NoelC

>it is not a "real" threat. Really? You'd like products you build to be discovered by your customers as sending data from their systems to Microsoft? And how do you know what's in the data? Just the sending itself it a serious privacy intrusion. Depending on the application it could say at the very least, "the user is home, using their computer right now". How is it you don't see that this is a form of surveillance? Microsoft's concept that they can just have YOUR computer do things THEY want whenever they want is wrong and must be resisted at every turn. Regarding LinkedIn... Have you really uploaded a whole lot of your personal information to LinkedIn? -Noel

Doesn't seem too surprising that Microsoft would - on purpose - change their software so that you have to be cloud-connected to use it. Is it beyond reason to imagine them sitting around dreaming up changes to each and every component of the system to further their goals of world domination? -Noel

A pretty good tool for managing shell extensions is "ShellExView" by Nir Sofer. http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/shexview.html -Noel

Bravo, BigMuscle. I for one am VERY happy to hear you'll be supporting the next release of Win 10. If I can help test please let me know. I'm sure that goes without saying for many others here as well. -Noel

<sarcasm> WHAT??? Are you implying that Microsoft could possibly lose control of your private data? Or sell it to someone?!? Perish the thought! This is MICROSOFT we're talking about, now, not some malware company. No one ever worked for Microsoft who was less than perfectly trustworthy, who was not infinitely more capable than any hacker in the world, or who would not in a heartbeat do the right thing instead of something that would make a quick buck. </sarcasm> -Noel

Thank you for passing that on, Jorge. I had not seen it before, and I'm about to make a software release. I haven't caught my software trying to phone the Microsoft mothership, but that doesn't mean it won't / can't. I have a lot of anti-telemetry settings on my own development system. I sure as hell don't want to be seen as someone who's on board with Microsoft's telemetry initiative. Sheesh! What roasts my nuggets is that besides apologizing that they accidentally included it and didn't document it, Microsoft downplays it at every turn, with statements like... ...as though blocks of telemetry data could not possibly be intrusive of user privacy in any way without a roadmap of how to interpret what's being sent by Microsoft's own software. Now that I know to seek out the term "telemetry", lo and behold seen in my product map (which means it's linked into the product)... . . . 0001:00000000 ?TraceLoggingRegister@__vcrt_trace_logging_provider@@YAJPEBU_TlgProvider_t@1@PEBU_GUID@@P6AX1KE_K2PEAU_EVENT_FILTER_DESCRIPTOR@@PEAX@Z4@Z 0000000180001000 f i libvcruntime:telemetry.obj 0001:0000007c ?_TlgEnableCallback@__vcrt_trace_logging_provider@@YAXPEBU_GUID@@KE_K1PEAU_EVENT_FILTER_DESCRIPTOR@@PEAX@Z 000000018000107c f i libvcruntime:telemetry.obj 0001:00000140 ?_TlgWrite@__vcrt_trace_logging_provider@@YAJPEBU_TlgProvider_t@1@PEFBXPEBU_GUID@@2IPEAU_EVENT_DATA_DESCRIPTOR@@@Z 0000000180001140 f i libvcruntime:telemetry.obj . . . Off to add notelemetry.obj to my projects... Of course, does one TRUST that advice? Or should one invent one's own __vcrt_initialize_telemetry_provider stub? Thank you again for that heads-up, Jorge! -Noel

"...Well, they've got a pet monkey, he likes to get drunky And write appy wappys and they look real funky... ...Shut up baby, I'm trying to compute... Win10zan, it's all you can't stand, let's give it the can, Win10zan..." -Noel

Whenever I see that graphic (since I have never seen the dialog and don't want to flirt with disaster) I wonder: 1. How far in the future could one pick a time/date? 2. What other panels are available if you click that arrow at the right edge? -Noel

Sure. You can use the one provided in the WinRE environment for Win 8.1... It may be the same as supplied in the WinRE for Win 10, I don't know. Apparently the version checks are eliminated. You need to copy the exe and a few other files, and as you can see it's quite possible to have both the old and new one. Just keep the files separate (I have them in C:\BIN). I found the info about exactly what files to copy online (maybe winaero.com or askvg.com?) a long time ago, and as I recall there was an archive provided that had the files in it - though I went and got my own just to be safe. You may be able to turn up that info with a search for "run old task manager in windows 8". -Noel

I've had this available on another site for a while. There are two things it just today does better than my prior versions: If you have commented out an entry in your current hosts file, because you found that it was blocked and you really wanted your system to be able to visit that site, HostsCompiler will recognize that you have done so, consider it a whitelist entry, and not create a new blacklist for that site when next it is run. It now does a better job of interpreting your existing hosts file and keeps duplicates out of the blacklist it generates in its next run. You will now see something like the following in the section generated by HostsCompiler: #--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- # Added by HostsCompiler.bat on Sunday, June 12, 2016, 13:50:14 from: # "http://winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.txt" # "http://www.malwaredomainlist.com/hostslist/hosts.txt" # "http://adaway.org/hosts.txt" # "http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/hosts" # "http://pgl.yoyo.org/as/serverlist.php?hostformat=hosts&showintro=0&mimetype=plaintext" # "http://www.quero.at/download/adblock-hosts.zip" # The following are whitelisted entries found commented-out in the previous hosts file. # These are excluded from the generated blacklist. #0.0.0.0 cdn.optimizely.com #0.0.0.0 d3m83gvgzupli.cloudfront.net # The generated blacklist follows. Enjoy your enhanced security! # Note: If you want to exclude any entry from the blacklist, comment it out by placing # a single # character in front of it. Then name resolution for that site will # then be allowed and it will be excluded from future HostCompiler runs. 0.0.0.0 ___id___.c.mystat-in.net 0.0.0.0 0.r.msn.com 0.0.0.0 005.free-counter.co.uk 0.0.0.0 006.free-counter.co.uk . . . Many thanks to contributor @bphlpt for submitting his ideas and code to help implement these features. -Noel

One of the most effective ways to keep your system secure and private while on the web is to implement a managed blacklist of sites you just won't allow your device(s) to visit. I have been developing a script that gathers data from various contributors around the web who have developed lists of badware web sites, and compiles the info into a blacklist of sites you REALLY DO NOT want to visit. The result is pressed into service by a very simple process: Adding blacklist entries into your hosts file. Windows uses the file %SystemRoot%\System32\drivers\etc\hosts. to allow you to pre-load your DNS cache. The intent is that if you have a server you'd like to name, but the name isn't provided by an online DNS service, you can name it in your hosts file. But what the hosts file can ALSO do is allow you to redirect name resolution to 0.0.0.0 for any number of sites that serve malware, ads, track you, or just deliver things you don't want to see. An attempt to access that named site just fails. Your computer never contacts it. If you put the right list into your hosts file, your system will automatically, and most importantly without noticeable ongoing overhead, just avoid visiting badware sites. That's it. It doesn't require decisions by you, and it doesn't cause extra software to run. And there's no cost; the information is freely available - and surprisingly well maintained. What you see in a practical sense is that your browsing experience becomes free from ads, you no longer see viruses and malware trying to come in, and your browsing experience even gets faster. No kidding. Let's say, for example, that a badware site is www.iservemalware.com... Maybe links to www.iservemalware.com are embedded in other people's web pages, in ad slots, for example, or in things you fear your kids might click on. Maybe it shows up as a link in an eMail. Or even worse, html that just opens the site as soon as you view the message. It'd be nice if something would just stop your computer from visiting such a bad site, right? One entry in the hosts file will do just that: 0.0.0.0 www.iservemalware.com Boom, your computer won't visit the online server for www.iservemalware.com again. Maybe you've already even added some of your own badware sites you've run across to your own hosts file. But wouldn't it be great if you could combine the web browsing experiences of other folks out there too? There are literally tens of thousands of bad web sites. Seriously. But that number is not infinite! I present to you, free of charge and with no strings attached, my HostsCompiler script: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/files/HostsCompiler.zip It retrieves badware site data, processes it into a minimum size blacklist, and augments your existing hosts file. I've tested it on 64 bit Windows 7, 8.1, and 10, though it will probably also work on 32 bit systems and Vista and XP. To set it up: Unzip all the files into the same folder, open an elevated command prompt, CD into that folder, run HostsCompiler.bat by typing its name, it will prompt you to continue, and it will immediately go out and find lists of badware / malware / adware sites from online sources and add them to your hosts file. You'll be instantly protected against visiting nearly 50,000 known badware sites. You'll notice a positive difference in your browsing experience. Run it regularly - for example by scheduling it to run every day using the Windows Task Scheduler as I do - and you'll have a "set it and forget it" system that will keep itself up to date to block the latest servers showing up online with intent to turn you into a victim. For me the script literally runs to completion in 5 seconds. The online sources this script obtains the information from are the following at the time of this writing: http://winhelp2002.mvps.org http://malware-domains.com http://www.malwaredomainlist.com http://adaway.org http://someonewhocares.org http://pgl.yoyo.org http://www.quero.at I wish to acknowledge the fine people who publish the lists at the above sites for their contributions to enhanced online security, privacy, and browsing performance. The executables in my zip file are from the freely available GnuWin32 toolkit plus one I've written (SHOWTIME, a tiny command line executable for displaying the current time/date), and the script is editable and readable, with plenty of comments. It's designed to coexist with whatever else you do with your hosts file. If you have even the slightest worry over running this, I ENCOURAGE YOU to research the executables online and open HostsCompiler.bat in a text editor and learn how it works. Those of you wishing to schedule regular HostsCompiler runs will be interested in this excerpt from the script: :: Synopsis: :: :: HostsCompiler NoPrompt :: :: NoPrompt - (Optional) If specified, will avert the request for confirmation. :: :: :: Suggest scheduling this job with a command line similar to: :: :: HostsCompiler NoPrompt >>C:\Some\Path\HostsCompiler.log 2>&1 :: Be aware that this is batch script and that altering your hosts file is a bit geeky. It requires a little knowledge about how Windows works and the exercise of some care. Don't use this if you don't feel comfortable with manipulating files on your computer. Please let me know if you have any problems or suggestions about things that could be improved. I'd love to hear your experiences with this method of enhancing security. Mine have been good. After running this, if you find a site you'd like to visit no longer works, there are ways to determine what the host name is and whether it's being blocked by a hosts entry - e.g., choose F12 developer tools in Internet Explorer, go to the Network tab, enable tracing, navigate in your browser, and look for a Result of (Aborted) - and you need only comment out the entry in your hosts file to restore access. -Noel

I don't think staying back on an old version will keep forever, but I for one held back from upgrading to Vista until the second service pack, and from upgrading to Windows 8 until 8.1 came out. Those were some of the best decisions I ever made. Not that I was ignorant about what they did - like you I ran them and tested them, so I knew exactly why I was holding back. But sometimes the value just isn't there. I can imagine that others - e.g., dhjohns above - really like the cloud integration. It's really just a matter of Microsoft not taking Windows in the direction I need to go, but of course I'm not everyone. Frankly, this business of them promising to pop out an in-place upgrade a few times a year is one of the worst attributes from my perspective - but of course I *could* just keep running a version of Windows 10 and avoid the full build upgrade. There are no clear paths, just intelligent choices. -Noel

"Needs" lots of work? What does Win 10 do that you need? Don't get me wrong, I agree that the desktop in Win 10 is an eyesore, and I've put plenty of effort into reworking it... It can be made better, but the problem I keep running up against... Why bother? Microsoft is about to break it again with the RS1 summer release. It's all "our way or the highway, bub" and "we're going to wear you down" now. If only they'd build in something worth having, THEN it would be worth taking further. As it is, you have to ask yourself why you would want to have to rework it over and over and over just to have it be usable. -Noel

There's no perspective. They dropped all perspective and switched to orthogonal projection (where all lines in each dimension are parallel) with Windows 10. Why? I imagine someone in Microsoft Marketing decided that perspective from now on should only be embraced in the Hololens or some stupid thing like that. That way there will be a difference in how "rich" the virtual reality experience will feel vs. the desktop. They're trying to herd us off the desktop without having anything substantial to substitute for it. Shakespeare was off a bit... He should have said, "let's kill all the marketers". -Noel

It's not like Unix is better, though. It's an undisciplined mess. I'm not sure it could carry the weight of expectations to be a good general purpose computing platform. But at least it's free from the worst parts of being closed and used by an evil corporate entity to steal from you. Except that some variants ARE put forth by such entities. Somehow the source code for Vax/VMS needs to become available in the public domain. Then someone port it to Intel processors (which I think has or is being done), and finally to re-implement Win32 on top of it. No part of that is an impossible task. Thing is, a majority of programmers tend to not be very careful, so you get junkware. I've just been working with some open source code lately, and man, some of it is downright garbage. Doesn't ANYONE else see the merit in raising the warning level to max and actually FIXING all the warnings? -Noel

I think we're in agreement. I did say, "Not everyone educates themselves as well as we do here". I'm not sure what the ratio of "complete dummies" out there is to "technical users". Maybe it really is 99% to 1% - which would help explain the numbers xpclient mentioned. Somehow I don't think the ratio is that one-sided. Remember, your customers are those who can't solve problems on their own and have SOMEHOW (probably because Macs are more expensive) ended up in the Windows world. -Noel

Given that I've probably downloaded it maybe 25 times, that's still probably a few million unique users. Very impressive. But why isn't it a billion? 1. Win 7 delivered a usable, if inferior start menu. Personally I've been using Classic Shell since the disappearance of the Classic Start Menu from Microsoft. Seems to me I even used Classic Shell in Vista, but I'm not sure. That was a long time ago. 2. People sometimes don't trust free software. I was fortunate to have been around back when Ivo posted the source files, and I vetted the whole thing. I doubt very seriously that he's put any malware in it since that time, but there really is no way to know for sure without the sources. 3. Not everyone knows about it because they're not being beaten about the head and ears by advertising. Not everyone educates themselves as well as we do here. Not everyone realizes there is MUCH better software out there than what Microsoft provides. The limited use is most certainly is NOT because of any functional deficiencies or ease-of-use problems. -Noel

Not sure the number of handles matters, but I have done a measurement in Win 10 build 10586... This is a few minutes after bootup, when things have mostly settled... Shortly after grabbing this screen the handle count for Explorer went to 1460. -Noel

Do I detect rounded corners on that icon? And shading? But it has orthogonal projection, so it's completely wrong no matter how well shaded it looks. Like looking at Windows 10 through a telescope. Windows 10 is certainly a system that has lost perspective. -Noel

As one who understands the "joy of discovery of new things" very well, in today's world I'm still motivated to ask: What do the new Windows 10 pre-release builds bring that is actually new and exciting, so as to offset the pain of having the things broken over and over again - such as Aero Glass that we rely upon to make our desktop experience actually palatable? Are new things showing up in the App Store that are now worthwhile? Last I looked it was all still junkware there. Will Big Muscle update Aero Glass to work with Redstone 1 when it's released? Time will tell - I hope so - but I'm quite convinced now that if I WERE to adopt Win 10 for actual use (rather than just testing on a VM) I'd certainly go with the 3 month delay setting, so that 3rd party developers will have had a chance to update their wares before I even saw it. Even then I'd probably exercise control over the update process and delay the in-place upgrades even longer. -Noel

Perhaps Classic Shell needs to grow up to become an entire desktop replacement. Soup to nuts, done right, all that's needed to provide a tight, slick work environment that replaces all the cancer that's growing at Microsoft. Where does "operating system" end and "application environment" begin? There's a line in there somewhere, and Microsoft has stepped over it - way over it. Would a desktop replacement, while technically possible, ever gain traction? Classic Shell itself, though free and far and away better than anything Microsoft has ever coded and likely used by hundreds of thousands if not millions, isn't used by billions. Why? -Noel

This. From people expert at repairing Windows. And best of all it comes with a promise that they will keep breaking it more, over and over. -Noel

At this point I kind of feel there's no point in trying to help either Microsoft or the people who would frequent the Microsoft forums. Quite likely very few folks there would want to hear about ways to protect users from Microsoft. The time for hoping for a change in direction seems over. Now it's about protecting oneself until such time as that becomes too expensive, then after that choosing alternative systems to work with. -Noel

I mentioned many of them above. Let's see, what didn't I mention... Aero Glass for Win 8+ with my own "Rounded Corners" theme atlas: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/RoundedCorners.zip Removal of stuff from the navigation pane via setting various registry entries. The specifics (among most everything else I've done) are embedded in my Windows10ReTweaker script: http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/thread/100/interested-participating-tweaker-development-test Though the default config is good, there are a large number of look and feel things you can configure in Classic Shell. I reworked my own shell icon that animates the pressing of the start button better for top-screen location and fits with my preferred color scheme better: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/ClassicShellReplacementStartButtonIcon.png Caveat: All of the above make Windows 10 usable (for me) but Microsoft's insistence that some of it will be broken every 6 months or so - even in light of being able to build much of the customization into a re-tweaker script - is just too much to bear, so I'm not making it the system I rely on for my day to day work. If I were going to adopt Win 10 full-time I might consider seeking out a full theme replacement in order to better be able to even better visually identify things like scroll bar thumbs, buttons, and the like. Personally I like rounded corners on everything. -Noel

FYI, I just completed a Windows Update cycle on a Vista x64 system. 3.5 hours of CPU time to get to the listing of 20 + 3 available updates. The installation completed in about 5 minutes after that. It's pretty clear Microsoft is subtly (or sometimes not so subtly) destroying Windows computing as we know it from the inside. They are more adept at managing and leveraging mediocrity than anyone can imagine. The pursuit of excellence was so last century. -Noel