NoelC

I read volumes into that comment. And I agree. Fad development, dumbing systems down to thunderous applause by the masses, who have no business guiding the direction of technical progress. Whether that bar could possibly ever be useful in a Windows installation on the device is the question. I suspect not, at least not for quite a while until someone does some serious driver work. Might it light up with Esc and function keys courtesy the BIOS? Who knows, but I doubt it. I wonder how many people understand the night and day difference between a set of physical keys that could be programmed and a touch panel that has no tactile feedback whatsoever. Now, a keyboard where the keycaps could be programmed (or not) with alternate graphics... THAT would be pretty cool (not to mention visible in the dark). -Noel Is it just me, or does the portrayed maturity level of the girl pictured in Drugwash's quoted image above seem right in line with that row of smileys?

You haven't embraced the Windows Update Show Hide tool? It's the only way to check updates before they are installed. And there's a group policy for instructing Win 10 (Pro at least) not to update hardware drivers. If you haven't set it up to 1) only look at updates when YOU give it the go ahead, and 2) only install the updates you haven't hidden, then you are not in control. Perhaps that's your chosen path. Microsoft doesn't feel any user should want or need control, but in order for that to be a viable approach they would need to detect when you don't have anything important to do (impossible) and to get all the updates right BEFORE delivering them (impractical for them, apparently, because it's literally at odds with their policy of having laid off their testing force). It sounds like you've signed up for insider (alpha) testing, so you're supposed to have these failures, so that Microsoft will take your feedback and act on it. I presume you're getting on the Feedback App and writing a new bug report every time you [don't] see white text on a white background. If you're just expecting someone else to fix it, then maybe you shouldn't be doing pre-release testing? The alternatives appear to be: Be an insider (alpha tester). You are the wall. They are throwing code up against you to see what sticks. Take only Current Branch (beta) versions, as soon as they come out, and keep them updated. Take Current Branch for Business (release?) versions by invoking the several months delay in Settings. Tweak whatever version you're using so that you choose when to look at updates, vet them before installing. Go through the licensing hoops to get an LTSB branch build. Stay on an older (e.g., 8.1, 7, etc.), stable version of Windows (where choices for how you choose to do Windows Update also apply). The above choices are supposedly organized in least stable to most stable order, roughly. They are documented, at least in part, here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows/manage/waas-overview But no matter what alternative you choose, with the possible exception of cutting off updates entirely on whatever OS you're currently running, you're at the mercy of what Microsoft chooses to deliver. That is the key in all this. The technical choices above are nearly meaningless if we can't trust Microsoft to do good work. The rock: If we stay on old versions and/or cut off all updates entirely, our systems will become obsolete. The hard place: Microsoft seems to be losing the ability to do good work that benefits us. -Noel Windows 10:

Thanks. Well, for what it's worth that problem has vanished diminished when I put the latest non-AppInit_DLLs experimental components in place. I'm still getting Explorer problems if I cause the Theme Atlas to reload. -Noel

Feedback on UxTSB being loaded by DWMGlass.dll on my Win 10 VM: The system boots normally, Aero Glass displays debug window and watermark, as expected, to indicate 1.5.1.738 DEBUG is being loaded. The Aero7 theme I have chosen is working. Everything looks good and controls have the appropriate visual styles (e.g. rounded button corners). As expected, the "loading DLLs for all applications through AppInit_DLLs) warning is no longer logged at bootup. Both 32 bit and 64 bit applications all have the expected theme-based visual styles. Aero Glass for Win 8+ seems to work as expected. Translucency is good, colors are as expected. I tried both with and without ModernFrame-x64-Debug.dll registered. Functionality seems equivalent in both cases. Ribbon-enabled Explorer titles are colored (white in my case) and with expected backing. The backing/glow seems a little taller than on other windows. Ribbon-enabled WordPad window titles and ModernFrame windows NO LONGER have colored titles or backing. From the sound of things, this is intentional. For me this only really matters when the window is not current, as the title text is white normally anyway when they are current. I could live with it. It all seems to work - nice job Big Muscle! Something's apparently different between my test setup and UCyborg's regarding the Explorer crashes... I'm just not seeing them. Should I be doing anything in particular? Just logging-off or rebooting via the ClassicShell start menu isn't yielding any failures. -Noel

Cyborg, you had mentioned a special UxTSB build that doesn't need to be inserted via AppInit_DLLs... I'm having trouble locating that post. NM, I found it: -Noel

That's good. I believe that limiting its effect will correct an issue with some of the fonts in version 4 of Beyond Compare. I do hope you're considering making your changes compatible with Win 8.1. -Noel

Thanks. I had an inkling that I may have missed an experimental UxTSB change, which is why I asked. -Noel

In my defense I have a fair number of icons on my desktop to do things that I need to do often. I just don't change the settings of the Aero Glass GUI very often. -Noel

Correct me if I'm wrong, Big Muscle, and not to be picky but I thought you included ModernFrame.dll in one of the Aero Glass releases at some point in the past. As I recall it was delivered with an installer-based release but not included in the manual download file. And of course there is the Experimental Versions download page where some things show up sometimes (and sometimes even more once we've logged-in). That said, there's nothing there now. Anyway, it's pretty cool that you've found a way to inject the DLL without using AppInit_DLLs. Are you thinking of trying to go that route with UxTSB as well? It's already possible to have a system that passes an SFC check (thank you for that), but it would be quite slick if it didn't log any warning at startup about AppInit_DLLs being loaded. -Noel

True. I'm used to rebooting because my Win 10 test system is a VM and takes about 15 seconds to reboot, so it's just easier/quicker than calling up Task Manager or Process Hacker, finding Explorer, and killing it. I'm not seeing any faults when logging off, though. Just when actually running the GUI tool, where Explorer restarts and logs an error in the reliability monitor. -Noel

I haven't tried anything but white, but that seems to work for me as a custom caption color. Remember that you have to reboot to see changes in the ribbon-enabled windows, because the UxTSB DLLs are loaded at boot time. -Noel

I jut realized that running the latest Aero Glass GUI tool on recent updates to Win 10 build 14393 is chalking up Explorer crashes... What I see is the desktop go blank/blue briefly when making changes to settings in the tool. I thought maybe it was a new feature to cause everything to be updated after a color or opacity change. Nothing special seems to be logged in the Aero Glass debug.log at the crash times... The only other special thing is that I have is the UxTSB64 and 32 DLLs and I am using Sagorpirbd's Aero7 theme for Win 10. -Noel

That's intriguing! Thank you, zolotron. Gems of knowledge like this are why I love this site. Out of curiosity, what resources do you see it using when run in the way you describe? For me, after having been running on my workstation for a day or so... Can't say I recall seeing any ads, but I have them blocked a number of different ways not having to do with Skype. -Noel

I'm not sure, but I don't think so. I think it was just running when Skype was running. But it's no longer running here at all, courtesy the procedure above. And so far, there's been no downside to blocking it that I can see. I have used Skype for audio and video calls, as well as chatting. That being said, I'm looking for a good alternative that harkens back to pure peer to peer communications. I'm not interested in joining Microsoft's (or anyone else's) cloud. -Noel

Not that I know of - not yet anyway. What's available is just what's on the download page. Out of curiosity, and unrelated to ModernFrame, what makes you prefer a 32 bit system over a 64 bit system? -Noel

Win 8.1 quite literally is going to be supported by Microsoft for quite a while yet, but I do understand your point of view. Documentation for older versions is difficult to maintain, not to mention the difficulty in maintaining the product itself for a dwindling audience. It turns out version 1.4.6 isn't working as well as 1.4.5 for me, so I dropped back to the older release. Maybe it's just time to end your support entirely. Version 1.4.5 worked well enough. I just have this silly idea that more people than ever are going to want to keep using older versions of Windows, and that sooner or later people will discover that Win 8.1, with appropriate tweaks (your software as one) is actually pretty darned good by comparison to anything released since. -Noel

I don't think it would have taken 94 ms to load if it were cached, unless it was somewhere in between the server and here. But it's all good - the imgur-hosted image takes 47 ms to load. So thanks for saving me almost 1/20 of a second! You might want to double check the second link in your sig while you're in the vicinity. -Noel

Tried again with the suffix a updated DLL from this afternoon. It works as well as shown above, and the Class not registered pop-up is fixed. After uninstall, Settings runs fine and looks like this: -Noel

I like that you are putting dates in the filenames. Saves me having to do it when I save the file. 1. 2. 3. Because SparkMan61 reported a problem after removal I tried unregistering the DLL, then rebooted. I saw this when I tried to start the Settings App: By the way, the only thing I have left in AppInit_DLLs is UxTSB64/32.dll now. I may have lost track as I've been busy with work lately... Have you already made a non AppInit_DLLs test version of the UxTSB DLLs? -Noel

Still got Win 10 available on it? Please download/run PassMark PerformanceTest. -Noel

>Internet works in mysterious ways… Assuming you're including the equipment and software, I'll go along with that. -Noel

That assumes you would want to use Photobucket at all, of course. I tried opening www.photobucket.com and got their small logo, "Sorry, an unexpected error occurred." and "Please try again or go back to the previous page." on an otherwise blank page. Voila, no ads from their site. I *DO* see your Hax/Nadella image though, no problem. And contrary to what Drugwash sees I guess I don't think I'm seeing any obvious delays because of it. -Noel

http://www.glass8.eu/download near the bottom. Right click and Save As a .7z file, then open with 7Zip. -Noel

Seriously? It's because they absolutely don't want you liking the way the desktop looks and works. Their goal is to eliminate the desktop entirely, and By God nothing will sway them from it. Never mind that there's nothing near as good to replace it. -Noel

That's a cool looking sticker. So did you get the machine already? That's fast! -Noel