NoelC

I bought a Win 8.1 disc in a box just to ensure I could get a full, clean install. At first blush it seems like sending Microsoft a couple hundred bucks for nothing, but boy that's been money well spent from everything I've read. I'm sorry it's worked out to be difficult for you. -Noel

Glad you weren't banned for it. The mods here seem very thoughtful and fair. -Noel

FYI, as an alternative you can set up notifications to show you who likes your posts... -Noel

All your data are belong to US. -Noel

I have Office 365 myself, and I can confirm it's an arctic desert, even though I've chosen the "dark gray" theme. Beyond just the things they do to color the elements, it's sluggish and kind of stupid. For example, if you hover your mouse over a part of a scroll bar below the thumb, so that clicking the mouse causes you to scroll down a page at a time, if you don't move the mouse the scroll bar becomes inactive and you can no longer click it. I assume this is some kind of touch-screen BS, but who thought it was proper to make that change for folks who use mouse and keyboard? I have honestly considered trying to scare up a license for Office 2010 and downgrade when my pre-paid year of subscription expires. I have only used 2003 myself (which Windows 8 saw to it was incompatible), but I've heard 2010 isn't bad. -Noel

Try to create your own legitimate business where you sell your software to put bread on your table, and you'll get a different opinion of the mental misfits who crack software rather than put their talents to legitimate creation of products. Cracking software is stealing. Criminal activity. Illegal. And people who download cracked software are complicit in the act, not to mention just stupid for inviting the kinds of viruses crackers create into their own computers. I'm not saying the world is perfect, but it works better when people are honest. Nobody but Big Muscle has any idea why he does things the way he does. For a long time I've had an idea that maybe he's been influenced by an external force (e.g., Microsoft's lawyers), but I don't know. We can't know. Maybe he's not allowed to say. But whatever way he does it, it's entirely up to him. -Noel

Dave, please edit your post and take out the link. Bigmuscle knows about it. He's had several conversations with the slime that does the cracking. -Noel

Are you speaking of UXTheme or some other tool? I see you have something called UXStyle in your screen grab. -Noel

They clearly thought that they could manipulate change into being - controlling what's fashionable on a desktop as it were - much more quickly by feeding people intermediate versions that gradually took the edge off, well, the edges. And yes, it's fun to gossip and speculate. -Noel

I believe the tool BigMuscle released at one time would allow a theme to be loaded and the system to maintain SFC system integrity, but I've lost track of where he posted it. It's not a given that a Windows 8.1 system should fail an SFC check. Maintaining system integrity is a worthwhile goal, as it avails you of some restorative functionality in case of problems (SFC /SCANNOW and DISM /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth come to mind) -Noel

The Startup tab is another fine tool, but it doesn't show you nearly as much stuff as Autoruns, which is incredibly thorough. Not only do you see the things in the various Run keys and Startup group, but it shows you services, drivers, shell extensions, and more... What I showed in the screen grab above is a small part of it. Note the scroll bar. Avast is still good if you only install the Shields. I haven't had any problems with things being broken (but of course no two of us runs the same stuff). There's a bunch of "Fluffware" they include, in the central column of their installer under the heading of "Tools", but all that's easy to deselect. The only one of about a dozen fluffware tools I use, as I mentioned above, is the Software Updater. -Noel

Does UxTheme Patcher break system integrity (i.e., SFC /VERIFYONLY will fail)? I thought it did, but I don't use it so I'm not sure. If so, it's something to keep in mind. -Noel

It's eerie but that's exactly the number of points I'd have chosen. I thought of that number before I read the 3rd line. -Noel

If there's one thing we've learned in recent history, it's to wait and actually see how it works vs. listening to what they say. Another thing is that the "Public Preview" isn't a preview of how it's going to work, but some kind of Marketing tool to try to ease the shock of migrating in the direction Microsoft wants us to go. So even when we see how the preview works it's not that meaningful. A good example is the way they phased out Aero Glass in the Windows 8 previews. It was less and less glassy/stylish with each new release. Pardon the pun, but it was easy to "see through" that plot, though a lot of people WERE fooled, and some even today think everything's flat because of all the extra compute time Microsoft claims to have saved (which is a misnomer). Don't believe what you hear.Start to form opinions on what you see in previews.Get to know what's released.Judge based on what the world of 3rd party developers turn it into a year after release, and only THEN decide whether to use it. -Noel

Sorry, was busy elsewhere much of today. The nice feature about the Avast Software Updater is that if you do have a version of an application you'd like to keep from updating, you can ask Avast to avoid notifying you about it. For a while I had a version of the Java Runtime Environment I needed to hold back from updating, so I exercised this feature. I don't know of a good reference for what can easily be disabled, though there are some good places to be familiar with (BlackViper comes to mind). The approach I've taken is this, for a given item starting/running in the background. 1. Research the item. Sometimes what it does can be easily identified. Sometimes it takes more digging. 2. If it remains a suspect for being "unneeded extraware", try disabling it with Autoruns and logging off/on. 3. See whether any critical functionality is missing or broken. 4. Every now and then look over the Task Manager. See if more processes are running than you had before. It's not something quickly done - it's more like a long-term hobby - and it requires confidence that you can recover from pretty much any problem you bring on yourself. Over time I've found it possible to pare down the list quite significantly as you've seen. However, I can't really imagine non-technical folks doing this aggressively without getting into trouble. Caution IS warranted. On the other hand, pretty much everyone says Windows "slows down over time", while mine does not. I have only ever had to have exactly one installation of each of my Windows versions I've used over the years. It's possible to keep a Windows system lean and functional. In fact, on several occasions when I've had to replace a computer I just restored my Windows installation from the prior night's backup and kept working on the replacement hardware. -Noel

Some folks do love it. I have no problem with it myself; my business runs on it. But it's proving to be a market flop by all forms of statistics gathering so far. Honestly, I believe it takes a bit too much work to make it into a nice system. Consider that all of us are here in this thread because we prefer Aero Glass and are geek enough to run it. 99.9% of the public have no idea that Aero Glass for Win 8.1 exists, and 90% of them probably wouldn't have the expertise to install/manage it on their systems. Please don't wish that Microsoft continues in the direction of shunning serious computing to exclusively pursue consumer toys. There's no future in that approach. They're big enough and (supposedly) smart enough that they could advance the state of the computing art AND make toys. By the way, I'm just about to complete 10 full days on my current Win 8.1 bootup after the last set up updates, using my system daily to do all sorts of intensive things, and Aero Glass for Win 8.1 has performed absolutely flawlessly. This is truly professional-grade software. -Noel

There usually is a way to prevent an auto-update, and it never hurts to research things before allowing an update. Nothing says you have to accept an update on the first day it was released. Conservatism says you should wait, and listen online for buzz about how well it works. As an example, there's a lot of feedback on the Adobe forums about how Photoshop CC 2014 removes some things (like the Oil Paint filter and flash-based extension panels) that were in the predecessor Photoshop CC version. Some people just remove the prior version first, then find out later. But savvy folks visit the forum and ask, "is there a good reason not to remove the old version?", to which the answer is often "It's up to you, but you may want to keep it around a while to ensure you don't need the things that were removed". I've already started a thread on this if you'd like to discuss it further... http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/172283-strategies-to-manage-software-updates-auto-manual -Noel

Whenever you install software, it may offer "helpful" settings that allow you to choose to let it update itself. Consider choosing NOT to allow it. Chances are deselecting those options will cause fewer services or background programs to be run when you log in. People complain that "Windows slows down over time". Accepting all the "handy" default settings and letting extra background applications run is a key reason why. I suggest downloading and running a freeware tool called Autoruns and looking over all the programs set to start when you start your system and log in. Surprisingly, a MAJORITY of such programs are not normally necessary for the correct functioning of a system. Autoruns allows you to disable an item (by unchecking a box), so that not only is it not run, but at some future time you can see that you've intentionally disabled it. That may matter, because you can easily know if a newer version of the program has installed it's background program yet again, and at that point you can disable it again with confidence (or just delete it). Consider the number of startup items I have disabled... Many of these things can be handled either manually (i.e., by occasionally going out and checking for updates yourself), or by a semi-automated process by which another program checks to see if updates are available. There's one such program, Avast antivirus, which has one feature that's actually useful: The Software Updater. It can be configured to look for updates to a growing list of programs it knows about, and let you know (via a system tray notification) that an update is available. -Noel

I find that many applications (and the operating system itself) want to automatically update themselves. Trouble is, if your use of your computer is for more than just frivolous entertainment, auto-updating behavior can happen at a bad time and really throw a monkey wrench into things. For example, let's say you really need to get some work done right away, and at the moment you boot up your computer you find Windows Updates start going in, delaying the bootup. Or once you're up and running Office updates itself. Or maybe Windows Update delivers a printer driver that unexpectedly leaves you unable to print - or your monitor color profile was updated unexpectedly and now your colors in your photo editing software are messed up. The list goes on. The worst time to have to deal with the side effects of an unexpected update is right when you need your computer the most. The best answer seems to be: Set everything so that you're notified of available updates, but they're not installed automatically without your giving the go ahead. Unfortunately, software makers are catering more and more to the "computing for dummies" audience, who really don't want to be bothered with computer maintenance chores. Or maybe the "lazy" audience who somehow never gets around to applying updates unless they're forced. Whatever the reason, I know I find automatically applied updates exactly wrong, and prefer to choose when to apply them. Right now the only thing that auto-updates on my system without my go-ahead is my anti-malware database. Trouble is, setting up a system to work this way this isn't trivial, so I thought maybe a thread on how to manage update behavior would be good. Let's discuss everything from Windows Updates to application updates here. Here's an initial suggestion... Windows Updates Set Windows Update to use one of the alternate settings other than "Install updates automatically (recommended)". I personally use the "Never check for updates (not recommended)" setting. Optionally, use a 3rd party tool such as WUNotify to check for updates and notify you in a less intrusive fashion when updates become available. WUNotify tells me via a System Tray notification when updates are available; I never get a complete screen overlay warning me to install updates from Microsoft. When notified of an available set of updates, look over the number of them and their sizes to give you an idea of about how long and intrusive the process is likely to be. Maybe it's not appropriate right now, since you have work to do, or maybe your backup isn't up to date. So you can plan when to apply them. I also suggest, when notified, that you use the "More Information" links provided for each update to know what's going in for each update. It's good to know when you're getting a whole block of bugfixes or a security fix or a new version of a component like the browser, and you may choose to exclude some (e.g., a display driver release where you know you're up to date from the video card maker's web site already). Some knowledge is always better than guessing what they're updating. Similar things can be done for most every application, though setting this up can be non-trivial in some cases. I'll put more in subsequent posts about how to manage updates for browser add-ons, desktop accessories, etc. -Noel

My point is not that Win 8 people are avoiding upgrading to Win 8.1. It's that fewer and fewer additional Win 7 people are moving up to Win 8 (point anything). The product is a flop! -Noel

Most software can be reconfigured to update only when the user initiates or allows it. The only thing I allow to be updated in real time automatically on my system is my antivirus definitions, and so far that hasn't bitten me. Everything else - Windows Updates, Office updates, Adobe software updates, various browser plug-ins, various tools - is only updated when I choose to do it. Usually that's once a month or less. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes the full expertise of a career software engineer to discover all the settings to accomplish this. Often it involves research and disabling "auto updater" applications that are set to start in the background. This has another advantage in that fewer processes are normally running, keeping the system lean and fast. For what it's worth, Avast antivirus comes with a nice little tool called, not surprisingly, "Software Updater", which can watch various applications for updates available online, and can be set to tell you (via a notification from the system tray) when a new version is available. Let me know if you'd like more detail on how to accomplish setting for manual updates only with Windows or specific application software. If I've done it I'm happy to share the technique (it's also in my books). Might be good to start a separate topic on this, now I think about it... -Noel

Missing glow behind the titles of ribbon-enabled windows such as File Explorer and Wordpad, is well-known. Those window elements are composited from resources from some other place than those managed by Aero Glass for Win 8.1, and a theme replacement needs to be done to affect those particular titles. I've come to just ignore it myself, rather than delve into theme replacement. Managing themes is outside the realm of Aero Glass for Win 8.1, though BigMuscle did at one time offer a tool that will relax the security requirements of Windows 8 and facilitate loading of themes. But again, that's separate from Aero Glass, and unfortunately I've lost track of the URL from which to download it. Maybe someone else remembers it. -Noel

Unfortunately, while those of us with experience and good web research skills have Windows 8.1 running great the thing doesn't seem to be good for the general public. They're just not buying it! Even though they can get a great Aero Glass replacement. If I had never upgraded from Win 7 to Win 8.1 - something that a detailed return on investment analysis led me to do, and I have had no surprises - I would probably have accomplished pretty much the same things by now, though I'd know a little less about Windows 8. Win 7 was functional, and Win 8.1 is functional - just not more so. And, importantly, it took more effort to get it to this stage. I think people don't relish the idea of paying for something that (even after they bend over backwards) really isn't any better at anything than its predecessor. -Noel

That's not in Windows 8.1, HarryTri. -Noel

We've reached the "it just works fine" stage. Edit: Also, the "no one in their right mind is upgrading to Windows 8.1" stage. -Noel