NoelC

I agree that cloud-integrated Win 8.1 is a smaller jump to Win 10, but no, I'm not assimilated, and Win 10 IS enough different [worse] to warrant avoiding it. How do you intend to buy a license for Win 10 Enterprise? That's a significant stumbling block for me as I don't need qty:5. That's also what I found when I did things like build Visual Studio solutions. -Noel

What's the error code the Settings App is putting up? I actually used one of those recently to look up a failure to install a prior update and it turned up an article on how to fix it. [rant] Big font, dumbed-down madness and we STILL have hex error codes, instead of a nice text message. Re-fricking-diculous. [/rant] -Noel

Do the systems in general compare more or less evenly (i.e., all the other PerformanceTest categories)? -Noel

I'm a masochist for sure, or I wouldn't be continuing to keep a Win 10 system up to date in a VM just as a curiosity. 8.1 Pro is HUGELY different than 10 Pro in one most important way: It's not replaced every 4 months. Thus a tweaked system stays tweaked. Stays productive. Been running my Win 8.1 setup now for years. Up until tonight it ran over 40 days straight on the same boot without one glitch, supporting my software engineering and business work. But I agree with you in principle - virtually all my tweaks have been to make 8.1 as good as Windows 7. I never really got it very much better - maybe just a little, owing to the fact that Aero Glass for Win 8+ facilitates some things I never attempted in Win 7, and there are a few things that actually run slightly more efficiently in 8.1. -Noel

And yet, not a single typo on THAT page, or any of those directly linked. -Noel

Purging all remnants of the Metro/Modern/Universal/App Store environment from Windows is a worthy goal. I ran an in-depth text search with the latest version of grepWin, which will pick out ANSI or Unicode text even from binary files... Text matches found in: C:\Windows\System32\en-US\shell32.dll.mui C:\Windows\SysWOW64\en-US\shell32.dll.mui (and corresponding WinSxS entries) These support dencorso's theory. -Noel

Watch out for scams. What kind of legal people would write a web page where the first sentence is jibberish? Note the word "if", which if you read quickly you might read as "is". And "tables"? There are typos all throughout that web page. Be afraid. -Noel

I truly believe that if Microsoft were to build a verifiable detour around their security software (e.g., the Windows Filtering Platform, which is the basis for the Windows Firewall and some 3rd party firewalls) then they could get in SUPER hot legal water with people who seriously care about security. I used to think they'd avoid doing things like that because of how embarrassing it would be in the press, but they clearly have NO shame about that. For now there is still no evidence that they have enabled any communications that are configured to be blocked by firewall software. -Noel

Interesting, and thanks for sharing. I'm still having trouble seeing an advantage to using Win 10 LTSB vs. continuing to use my Win 8.1 setup that's supremely stable and quite a bit more functional. And there is the small matter that Win 10 Enterprise licensing isn't available in reasonable packages that make sense to the smallest of businesses (i.e., which have, say, 3 computers). Maybe a group buy could be arranged. -Noel

Well, to be fair a person running Win 8.1 might consider Win 10 a downgrade as well. -Noel

Cool, thanks for the additional info and confirmation. I really like that Disabling this service has shut up one of the few remaining attempts Windows 10 makes to try to contact online servers. It never succeeds, because of my firewall setup, but not trying is better than having it try and fail. Because of the firewall status logging I know exactly what communications it's attempting. Tinfoil, hell - my hat is 3 inch thick titanium over steel with explosive armor. :-) -Noel

Those errors disappeared for me immediately after following intika's instructions. Somehow it seems you are not actually getting the packages truly removed. Update: I found the log under Applications and Service Logs > Microsoft > Windows > Apps > Microsoft-Windows-TWinUI/Operational. I think I see why it's not reappearing for me: So this seems to be another good reason to use a 3rd party firewall. -Noel

Another cloudburst just today. Note the version: -Noel

If you use a Microsoft account for anything, stop now. But if your intent is to use Windows 10 with a local account, and never log in to anything with a Microsoft ID, this might be of interest to you. Owing to a nice little tool, SVCHost Viewer, that dencorso introduced me to a little while back (thanks again for that), I was going through my current list of running Windows 10 services, and one caught my eye: wlidsvc Enables user sign-in through Microsoft account identity services. If this service is stopped, users will not be able to logon to the computer with their Microsoft account. I thought hmm, that sounds like a feature, not a problem! Maybe this service is not actually needed on a system that never, ever logs in with a Microsoft ID. Sure enough, I stopped it and logged out/in with no problem. It's hidden - it doesn't show up in Services.msc - so I dug into the registry and found its entry: [ HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \ CurrentControlSet \ Services \ wlidsvc ] Change the Start REG_DWORD value to 4 (which is Disabled), and voila, it never starts. And you can still log into Windows with your local account just fine! Edit: I may have misspoken above. It appears this actually DOES show up in the services.msc list as: Microsoft Account Sign-in Assistant Privacy bonus: The system no longer appears to attempt to contact Microsoft servers at addresses 131.253.61.x at logon even when you log on with your local account. Warning: If you use a Microsoft ID for accessing anything in Win 10, I don't know whether disabling this service will break something for you. I suspect it will and it may even leave you with no way to recover. I have ONLY tested this for a short time on a virtual machine that only logs in via a local account and has ALL Apps removed, and which I can easily revert to a time prior to making this change. -Noel

I've disabled a number of things in my Task Scheduler setup. Perhaps that's what's triggering for you that's not triggering for me. Also, specifically, I used Remove-AppxPackage -allusers as well as Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage -online. Note in the screen grab I posted earlier I show no provisioned packages whatsoever. -Noel

Makes you wonder whether they're following a long-term plan of "Wear 'em down. Wear 'em all down.". Actually, I no longer wonder about this. It's quite clear that they are. Windows As A Service can only happen if expectations - and indeed the very culture - are changed. To do that requires years of focused effort. Maybe even decades. What's actually impressive in all this is that a corporation could actually embark on a multi-year plan and stick to it in this day and age. I guess starting out so rich you can't possibly fail any time soon is the entry requirement. They consider you and I and a few others around here being horrified now a necessary evil to facilitate the Great Profits to come. Sooner than you think, a day will arrive when there will be no one left who remembers being able to run software on your own computer without constant ongoing payments to a software company, which doesn't provide anything at all more than was provided the previous month. Then: A better mousetrap every few years, for which we beat a path and paid handsomely. Now: Nothing new and in fact many things worse, for which we will be forced to pay handsomely. The end result is that the company doesn't have to work - at all - and they still get rich. And no way to stop it from happening. -Noel

Hey Jaclaz... Hey Jaclaz... Hey Jaclaz... Hm, no response. Must be old tech. Wow, you actually found an article about Cortana online! You really ARE good at finding things!! All in fun! -Noel

Yes, I had already cleared that setting. Per my firewall log, a service STILL tries (infrequently) to contact a number of addresses in the 131.253.61.x range, using both ports 80 and 443. I suspect this is that remnant level of telemetry Microsoft requires for everything short of Win 10 Enterprise. -Noel

Opdenis, are you doing Remove-AppxPackage and Remove-AppxProvisionedPackage on Cortana immediately after changing IsInBox to 0? Having done that, I've not seen Cortana come back at all, even after some weeks of usage. -Noel

There is of course still the possibility of technology being applied for (gasp) good... My system doesn't allow the following of the sponsored links (owing to my hosts file blocking ad management sites): -Noel

Thing is, people like us can sense the difference now. The evidence that the youngest folks sense it less says that we're relying on contextual information that's growing ever more stale, and that "the new normal" can indeed be redefined. Seems to me it's a form of assault. -Noel

Seems desirable to run them both. I already had Win 10 well-muzzled, but there was still an ongoing attempt to contact a server from time to time, maybe once an hour or so. Now, looking at my firewall log, after having checked a few boxes that weren't already checked in W10Privacy (and you know I've been tweaking Win 10) that I haven't yet seen it try to contact any address on the net at all in a couple of hours run time. Communications with the other systems on my LAN are proceeding unhindered. All in all, just the way I want Windows 10 to run. Two thumbs up for W10Privacy from me. I'm glad - though not at all surprised - to see such software being made available by conscientious and thoughtful people. -Noel

I just saved you more than that in aggravation and wasted time. -Noel

Do you know whether W10Privacy provides anything more than / better than O&O ShutUp10? Seems like I've asked this question, but somehow I can't find it. Edit: Never mind, I scared up a copy and experimented with it. Seems nice, and spills over a bit from "enhancing privacy" to tweaking (e.g., desktop icon spacing, uninstalling Apps, etc.). At least it didn't try communicating with any server. -Noel

Is saving a few $$ so important? in 2 years, IF they manage to pull it together to where it is worth having, just buy an upgrade license then. How much is your time worth? How much the risk of something unexpected causing you not to have all your data and applications back again under Win 7? For what it's worth, back when Win 8 came out. I stayed comfortably and productively in Win 7 and when I finally was ready to accept 8.1 I just bought a license. Sure, it cost a few hundred dollars more. So what? I have no regrets. Avoid being penny wise and pound foolish. -Noel