UCyborg

Indeed, anti-virus programs love to flag useful non-malicious stuff for various reasons. Check out this blog post: http://blog.nirsoft.net/2009/05/17/antivirus-companies-cause-a-big-headache-to-small-developers/ File system modifications can certainly be malicious, not in this case though, and the warning on the website about total Windows breakage is just so you don't blame the author if something goes wrong. It's true however that using custom themes always carries a small risk of breaking something. What happens if Windows Update replaces those files with originals and you don't switch back to stock theme until files are re-patched? You won't make it to your desktop because Windows rather commits suicide instead of falling back to stock theme. Big Muscle's theme signature bypass DLLs lasted for quite some time, they just broke now with Creators Update. It's a wild goose chase with custom themes in general, need to keep up with how they change under the hood. From Anniversary Update to Creators Update in its current state, it seems they haven't changed drastically under the hood.

So it really works now? Starting aerohost.exe with the method I posted? You said you did disable the scheduled task the first time. I can confirm Pipe error occurs if you try to run 2 aerohost.exe instances.

It's hard to say. Type of disk and passworded vs passwordless account could be influencing factors in your particular case. Would be interesting to know what happens if you set passwords on those 2 computers you said don't have passwords. Apparently that extra time it takes to type in password helps on your computer with SSD. My machines have regular HDDs and using passwordless account works fine. All this still doesn't explain why VirtualAllocEx fails. Just access denied is not verbose enough. Does UxStyle work on your end? I suggested it some time ago as its different approach might work, the only problem is that it still needs some fixes; not working on build 10586 and Creators Update builds, in some scenarios its service has to be restarted for the themes to work again and it's been said its driver doesn't load on UEFI systems with Secure Boot due to signing requirements.

Just an idea. Interestingly, on Windows 8.1 majority of log entries don't appear, while on Windows 10 they do, so something changed in that regard. Either way, I don't think that problem would be solved by changing aerohost.exe into service. There is nothing particularly special about services, just that they interact with Service Control Manager. Would the problem occur on completely fresh bare-bones Windows installation? I don't have any other ideas besides maybe some 3rd party software interfering somehow. I have 4 different machines at home and none of them have this issue. Sorry, can't help you with this one.

Install AeroGlass in C:\AeroGlass.

Exactly, applications that are run under SYSTEM account run indefinitely unless you fully shut down or reboot the system. This just makes it independent from the Task Scheduler so maybe it starts sooner. Better solution would be modifying aerohost.exe to accept service events. srvany.exe is the wrapper that can make any application run as the service, but it is obsolete and has number of limitations. It's true that you can't make aerohost.exe directy run as the service with sc create. https://www.coretechnologies.com/products/AlwaysUp/srvany.html Then you have paid solutions like FireDaemon Pro or AlwaysUp. Those are the must if you want to run eg. a game server which wasn't coded as the service. There is also free NSSM. I can't really say if this helps with anything as I can't reproduce the injection problem on my end neither, but those are the only ways to run non-service application like it was the service. If it actually helps, judging by UxStyle source code, it doesn't seem it would take a lot of effort to turn aerohost.exe into real service.

If it helps anyone, I wrote a small batch script that runs aerohost.exe as a service with the help of the srvany.exe wrapper mentioned few posts above. Just extract both files and run InstallAGService as admin. And do stop Aero Glass task beforehand from Task Scheduler and disable/delete it. If you want to delete the service: sc stop aerohost sc delete aerohost Then only the wrapper, which is copied to either Windows\System32 or Windows\SysWOW64 remains. AeroGlassAsService.zip

Just for informational purposes, UxTSB no longer works with Insider build 15042. UltraUXThemePatcher is updated to support it. Old .msstyles for Anniversary Update still work with minor glitches, I only noticed some outlines being visible inside the window while in Peek Desktop. This build doesn't have the watermark. Maybe theme related things won't see further changes. But 1 month is still plenty of time to flip everything upside-down. No symbols to see Aero Glass in action, but again, nothing crashes. Says it runs in always-glass mode, though it looks more like no-glass mode.

New injection method by DWMGlass.dll doesn't require signed DLL, something else can go wrong. Microsoft's official opinion is that there is no reliable method for injecting a DLL in a running process, if that has something to do with it. At least, their own Detours library version 1.5 had a function for DLL injection, which I believe, under the hood utilized the CreateRemoteThread method, like DWMGlass.dll. The only bad thing that happened once on my end were tons of VirtualAllocEx errors in debug.log and at the time it seemed like logon process was aborted, second logon attempt worked, but apparently, things can go worse for unknown reasons. Good point about the signing, AppInit_DLLs method would work with secure boot if UxTSB.dll was signed, just the fact that it lands in almost every process is a bit of an overkill. They wrote long time ago on MSDN they may remove it in the future. Good point about UxStyle as well, I forgot about the driver that has to be signed. Late edit: Actually, AppInit_DLLs is completely disabled when Secure Boot is active.

A bit off-topic, but UxStyle seems to work on Win10 latest build 14393 at first glance, though no luck on build 10586 and the word is it doesn't work on newer Insider builds. There have been reports about certain issues, but no new commits. None of the people that forked it changed anything either. Just bringing it up because its different approach might bypass winlogon-loop problem. If only someone with the knowledge addressed its issues.

Text problem is due to a bug in Aero Glass v1.5.2 which hasn't been fixed yet. For the theme atlas problem, you need a Win10 14393 (Anniversary Update) compatible atlas.

There is another type of glow effect besides the one from the atlas image, composited glow effect. If you find the theme where setting Caption glow effect mode to Use theme settings in Aero Glass GUI produces glow, you should be able to get same type of glow in Ribbon windows. I know for certain such themes exists for Windows 8.1 and 7. Composited glow effect is what you get out of the box on Windows 7.

Compatibility modes only hook legacy GetVersion and GetVersionEx APIs, Firefox uses VerifyVersionInfo. There is a bunch of CSS stuff in there that adjust UI differently if ran on Windows 10. Supposedly whole capability for querying OS version using CSS was implemented so the UI can adjust according to the used OS. I'd really like to know where exactly Windows caches manifests. Because just saving the file with Resource Hacker didn't change anything. Only when the modified date changes on the .exe it will re-read the manifest. When you put back the original modified date, it will use original manifest.

I removed Windows 10 GUID from firefox.exe's manifest with Resource Hacker, then altered firefox.exe's last modified date by opening it and saving it again with Notepad++ for Windows to register new manifest (Resource Hacker doesn't do it). It's better to change the date with BulkFileChanger. Logging off might also be sufficient on recent Windows 10 builds. Now it thinks it runs on Windows 8.1 and behaves just like it does on said OS.

@NoelC Exactly, you only need it if you want glass at other places. And then the URL bar and search bar have greater heights, which is also Windows 10 only behavior. I use Firefox on Ubuntu occasionally, where I get the exact frame according to Window Decoration settings. It's only Windows 10 where it has to act differently.

These should explain everything: I also like the default behavior on Windows 8.1 where glass is applied only on the title bar. GlassMyFox makes whole window glassy, which is not what I want. It also doesn't fix the standard 3 buttons hover-over effect. And if I want custom persona, I can only get those atrocious white buttons instead the ones from selected theme's .msstyles or atlas image override from Aero Glass on Windows 10. Everything is fine on Windows 8.1. One good thing comes out from using default aero.msstyles with custom persona on Windows 10, the standard 3 buttons blend with the persona.

I just compared default settings under HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop\WindowMetrics between Windows 8.1 and 10. The only difference there is in a single byte in CaptionFont and SmCaptionFont settings. Applying Windows 8.1 settings gives larger font on 10. That is changing the first byte of said settings from F4 to F1.

Firefox has these oddities only when ran on Windows 10. On older Windows versions, its default title bar has glass effect, along with standard 3 buttons straight from theme atlas image. If only there was a switch to turn off this Windows 10 mode.

I just remembered about the quote from here: https://itvision.altervista.org/why-windows-10-sucks.html You're right though, if you love working on these things, you'll definitely want to perfect your code. About that bug that is triggered when new accent color must be taken from the new background, whatever kind of refresh in Explorer it causes, it's not the same as when you hit F5 key. This one puts the scrollbar back and isn't triggered if you're in the middle of renaming a file. There are some nice little things there and there; task view, new action center, ability to use mouse wheel to scroll in inactive windows. Did anyone notice new GUI for editing PATH environment variable? Other things just make no sense at all, eg. what was the point of removing GUI for editing and ordering WiFi connections? Windows 8 and 10 have to be the only OSes in existence where you can't access these settings in a normal fashion.

True. They still haven't fixed this neither: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-files/windows-10-file-explorer-scroll-bar-keeps-jumping/11c11063-569d-4b37-97ea-68a438b5dff4?auth=1 And judging by certain answers in that thread, they never will. Why bother when the user can just turn off bug provoking feature?

Word 2016 has its own border and it's not a Metro app, but its borders surely look like those of Metro apps. It really depends on each individual application's customizability options. PotPlayer for example comes with 2 skins, default one has a custom border and the other one gives you the regular borders. If I understand correctly, Microsoft wanted to make all-in-one OS, so they force such design on all devices, supposedly so the same system appear consistent across various devices, which obviously doesn't make much sense. Phone and a full-blown desktop is like a night and day in many aspects. Windows Aero is Microsoft's full set of guidelines for UI design, which emerged with Windows Vista. The glass effect is rendered by Desktop Window Manager, responsible for rendering whole UI using graphics hardware acceleration since Vista. The functionality for rendering glass effect was removed starting with Windows 8. Aero Glass that we're discussing on these forums is an unofficial extension to DWM that adds glass functionality back. It was coded by Big Muscle alone AFAIK. Community here provides feedback. The appearance of window borders is influenced by theme atlas image (which is what this thread is about). This image can be overridden by Aero Glass. The way Windows theming engine works, this image is part of selected theme's .msstyles file. Custom themes that come with their own .msstyles have the most influence on Windows UI appearance.

My experience with NVIDIA's drivers in general is that after some point, I just have to stop updating them because rather than improving something, they break things. I did read about that issue you mentioned, my problems with newer drivers are stuttering in games and stability issues. 368.81 is the last version that at least gets most things right, but I prefer 347.88 as it's the most solid in my experience. Luckily most games I play occasionally work fine with 347.88, but certain titles like DOOM (2016) require something newer to run optimally. Vulkan API also wasn't around when 347.88 was released. I also have a mouse for which exist some outdated custom driver, which likes to make PC BSOD. Had to prevent Windows Update from installing this one as well. The only thing I found useful about it is ability to set USB polling rate from its application, but universal Sweetlow mouse driver works well for that purpose. I just remembered switching the polling rate with the help of buggy driver I mentioned even crashed Windows 7 sometimes, but after the switch, there were no issues. There aren't any issues at all with Sweetlow driver. They shouldn't host buggy drivers on Windows Update, but since you have support for majority of graphics cards bundled in one driver package, that won't ever change in NVIDIA's camp unless they change their ways.

The title bar height depends on type of window application creates, for example non-resizable window will have lower bar height than a resizable window. This is in their regular non-maximized state. For those familiar with Windows API, WS_THICKFRAME is the Window Style of interest. It's odd indeed, the height should be constant. Or add an option to tweak the behavior to one's liking. Is this supposed to be some sort of accessibility feature? Can't think of the good reason for the current behavior. Someone intentionally made it like this though.

It's strange because I clearly remember graphics drivers were offered in the past if I had no driver, but they would disappear after I installed them on my own without Windows Update's help, regardless of version I installed. And AFAIK, the NVIDIA driver version 376.53 wasn't put on Windows Update servers yesterday, been up a bit longer, only yesterday they were automagically installed. And I wondered why my PC was acting funny after a trip to the bathroom! Thanks for the hint about the policy setting. Regarding default drivers' dates, never gave a lot of thought into that. Interesting blog post. That they wouldn't be touched at all since 2006 doesn't make much sense. But there is another similar convention. Check your CPU properties.