NoelC

You still allow ads to be downloaded to your computer? How quaint. Telemetry probably showed that people hardly clicked on the up arrow. I'm guessing - beyond the fact that the up arrow has always been smaller and lighter than the left and right icons - that it's because really only smart people use the hierarchical file system on their computer as anything but a big garbage can, and smart people block telemetry. It's kind of like some people's cars. Should car makers stop putting in carpet and floor mats just because the lazy masses fill them up with discarded drink cups, used tissues, and leaves? If dumbass masses don't need a hierarchical start menu, why should they need a hierarchical file system? You just KNOW what's coming next, after removal of the up arrow. Microsoft removed the up arrow once before, but that was before much of the rest of the system was so dumbed down, so people noticed and raised a stink. Now that we're all getting weary of complaining, they go back and remove it again. Yep, Microsoft: Single-mindedly moving Windows away from being an operating system. Mark my words: NOTHING they've screwed up, then unscrewed under public pressure, will remain unscrewed. -Noel

It's utterly quiet. I don't use a video card for it (being a server, I'm not using it much interactively, though the Intel GPU isn't too slow), so the PSU is quite sufficient. -Noel

I remembered I had taken a picture of the innards when I first unboxed it... -Noel

It's an underappreciated little system. As you see tested above, excluding the cheap monitor I have less than $500 total in the system. By the way, the RAID is all via the motherboard SATA III ports and Intel RST drivers. -Noel

And no doubt you now see the Opacity is turned all the way up, right? Try cranking down on that. -Noel

By the way, some benchmarks I did just now on my T20... -Noel

I bought a PowerEdge T20 last year with the dual core Pentium G3220 (a Haswell chip). I run Win 7 x64 Ultimate and it's actually quite quick. In my case I bought three OCZ Vertex 3 120 GB drives and made a RAID 5 array from which everything boots and runs. I also put in an old SATA 512 GB HDD I had laying around so that it would have internal backup beyond the redundancy of the RAID 5 array. Even with the modest 2 core processor I got it's turned out to be a great little system - and for a great price. I increased the RAM in mine to 8 GB with some inexpensive DIMMs from eBay, and that pushed the performance up a little more. With the ECC RAM and RAID 5 it's been 100% reliable for over a year now. The longest I've had it run between reboots (initiated by me) is a bit over 3 months. I imagine with the E3-1225v3 it will be an absolutely great performer. The Passmark site rates that processor at 7,025, which ain't too shabby for a 4 core chip. You'll have 4 logical processors, since the E3-1225v3 does not have Hyperthreading. What OS are you thinking of putting on it? I can tell you Win 7 can work perfectly with it. I also had a test installation of Win 10 on it once. -Noel

The Accent tab was showing in the desktop screenshot. Have you got the configuration tool in two different places? -Noel

Edward10432, have you tried adjusting the settings in the Accent tab of the Aero Glass configuration tool? -Noel

George-Z: ModernFrame.dll is for giving Metro/Modern/Universal Apps on the desktop in Windows 10 have translucent chrome. Do you have Win 10 and are you running Apps in windows? If so, what build? Assuming you have Win 8.1 or newer, look carefully: Section 3 does not apply. Do not put DWMGlass.dll in the AppInit_DLLs registry value. The product was changed years ago to use the clearer name donation.key. That's the file you get if you visit the key generation part of the glass8.eu site. Big Muscle: Since people from time to time seem to have trouble reading the combined instructions carefully, even with an installer to help them, perhaps it would help to get fewer of these kinds of questions if you would make a separate section specifically for installing into each OS. That might be redundant in some parts, but I'm guessing it would ease confusion. Perhaps you could also consider adding a small "theory of operation" overview, with a very brief paragraph defining what each component does and how it fits in. That might help people who are technically competent but otherwise initially overwhelmed by details to understand how the product fits in with their systems and needs, not to mention see that they have acquired all the parts. A very brief example of the kind of overview information I mean (please feel free to use/correct/expand this in any way you see fit): DWMGlass.dll augments the function of the Windows DWM process, which composites graphics together to create the look and feel of your desktop. DWMGlass.dll gives your windows translucent borders and title bars. aerohost.exe is scheduled in Task Manager to run at bootup to manage injecting DWMGlass into the system and to see that it continues to run properly. debug.log is written with log information that describes how well Aero Glass for Win 8+ is running on your system. Debug versions write significantly more than Release versions. File dbghelp.dll aids in the logging process. donation.key is a file that acknowledges your donation and quiets reminders. It depends on your machine ID and can be generated on the glass8.eu web site. DWMGlass.dll looks for it in the AeroGlass folder. symsrv.dll and symsrv.yes (if donation.key is present) facilitate the automatic download of information from Microsoft that helps DWMGlass.dll and aerohost.exe continue to work even after Microsoft has changed the operating system via Windows Update. ModernFrame-x64-Release.dll augments DWMGlass.dll and adds Aero Glass effects to Windows 10 Modern App titles and borders. It is installed by adding it to AppInit_DLLs. AeroGlassGUI.exe is an application you can use to adjust the appearance of glass effects, including adjusting colors, corner roundness, and to load Theme Atlas files. It modifies values in the registry and informs DWMGlass.dll of changes. win8rp.png and win8rp.png.layout are Theme Atlas files that can be loaded to replace some of the graphics components from the theme to specifically give your window borders and buttons a different look. Always keep these files together. Other Theme Atlas files have been posted by members on the msfn forum. UXTSB64.dll and UXTSB32.dll bypass Microsoft theme signature requirements in all newer Windows versions to facilitate a full theme replacement (full themes may be found elsewhere, e.g., on DeviantArt.com) and are installed by adding to AppInit_DLLs in the registry. Note that they are not needed to load just a Theme Atlas file. These DLLs also facilitate title bar text coloring and backing on ribbon-enabled windows such as File Explorer and WordPad. -Noel

Hi Formfiller. You didn't miss anything too important. Probably the biggest thing is that Big Muscle now has almost all his Aero Glass et. al. software releases working for Win 10 build 14393 as Release builds. Regarding laptop suggestions... I was going to suggest thinking about a MacBook as well. Apple makes good, solid hardware. My son (Master's degree; working on his PhD) just bought himself a MacBook Pro. He was going to dual-boot it but on my advice decided to leave OS X as the native system and run Win 7 in a VMware Fusion VM. He says that combo works surprisingly well. It's a VERY powerful machine, replacing his last MacBook, a 2008 model, which was actually useful to him for 8 years. -Noel

Nope. My intent, on the subject of Aero Glass, was to illustrate how Microsoft's dissolution / ignoring of prior desktop style / theme standards, is to show how in a big-picture sense they're destroying the ability for even a product as visionary as Aero Glass for Win 8+ to fix the desktop to where it is as good as it was in Vista/Win 7. We are still able to make a Windows 10 desktop almost as integrated as a Win 8 desktop, which in turn is almost as integrated as what we got out of the box in Win 7. Big Muscle is to be strongly commended on sticking with it, and continuing to deliver a package that makes our desktops look halfway elegant. Microsoft should be praising him greatly, rather than working against him, because without this kind of workaround more people would simply refuse to use Windows 10. -Noel

OK, we're on the same page. It seems a bit strange to use the very same theme atlas from the theme itself, but as I mentioned it can be a workaround to achieving the proper title glow - as you have now confirmed. And - other than you having to remember a bit more complexity in how it's all set up - there's no real downside. -Noel

Sorry, probably because of our language barrier I can't understand what you mean there. On a related note, I use an older Aero7 for my Win 8.1 desktop, and a long time ago I altered the theme atlas to suit my own tastes. I actually went so far as to also replace the theme atlas in the Aero7.msstyles file (kind of the opposite of what I listed above). It's been working great ever since. Even if I disable Aero Glass, I get decent title bars and borders (essentially, at 100% opacity). -Noel

Bravo, Big Muscle. It's always SO nice to hear from others who understand that what the industry pushes on us to "increase security" at best only helps protect complete dummies from doing stupid things to themselves. Anyone should question any concept being pushed as "security is good" and "more is better". There are ALWAYS downsides. In this case it is loss of control over what you are allowed run on your own system. So here you are, wanting to add desktop elegance your operating system that Microsoft absolutely doesn't want you to have. Did you REALLY want someone else to tell you what you're allowed to run on your system? -Noel

Hm, link works just fine for me here. Transient problem? Try right-click and choose Save Target As... -Noel

A fairly easy workaround you could try is to extract the theme atlas resource from the theme .msstyles file then use the Aero Glass GUI tool to select that file as the theme atlas of choice. At one time I wrote myself a small set of notes showing how to do this. They're oriented toward extracting the Windows out-of-box theme atlas resource, but easily adapted: 1. Copy Aero.msstyles to TEMP and rename it Aero.dll 2. Open it in Visual Studio and expand the resource tree for "STREAM" 3. Right-click and export these resources: first one listed as ThemeAtlas.png second one listed as CircularAnimations.png third one listed as Icons.png -Noel

Exactly! Well said. The key is this: If, as a web site provider, you agree to host ads from a particular source, then THAT source - and not you - chooses the ads that run, and they aren't doing proper vetting. In other words, they're not doing their jobs. You may be given some high level control, in terms of picking categories, and you may be given a support eMail address you can contact (as apparently Woody has done), BUT the bottom line is that the data and programs (when considering everything shown on the page) that are being delivered (or more importantly, will be delivered) to site visitors are NOT AT ALL under your own control. The fault lies with the ad brokers, because they couldn't care less whether their delivery of "malvertising" results in problems for YOU. They just want to count your eyeballs. It may seem that monetization inevitably causes a shift toward malicious intent, where providers prey on consumers. But it's only a given if we let it happen! Because of this fundamental reality of the internet (with apologies to Woody and Xper here) I'm sorry to say that no site will ever deliver ads to me or anyone who follows my advice. Those (e.g., Forbes) that try to program their site code to make it necessary to see their ads in order to see the content just won't get my visits. Those who beg to have ad blockers disabled lose my respect. Instead, as my way of making payment I freely share my wisdom, knowledge, and sometimes a little software or data. If I don't feel I've done enough for a site I frequent I send a few bucks via PayPal. Integrity and honesty are the ONLY ways to make it work. I will also never host ads on my own sites. -Noel P.S., I have set up all the systems I use to be ad-free for a long time - literally since the 1980s. Coupled with a thoughtful approach to using the network (a big part of which is vetting anything and everything before running it) not surprisingly I have never had a malware infection. I have only ever installed each operating system I used once, and my systems are reliable and stable. P.P.S., If your site isn't valuable enough to be monetized without ads (e.g., direct product sales or donations or paywall) then consider doing something else. You aren't adding value to the world via the internet. P.P.P.S., Just for reference, right now my blacklists include 18,000+ entire domains and 52,000+ specific web sites that no system of mine ever visits. And guess what? I don't have any problems finding worthwhile content online to view.

Working well here. Nice job. If I were to have to use Win 10, I could almost stomach it now, with your software prettying up the desktop, no Apps, and everything locked down for privacy and security. Now that you're getting most of the extra components polished up and we're finding all the ways to turn it back into a good OS, I imagine it's near time for Microsoft to release a new version of Windows and screw everything up again. My hat is off to you for your patience in continuing to follow up after each of their disruptions to the operating system. -Noel

Apps are indeed Microsoft's "fault". Literally years of development (don't forget, Apps came out with Win 8) and the ONLY "useful" Apps so far seem to be actual Win32 applications with their own flat looking control libraries that make them look App-like. An example is O&O ShutUp10. They want them to look "modern" but need to actually work. Others that come to mind are Visual Studio, recent Office versions. The trouble with these is that even with Big Muscle's ModernFrame DLL the borders aren't restored and the title can't be made translucent. So indeed, this flat, lifeless fad has led to an inability to go back, or even to restore functionality through tweaks and augmentation. -Noel

You're right; I don't see a way past rebooting to affect the ribbon-enabled windows. -Noel

No need to log off; just make a window inactive (e.g., click on the desktop) then active again (by clicking on the window) to see title bar coloration updates. -Noel

Big Muscle, on further testing, I have noticed a slight misregistration of the title glow on the Settings (Modern) App. To me it's no big deal as I don't run Apps, but some might find it unpolished. -Noel P.S., Big Muscle's yet to be published ModernFrame.dll for Win 10 build 14393 will be used to give Aero Glass frames to Modern Apps like Settings. I captured the above with a now unavailable pre-release debug version (ModernFrame-x64-Debug.dll) in use.

Please read the first post in this thread for instructions on how to employ Big Muscle's UxTSBxx DLLs to facilitate overall theme replacement. Look to the instructions by the publisher of the theme for how to install themes. I have put 3 different theme atlases online at various times in the past. I actively use only the first one myself with Windows 10 build 14393. The latter two may work. Please feel free to test them. RoundedCorners - with a blue tint to active windows. RoundedCornersNoExtraColor - with no extra tint (clearer, but more difficult to get enough color on active windows). SquareCorners - with a blue tint to active windows. -Noel

Duplicate post - deleted.