NoelC

The documentation HAS finally showed up. The depth and quality of the highly technical info are breathtaking! Example - this gem: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3027209 This one runs a close second: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/3030947 -Noel

Normally you do not want to put the double slashes actually in the registry. They show in DosProbie's .reg file above because the registry editor needs slashes to be escaped. Also you do not need DWMGlass.dll in the AppInit_DLLs value at all. the Aerohost entry that gets added to your Task Scheduler starts and manages it. -Noel

The documentation did finally come online, though some of it is so vague as to be little better than "404". I found that almost nothing I do with Windows will be directly affected by the updates. The only one or two that gave me hope were too vague to be comforting. Something about "improve stability". Since my system runs all the time between updates anyway, it's not likely to be improved in any meaningful way. The updates all seem to work on my VM, which is configured similarly to my host workstation. Notably there were 32 updates for the VM, but the host says only 31 are pending. Since I've heard no screams of anguish (here or elsewhere), I guess I'll apply this set and see what happens. Wish me luck! -Noel Edit: It survived the nightly backups. So far so good. Edit 2: Storm clouds! Photoshop isn't starting up properly. It doesn't seem to be able to characterize the GPU any longer. Still investigating... Edit 3: All appears to be well with the updates. The problem with starting Photoshop was that I hadn't waited for the system to complete verifying all its volume snapshots.

Honestly, I really don't see the tab text as a problem at all. It's just as readable as if it were black. It would be acceptable if you were to just leave it as is. -Noel

I don't see anything like what you describe at outlook.com. Maybe a shady Add-on? -Noel

Its Update Tuesday! Woohoo, all kinds of great new features and bugfixes. Okay, back to reality. Specifically, 31 important updates are shown (the number may vary depending on the system), requiring a whopping 134 MB of downloads. As usual, I've gone through and read about each of them. Or at least tried. Clicking the More Information or Support Information links for each update turn up... Nothing! Well, specifically, it said: "Oops! The page you are looking for may have a new location, or is no longer available." That's some real quality documentation work there, Microsoft. I realize I can search for KB articles individually, but that's inconvenient. I've gone ahead and installed the updates on my Win 8.1 x64 Enterprise virtual machine. It boots, no System Errors are logged, and Aero Glass still works - good signs so far. Meanwhile, maybe Microsoft will actually document the updates through the normal links. But maybe not. They're busy revamping the Windows Update process for Win 10. Maybe the More Information links will be broken in Win 8.1 from now on. I'll be interested in hearing your experiences with this set of updates. -Noel

I should think it'd work fine on an external drive, but honestly I don't know for sure how much if any of the self-healing functionality has been exercised - my ReFS-formatted drives both work as well as the day I started using them, so if there has been any recovery activity, I just haven't noticed. I do glance at my System Event Log from time to time, and I haven't seen anything listed there. That might say there's a lack of management information and control with ReFS - or that I just haven't found it. ReFS management panels might be found in server management packages I don't normally use. Certainly Microsoft didn't / doesn't expect us to run ReFS in Win 8+, even though it runs perfectly as far as I can see. How ReFS would work with RAID 5 et. al... I haven't any anecdotal information, so I can't say. Since the two systems work at different levels it seems as if they should complement each other nicely. Whether there would be gotchas or thrashing situations I can't say. I would certainly want to test it on an array before committing real data to it. One other thing, re: Performance... Both my internal HDD and my external USB drive that are ReFS-formatted have been taking incremental file backup updates for quite a long time now, and they're always nearly full, yet I've not noticed any performance degradation at all. Performance is holding up remarkably well, actually. I'm disappointed to see that there appears to be ZERO advancement of ReFS in Windows 10. -Noel

Assuming of course you're running a desktop system, one possible workaround is to get out of the habit of running any Metro/Modern App full screen, but to run them either windowed or "maximized windowed". You lose a bit of screen real estate keeping the title bar displayed, but you don't lose control. I'm teetering on removing the "full screen" part of that. It was viable to avoid Apps altogether in Win 8.1, but there's no denying Microsoft is pushing a "Universal App future" while simultaneously killing off the desktop. Sooner or later useful Apps should start to appear in the App Store. It's possible there will be improvements in the next build. It seems many folks are disappointed with the present level of integration between the desktop and Metro/Modern Apps. There are also some bad interactions with the buttons in windowed mode too. I often have to click the [ X ] several times to get a Metro/Modern App to close. -Noel

Nice! Even changes the text on the Metro/Modern Apps. Only glitch I can see is that on Metro/Modern Apps the caption glow is indexed to the top of the window, instead of to the center of the title bar where the text is. -Noel

Actually, things have changed since I wrote it, if you can believe it. BigMuscle has just now released an updated UxThemeSignatureBypass tool that fixes the problem, and so far it seems to work. -Noel

Explorer and e.g., Wordpad are ribbon-enabled windows. They are composited differently than normal desktop applications. Everyone is seeing what you're describing. Full theme reimplementations can set that, but it cannot be corrected with a simple Theme Atlas resources change. BigMuscle has created a theme signature check bypass utility that can help you facilitate loading an entire replacement theme. BigMuscle has also been working on something that would correct just the missing text color/glow management for ribbon-enabled windows. He provided a trial version, but that unfortunately broke drag and drop. See: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/170945-uxtheme-signature-bypass/#entry1091393 -Noel

Nice improvement! Thank you. Only usability glitch I see is that sometimes the events for the [ X ] button are processed out of order, and (for example when first activating the App) it will change to the "glow bright red" version briefly even though the cursor is not over it. There are also cases where the "Active App" button graphics are displayed on an inactive App. I can tell because I added a little bit of color to my Active App graphics resources. Example: -Noel

I believe you have it right, above. By the way, you might want to try the Testing version of GUI application to modify Aero Glass parameters from this page: http://www.glass8.eu/download.html Though at the moment in IE the .7z file at that link loads as text in the browser instead of opening a "Download or Open" type of prompt, probably because the Mime Type is set wrong on the web site. -Noel

Same old same old... Early releases missing obvious functionality, pre-release testers reporting it's not good enough, Microsoft exclaiming, "we're listening, it's not done yet", then the fateful release date comes and goes. We are witnessing the crumbling of an era. But it's all too clear... Microsoft is no longer capable of writing complete software. The only thing they can do, it seems, is execute UI changes to some cockamamie plan their "visionaries" have cooked up. -Noel

Well put. Up until it burned out last year (bad capacitors), I kept my circa 2005 Dell Precision 470 dual Xeon workstation running Vista x64, even though I bought several better systems since. It became a file server, having served well as a development workstation for quite a number of years. It ran for months between reboots mandated by updates. As machines go, it was a very fast one for its day, and by contrast a very slow one as compared to today's modern systems. With a decent video card (which I didn't start out with) it actually ran Vista very well indeed. And it never, ever, never crashed. Vista was the first Windows OS I used that didn't present a significant chance for loss of data, even though I worked it hard. Folks like to tout XP, but in its day when XP was used hard - I mean crunching through gigabytes of serious data - it could and would fail hard. XP tended to use up its resources, requiring a reboot every so often. Vista was the first Windows OS I could put through the paces that would just run ad infinitum without needing a reboot. Someone involved in Vista development had their head screwed on straight. Vista brought us such a polished, elegant UI. Who'd have thought they'd be making the window dressing worse now with each new version? I've moved on - my main workstation runs a newer Windows version, but I'll always fondly remember Vista. Of course I can and do boot it up in a Virtual Machine, which facilitates testing of products destined for folks using Vista. It's poignant to run the same software side by side on various different versions - makes you realize how much Microsoft is trying to destroy the desktop. -Noel

In the beginning, there was the Byte. It replaced the Abacus. It was a Simpler Time. Computers made by those who believed sticky tape can fix eyeglasses could chew up the nearby Humans' text a Byte at a time. The Byte was sufficient unto itself. The Byte was used by chips with very small part numbers. Then came the Word, because Humans who stood sideways upon the Earth compared to the Humans with the taped up glasses wanted to be able to use THEIR languages. The Word was formed from 16 Whole Bits, cooperating in integral binary harmony. And it was Good. No one would ever need more of anything than the numbers that could be represented by The Word. But restless Humans looked upon the Word, thought of obscenely big numbers, and proclaimed, "ith tooth smalleth" (well, Humans using the Lisp programming language did. Honest.). And so 16 more whole Bits were marched in and formed the Double Word. The Double Word was Bigger. Humans all know that Bigger is Better, but only up to a point. No one could EVER need more things than can be represented in 32 bits. Ever. Never. The Programmers, who are a lazy lot and not generally Humans anyway, preferred to type DWORD rather than unsigned long, because they have to be different, and they have no lives. For a time the Double Word reigned surpreme, until some Humans decided Much Bigger is Much Better. But that is another story. To answereth your quethstion directly, if a DWORD, expressed in hex, is 12345678, then the High Word, which would be the most significant 16 bits (hm, that could be what HIWORD means) is 1234 and the Low Word (LOWORD?) is 5678. Those quaint Humans write things down with the most significant things on the left. High things are generally considered more significant than low things. As an exercise, what are the High and Low words of this hex value? DEADD0D0 As another exercise, if you wanted to set a blur radius of 9, what hex digits would you use in place of the hex digits DEAD? Lastly, what is the decimal equivalent of the hex digits 0009? And now we pause to ponder that RegEdit provides you the ability to entereth your DWORDs directly in hex. Eth. -Noel

Just for clarity... That's from an earlier build, not 9926. Here's the stock theme atlas as extracted from 9926: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/Build9926ThemeAtlas.png Alas, it's probably not going to be useful for all that much longer. -Noel

Methinks you need to do something else besides try to analyze me. How do you think I got Windows 8.1 and its predecessors to work? By being all happy about them? Happy comes later, when one figures out all the tweaks. -Noel

I was just looking over the running process list for the umpteenth time, and something that concerns me a bit is that with some of the things we're seeing run now (e.g., this searchui.exe thing) we're not able to see directly how they get started. Good tools like Autoruns don't show them anywhere. Registry searches don't turn them up. That's a bit disturbing for those who like to reconfigure. Are they now hard coded in other executables? If so, does this represent a step away from the software being an operating system and more like a single-purpose application (the purpose of which is presumably to herd us all into the App Store)? FYI: https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/24e3873c-89bf-40a5-8c82-fad21e2006cc/do-we-really-need-this-many-processes-just-to-do-nothing?forum=WinPreview2014Feedback -Noel

Actually, to be accurate, the ​computers are the beasts I dreamed of using. The operating systems I mentioned only happen to be those I found to be the most useful on said hardware. At this point my system isn't even close to a top-end model any more. It's (gasp) years old. They're now multiple times faster, with multiple times the core count. That's life. At some point I'll get another, better one when I need it (I'd suggest that time is nearer for you). The chassis will almost no doubt be around the same size and I'll make the operating system into something more gratifying to use (with, for example, the help of amazing 3rd party software developers like our own Big Muscle here on the forum, and nice discussions here about what can be blocked from running to make more resources available, etc. etc.). My main reason for speaking up here (apparently which you interpreted as coming out against you) was that frankly I get tired of hearing how bad the newest systems are, etc. etc. Suppose I kept coming on here and actively exclaiming how bad the OS you've chosen to run is? Would you consider that an affront to your choice? Would it irritate you to hear "Windows 8.1 rules and XP drools"? Sure, everything we see in the world could be better. I do more than my own share of grousing about how bad it is. Sometimes maybe it feels good to complain and be depressed, and sometimes maybe it also feels good to celebrate success, even if success can be defined as no more than avoiding pain for a measured period of time. Can we please get back to talking about how to stop Cortana from running? -Noel

You claim to better enjoy your free time, yet you're repeatedly posting how "sad" you find things, while I repeatedly claim that I'm getting pleasure out of my tech. Clearly we both have systems working well enough that we can waste time blabbering here. We're here to share our experiences, and we both suggest the other join us in our mindset. Specifically I suggest things and ways to approach things that might increase your satisfaction with your tech, while you suggest I should be more jaded about things over which I have no control... Who's trying to bring whom down? Yeah, I have an ego. It comes from succeeding at what I do. I like to share that success with others. It has not been my intent to offend, here, no more I'm sure than it was yours. Clearly I have (I'm sorry) and I probably will again (I'm sorry). What you probably don't see is, so have you (don't worry about it). We'll both get over it and life will go on. -Noel

Precisely. It's a lot harder to make something else GOOD so that it attracts people to it. Thing is, they're in too much of a hurry. They should be making the desktop experience all the better AND doing their best to make the touch-first side attractive too. That's how winners win. -Noel

GIVEN what each can be ​made into... (which, don't look now, is what this thread is about) Yes, each new version has been better than its predecessor - even 8.1 (or I wouldn't be using it). Yes, XP was hundreds of times better than WFWG 3.11. Yes, Win 7 was easily 8 times better than XP. Sorry I can't agree with you on any of your comparitives. The only one you didn't make is that IMO Win 8.1 is only about 1.05 times better than Win 7 - for me, since I don't partake in the App Store or use a Windows tablet. Others who do might think differently. Since we can now buy terabyte SSDs now for the price of what a few hundred MB HDD cost back in the 1990s, what of it? Maybe it's more ready for you to plug something unexpected in than ever. Like I said, they fit in the same boxes, which now do WAY more than they used to. Your attempts at putting a twisted arbitrary perspective on the whole thing based on RAM and disk usage just seem to me to fail. Perhaps I'm unique in that I'm getting more than ever out of my Windows systems now. Sucks to be you. -Noel

Looks like another article that's full of crap to me. Seriously? "Microsoft isn't thinking about icons or aesthetics right now?" ​Give me a break. It's the ONLY they know how to do, and don't kid yourself - their "lookie and feelie" people are FIRMLY in charge. They're all about changing the fashion and herding the users. We couldn't believe they were eliminating Aero Glass in the late Win 8 pre-release builds either (what id*** would do that?), yet looking back we can clearly see that they were "fading it out" across all the builds. There wasn't one hair out of place in their pursuit of that. If there's ONE THING Microsoft does it is to use the pre-release builds to get people used to whatever stupid "vision" (think LSD) they have. -Noel

Did ancestral Poebloans 900 years ago anticipate Windows? -Noel