NoelC

Sigh. I still remember the time when one would pay dearly for tech because of the value it brought, back in the golden age of computing... Now it's free, and delivers no value. It's a good thing we're progressing. -Noel

I've confirmed that the new 1.5.1.806 debug Regsvr32-installable DWMGlass DOES work with the 1.1.0.0 UxTSB.dll. I am using an Aero 7 theme with it right now. -Noel

The only way "it'll stabilize" is if Microsoft hires a whole different crew. Starting with management with integrity, and ending with real engineers who can both do good, solid OS work and who ALSO care about the policies of the company enough to flat refuse to turn the product into malware even if management of the "modern" school tries to make that happen. -Noel

OK - I did this: Stopped AeroHost in Task Scheduler. Killed DWM.exe. Uninstalled the prior debug Modernframe with: regsvr32 /u C:\AeroGlass\ModernFrame-x64-Debug.dll Copied the new debug DWMGlass.dll from the 7z file to C:\AeroGlass. Installed new debug DWMGlass.dll with: regsvr32 C:\AeroGlass\DWMGlass.dll Ran the AeroHost entry in Task Scheduler. Explorer crashed once during the startup and listed a "Critical event" in the Reliability Monitor. There was a very brief screen flash. After the brief flash the glass effects came right up. Glass effects come right up after a reboot. Debug window, pop-up dialog, and watermark are shown as expected. The Settings App comes right up with glass effects. Debug window is shown as expected. Observations: The title backing "glow" is now properly positioned behind the title text in the title bar of the Modern Settings App. The title text of the Modern App is white when it is current, but if it is not the current window it is gray and harder to read. Title text of File Explorer windows is white (my selected color) when current or not current. The Aero Glass GUI configuration application "Whose settings..." startup dialog has the title jammed to the left. Explorer crashed once and the screen flashed blue on exit of the Aero Glass GUI configuration app. In brief usage, I am not seeing any other instability. Screen grabs: Log: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/14393/Build806Debug.log Look for the activity leading to an Explorer crash around 7:58:28. At that time I had just closed the Aero Glass GUI tool. Anything in particular beyond the above you'd like me to test? -Noel

>Love that image for a proposed configuration menu. Sure, but Microsoft isn't going to backpedal on this one. They HAD essentially what is proposed there. Apparently they're convinced they can do it as well or better than the majority of people, and their agenda is to close the system entirely so that they manage it. In a related article, there's a great quote: -Noel

Businessmen may say Microsoft is being "smart". In my world "smart" just doesn't describe doing things that bring quick profit at the detriment of trust and the long-term good of the world. Being "smart" is what they did in the past, that led to them being a viable company that brought positive change to the world for 3 and a half decades. Their current tactics simply have no positive future. -Noel

Thing is, the majority of people are content to just make do... It really is a "raise the temperature slowly and boil us alive" situation. Time was, if you pushed into territory where society didn't accept what you were doing morally, you backed off. Now you invoke a campaign to do no less than change the norms of society - in order to be able to pursue profit that was previously unavailable. It's how yesteryear's malware author became this year's cloud company. I have trouble as seeing that as anything but evil. -Noel

I took no offense, and I wasn't responding specifically to you Jody - I know we're substantially on the same side, and that you're describing the world as it is. In fact I'm very glad to see this subject discussed. It NEEDS to be discussed, because the message and belief that "mobile will take it from here, you can stop with desktop computers now" will destroy general purpose computing. Computing as a tool. Computing that is needed by those who create technology. We won't even be able to maintain what we already have without real computers. Not everyone gets to be an executive. Someone still has to push around the details and make things work. As with all things, balance is needed. I don't know what the big companies are thinking... It seems eerily along the lines of, "someone else (the government? Skynet?) will do the work. We just want to make toys and profit insanely." Maybe trying to take over the world is a natural outgrowth of insane levels of wealth. I just don't feel like giving up control of my tech. -Noel

Only the Accent tab will affect the translucency and color for current Win 10 installations. Big Muscle has said he'll hide the one that's not functional in a future release. -Noel

The side shadow resources just don't match up with the bottom shadow resource. It's actually harder to get right than you'd think. Add rounded corners and it gets even more challenging. And don't forget, there are two sets of resources, for active windows and inactive windows. That gives rise to the possibility of deeper shadows for the active window as a subtle eye-catching cue, and also (since we have Aero Glass) for making the shadow slightly tinted - as though light is showing through the glass and coloring the background... -Noel

By gosh, I think we may have inadvertently found the first truly good use for that "Modern UI" business where screen elements move around to fill up empty space. When the ad is not shown it uses the whole window for real info - unlike web pages that leave blank spaces. -Noel

You actually enable and use SmartScreen? You realize that causes all your network activity to be sent to Microsoft, right? Not to mention putting them in an anti-competitive position... Have you noticed that things not sold through their App Store are labeled as "dangerous"? There are better ways to avoid visiting bad sites that don't involve running extra software, giving up your privacy, and giving Microsoft control over what you can run. Do you WANT to send every web address you choose to a central location for approval before you can visit it? This cloud crap they've invented to "improve security" is just ridiculous. -Noel

Which one is the "Status input box" and where are you expecting to see it? I have one that says "Write a public message on your own feed...": -Noel

I'm looking (albeit not aggressively yet) for the same thing for collaboration sessions. And I would like the communications, once established, to be only between the peers. I was most recently reading about TeamSpeak 3. That requires a server to be set up (or to use an already online server). Obviously the former would be more private, and it would be okay for me as I have a machine online that runs 24/7. I'd welcome more info on TeamSpeak, as I have not yet actually tested it. -Noel

Looks like we've accomplished the same things in different ways. Your Working set and Commit size are actually showing as larger than mine. Thanks for letting me know that my ad (and SkypeBrowserHost) blocking strategy is effective with Skype. I didn't realize that others see ads in the places you described. -Noel

I'm imagining he's just pointing out that there is an equivalent UI on the newer systems for reading the WEI numbers, not to mention pointing out that winaero.com has a lot of nice stuff available. In a world where Windows is getting worse (not to mention less overtly tweakable) it makes sense that tweaking information, tools, sites, etc. will become more and more prominent. Probably the more appropriate word would be "hacking" rather than "tweaking", but "hacking" has taken on negative connotations. -Noel

Those who think that young people will be able to do anything more useful with mobile tech - no matter how young / flexible they feel they are by comparison to someone who they believe is old and stiff - are deluded. I'm not old (yet). I'm wise. I have experience. I know my a** from a hole in the ground. It's not a matter of being young or old, flexible or inflexible. It's a matter of understanding what's actually useful in the real world. What it takes to create rather than just use. The root problem is that people who carry around mobile technology feel they're doing important things, when they don't really even have a handle on what's important. Or how hard you have to work to do something important. THAT is what's going to undo everything. Looked at another way: Someone working at the limits of their human abilities, when aided by a top notch collection of technology is always going to outdo someone working at the limits of their abilities and aided by necessarily limited because it's mobile technology. Limited in power. Limited by battery life. Limited by poorer connectivity. Limited by small size. What could you think of if you never, ever had to worry about battery management or never, ever lost a few hours (days) due to an ill-timed update? Or never had to wait for the information you requested to be painted on the screen. How well could you communicate if you didn't have to ask the person on the other end to repeat themselves so much? That crap just makes people weary. We don't need more weariness. The future would be better served by people who aren't slaves to their technology, but instead are its master. Nothing Microsoft or most others are doing right now seeks to make you more the master of your technology. I believe I'm pretty adept at applying technology. Hey, I'm using Windows 8.1 to advantage in a world where most others stopped on 7. Years ago I got good things from Vista where most stayed on XP. I haven't changed; I embrace new things and make the best of them by applying my considerable experience. You can see from the original post in this thread that I'm no stranger to figuring out Win 10. Every new release that's come out, I give "Apps", "The Win 10 Experience", "Cloud Integration", and the whole 9 yards a fresh new try, with an open mind. And, unfortunately, every time I have reached the same conclusion. It's not like I'm living in the past. It's like Windows 10 just isn't better. Even that - EVEN JUST BEING AS GOOD BUT NOT BETTER - I could live with, because there are advantages to keeping current. But Microsoft increasing the ongoing cost in time and weariness to make Windows just not be worse - by releasing new alpha quality software constantly, by adopting "our way or the highway" policies, by being so arrogant that they think they know what people need better than the people themselves... That ongoing cost is increasing, and it has become simply unacceptable. We need things to be better, and "better" is a long way from "almost as good if you work hard and tweak like crazy". -Noel

Get another 4 GB RAM stick and the memory performance will rise. It moves up to dual channel access with two DIMMs. I don't know about where you are, but here 4GB of it can be found on eBay for $20 or $30 or so. -Noel

Not sure I'd accept mandatory telemetry in return for a new Windows 7 service pack... My Win 7 system, weaned off updates entirely, just hums along without trouble now. It's hard to want more from it, save for maybe new device support for a new system one day... What do I need Microsoft for? And... My Win 8.1 workstation just hit 60 days uptime today. Anything hoping to replace it has to be pretty much as complete and reliable, or it's a non-starter. By contrast, Windows 10 is a perpetual-starter. They never let it mature. If I can turn - with tweaking and augmentation - Win 10 from the out-of-box playtoy they deliver into a mostly serious system, I'm pretty sure that says Microsoft could do it starting with the Win 10 codebase. Then they just need to adopt a more rational release strategy, because contrary to fashionable opinion, the world does not really need (I didn't say want, I said need) a new operating system every 6 months. Longer release cycles would give time for missing pieces to be developed by the world, a loyal user base to be developed, etc., as it has always been. Never forget that business only just barely gave up XP relatively recently for Win 7. That's pretty much the antithesis of continuous releases. You can't build on a moving foundation, and you can't figure out how to adeptly use something in just a few months. -Noel

Heh heh heh, Drugwash, you and I have some things in common. I'm typing this on a keyboard literally made in 1985 or thereabouts (and have a few spares in the closet). Some things just haven't been improved on since then. -Noel

That's pretty much what I have now. At the moment it's actually better to run the older OS on the hardware for general desktop operations. But it would always be best to have one integrated system on which everything's available and optimal. It's most integrated that way. But you're right, given the availability of Virtual Machines, there are no real "you can't get there from here" situations any more. -Noel

With each new distribution of a major build, Windows 10 has needed serious re-tweaking. Some software - such as Aero Glass for Win 10 - doesn't work right at first and so the turning of the system into something actually worth using necessarily has to wait. So here we are, at the end of October 2016, and I can state that just in the past couple of days I have finally gotten the "Anniversary Update" - 14393.351 - into shape to where I consider it actually usable. What's that, 4 months after release? This is why it's better to have operating system releases only every few years. Well, I have to qualify that... I still have several beta bits of Aero Glass for Win 8+ running, and beta firewall software, but it's finally acceptable to use. Listed here are some of the things needed to achieve sufficient usability as a serious desktop system that's App-free and divorced from the cloud, yet all hangs together. These sound deceptively simple, but the devil is in the details. Tweaking to increase privacy and control of Windows Updates. Disabling of UAC. 3rd party software for Start menu, deny-by-default firewall, various maintenance tasks. Setup of features not enabled by default (e.g., System Restore, backup). Desktop usability enhancement (e.g., Aero Glass, replacement Aero 7 theme, various other small tweaks). Verification that needed applications still work. Removal of all but the Settings App, removal of OneDrive, disabling of settings sync, use of only a local account. Removal of many unnecessary scheduled jobs. Reconfiguration of browser, augmentation with custom blacklists. Things that even STILL make replacing Win 8.1 with it unacceptable for my use on actual hardware systems here at my business: ATI has ceased including features I need in their current display drivers (e.g., per channel calibration). I don't know whether a Catalyst driver suite from 2015 could work with the latest Win 10, but that's what I'm using on Win 8.1 now. Media playing features are reduced, though most of the media I'd like to play so far seems to play in Media Player. Even with all the tweaking, the Taskbar isn't quite as usable as with an older system, since themes can't change it. Microsoft disrupts compatibility and stability far too often, even with my exercising manual control over updates. I would need to set Windows Update to the CBB (Current Branch for Business) at the very least. I continue to re-evaluate Windows 10 to determine whether I can move "up" to the latest OS, in order to stay current, compatible, etc., but for now this one stays on a VM as a curiosity only. I had extra hope this time around, because with Win 8, upon the release of Win 8.1 a year later I thought it was good enough to move up to (and I'm glad I did). I keep wishing that Microsoft will ultimately release something that improves the state of the art in computing again, but alas all they really seem to be doing is hanging new apps on the old kernel and making things less and less efficient. I fear they've lost all the people who know how to do serious operating system work. Trouble is, it just won't be viable to continue to run an old version of Windows forever. -Noel

Are you starting System Restore from the Win Recovery environment (i.e., by going through the Advanced Boot menu)? In past versions of Windows I always found that to be more reliable. I haven't tried a System Restore lately on Win 10 build 14393.351. Thanks for the reminder that I should test that - as well as backup. -Noel

Imagine they have no interest in having people run Windows on the things. -Noel