xpclient

What I can't stand about Microsoft Edge is that first it's a POS slow Modern app. Its rendering engine may be fast but that's about it. It starts slowly. It's based on the new bul***** principle about minimalism and Microsoft is making us beg by asking for "feedback" to add features that were ALREADY THERE in IE. Also, many people are quick to assume that because the process for Edge shows less memory consumption than IE, Edge must be more efficient that IE. IE is native code. C++/COM. IE uses Direct2D and GDI. It's UI is very responsive. That Spartan UI is most probably XAML and is running on top of WinRT and EdgeHTML. That adds some performance overhead. Task Manager doesn't show the slowness of the WinRT runtime but in real-world tests, it's nowhere near as fast as native code nor memory efficient. Why couldn't IE have the EdgeHTML engine? Edge did to IE what WinRT/Metro did to Win32. A dumbed down, touch-first subset for the stupid people of the world who can't see how powerful the classic apps and Win32 API were.

The point of replacing that dialog is choice and productivity. If you don't want to be prompted, you won't be by PerigeeCopy. Although personally I would never want to overwrite without being prompted. And second issue is productivity. The way Windows 8/10 does it - you must click "Compare info" to see the actual details which are essential to make a decision and then check at least 2 checkboxes (or even more) and then click Continue. It is neither intuitive . Sure you can click "Replace all" in the new dialog but you don't see any details unless you click "Compare info". The XP dialog which is similar to the one in PerigeeCopy, was superior because it had excellent mouse and keyboard usability and you saw all the details right upfront. All you had to do just 1 click thereafter - either Yes, Yes to All, No, or No to All.

Replace the Windows copy engine with PerigeeCopy: http://winaero.com/blog/queue-copy-and-move-operations-in-windows-with-perigeecopy/(you can see screenshots of the overwrite/conflict dialog in that article).

NTRegOpt is not a Registry cleaner. Registry cleaners are a truly useless trashware/snake oil that everyone should stay away from just like "OS tuning/optimizing tools". NTRegOpt merely rewrites the Registry in a single contiguous way. According to its description "The program works by recreating each registry hive "from scratch", thus removing any slack space that may be left from previously modified or deleted keys. Note that the program does NOT change the contents of the registry in any way, nor does it physically defrag the registry files on the drive (as the PageDefrag program from SysInternals does). The optimization done by NTREGOPT is simply compacting the registry hives to the minimum size possible." But on modern machines and OSes (post Windows XP SP2 where Registry is loaded in the system cache and has built-in optimizations to reduce fragmentation), it wouldn't make much difference even if you don't use it. Windows 2000 and earlier would benefit from NTRegOpt. Remember that Windows 2000 also had a pretty low Registry Size Limit for the system hive. Windows XP and later - negligible benefits to using NTRegOpt. Now I would be seriously p***ed off if they broke ERUNT.

Sad. Thankfully ERUNT still works!!

Well you know, geeks hanging out at computer forums and staying in touch with tech news are likely to notice the new release, download it, test it and since they're geeks, they'll be more comprehensively using/testing it. When the download server starts getting hammered with 10,00,000 downloads per month once the auto update is rolled out, we don't want any big regression or bug to affect that many users.

Automatic update of the new version will be rolled out as always after a couple of weeks after release so any bugs despite comprehensive testing that may not have been detected can be fixed.

Meh. This drop down menu for Open file dialog exists in Windows 7 too. Nothing new.

So I am not alone in thinking that everything is wrong and too many things need to be fixed. Basically everything should be changed to make it more powerful and functional instead of adopting dumbed-down, stupid and slow Metro garbage. It sounds like fighting a losing battle because we won't be able to change some dumbed down parts of the OS anyway. Nice suggestions in case we're forced onto this abominable OS some day. Staying with Windows 7 as long as possible seems a wise move for power users wanting all the extra customization they want.

Control Panel vs PC Settings mess is one thing that comes to mind and everything that's split between the Metro UI and classic UI and severely dumbed down. e.g. Calculator since old one is actually removed.

So MSFN is a forum which I consider is intelligent enough (unlike Neowin for example) where I can ask this. Can we make a list of all things completely wrong with Windows 10? As in component wise: e.g. Start Menu (which is fixed by third parties). Assuming the "right" way it is done is in Windows 7 or XP. Because Microsoft and its hardware partners are eventually going to force Windows 10 on Windows 7 users. What else would you fix by replacing it with an alternative?

XP is the best at usability and everything after it is bloated crap.

On Windows 8, I use PerigeeCopy (http://jstanley.pingerthinger.com/pscopy) to get rid of Windows 8's copying shittiness. Sure it's not fancy, it doesn't have graphs or pausing ability. But it can queue copy jobs, doesn't crash when Explorer crashes and is far less annoying. When overwriting files, it shows me all the details needed for comparison right away, no extra click-click-click.

May I recommend BitTorrent Sync? http://getsync.com/

Ah ok I see what you mean from @2008's screenshot. I meant that the Programs column itself won't expand to the right of the main menu when "Scroll programs" is enabled - the Programs column shows in a single column then. But it's subfolders do expand beyond that - no way around that in XP. It's a tradeoff - to avoid scrolling vertically and clicking to expand each folder in a relatively cramped area like the Vista Start Menu, XP's menu requires you to move the pointer horizontally to reach the program. IMHO using the available screen estate is better than click-scroll-click-scroll to launch the program, but I see how some users may prefer the compact Vista style because it doesn't cover the rest of the screen. Of course, searching to launch a program is an outstanding improvement of the Vista Start Menu but it forces mouse diehards to use the keyboard.

Well the August Update KB2918614 broke something in Windows Installer (MSI) too: http://www.classicshell.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=3089&p=14459 as at least 3 Classic Shell users reported. For all 3 of them, uninstalling the August update to Windows Installer fixes the issue.

If you use Classic Shell's Start Menu btw, you can change the user account picture frame. In fact, the user frame also supports masks and can be tinted with the glass color.

There is also a GUI tool called Task Scheduler which doesn't show console windows. If the Task Scheduler's crappy and slow UI is annoying you, use a tool like Startup Unblocker: http://www.jimmah.com/vista/content.aspx?id=2 which uses the Task Scheduler API to create the Task.

No idea. Your Start Menu is broken lol. It's a setting available since Windows 98.

The XP Start Menu can be made to "Scroll programs" then it won't occupy multiple columns, at least the column with the full list of programs. Are you aware of that setting? When that is checked, the Programs column will overlap the right column of the main menu only (Documents, Pictures, Music etc), It won't go beyond that although if you expand program folders further, they do take screen space horizontally. It still manages to show more programs than the nested "All Programs" treeview which is too cramped and requires too many clicks to get to the program. (In the XP menu, just hovering was enough). I agree about Windows Update. It is much improved in Vista. The text can be tuned using ClearType Tuning PowerToy but the visuals are no match for the beautiful Windows Vista. Vista's DirectX is obviously also much more capable.

LOL wut. Vista sucks completely. You just have to read this list to understand why. Then read XP was my idea blog and download Classic Shell to truly understand why Windows Vista sucked hard. Finally, try to patch a Vista machine and bring it fully up-to-date to understand how Windows' servicing/update stack was completely screwed up in Windows Vista. Yeah I know. Vista brought a million genuine advancements to Windows. I wrote mostly the entire Vista series of articles so I know how many new features it introduced but my did the user experience suck and the sheer number of unfixed regressions and steps backward and compromises made compared to XP! Although Vista takes second fiddle in terms of suckage to Windows 8 which is truly the most horrible operating system ever designed. Vista was a tremendous step forward too but you expect a perfect regression-free product from Microsoft, not some half-baked something-improved-but-tons-of-things-broken kind of OS. And yeah Vista was incredibly beautiful. But the usability and user experience? Zero marks. Negative marks if I could give it negative marks. Vista can be summarized as a step forward architecturally for Windows - improved security, improved networking, improved graphics, improved printing, better management and deployment tools, but with massive and unacceptable regressions in the user experience, shell/GUI, usability, performance, compatibility and serviceability.

Comment deleted. Maybe I was drunk.

Folder Options X does the same tweak but it does so programmatically I think, not using the registry tweak.

Thank you Tihiy for finding the time to maintain this. Ribbon disabling and bottom Details pane are so essential for me to tolerate Explorer.