the theme atlas that I'm using now. I really like the additional visual styles on the controls such as scroll bars and buttons.

Unfortunately, no one CAN be "right". Without a project to decompile Windows and look in every dark corner, it's simply impossible to know. All we have is FUD. How (and why) do you think a company like Google developed the slogan "Don't Be Evil"? Is it possible some (actually) Good Microsoft people migrated there some years ago after seeing what they were being directed to do? -Noel P.S., I liked Vista too. I just don't think it was better than Windows 7.

That's disappointing. It implies: Death of Windows. Then after all the lawsuits from people who get upgraded unwillingly... Death of Microsoft. The executives will of course have golden parachutes. -Noel