NoelC

The concept of providing VALUE that will cause people to WANT the new thing is SO last century. Now it's about pushing more than a foot in the door... -Noel

It's shown up for me. Trying to research it reveals little beyond some "rah rah" info... From https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3035583: Additional capabilities indeed. This appears to be a downloader for presenting Windows 10 to you as an "Update". If you accept this update, you might want to make sure you have your Windows Update settings configured so that it requires your permission before downloading/installing updates. Otherwise you may just boot up Windows one day and find they've automatically "upgraded" you to Windows 10. See also: http://www.myce.com/news/windows-update-silently-installs-windows-10-downloader-75647/ -Noel

Outstanding! I had gotten so far as to try changing that attribute to A0000000 but I had not tried A0600000. Thank you! As far as "why to do it"... This is just right for someone who only wants to see hard drives and network systems. No other distractions makes it a few percent easier to get right to what you want, rather than incessantly having to ignore visual noise. Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 ; This registry file hides "Quick access" from the root namespace of File Explorer [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b-5540cc05aab6}\ShellFolder] "Attributes"=dword:a0600000 [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Wow6432Node\CLSID\{679f85cb-0220-4080-b29b-5540cc05aab6}\ShellFolder] "Attributes"=dword:a0600000 Amazingly enough, the system seems to work more deterministically (e.g., Explorer is substantially free from "failure to update" issues) if one works with just hard drives and network shares. -Noel

The word "software" is not a word that can be made plural by adding an 's' at the end. Personally I would be a bit wary of downloading anything from someone who uses the word "softwares". By the way, for reference normally Windows puts the "edition" in that space... -Noel

It sounds like you're comparing a fresh installation against and old loaded-up installation. Not valid. -Noel

Good - another way to do it for those who would like to run OneDrive. I had found that if you remove OneDrive entirely it will not show there either. Now for the hard thing: How can we get rid of Quick access? -Noel

David, could you please show a full process list with Task Manager? -Noel

I just caught backgroundTaskHost.exe loading 17 MB of data into files labeled with "Microsoft.BingSports" and "InetCache" in the path. The takeaway clue is "internet cache" I think. I have just uninstalled the Sports app, along with a number of other "fluff" Apps like Food and News, and will see if this helps with the unexpected downloads. Edit: Another 6 hours and the system accumulated another 11 MB of download. I think uninstalling those Apps has helped slow things down, though an additional 11 MB isn't anything to sneeze at. -Noel

At this point I'm also doing my darndest to get rid of OneDrive. -Noel

I ran the "legacy" Task Manager (available from within the WinRE environment) for a time yesterday and saw hundreds of megabytes downloaded. Today I'm running it along with Resource Monitor to see if I can spot just what files are being affected. -Noel

Wow, that's something I never noticed with Win 7. So all they did was resurrect a complete feature. Drat. I thought I detected a spark of goodness.. -Noel

Ooh, a topic right up my alley. Way to go!! My focus is in making Windows 10 a "To Work" system, and I'll be publishing a book on same to follow my Win 7 and 8 books. Here are some of the things that come to mind: It absolutely MUST be possible to have a fully functional system using a local account. I would want to be able to run ALL features of Windows 10 with UAC disabled. The impact of constantly being second-guessed is greater than people realize, especially for people doing development work on Windows. It needs a desktop theme that promotes better usability. Aero Glass with a custom theme atlas gets us close, but frankly even the skin of the common controls needs work (who can really see a gray, flat scroll thumb on a gray background?), so I might ultimately want to move up full re-theming. Of course, Metro/Modern Apps don't/won't respond to such a theme, so they will never seem better than their current state of disintegration. Similar to the above, Microsoft's desktop applications need to conform to the theme. Registry tweaks to change window metrics to reduce the size of title bars, plus the Aero Glass tweak that makes borders return. Classic Shell, Classic Mode start menu with fly out hierarchical menus. NO live tiles in sight, ever. Classic Shell has ALWAYS been a better implementation than anything Microsoft produced, going all the way back. Classic Shell's Classic Explorer component and Folder Options X to give File Explorer windows a much higher vertical density of items and to improve the UI in general. And the Classic Internet Explorer component to augment IE with status bar, title in the title bar, etc. The ability to hide or show EACH AND EVERY entry at the root of the Navigation Pane in File Explorer. If you don't want to see Quick Access, it can be hidden. Same thing with all the abstractions that live just under This PC. Maybe a user only wants to see drives and Network connections. Tweaks to Classic Shell and the registry to speed up the presentation of submenus and Taskbar Live Preview images to be virtually instantaneous upon hover. This alone makes a system feel MUCH more responsive. I always overwrite the default hosts file with one that combines the MVPS hosts file with some additional entries I have created. This alone makes the system FAR more secure and eliminates ads. More restrictive and conservative default Internet Explorer security settings. Don't allow any ActiveX by default (an idea long overdue). Vista Shortcut Manager removes that stupid little arrow from desktop icon shortcuts. ShellFolderFix pre-positions new File Explorer windows in the place where I left them last. I have to resort to scheduling WBADMIN commands in order to have recurring System Image backups. I should think a proper backup UI should be resurrected. There needs to be MUCH more attention paid to trimming a system down to do just what's needed. Most of the managers, brokers, hosts, services, etc. that continue to run all the time need to be set to exit if they're not used. It should be possible to have a quiescent system with a blank desktop run in less than half a gigabyte with only 20 or 25 processes running. Related to the item above, there needs to be a panel where major features of Windows are enabled/disabled - regardless of whether they make Microsoft money. For example, one big switch that turns off and eliminates OneDrive. Another that easily disables Indexing. A switch for each Metro/Modern App (ask Jorge A about them downloading stuff in the background to fill their live tiles just by being pinned to the Start Menu). A setting that has Windows ALWAYS display actual file dates/times, NEVER "3 minutes ago". Per-monitor ClearType font tuning that actually works. Windows Update facility that provides every bit of the control the previous one did. And it should be configurable all from one place, not spread in Group Policy, Settings, Control Panel... Make it possible to install some updates (e.g., those from Windows Defender) automatically while making all others (e.g., system updates or driver updates) separately controllable. It's not hard to imagine wanting different settings for each. A sophisticated, integrated performance tuning panel, complete with system monitoring (e.g., temperatures, power consumption). LOTS of documentation and help tuning a system to be optimal. I always add a 3rd party search tool, grepWin, for searching for things in files/folders. It's better even than the old XP Search facility (before the stupid dog). WizMouse to complete the implementation of "send scroll events to whatever window the mouse is hovering over", as Microsoft never got it 100% right. A better system-provided facility for monitoring what's running and what it's doing, including logging so that trends can be detected (e.g., for situations like "Was that xyzzy.exe process running last week? Could it be malware?"). Full, multi-instance capable desktop implementations of things like Calculator. I always install Calculator Plus, for example, since it's more capable in the ways that I need than the Win 10 Calculator App. For that matter, make all Metro/Modern Apps capable of being run in multiple instances. As it is now, they're completely useless to me, but maybe one day someone will make one that's good. The system needs something graphical and well-integrated / easy to use to manage disk space. It's something that always seems to run out, and a central facility for both determining why and helping clean up (e.g., an expansion on the Disk Cleanup tool) would be damned handy. That's a short list for now. I'll post more as I think of them. -Noel

Some may already know that the "Previous Versions" feature has been resurrected in Windows 10. Basically it gives access to files backed by System Image Backups or Restore Points or files saved by File History. The Properties dialog tab that shows you the previous versions that once existed in Windows 7 and was lost in Windows 8 is now back in Windows 10. Well, it seems they've taken it a bit further this time. Have you noticed a new little "pull-down" indicator on the [Open] button of File-Open dialogs? Anecdote: I have an application that stores settings in a folder under the Users area. It turns out those settings all got deleted because of something I did. I didn't realize that had happened until... A few days later, I went to load settings using that application's Load Settings menu entry, and it presented me with a File - Open dialog. At that time I came to realize all the settings had been deleted because the folder they're normally all in was just empty. But... I noticed that little button I pictured above, so I tried it. Sure enough, upon clicking the Show previous versions entry it presented me with a dialog showing the time of the last backup of the Settings folder. Upon double-clicking the Settings entry I saw: Thus I was easily able to access the data from a file that had accidentally been deleted but still existed on a backup. I could drag the files out of there and back to the original folder as well. This is actually a useful, good feature for traditional desktop users! One of the very few I've discovered in Windows 10. -Noel

Other things I can think of, just off the top of my head... Skype, transferring directory information and possibly even other people's data? Did you disable Supernode status?Windows Update querying the web for whether updates are available?Windows Update participating in peer-peer delivery of Windows Updates?Information being gathered for live tiles?Ad data retrieved for display in Metro/Modern Apps? What happens if you unpin all live tiles from your Windows Start Menu? -Noel

Hard to tell at this stage, but... Anecdotal information says there will probably be resurrection, at least when they do one of these new "whole system updates". I had uninstalled OneDrive completely. It came back with the installation of build 10049. -Noel

Good a time as any to try it. Chances are Microsoft will put them all back when they deliver the next build. The implication is that these "whole system Windows Updates" will continue after release. No one's said that they are only for the preview. Like TELVM, since Microsoft is crossing the line between real software and XAML/Metro/Modern in their system, I worry about how much coupling there is. That reminds me, I need to test it with UAC fully disabled to see what "can't get there from here" situations arise. -Noel

Cool. How many processes are running just to bring you an empty desktop? Without terribly much tweaking/uninstalling, and with a few additional programs installed, my Win 10 setup sees about 56 of them running. -Noel

Possibly Windows Defender updates. There are one to several a day. I've set my Group Policy to ask me before downloading, which finally seems to work (with build 10049), so I see them. -Noel

Uh, there's no evidence whatsoever that the UI takes fewer resources to run than its predecessors. The degradation is all arbitrary. Microsoft is trying to reset so that they can have another couple of decades of releases where they say "We've improved Windows!" Right now we realize we've seen better. In 5 or 10 years people will forget how good it was with Windows 7. Us old guys will die off or become irrelevant. -Noel

Implied in the other two responses is, "Yes, and the software is trying to give the code to you." What's the problem, do you want to use it on more computers than you got keys for? It's online activation insofar as one can't publish the key and be a "hacker hero". Is there a problem with that? -Noel

Sure, but are *YOU* changing the OS you use on your primary system? Microsoft has us by the short hairs and they know it. -Noel

Define "works". Define "protected". Do you feel you should be able to run any piece of software you want from any source and magically your system will be protected? That's a fantasy, and doomed to failure. There is no anti-malware philosophy that will work without thought. Common sense and adoption of good practices are required first and foremost. If you can't be bothered to think, then you WILL be bothered by malware. -Noel

It doesn't do online DRM as far as I know, beyond you having to use Big Muscle's online page to get a donation.key file. -Noel

(full sized keyboard extra) I'm too burdened with other work right now, but putting a keyboard on a desk in front of a propped-up smart phone and taking a photo came to mind. -Noel

Thank you, 5eraph, I have not found a way so far, however, to tweak settings so that the 10 x 18 Raster Fonts (Terminal) font comes up, except to check the "Use Legacy Console" checkbox, which I assume is going away. -Noel