NoelC

Hm, I don't seem to see any sensitivity to the ColorizationColorInactive setting. But it's okay, I have a livable desktop now through manipulations in my FauxBordersRoundedCorners.png theme atlas file. Big Muscle, I'd call your implementation a real success (and still sorely needed). I can tell you this: I will never adopt Windows 10 without being able to change the desktop appearance as I am able to do with Aero Glass. Have you decided what to call it? Just "Aero Glass for Windows" maybe? Have you considered turning it into a real commercial product? -Noel

Yes, for me as well. Nice job, Big Muscle. -Noel

What's scary is that they're starting to snare intelligent, inquisitive people with their deception. I'm imagining Microsoft management, pondering things over coffee... "Well, because of the management changes and layoffs destroying the culture, we just don't have the talent to actually engineer anything serious any more, to make customers joining the cloud seem attractive, so we have to do SOMETHING to suck them in or we'll all just get laid off." Their mistake was EVER listening to Marketing. Some things (such as engineering a good, viable computer operating system) only geeks can do. Did I actually HAVE to say that? -Noel

Never attribute to evil brilliance that which can be explained by incompetence. -Noel

Yzöwl, something very much like what you described started happening to me about 6 months ago for a time with Windows 8.1 and an HP Envy printer (connected wirelessly), but it magically cleared itself up the next month. I attributed it to a Windows Update. For what it's worth spoolsv.exe is always running here on my Win 10 Enterprise x64 TP setup. I haven't done much printing, but what I have done to this printer has worked. I haven't had to start the Spooler service manually as you have. -Noel

I noticed the status is no longer reliably updated in the Task Scheduler Libraries window. You need to hit F5, at which point you'll see it's gone back to Ready status. Yet another thing Microsoft has messed up lately. -Noel

That's good news. Sometimes it's the little things that bite you in the rear... :-) -Noel

Just did a test with my Win 8.1 Enterprise x64 test system. Same exact issue. -Noel

Thanks for the additional info. I'm always eager to learn about corners of the system I've not come in direct contact (or conflict) with before. -Noel

And by contrast, the same environment with the 4 files (only 2 of which are actually different) from the prior 1.2.6 release restored: -Noel

Sorry, I should have been more specific about the test environment. I tested on Win 10 Enterprise TP x64 build 9879. Single virtual monitor is 1920 x 1200 pixels. I run the software from C:\BIN. Aerohost exits instantly and emits no message at all, as shown here... -Noel

Unfortunately, the x64 build doesn't seem to work on the same VM the last one was running fine on. Aero Glass runs to completion at startup (it normally keeps running, of course). No DWM.exe window comes up at all, and nothing is written to the debug.log. No errors are logged in the Windows error logs. To install it I just replaced the 4 files on my test system on which the prior version had been working fine. When I restore the 4 files from the prior 1.2.6 preview that you built in October Aero Glass starts okay again. I'm not sure whether mixing and matching components is reasonable at all, but I tried replacing just DWMGlass.dll from today's build, without changing anything else, and got the same symptom. No DWM startup and nothing written to the debug.log. Sorry I don't have better news for you. Let me know what other info I can provide. -Noel

In any case, I'd really like to know if anyone else has found this setting to affect anything. -Noel

Like you, I don't know what applications use WPF. It's possible most don't (using GDI instead, which may not be capable of this adjustment, I don't know). Given that the ClearType tuner application allows the choice I was thinking that the setting ought to actually do something. I have not been able to find an application that IS affected by this. Applications like Notepad and Wordpad, as well as dialogs like those put out by WinVer always use the full amount of color. Internet Explorer always uses 0 color. Visual Studio 2013 I believe is considered to be a WPF application, yet I can see color in the rendering of text from that application. In other words, it doesn't work and it's shrouded in such mystery that it's impossible even to define what "it" is. -Noel

Sorry if I wasn't completely clear in my rendering of the problem. The basic assumption (which Microsoft may indeed be lying about) is that one of the parameters that can be set by the ClearType tuner is how much color should be used in the subpixel rendering. See: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/text/archive/2006/10/18/tips-for-improving-your-wpf-text-rendering-experience.aspx That article suggests that the ClearTypeLevel - which is influenced by the ClearType Tuner panel I illustrated above - tunes the amount of color used in font rendering. As I have two end monitors that are turned up sideways, I'd like to completely disable the colored subpixel rendering entirely on them. It only serves to add color fringing, which is subtly visible. In Windows 8.1 this doesn't work properly either, but I've given up on trying to get Microsoft to improve 8.1. Basically the ClearType font rendering process now uses full color in doing the subpixel rendering. I'm quite sure this once worked (possibly in Windows 7, possibly in 8 or early versions of 8.1) - I'm not really sure when this particular thing in Windows went wrong. Thus neither Windows 8.1 nor 10 appear to respond to changes to the ClearTypeLevel setting in the Avalon.Graphics key. They use full color at all times as I illustrated in post 1 above. What I'd like to know is whether if you use the panel entry I illustrated above (or enter a ClearTypeLevel value of 0 in the proper DISPLAY subkey of the Avalon.Graphics registry key) do you still see color in font rendering. As a side note, and only distantly related to this issue, Internet Explorer (since version 9 I think) NEVER uses color in its subpixel rendering - which probably explains why I haven't been too bothered by this feature not working on my side monitors. -Noel

Interestingly, I seem to be able to affect the contrast/darkness of fonts smoothed with ClearType, but not the use of color. I'm wondering if you have tried the ClearType Tuner and see the same thing... Note that to test this thoroughly you should run the ClearType Tuner first, then log off/on, then look at GDI-rendered fonts. I am running the ClearType Tuner a second time in this image to capture the entire effect in one image: -Noel

Hey BigMuscle, hope things are going well for you. If you have a moment to prep one, I'll be happy to test a new build with your latest code that sets the inactive title bar color (sans alpha). I see your latest x64 test build is still from October 24. If it's not convenient, don't worry about it. -Noel

I was surprised such decisions are based solely on the name of the installer executable. In this day and age of signatures, etc., stuff like that really seems like something of substance that Microsoft ought to be working to improve if they're truly concerned about security - instead of just futzing around incessantly with the desktop theme. Not that I would want a more thorough block of the Classic Shell installer - please don't get me wrong... While it's clear Microsoft's keen to get people to test their new Start Menu implementation, It was just plain nasty of them to add Classic Shell to the database of "incompatible" programs. Seems like they should be dinged publicly for stuff like this, but even the designer of Classic Shell (Ivo Beltchev) said on his forum that there are one or two things that aren't fully compatible between the released Classic Shell and the new Windows 10, so who can complain too loudly? And so we have a security hole in Microsoft's software to work around Microsoft's attempt to block software they don't like. At Microsoft someone's forgotten who's supposed to be doing things to benefit whom. -Noel

Hm, I have rebuilt it with a slighty different manifest and it seems to work again. False alarm, I guess. -Noel

Just noticed a job I had scheduled for startup, with [ ] Run with highest privileges set, is not running. Note the status listed... This was working as of build 9860, and may represent a fundamental change in being able to run things that need Administrative privileges. I haven't had time to look into it any further... -Noel

Yep, my test setup feels reasonable again as well. I now find myself hoping that Microsoft doesn't make Windows 10 worse in ways that make it ultimately impossible to do this. My impression is that you'll just hear about fewer releases on the "Slow" path, not the same ones later. -Noel

If you mean everything about Aero Glass, yes, it appears to. I've updated my theme atlas to match it. It makes it more pleasant to test. http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/FauxBordersRoundedCorners.png Microsoft has been playing about with the theme atlas file, and something doesn't quite line up between the theme software implementation and the current theme atlas, so I made some tweaks to try to tidy that up. I don't think it looks too bad, but there's probably room for improvement... -Noel

Symbols for dwmcore.dll are online. Theme atlas elements have moved again. -Noel

The information was discovered/revealed via sharing of info on forums, including some experimentation by yours truly... http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=19&p=15647#p15624 ...proving that a group of people can work together to be greater than the sum of their parts. -Noel

ClassicShell is actively removed by Microsoft, and the installer was added to the list of incompatible programs, BUT... Rename the installer to CS.exe and run it, and it goes in just fine. -Noel