NoelC

Just keep in mind that If you replace the files, you'll either need to reboot to get the new Aerohost.exe running or stop it via the Task Scheduler, log out/in, then start it again. -Noel

1.2.5 in and working perfectly here. I just overlaid the files from the .7z after renaming the old ones to xxxx.xxx_1.2.1. I assumed there's no need to reinstall if 1.21 was working fine. [2014-05-08 12:15:50][0x2084:0x2704] Aero Glass for Win8.1 v1.2.5 x64 correctly loaded (C:\BIN\dwmglass.dll). [2014-05-08 12:15:50][0x2084:0x1E70] dwmcore.dll version 6.3.9600.17041 [2014-05-08 12:15:50][0x2084:0x1E70] udwm.dll version 6.3.9600.17031 For those who may not have noticed, I have recently slightly updated my themeatlas.png file to clean up the faux rounded corners just a bit. I don't know if Big Muscle has my latest version on his page. http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/themeatlas.png -Noel

Yes, I use some tricks of light and shadow in the drop shadow portion of the theme atlas to give the appearance slightly rounded corners. I like 'em that way. -Noel

My suggestion: Visit forums dedicated to problem solving and tuning SSD operations. I have no idea whether Crucial has good support, but one of the factors that influenced my decision to buy OCZ brand SSDs was the EXCELLENT support given by both OCZ and non-OCZ personnel on their online forum. I saw people reporting problems, sure, but I also saw them being solved. A recurring theme on the forums is that not every system responds well to the installation of an SSD. In many cases advice comes from experts to clear CMOS, reset BIOS parameters to certain settings, etc. and it does tend to solve SSD problems. And you might even just have a malfunctioning SSD drive. Chances are the problems you're seeing are unrelated to Aero Glass for Win 8.1. -Noel

Of course there are the BIG ones, like Classic Shell and Aero Glass for Win 8, but one of my favorite little free utilities (not written by me) allows me to turn off automatic Windows Updates entirely, and notifies me of the availability of updates in much the same way the notifications came through with Windows 7: http://www.quppa.net/wunotify/ -Noel

Exactly. Windows 8 is almost exclusively about manipulating people. They just don't make any money in an ongoing fashion without continuing to improve it, and everyone wants to make money nowadays as a sales facilitator. Building better mousetraps is harder than letting other folks do the programming. I just don't understand why a company the size of Microsoft couldn't do all of the above - BOTH improve the OS *and* build an infrastructure through which to facilitate sales. The folks running the show must be real simpletons. -Noel

In my opinion, it's to sway "fashion" in the direction of selling more Microsoft devices. Tablets with flat, lifeless UI - good. Desktops with plenty of power but ugh, skeuomorphism - bad. Consider... Even Apple devices are now switching to the flat look. IPads have had plenty of UI responsiveness and battery life, even back when they had wood grain, decent 3d looking buttons, and drop shadows. Computers and GPUs are not getting slower. The amount of computation that goes into something like Aero Glass is inconsequential. Do you hear of people claiming Big Muscle's Aero Glass replacement software slows their desktop down? I haven't. Now you know what I mean in this thread. -Noel

Well said, LasseSL500. Only thing I would add is "and drop shadow", which a custom themeatlas file can bring to the party with the help of BigMuscle's software. -Noel

For me, after I put in the Spring Update and rebooted, Aero Glass for Win 8.1 went through a couple of extra flashes then came right up and has worked perfectly ever since. It loaded the needed symbols quite quickly. You can temporarily prevent the software from starting up by holding down the control key. To stop it more permanently, you can open your Task Scheduler and disable or delete the entry that starts aerohost. I don't know how you can make the uninstaller successfully delete the files, but once you have stopped the software from starting you can of course go find the folder in which they were installed and delete them manually. -Noel

Since Windows (Microsoft) does not provide APIs to directly allow the augmentation of the desktop Aero implementation with additional effects (e.g. translucent glass), Big Muscle's software must resort to measures to install itself that resemble the tactics taken by some malware. THAT DOES NOT MEAN IT IS MALWARE. There is no evidence that Big Muscle has any intent of taking over anything, but just that he wants to provide a better user experience for all of us. The important take-away that I see here is that if Aero Glass for Win 8 WERE to get wildly popular, there are measures that should probably be taken to ensure that it can resist some attempts by OTHER software/malware to take It over. Otherwise it could become a more or less "easy ride" for malware to get in. Lest you think the probability of that is low, consider: That people already have tried to hack it to remove the reminders says that there are people out there already looking at it with nefarious motives. It sucks but this is the world we live in. -Noel

I was not wrong. Thing is, many folks don't sense the subtle differences between an old style non-composited desktop and what Windows is presenting now because it's been a long time since we've had computers slow enough that we could see the actual window pixels being painted in. Remember when, on a pre DWM setup, you'd see all the controls flicker as you were resizing a window and they were all repainted before your very eyes? Many folks believe Microsoft when they say they removed Aero GLASS to save resources, when almost all of the activity is still there just to paint flat, lifeless, "digitally authentic" UI elements. One really needs hip boots mow to deal with all the Marketing speak. -Noel

I for one am glad someone with a deep knowledge of security is looking at the software and providing thoughtful feedback here. That some folks view the input as an attack on Aero Glass for Win 8.1 or trolling seems a mystery to me. There's nothing wrong with questioning how things work. It had also occurred to me that the product should ultimately add things like code signatures and some measure of self-protection. As far as not using the software on mission critical machines, well, that may make sense, but it depends on the definition of "mission critical". For serious / business use, If it increases productivity and it's reliable (i.e. Introduces an acceptably low level of additional risk), why not? People buy commercial software with who knows what in it all the time. Some of us HAVE tested this software quite thoroughly. From a reliability perspective Big Muscle seems to be a more detail-conscious and talented software designer than most or all of the folks at Microsoft these days. Are those saying it should be restricted just to frivolous use implying they believe there's unacceptable additional risk of failure or embedded malware? -Noel

The Aero implementation is still there. DWM is still present. In fact, desktop composition is now the ONLY way it works, opposed to the Classic theme of Win 7, which turned off desktop composition. It's Aero GLASS that's no longer implemented, strictly because Microsoft decided it would be better for them if they started trying to herd people to Metro/Modern. I'm sorry to pick apart terminology, but getting it wrong doesn't help make any points. I'm not opposing your viewpoint that Microsoft is going in the wrong direction - I share it. As much of Aero as is still there may imply Microsoft doesn't even have the talent to remove entire features any more. -Noel

Why? With Big Muscle's tool to restore translucency and a theme atlas to restore drop shadows it's fine. My Windows 8.1 desktop experience isn't really worse than with Win 7 Aero. That's not to say Microsoft isn't trying to make it worse. But so far 3rd party developers have been able to compensate for Microsoft's deviousness in actively hobbling the desktop in order to try to get people to love Metro/Modern. That may not be possible forever. -Noel

Wrong. Aero is there - it's just been hobbled to appear flat and lifeless. -Noel

Just a scientific wild-assed guess, but I'd say that's a component Old New Explorer has added to your system. Personally I'd suggest never running anything with "cleaner" in the name. -Noel

No! It's all hype. -Noel

I don't think I've ever seen it stated better. Thank you, xpclient. The thing that most folks don't realize is how long the pipeline is. What we're seeing released today was designed by those minions. People credit Sinofski with Win 7, but if you think about it he really just kept the pipeline flowing for things that had been originally designed years earlier. And wow, the Quote button actually worked here on the forum. -Noel

Praising security? That's just more spin. It seems like ALL there is is spin any more. People have as many problems with malware and viruses today with the latest systems as they ever had. Perhaps more. By the way, there are several easy things one can do that make a modern windows system FAR more secure, including disabling the default ability for Internet Explorer to run ActiveX from the Internet Zone, adding the MVPS hosts file to block parasite web sites, upgrading to a better 3rd party solution from the mediocre anti-malware software package Microsoft includes (and which is every malware writer's prime target), and adopting good computing practices. -Noel

I have to agree with you, Harry and all, that choice would be better than no choice. Here's a good example of something having gotten worse after XP: In XP you could set up Explorer to be quite dense - I mean you could have a lot of files/folders visible, because you could set up a small font and the lines could be made to display quite close together. Now, everything's all spread apart and airy, with ever bigger fonts, and without a configuration option to counteract that trend. Maybe that's simpler to look at, and Microsoft claims to be countering "cognitive overload", but I'm sorry - there are computer tasks that REQUIRE a lot of things to be visible at the same time, so that you can make sure you're dealing with them all. I have a huge desktop because I do a lot of these kinds of tasks. Another example is that ridiculous UAC. I understand that for laypeople it may help them avoid malware, but as a computer professional I need to be an admin full-time. Now I can't have that and run Metro/Modern apps. Who thought up that stupid, arbitrary limitation? Thank goodness there are 3rd party developers who have come to the rescue. They have figured out what can be poked where in Windows to restore the more useful functionality. They have also PROVEN that the system is capable of doing the things they have enabled, so my question is this: Why make it necessary to hack to get the features some people want? What does Microsoft save by oversimplifying the system? If anything, Microsoft seems to be putting ever more effort into building a "walled garden" to try to close off the possibility of people "having it their way". It's just the wrong direction. -Noel

I've said here and elsewhere that the effort it takes to make Windows 8 a productive system is unprecedented. I used to set up engineering workstations on Windows since the beginning and we had people doing things you'd not think possible. XP was good though it also advanced the move toward fluff. Vista actually improved on XP - after the hardware and drivers caught up with its thirst for resources. It took enough planning and sequencing and detailed knowledge to get Windows 7 tweaked/tuned up that I actually wrote a book on it. I updated the book for WIndows 8 and yes, it got a good bit thicker. A lot of folks have rose-colored memories of the great XP, but that system still did require regular reboots to keep working properly, and it wasn't as professional as we expect our current systems to be. It could easily lose its way in the middle of a big copy. It was great for its day but it is nothing special by today's standards. I still boot it up in a VM fairly often, and it always surprises me how clunky it really is. Thing is, it's possible for a computer operating system to be very, very good nowadays. It's really not the time for Microsoft (or anyone) to be turning away from advancing the state of the art in the greedy pursuit of quick money. We will not reach a "Star Trek" utopian future if we stop trying to improve computing. -Noel

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/getfile/148339

It's not just you. Microsoft seems to be populated by a bunch of noobs who prefer to do things a different way than the ways that worked in the past just because it's different. I can't complain too much though... My current setup is perfectly stable and I don't really have any reductions in functionality vs. Win 7. I used hell out of it today doing insanely heavy software development and debugging and had nary a system hiccup. It's not any better than Win 7, though - just about the same. You'd think things would have improved in 5 years. Only thing is that some kinds of disk I/O are slower in Win 8.1, but I have an insanely fast I/O subsystem so it's not noticeable in any real way except in comparative benchmarking/testing. -Noel

That's an easy workaround. Just avoid the use of the charms bar entirely. By the way, Aero Glass seems to work with the new ATI Catalyst 14.4 driver awesomely. -Noel

Used my system remotely for about a week via RDP (from an iPad no less). Aero Glass worked flawlessly. Thank you, Big Muscle. -Noel