NoelC

Try setting your "Glass geometry radius" to "Custom" and increasing the value to something like 10 in there and see how it improves the corners. -Noel

Left to right or top to bottom? I can put a slight top to bottom gradient into the theme atlas resource - e.g. to make the window chrome look like it's lit from the top, but even that is starting to look wrong because of the way Big Muscle has to composite the various translucent portions. With such a gradient it becomes a bit ugly at the left and right ends as I recall. I don't know of a way to make a left-right gradient. -Noel

We can all dream. As 2016 draws to a close, we can dream that our dreams might outlast Microsoft's foolishness. Please be safe everyone, as you welcome 2017. -Noel

I guess I didn't expect much here, but I do know that at one time many of us looked forward to new versions; joined the pre-release programs on purpose, and eagerly dove into each new version to try to be one of the first to understand it and even customize it. Now it seems like drudgery. I just can't see how drudgery could be good marketing in any sense. -Noel

You're proving my point. I did a lot of customization of XP too, back in the day. Today my Win 8.1 workstation is also fully connected to the internet, is used online every day all day, is running on its first install, which I did in October of 2013, and I haven't run an active AV system on it in years. The only thing done are daily MalwareBytes AntiMalware scans that never turn up anything. Likewise, my Win 7 server hasn't detected malware ever since I brought it online almost 2 years ago. So what? We have both achieved several systems that are fully secure from malware incursions, using three different versions of Windows. We've proven it can be done. But we're not the ones to worry about in conversations about general security. It's the "dummy" crowd - the general public - who define how "secure" an operating system is, in modern terms. Frankly, Microsoft has NEVER delivered a well-configured, tight, secure system out of the box. They optimize for glitzy ad revenue. Who in their right mind didn't see abuse coming when ActiveX first came out? But back to the point: We respect the Windows versions we base our customizations on because they could be turned into something better. We have both done so (with knowledge, effort, and time that the general public doesn't have). Where Microsoft falls down on the job now is that they're actively trying to block our kind of customization activity. This is why they fail. -Noel

Point taken, but just because YOU customize an older OS doesn't mean a lot of people do. What percentage of the remaining 8.6% of Windows systems out there running XP do you think are being run by tweakers/customizers like you, Dibya, vs. old, dusty XP systems still running in doctors' offices and such? While what you say may be true of some exploits, I covered that when I said that malware writers target the systems with the largest distributions. But there are still other malware packages that are not system-specific. For example, if you subscribe to the "run things at user privilege level instead of system" (i.e., you think UAC has merit) pretty much any download that spreads socially and gets a user to install a malicious payload when run As Administrator could be even more likely to cause a fault on a system that doesn't provide a UAC prompt. Those of us in-the-know about operating systems and malware just don't get infections no matter what system we're running... Why? Because we're smart and tend not to be irresponsible in our computing habits. That alone protects probably most of the people in this debate and on this site from malware - so what we're really talking about here are the chances that people who aren't knowledgeable or responsible will be infected. I'll wager that each and every one of us having this conversation here both does uncommon things to protect our systems and has an uncommon system configuration. Dibya, your highly augmented/tweaked/modified XP is no more an out-of-box XP than my augmented/tweaked/modified Windows 8.1 system, so neither of us can really say "XP is better than Win 8.1" or vice versa, because we're speaking about something different from XP or Win 8.1 that pretty much anyone else would see. You have your reasons, and I have mine, and in the end the systems accomplish two different goals - spectacularly well! So it boils down to the fact that we've each chosen a kernel on which to build our ideal systems, and none of them are anything like what the general public gets when they install Windows as delivered by Microsoft. What's funny is that I'll wager we've tweaked our systems to be more similar to one another than to what Microsoft delivered. -Noel

I don't know why the published results of "no new exploits" are being interpreted as "XP is secure". It seems to me vulnerabilities are primarily found in the OS that's got the widest distribution, because that's where the ROI is for malware writers. It's probably also true that systems running XP are more isolated from typical exploit vectors. For example, kids aren't downloading the latest OMG It's Cool game (that's laden with malware) onto old XP systems. They're likely running (and messing up) newer systems. XP, being run on more conservative, older systems, is simply more insulated from problems. And is every older vulnerability fixed? I have never heard that patches have eliminated all vulnerabilities. Looked at another way, is there any evidence that all the exploits reported against Win 7 (or various applications/add-ons e.g., Office or Flash) don't ALSO infect XP? I guess you could say that exploits against IE 11 might not apply to whatever version of IE that XP runs, but it's not a certainty. There's still some code commonality, as there is in the rest of the system. It's not like Win 7 and newer are all complete rewrites. It seems to me things are being oversimplified here. I wonder whether sysadmins here can relate recent experience fixing systems - are people bringing XP systems in with infections to be eliminated? I'm not trying to dis XP. I'm just trying to understand what the reports really mean, and to help prevent a possible false sense of security from getting readers of this site into trouble. -Noel

For any future hypothetical desktop version, whatever code it is based on I'd want to make sure all the memory leaks discovered since release are corrected, so it could run virtually forever, as an operating system should. There WAS a time when taking a computer offline for maintenance (e.g., OS upgrade) was considered horrible. And yes, a system that would use ReFS all around would be nice. As far as I'm concerned they could buy the code base of Ivo Beltchev's Classic Shell and use that for an imporovement over any version they've ever made. -Noel

It's possible I missed the expiry notification. But the important thing here is that when I started the upgrade, using that product key, it both accepted the key and gave the indication that all was well to continue with the upgrade. Just because it happens elsewhere doesn't make it right. And I have had experience with a lot of things, but trying to use pirated keys isn't one of them, so I didn't know that keys can be accepted as valid but not ultimately be good. That's just ridiculous. EVEN THEN, after it really wasn't able to activate, I'd have been willing to pay the $9.95 to make it right, but nooo, that was no longer the price. Once the ransomware-like in-place upgrade had been completed, the price became $99.95, and the folks on the phone would not budge. -Noel

No, just RAID 1 Mirroring. -Noel

You can "bring your ideas to life" and "do amazing things in 3D" of course! https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/upcoming-features And whoa! You can broadcast your game playing experience to others! But as far as I can see you still can't boot from a ReFS partition. Nor can you easily disable Cortana, or take control of when updates are applied, or disconnect yourself from "the cloud" without doing software backflips. And of course you can put on a headset and stumble around your house half blind. I wonder what wall the ads are going to show on this week... -Noel

Windows 10 "Creator" edition is right around the corner. What's your anticipation level on a scale of 1 to 10... 1 meaning "It'll never even get close to any of my systems! " 5 meaning "Meh, I'll get to it sooner or later, I have better things to do" 10 being "OMG, a cool new Windows version! I can't wait!" ...what's your excitement level about the upcoming Windows "Creator" release? Mine's presently at: 3 - Sigh, I'm going to have to re-customize Windows 10. Again. And for what gain? Maybe I should just wait until they move it to Current Branch for Business status. I would like to hear your honest level of anticipation about this next release. -Noel

I predict each new version will get a little slower as more and more stuff gets hung on the kernel. Each new version, of course, brought new features. For a long while those new features suited me, but lately not so much. I don't think I changed, not since Windows 8, I just think Microsoft decided to concentrate on things other than improving the state of the art in operating systems. Easier things. -Noel

Yes, and a desktop watermark but I expect to see them since I'm now running Debug versions (testing the latest Debug build that avoids using AppInit_DLLs and works via regsvr32 to get hooks in for ModernFrame and UxTSB). Beyond what's shown above (note 1.5.1.834) I also get a debug window for ApplicationFrameHost. I just minimize them. But I'm not having problems. Maybe something's fixed in 1.5.1.834 that is not fixed in 1.5.1.724? -Noel

I would love to see those results! -Noel

Good for you for getting out your graphics editor and getting creative! I suggest taking it further yourself. You can see where the X and other resources are, and the .layout file also gives some clues. Try changing stuff, use the Aero Glass GUI to reload the resources, make notes, and iterate until you have it looking just the way you want. -Noel

I haven't noticed any specific theme atlas that gives caption buttons that resemble Windows 7, but I haven't looked very hard since I've done up my own. I've seen a full theme package that that models the look of Windows 7 on Windows 10. It is called Aero 7 by Sagorpirbd and can be downloaded from deviantart.com: http://sagorpirbd.deviantart.com/art/Aero-7-Themes-for-Win10-Final-523979941 There may be others. I've tested this one and it does work. It also replaces the skin of common controls to bring back some skeuomorphism and make desktop applications easier to use. Replacing the Win 10 theme is more involved than just specifying a theme atlas replacement file, though. It involves patching the system so that the Microsoft signature check is averted. Big Muscle has published components that facilitate full theme replacement on Windows 10. Specifically, I'm using this UxTSB.dll: -Noel

No worries, and no hurries! Just making sure you know about all that I see. Regarding item #1, are you saying a File Explorer window is not handled by you differently from another ribbon-enabled window (e.g., WordPad)? Because somehow the File Explorer windows are coming out right. I suppose we expected that without having to adhere to a concerted theme the Windows desktop programs would start to diverge from consistency. -Noel

Al E. Gator? -Noel

I've been doing all this responding from (quite clearly flawed) memory, as I'm working on other things. I did mention never actually having chosen the option. THIS is the option to which I was referring - and you're right - it's the physical disk. Thank you for the corrections. Note to self: Don't rely on the old brain cells; do the research before answering. -Noel

Right, my mistake with the terminology. I should have said "Volume". -Noel

I'm pretty sure you can run a VM from a partition, because I've seen prompts implying you can set up a VM to run that way, but I've no personal experience doing that - all those I've set up have been created on virtual hard drives (.vmdk files). -Noel

Yes, having sufficient resources goes without saying. I'm fond of big systems. And I actually don't "swipe" things back and forth myself. For me I have a lot of desktop space on 3 monitors on the hardware host system and run the VMs in windows. I find that an easier way to interact between host system applications and VM system applications. In that mode you see the whole console desktop and just click on things in it to interact with the VM. Copy/paste between host and VM (or VM to VM) is convenient. Plus I'm not on the latest VMware version at this point. With Workstation version 11 t's a single button click to make a VM go "full screen", so I presume that with sideways scrolling the "next big thing" of Windows 8 and newer they probably have it to where a VM can be slid in from the side, just like I observed on Fusion running on a Mac. -Noel

For a Windows host you would need VMware Player or VMware Workstation. I run Win XP, Vista, 7, 8.1, and 10 in VMs on my Win 8.1 host as needed. Once you've discovered the advantages of virtualization you can't imagine having not had it. -Noel

The shadow is a resource that's composited around the outside of a window. I doubt that removing it (making it fully transparent) from the theme atlas would result in a reduction of the glitches though. I suspect you have a theme/theme atlas mismatch of some sort. I can't speculate further, but it might help Big Muscle or those who might be able to suggest workarounds if you would describe: What OS you're running. Be precise. Whether you have a 3rd party theme, and what it is and how you've enabled it. What theme atlas you're using with Aero Glass for Win 8+. What you've done to your system in general. -Noel