NoelC

Since Windows Updates can no longer be implicitly trusted, please contribute your experiences here with the new December 2014 Windows Updates, now available as a set of nearly a dozen KBs, two of which are Optional and unchecked by default. Notably this time one of the required updates is also unchecked by default. Perhaps that means Microsoft thinks they should be installed in stages. As I always do, I'm installing them all in a virtual machine now so as to get some experience with them before committing to install them on my host system, which has been working great so far with all updates through November. -Noel

Big Muscle is right. If you have an SSD use the daylights out of it. That's what it's for. If you're concerned about the possibility of losing data, make backups. Don't read too much in other people's problems... SSDs break because of heating/cooling cycles, bad cables, dust and moisture, etc. (I.e., reasons electronics fail in general) FAR more than they fail because of exceeding write cycles leading to NAND wearout. There have been tests (e.g., Tom's Hardware) where they tortured SSDs with constant writes 24/7 and still found them to last a very, very long time. And it's not a mystery how much you've written. The SMART statistics you can get from the drive controller will tell you (with most if not all brands). Lastly, if you have an intensive application where you're truly worried about SSD longevity, put the SSD into a RAID 0 array with another one or several just like it. The write load will be spread among them. -Noel

Hold the Control key down to avoid having Aero Glass install. Does the problem persist? Yeah, I prefer drop shadows, rounded corners, and not to use a full blown theme as well. Fortunately, Big Muscle's software facilitates replacement of the theme atlas resources, and through that and crafty manipulation of the drop shadow resources that are composited all around a window you can achieve the appearance of small rounded corners. On Win 8.1 this is the dream I'm living - simple and easier on the eyes. I also reduce the size of the Window chrome by importing a registry key saved from a Win 7 system on which the sizes of several elements were reduced. Use this replacement theme atlas file, which adds the appearance of rounded corners through a trick of the light using the drop shadow resources... For dark title text: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/FauxRoundedCorners.png For light title text (shown above): http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/FauxRoundedCornersLightText.png Here's the registry key data: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win81/SetWindowMetrics.reg You may also want to manipulate the colors Aero Glass uses by changing registry entries or through Big Muscle's GUI Tool. I wish Big Muscle would release a completed version of it, but this beta one he released before does actually work, and can make changing the colors and transparency to your liking easier: http://www.glass8.eu/stuff/gui.7z (from this page: http://www.glass8.eu/download.html) -Noel

A browser won't pull it up - probably in the name of "security", but the file is available. For direct retrieval of online files, look into the gnu toolkit's "wget" command... Very handy. @gnu.org> -Noel

Thanks, jaclaz. That's a handy addition to the stable of tools. -Noel

What, you don't trust Microsoft with your most intimate secrets? Time was it was a bad thing to code "back doors" into a system. Today of course it's all in the "interest of keeping you safe". Mother Microsoft knows best. Out of curiosity, exactly what server names / domains do you find dnsapi.dll "whitelisting"? By the way, you may already know this, but for reference: 1. The excellent free search tool grepWin by Steven Kung will find Unicode strings in binary files, with the right combo of options. http://stefanstools.sourceforge.net/grepWin.html 2. The tool strings.exe by Mark Russinovich is good for finding strings in files. http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897439.aspx -Noel

It's nice to hear from someone not struggling with basic things for a change. So far, with a donation key the software has been very good at automatically finding and downloading what information it needs to keep current with the latest Windows Updates. And it's been absolutely stable for me. I honestly wouldn't be able to stand Windows 8.1 without it. -Noel

Trying to be Apple Computer for a Windows user... Tying your success to the acceptance of Windows in this day and age... Without thinking too hard these don't sound like the best of ideas. Don't get me wrong; I've often thought about custom-building high-end workstations for folks. Thinking about just the kinds of things you've described in this thread has held me back. -Noel

Yeah, Avast has corrected the specific incompatibility. They still slow things down a lot in the latest version, though. If you have I/O critical things you do, test with and without Avast so that you know what the impact is. -Noel

If you're still having problems, war59312, please describe again what's happening for you, from the top. To be honest, I can't really follow what you've said above very well. -Noel

Don't edit your registry or use a "cleaner" application if you haven't a clue what you're doing or why you're doing it. -Noel

That gave me a certain warm fuzzy feeling, believe it or not... They only have 121 more builds to try to screw things up. I've already proven it can be configured/augmented into something useful. It's depressing in another way, because it implies they won't be doing much more to it, and it's really not even worthy of an 8.2 version label, no matter what their Marketing people say. Win 7 x64 Ultimate SP1, fully updated, right now is 6.1.7601. Programs like ntoskrnl.exe show 6.1.7601.18409. By the way, the [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion] key contains as much as you'll ever want to know about system identification... -Noel

Gray - good idea. Seems to me with the right settings Big Muscle's software can be set to make a glow programmatically as well, though I don't choose to do it that way. -Noel

Chances are it will once the symbols are published. But certainly Microsoft isn't going to publish symbols for a leaked build. And if 9888 has been leaked now, since the next pre-release build will be coming out in 2015, I'd be willing to bet it won't be 9888. -Noel

Who's "re-embracing" anything? Most (and especially smart) people didn't "un-embrace" the PC. I hate it when the writers imply everyone's all been swayed this way or that, "but now it's all different". The frenzy of marketeers blabbering this or that in the hopes of gathering a fashion following has really got to go. -Noel

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not being critical of the staff here (I hope my post didn't come off that way). And I do have near-infinite patience. I use Windows 8.1 after all. -Noel

It has never worked completely right with IE11, by the way. But the number of glitches is down to a near-manageable level now - which is how we know it's time for a new browser. It never ceases to amaze me that web programmers can be so uninterested in the next release of the OS (it's not just the "good IPB guys"). Adobe is another one that only swings into action months (if not years) after a new browser release, and never quite gets their web programming right (they apparently buy theirs from Jive). Tell me again why it's good to buy or lease forum software? And how the heck do people continue to actually get paid to write software that's so stupidly buggy? So I have to ask... Do the folks who comprise the "board's staff" pass observations such as mine on to the authors? And if so, do they keep on top of them until they answer? And if they don't answer, do they consider alternatives? Do the software authors participate in Microsoft's (and others') programs where they can pass feedback about things that don't work back to the browser authors? Man, the day Win 10 came out I made sure all my software worked with it, and I re-check it every new build. -Noel

Think: Trial and error. Careful experimentation. Look at the Help file. No one told me how to do it. -Noel

BigMuscle is probably asleep now. Just a wild guess, but I should think the CustomThemeReflection setting (from http://www.glass8.eu/guide.html) could help, if any of them can. If it doesn't affect the Taskbar, then you're probably right in assuming that a full theme replacement is needed. -Noel

I think someone once figured out which resources go to which buttons for that for Win 8. Time for you to get the old graphics editor fired up too, and join the ranks of people improving Windows 10. -Noel

That's what you've got there, though there's a slight change in opacity between active and inactive windows. If you want to tweak it, get an image editor and set it up precisely to your own liking. Beware, though, it has the ability to eat up whole days of time. -Noel

>how do I make the start menu not look like crap? You're kind of stuck with that look with Windows' own Start Menu I think. Most of us use one of the replacement Start Menu tools, such as Classic Shell or StartIsBack or... Those are better than Microsoft's feeble effort, and usually do have the ability to become translucent through some configuration options. -Noel

Heads up: I've noticed I can't even drop an insertion cursor in the editor box with Windows 10 TP's IE set to "Experimental Web Platform Features: Enabled". This could be the indication of an upcoming forum problem when the next version of IE is released... -Noel

Win 10 Build 9879? That's the only one it will work with. -Noel

Here's what you do: 1. Visit this site: http://www.glass8.eu/ 2. Click the Support link. 3. Log in with your eMail and postal code. 4. Enter your machine code (as provided by Aero Glass at startup). 5. Press Generate. 6. Download the donation.key file to the location in which you have installed Aero Glass. -Noel