NoelC

Are there geeks amongst us who haven't had the power of Unix-like tools on Windows up to now? Cough *gnuwin32 toolkit* cough. -Noel

In Windows 8.1... If you run a scheduled task as a particular user, and if that user is not logged on at the time, when you use the %USERPROFILE% environment variable, in Win 8.1 you get the default user profile path. In other words, where I would have expected USERPROFILE to be C:\Users\NoelC, instead it's delivered to the scheduled task as C:\Users\Default. USERNAME is set as expected (NoelC) though. So if one wants to use the user profile area, one has to code the command: SET USERPROFILE=C:\Users\%USERNAME% In Windows 10... When I tested it, I actually got C:\Users\NoelC in the USERPROFILE variable. OMG, I'm going to have to upgrade all my machines immediately to eliminate this horrendous, critical bug!!!! -Noel

For what it's worth the problem came back this month on the very same system. Then, after putting this month's updates in, it seems quick again to find Defender definitions. I think the problem and this particular bug are more complex than we realize. -Noel

Well, as is usual things are probably not as simple as we'd hope... I have never hidden KB3102810 and definitely saw the delay when testing. I don't show that one in particular as installed, though. It's superseded by KB3112343, and that one I DO have installed. -Noel

Amen to that, BudwS. In 2015 I canceled my Office 365 subscription and bought a new old stock Office 2010 disc. I couldn't be happier with that decision. -Noel

Reasonable, though nothing is without risk, alas. There is the possibility - however small or large depending on your security landscape, what you use the computer for, and how conscientious you are - that one of the more recent security patches would be prudent. My understanding is that there ARE exploits out there that take advantage of vulnerabilities some of the published patches eliminate. Of course, there's ALSO risk that a patch will make things more unstable too. At the moment I'm testing a Win 7 VM with two of the above listed updates installed (KB3068708 and KB3080149), and carefully monitoring to see whether anything additional runs or is reported to Microsoft. So far, with the other things I've done, there is no attempt at all to send telemetry, so this could potentially lower the risk of hiding updates causing system instability. In summary, now I have only these hidden: KB3035583 - GWX itself KB2952664 - Diagnostics to determine compatibility with Win 10 KB3021917 - Diagnostics to determine if there will be performance issues with upgrading to Win 10 KB3123862 - Adds capabilities to some computers that lets users easily learn about Windows 10 KB971033 - Update for Windows Activation Technologies FYI, the update check that led to me unhiding those two also discovered a Windows Defender update, and did NOT cause a long delay. It's clear that there's more than meets the eye with that CPU looping behavior. -Noel

Are you sure about that? Do you have a specific KB number that fixes the problem? Is it one of those below? I've reproduced it on a Win 7 test system that has only these hidden: KB3035583 - GWX itself KB2952664 - Diagnostics to determine compatibility with Win 10 KB3021917 - Diagnostics to determine if there will be performance issues with upgrading to Win 10 KB3068708 - Updates the Diagnostic and Telemetry service KB3080149 - updates the Diagnostics and Telemetry tracking service KB3123862 - adds capabilities to some computers that lets users easily learn about Windows 10 KB971033 - update for Windows Activation Technologies There's far too much misinformation and speculation out there with regard to this issue, and if you have hard knowledge of an update that actually fixes the problem, please let us know. -Noel

I think what he meant is that not making software "smarter than its own good" is better. It seems a relative of the old "make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler". Thanks for the link, by the way. It was eye opening to learn that copiers / scanners are trying to actually "read" the data, making mistakes, then reproducing it with the kinds of substitution errors that humans might make but would catch because they have higher cognitive abilities. What person / company / culture has said that there should be a concept of "close enough" in the digital world? Digital systems make it possible to achieve perfection, but somehow marketers or managers are trying to convince us that it's okay that they don't. It must be born from laziness. -Noel

I have a reasonably complex computing life, where I do both business and technical development on my workstation. As a software-developing content producer, I suggest that I'm probably nearly as far from Microsoft's focus on content consumers as one can be. That's okay. I have, like xpclient who also tweaks and augments Windows into becoming something more useful, been willing to accept this difference. After all, it actually HAS been possible to make Windows a reasonable, usable system. The operating system doesn't have to be the end-all. Some of what Microsoft provided can be ignored, other parts of it can be tweaked (probably because some software engineer at Microsoft also really needs it to work), and still other parts can be augmented with 3rd party software. But it had critical mass where it counts, because it was originally developed (as Vax/VMS by Digital Equipment Corporation) to have a serious computing kernel. Examples: I haven't used Apps or Gadgets or Windows Live Gallery software. I shut off things like Indexing and Cortana. It's no problem, I have plenty of disk space. I apply literally hundreds of different tweaks via settings or registry or file manipulations. I developed a script to help me bring Windows 10 as close as possible to being useful... This script is up to (including comments) almost 1500 lines! I download / buy good 3rd party software such as Classic Shell, grepWin. Tortoise SVN, Sphinx firewall, and many others to add features that work, and which I need. Honestly, you'd not recognize my desktop as a Windows 8.1 system. It's not even close. But it's quite useful. Doing all these things to Windows to make each new major version a system with as much or more capability than its predecessor has been growing increasingly difficult. I follow a guide I've written that now has way over 100 pages. When did I write this guide? I made a few notes and .reg files in the time of XP. I scraped those together into a big text file in the time of Vista. It became a full-fledged book for Windows 7. It grew a lot for Windows 8. As xpclient says - and this is the central crux of the current problems: Microsoft has finally turned the corner to where it's actually impossible to equal or recover some of the functionality we had in the past. I'm all for "new and improved", but the "improved" part really does have to be there. I'm even willing to suffer a bit during transitions if there is potential for improvement. For example, if the new Metro/Modern/UWP had brought things that actually made it likely that new and improved Apps would be forthcoming, I'd be patient and wait for them. Hell, I'd probably even write some of them. But here we are, almost 1 year after Windows 10 was released, and even longer after the pre-release versions... It doesn't. They aren't. I'm not. Even Microsoft's own flagship Apps, such as Calculator and Weather, do NOTHING that's particularly impressive - nor are they better or quicker or cooler than things we've already seen! And they do it with bigger fonts than we need and more slowly - even on a supercomputer. I reiterate: The "improved" part really, really does have to be there. The IDEA of UWP was good, don't get me wrong - make it easier for Windows to promote software development by all kinds of geeks out here and the world will develop all the functionality needed by anyone, anywhere. But the devil is in the details - the new environment actually has to WORK and have some ADVANTAGES in order to accomplish this. It's something that simply CANNOT be marketed into existence! It's a computer operating system. It has to be a DESIGN that works and provides real TECHNICAL ADVANTAGES at a deep geek level. It's a lot of things, but it ain't that. Like a modern Dick the butcher, I say... The first thing we do, let's kill all the marketers. -Noel P.S., I just counted. I have 44 icons on my 3-monitor desktop, and these icons, arranged in groups, actually do represent 44 of the things I most frequently do. They're set along the top and bottom so that I have room in between to work. I'm a positional thinker, so I know exactly where to go to start each application in an eyeblink, without any effort at all. I also maintain a carefully organized hierarchical start menu that at some points goes 7 or more levels deep. IMO this is what a quite complex computer system needs to be truly useful.

Actually it's worse than that... For months now, Windows 7 Updates cause a hard-loop of a core for tens of minutes to hours, depending on how powerful your CPU is. See this thread among several others on AskWoody.com: http://www.askwoody.com/2016/the-windows-update-takes-forever-problem/ More recently I've written this: http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/post/2025/thread I'm becoming more and more convinced it's a "penalty" being imposed by Microsoft for running Windows 7. I call it "Windows 7 Deprecation As A Service". -Noel

Yes. I've never been a fan the frivolous stuff - which has been available via a web browser for a long while - becoming the centerpiece of an operating system. For one who's been in the industry since the mid-1970s, it's just ridiculous to think that such things should be influencing the direction of development. Windows and Microsoft got so far as to take over the computing world by concentrating on computing, not distracting users. If they make a serious, stable, useful OS adding junkware to it is trivial. If they optimize an OS to deliver junkware, there is a SERIOUS possibility that it will never be able to support serious software. And yes, I fully agree, Win 10 Apps now, made to work under the UWP, don't even seem as useful or pleasing as gadgets were. Or web pages. Speaking of Apps (not Microsoft but Apple, and illustrative of the kind of quality of service I'm alluding to)... Yesterday my wife showed that the Weather.com App on her iPad displayed 56 degrees F for our home location in south Florida. It hasn't been 56F for weeks or months here. It showed the right information ONLY after she tapped on one of the sub-pages, then returned to the main page. Right now today my wife was watching some severe weather moving in with the map animation in the App. I was easily able to bring up the very same information - including animation - via the weather.com web site. I cannot think of a single reason I would need or want to use the App vs. the weather.com web site. Why the hell are so many people so enamored with Apps (to the exlusion of making OS software actually better)? It's not like they work better, or perform better, or give better service somehow. OK, so it's not trivial to make Windows better. That's the state of the art, and why a company like Microsoft gets the big bucks. Why do they insist on trying to better Apple or Google, who can only build systems that do frivolous things? -Noel

Topic question: The current released version is now 1.4.5, right? It has been for quite some time (December 2015 as I recall). >[2016-04-15 19:32:39][0x1AC:0x7FC] Aero Glass for Win8.1+ 1.4.5.520 x64 correctly loaded (C:\AeroGlass\DWMGlass.dll). Should this thread be renamed? -Noel

I have to confess that I did choose some security updates from the last cycle, so at the moment I don't have a system in an "updates disabled permanently" state where I can definitively say one way or another whether my Win 8.1 system drops into a "must communicate to remain activated" state. That communication might have occurred during the update process. It's probably a good assumption that some communication will ultimately be attempted, however, even after a properly licensed system is considered "permanently activated". I am imagining that if such communication is never allowed that it will just never drop into a state where activation has been rescinded. The alternative, of course, is that if it IS allowed to communicate, Microsoft could ultimately send back a "deactivate now" response that would wreck things. -Noel

My point about gadgets (or Windows Live Gallery apps before that) is that the silly little web-integrated, cloud-integrated "App" has never managed to supersede the web browser, and have ultimately fallen by the wayside. It's as though Microsoft keeps wanting to try different ways to invent "silly little Apps" until somehow magically they strike on the right combination to make them world leaders in computing. Get a clue, Microsoft: You become a world leader in something by doing it well and right, not by doing it silly. It's as though they entirely forgot what made them a world leader in business computing. Thanks for the welcome back, Jorge. -Noel

Is it a surprise that the government would want to look at cloud data? I can't imagine law-abiding citizens would want their data "in the cloud", much less criminals. Look around... Smart people, who know what's really happening in the bigger picture, all tend to agree that not spreading one's data around is better, for any number of known reasons, not to mention reasons even they haven't thought of yet. -Noel

Now, it's still possible to control Windows Updates - though not as straightforwardly as before - so it could be that one could just settle on running, say, 10586 for a long time. This isn't fundamentally a different concept from running the Long Term Servicing Branch. That WOULD make the system more stable for longer. But part of the utility of Windows has always been in being current. You know the latest software will work, because the developers keep current as well. Boxes say "compatible with Windows nn" on the outside. If you stick with an older version, compatibility (and support) become less a given. Microsoft doesn't realize that by their policies - followed for decades - they had established a very powerful, very viable computing environment for the world. What I don't understand is why, with a majority of the world's computing in hand, they suddenly felt the need to try to follow Apple and Google into the mobile space - where frankly they can NEVER succeed. -Noel

Oh, I do have Win 8.1 set up just as you say. Rounded corners and all. In fact, with a full theme replacement I have better looking controls inside the windows too. My Win 8.1 setup is quite a pleasure to use, so I'm not really craving better for technical reasons. It was just a matter of just momentarily NOT feeling the repugnance that Win 10 deserves, and slipping into the "maybe I really could use this" mindset, while temporarily losing sight of parts of the bigger picture. I'm under no misconception that the older Windows systems will be viable forever - though Win 8.1 will likely be viable a little longer than Win 7, which has already passed its mainstream support end date. I hold the hope that there can ultimately be a hypothetically sufficient set of tweaks that (coupled with some improvements from Microsoft) would make Windows 10 actually desirable. Some would make UI improvements (when we get past this "flat, anti-skeuomorphic" design BS, for example), and re-focus (abandon all the silly "App" BS just like they abandoned all the prior little gadget / web-integrated BS) and get back to systems that WORK. Lastly, someone at Microsoft has to come to their senses and decide that a new OS CANNOT be delivered every few months for the computing world to advance. That policy has to change. Another that needs to change is that they need to stop delivering malicious stuff through Windows Update! The UI and technical stuff we can tweak and work around - that's how we made all prior Windows versions usable. It's the bad policy stuff at Microsoft that evokes the need to slap people who think Win 10 is worth having. -Noel

No doubt! They would say I'm running at least two Windows 10s, though in actual fact I'm not relying upon my Win 10 VMs for anything useful save for allowing me to make and re-make the informed decision to not "up"grade to it. -Noel

Anyone remember the Windows Live Gallery? Gadgets? Things that actually work and do useful stuff generally survive, but... On the other hand, humans in powerful positions are not immune to doing stupid, irreversible things... Microsoft could just continue on their current path and do to computing the equivalent of the destruction of the library in Alexandria... -Noel

Somebody slap me! Not long ago I crafted a better looking theme atlas, in which I resurrected rounded corners on my window borders. I brought my Win 10 virtual machine up to patch level 10586.218 and found that it runs fine. I installed Visual Studio 2015 Update 2 as a test and that went in perfectly and works great. I did such a good job of it I actually LIKED using the Windows 10 desktop to do this updating / installing / and testing. I caught myself thinking "gee, I could actually like using this on my main workstation". Briefly... Emotion trumped rational thought... Desire overrode caution... I almost became another sheep... I nearly gave in to dark desires... Thank God I came to my senses in time. I remembered that I can't play all the media I could play with Windows 8.1 MCE. I recalled that Microsoft is planning to deliver a disruptive in-place upgrade a few times a year. The knowledge that Windows 10 doesn't actually DO anything better than its predecessors yet resurfaced. I came back to the idea that at the end of a day a pig with lipstick is still, well... -Noel

If "old and crabby" describes someone who expects basic things to work, then I'm there. The more disturbing aspect is the lowering of the bar. A digital system is one that actually CAN achieve perfection. That we are seeing people more and more willing to accept greater and greater IMperfection is disturbing indeed. A what point does nothing work and people just stop trying to communicate? Case in frigging point: I was hoping to italicize the word "nothing" in the above sentence. I pressed Control-I while I was typing. Then, when I typed the very next character - the 'n' - the I stopped being highlighted and the n that appeared in the post was NOT italicized. People who allow stuff like that to be considered acceptable and released need to be terminated with extreme prejudice. And now I'm going to browse elsewhere, since I have no desire to be frustrated like this while I'm on a forum. -Noel

Thanks for your candid thoughts. I really respect your decision. On the B comment I'm of a like mind... They're not getting MY data! However, it should be noted that it's still possible - granted, with the application of some geek chops - to have a completely private system even with the most recent releases - but it's clear that's not what Microsoft wants! Paddling upstream gets to be so tiring... What's ironic is that, as a computer user, while I've personally found it advantageous to move up through the systems, I choose NOT to make Win 10 the system I depend on to run my computing platform. It's not better. That's the same thing as saying it's worse - and it is. So, even though I'm not on one of the much older systems being discussed in this thread, I am now another who's fallen by the wayside. Maybe it's inevitable that each of us will drop off the Microsoft bandwagon at some point. Beyond running the Windows I'm most used to for the long term, I sense that Linux may be in my future. Even Emperor Palpatine has been overheard saying... Substitute the number of your choice for 10. It's the same thing, and it's a decision to be respected. -Noel

Nothing specific to report, just a general comment... This Invision update was supposed to have fixed some 600 bugs, right? And I can tell you from personal experience in just a few minutes use, this new version still has bugs. So... 600 fixed, easy to find new ones. My question is this, and I certainly don't want to seem disrespectful to xper and the forum staff - you're not responsible! But... Am I the only one who thinks that forum software shouldn't have hundreds of bugs? What kind of junkware is this? -Noel

Today Apple announced they have 1 billion devices. It's not surprising. -Noel

I'm curious about whether you run an older OS more because a) you're familiar with it and it's all you need, or b) you hate the new stuff for a particular reason, or c) it's just fun to tinker with old tech. -Noel