xpclient

No I don't see why I should punish myself and downgrade to Bob 10, the worst Windows ever! I only moved to Windows 7 after almost every single feature I missed from XP was somehow restored to it by third party apps. Ditto for Bob 8.1 - after I could mould it to make it work like XP/Win7, I moved to it. Bob 10 cannot be modified to make it work the way you want and it has no feature that would make me downgrade to it either. Even Bob 8.1 has some genuine reasons: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/175753-hardware-reasons-to-upgrade/ but Bob 10 has NOTHING. Zilch. It is indeed as one MSFN threads says the "Worst crap ever".

Bob 10 is known to push random crap to only certain users: http://winaero.com/blog/fix-windows-10-installs-apps-like-candy-crush-soda-saga-automatically/

If you are using Microsoft Update and facing this issue, try going back to Windows Update. For Office 2000, install SR-1, then SP3 and then these patches: https://www.dropbox.com/s/c47ngtkmhy7ayua/Off2000PostSP3.zip

It's the LG 32LF6300. It also has Miracast for wireless streaming and playing video from USB.

@Mcinwwl, Windows 7's PowerShell lacks cmdlets / functions and modules found in Windows 8's version of PowerShell. You cannot install certain cmdlets (even by copying the modules folder from Windows 8) because Windows 7 does not have the underlying WMI classes. For example Get-NetAdapter in Windows 8. Also there are many new cmdlet-like functions. Here the score is Windows 7.count = 147, Windows 8.count = 593. As for the Reg keys and values, read the http://winaero.com/blog/ regularly. It is where I share my reg tweaks. As of now there are only http://winaero.com/blog/page/212/ pages.

Oh wow that's great to know! Thank you MTDirector. There is lack of information on this so I appreciate your info. Certainly USB 3.1 is hardly a reason to use Windows 10 given how intrusive and time-wasting it is.

USB 3.1 has two standards: 3.1 Gen 1 which was USB 3.0 revised with minor improvements and 3.1 Gen 2 which was the 10 Gbps speed. The Type-C connector is also part of the spec but I think some update for Windows 8.1 added that support (although I haven't tested it myself). So I thought Windows 8.1 only supported USB 3.1 Gen 1 with Type-C (after KB3103696) but not Gen 2? What is the actual throughput that you get when you start copying a file from a USB mass storage device, if I may ask?

Because of the UI and UX awfulness of Windows 8/8.1 and Windows 10, there have been many people who stayed on Windows 7. I hate stock Windows 8/8.1 very much but after intensive modification by third party apps, especially Classic Shell and others, it becomes somewhat acceptable. So I began comparing it to Windows 7 to evaluate if there were any actual improvements too that were worth upgrading to Windows 8.1. Windows 10 is still extremely awful to the point where it no longer remains an enjoyable experience for long due to forced updates, size of updates being hidden and Microsoft resetting what you have carefully set up every few months. Nevertheless, Windows after Windows 7 did have some improvements on the hardware experience side. I am trying to make such a list. I already moved to Windows 8.1 with Classic Shell and a dozen other third party apps to fix the awful software experience. On the hardware and software side, Windows 8.1 has the following benefits for me over Windows 7: - Windows Search in Windows 8.1 has the ability to include removable drives/folders on removable drives in the Search index/or in a Library and have them indexed! - Windows 8 introduces a new Solid Windows setup image format that uses LZMS compression. The resulting image install.esd is much smaller than install.wim - Memory Combining reduces the footprint of processes in the working environment - USB 3.0 support. Even though Windows 7 PCs do have USB 3.0 drivers, Windows 8.1 supports USB Attached SCSI protocol which makes UASP flash drives much faster than USB 3.0 on Windows 7. UASP with USB 3.0 is a significant speed boost over USB 2.0 while still maintaining compatibility with USB 2.0 devices. - USB Video Class 1.5 means your UVC webcam will work with inbox drivers and use H.264 compression (if your webcam supports it). 8.1 also supports 1080p60 webcams (60 fps), with Windows 7 and earlier, you're limited to 30 fps and USB 2.0. - USB Type C connector with KB3103696 - Bluetooth Low Energy (LE)/Bluetooth SMART support means I can use devices like Bluetooth wireless mouse which supports the Bluetooth 4.0 LE standard or LE headsets. The batteries in these devices last for a long time. I began to use a Bluetooth 4 wireless mouse with 8.1 on my laptop and its single AA battery lasted one full year! Now that's amazing! This is something that was unexpected - a touch-centric OS like Windows 8/8.1 actually improving my MOUSE experience in Windows!! - 802.11ac. With a fast 802.11ac router, 2 PCs with PCIe/NVM Express SSDs, you get amazing WiFi speeds. (OK, after doing some testing on Windows 7, it turns out, as long as you have the right drivers installed under Windows 7 and an 802.11ac router, you will get the same faster than N speeds as Windows 8 on 7 as well. It's only that Windows 7 continues to report your radio as 802.11n.) - Offloaded Data Transfers for file copying - More WMI classes and PowerShell cmdlets - Miracast wireless streaming to a display which 8.1 supports (although you could also use Windows 7 with Intel WiDi or buy a Chromecast dongle). But Miracast in 8.1 lets you not only mirror your display wirelessly to the second display but also extend your desktop to it. Like a wireless multiple monitors solution! - Windows 8.1 supports external manifests for application executables ("PreferExternalManifest"=dword:00000001) without any side effects of Windows 7 like the Network icon breaking. This is important if you are using a High resolution/High DPI display because Microsoft f***ed up DPI scaling with Windows 7. I wrote an article "How to fix apps that look small on high DPI and high resolution displays" but the modications in it requires the PreferExternalManifest Registry key to be set which works correctly only on Windows 8.1, not on 7). - The DPI scaling engine in Windows 8.1 loads much earlier than Windows 7 so apps which load at startup are scaled properly - Windows 8.1 has better WinSxS cleanup using Dism.exe /Online /Cleanup-Image /StartComponentCleanup /ResetBase - Besides the good old SFC /scannow, Windows 8.1 has the ability to repair the Component Store itself using: Dism /Online /Cleanup-Image /RestoreHealth. Also its servicing stack is self-healing, it recovers from component corruption vs 7's stack which requires fixes from Windows Update like running CheckSUR - Chkdsk Spotfix ability - Client Hyper-V (although I was a fan of Virtual PC too, but VirtualBox is a good replacement for Virtual PC, except for running legacy Windows OSes) - Most issues on the software side were resolved for me by using third party apps - Classic Shell, 7+ Taskbar Tweaker, Classic Task Manager, Equalizer APO, Google Chrome, Everything Search, PerigeeCopy, OldNewExplorer, FileSearchEX, VistaSwitcher, Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, and reinstating Sidebar Gadgets, Classic Games, classic MSConfig, various tray applet fixes, ERUNT, AutoHotkey, EasyBCD, UxStyle plus this theme, WindowsFirewallControl etc - All the Metro crap uninstalled, default programs set to Win32 apps, Group Policies to disable crap like OneDrive, Bing Search and Customer Experience Improvement Program, it is OK. - DOZENS of Registry fixes to make it work like the way I want - more like Windows XP Professional and Windows 7 so Windows 8.1 is now a pleasant and stable experience!! - Media Center is missing but I got a new LG TV which has far better DVR recording features using modern compression and takes the load off the PC. If you don't have another piece of hardware that does DVR and home theatre, try Kodi. It is in my opinion superior to Media Center in many ways. - Aero Glass project is there if you miss Aero. Personally I don't miss Aero's transparencies any more. I prefer this theme instead with makes the taskbar's active button of the foreground (focused) window very clear and easy to understand. From a usability perspective, I find the Windows 8 theme is uglier compared to Windows 7 but the visual cues are better. For example, it is easier to tell the active window due to the use of solid colors in the title bar compared to transparencies. The baby blue selection color in context menus is also more visible in the Windows 8 theme vs Windows 7. - Classic Shell can completely skin its Start menu and the taskbar in any OS on Windows 7, 8.1 or 10 so the taskbar appearance too is fixable. - Windows 8.1 has great performance as a virtualized guest OS due to DWM compositing being hardware accelerated/Advanced Rasterization Platform vs Windows 7 in a VM (even with WDDM drivers). Windows 10 is again horribly slow in a VM due to excessive use of managed code/.NET in the Explorer shell. Windows 10 has the following benefits over Windows 8.1: - RemoteFX vGPU in Client Hyper-V (although VirtualBox is faster, more useful for me) - Windows Spotlight (although the Lockscreen Slideshow of 8.1 is just as good) - Miracast receiving ability in Anniversary Update and later (but an app called MirrorOp does the same for earlier versions of Windows) - DLNA Streaming of YouTube and other web videos to DLNA compatible TVs using Microsoft Edge and Windows Media Player (I haven't been able to find any decent 3rd party app to DLNA stream to TVs that works as well as Windows 10's built-in streaming). But in Windows 10, mostly I find cheap gimmicky features like Cortana and more of the silly Metro stuff forced on us! We have a broken updating mechanism now that abuses your internet bandwidth, changes things on your PC however it wants, whenever it wants, downloads unwanted crap from the Store, shows annoying nags. Action Center is just one more headache to manage and clear all the notifications after reading them. Lots of stuff happening behind the scenes which I cannot control. Even if I can control updates somewhat by setting my Wifi to metered, I have no idea how big they are, what exactly are they going to change because many of the changes are undocumented, and so many of my customized tweaks get reset. Updates take a hell lot of time to download and install compared to the little value they add. This is a complete deal-breaker. And then the UI which is still a disaster. For me, Windows 10 is a very strong case of negatives overwhelmingly outweighing any positives. Given the extremely intrusive nature of Windows 10, it is not suitable for serious use on a business/enterprise class PC. I can think of no good reason to use it for now. Windows 8/8.1 on the other hand whose childish UI and Metro silliness killed it has now evolved because great hardware is available and the f***ED up software side is fixed by third party apps. Do you have any good reasons on the hardware side to "upgrade" to Windows 10? The software changes in Windows 10 are already AWFUL with silly features like Store, Cortana, ugly and silly Metro/UWP apps, totally crap visual style and graphics, slow bloated .NET code in the shell, Windows Update nonsense, Telemetry crap, Tablet mode/Touch UI infecting more parts of Windows destroying the mouse/keyboard usability, GarbEdge being worse than IE. Discuss. UPDATE: Update size is also a big factor affecting my experience due to slow internet. It has ballooned tremendously for Windows 8.1 (updates are up to 100 MB or more) compared to Windows 7 (less than 50 MB). Don't even ask about Windows 10 where monthly updates are 500 MB to several GBs!!!!. I cannot download such huge updates every month just to keep Windows secure, simply do not have the bandwidth. Windows 10 is out of the question forever.

@bapt, This might help: How to move Libraries above This PC in Windows 10: http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-move-libraries-above-this-pc-in-windows-10/

Opera seems to disagree: http://betanews.com/2016/06/22/opera-makes-dodgy-battery-claims/ Anyway the point is Opera, which is Chrome++ as far as features are concerned comes close in battery life to GarbEdge which is so horrible and so lacking in features compared to even IE that one would be depressed seeing such a bad browser from Microsoft and completely lose trust in their ability to ever build a decent one. They may have a state-of-the-art rendering engine and fast Javascript engine but those aren't the only things that count. Building a user interface that people can enjoy also matters. Features matter.

And even if they had exclusive content, on the internet, everything is plagiarized, nobody credits the source or copyright. Unfortunate but true. We don't have internet law or police.

Because starting and stopping the WU service is one more headache. I don't want to manage the updates service. Why should I have to do that? In earlier versions like Win7, a balloon told me updates were available. When I felt like it, I went to WU which was pinned to my Start menu, installed them and forgot about it. In Windows 10, I get a hideously ugly annoying notification which overlays all other windows and says "Requires updates need to be downloaded". It opens WU even if I press Esc or Alt+F4 on it.

In my opinion, WU MiniTool doesn't work that well in Windows 10 Pro or Home because these editions are super-annoying since the default WU behavior is to always download updates automatically. While WU MiniTool can stop it, unless you use the WU MiniTool GUI to control WU, the OS behaves like a b***h and always tries to download updates on its own unless you disable the WU service completely which is not what you want. You also get rude in-your-face notifications overlaying everything else which says "REQUIRED UPDATES NEED TO BE DOWNLOADED". That message has no buttons to close it and even if you press Esc, it still opens Windows Update in the Settings app. I haven't tried WU MiniTool on Windows 10 Enterprise, maybe that edition is less annoying. Windows 10 is a dead end to me anyway, I don't see myself downgrading to this POS for the next 10-15 years at least.

No of course not, all of the updates in that list are not REQUIRED to make WU working. But the goal isn't to just get WU working (according to Paul Thurrott), WU checked for updates for 2 hours on his Convenience Rollup and then showed updates. The goal is to get WU to finish scanning quickly. For that I recommend integrating those updates which are not included in the CR. They are not required to get WU working, but required to get it working FAST like 5 mins waiting time. In fact, the IE11, Virtual PC, RDP 8.1 updates are optional. So are KMDF, UMDF, WinHelp, Agent, Hyper-V components, RSAT and some others. But the Convenience Rollup includes updated files for many of these components. If you don't integrate them and later install them, you will have to install updates for them again via WU. Instead, if you slipstream these optional components first into Windows 7 Setup and THEN slipstream Convenience Rollup, they all get updated files from CR without you having to download them from Windows Update. I believe this takes off a huge chunk of the time required for checking for updates. Still, if you want to integrate only the essential updates I think the following might work although I haven't tested it. It might take far longer with only these updates to finish its check for the first time after a clean install): KB3020369 (April 2015 Servicing stack update) KB2670838 (Platform Update) KB971033 (Update for Windows Activation Technologies) KB2990941 (NVMe/PCI Express SSD drivers with TRIM support) – This is not essential but more like future-proofing for NVM Express SSDs KB3087873 (Hotfix for NVM Express drivers) KB3059317 (Security Update for common controls) KB3102810 (Update to fix high CPU usage and slow installation and searching for updates) KB3138612 (Windows Update Client: March 2016) KB3145739 (Security Update for Windows Graphics Component) KB3153199 (Security update for Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers) KB3156017 (Security update for Windows Kernel-Mode Drivers) KB3156417 (May 2016 update rollup for Windows 7 SP1) ......and then Convenience Rollup. But like I said, after integrating the full list, WU finished its check after a clean install in around 5-7 minutes on my machine and there was only 150 MB to download (34 updates) after hiding the language packs, drivers, telemetry and Windows 10 upgrade s***e.

For anyone who's interested, I wrote: How to make an updated ISO with Windows 7 SP2 Convenience Rollup so Windows Update works It is nothing special, just info I got thanks to the user abbodi1406. If you do a clean install with just a few more updates besides Convenience Rollup, it doesn't break WU. As for the controversial KBs included in Convenience Rollup, there are no KB to upgrade to Windows 10 in the CR. There are *some* telemetry updates but if you turn off Customer Experience Improvement Program (Type: ceip into the Start menu and choose "No, I don't want to participate") then there should be no more telemetry issues on Windows 7.

I've checked out that Windows Update MiniTool and here are my observations: - Windows 10 still supports controlling Windows Update via APIs. It's only the default behavior that has been set to auto-download, hide download size, auto install updates. So the UI and end user control over it is crippled but programmatic control still remains. - Windows Update MiniTool does precisely that. It doesn't download the updates itself, its tells the WU and Background Intelligent Transfer Service which start behaving themselves once the right API functions are called Nor does WU minitool have to maintain its own server or do any update checks on its own. It just calls the various APIs in Windows 10 to restore control to the end user. So if the Settings app in Windows 10 is showing that an update is being downloaded, WU MiniTool can easily interrupt it and stop it. You can see the size of updates once again, download selected updates as you want, install only a few ones, block the ones, hide some of them (which that Microsoft troubleshooter also lets you do because it uses the WU API). - The left side UI of WU MiniTool is poor with only cryptic icons that don't make it easy to understand. I've requested its author to put text labels below the icon-only UI. Also, Windows Update MiniTool's UI is not as polished as the UI of the real WU in Windows 7/8.1 which shows the downloaded MB, shows which update it is installing etc etc. - If you use Windows 10 Enterprise Edition for example and use WU MiniTool, then you should be able to gain full control of Windows Update once again. I don't know if you can turn off the annoying full screen notifications though that "Required updates need to be downloaded". - Telemetry can be completely turned off/defeated by modifying the hosts file yourself and using Windows Firewall or using tools like Spybot Anti-Beacon (and dozens of others) which not only block telemetry servers but also turns off the processes/services that collect this info. - This doesn't change the fact that Windows 10 still: -- Is a POS crap OS -- Hardly delivers anything of value to serious users -- Make the touch experience worse in some ways from even Windows 8 -- Has tons of regressions -- Is constantly changing, like a beta, constantly under construction, constantly wasting the user's time, resetting tons of settings, app defaults, having to reconfigure everything all over again. it's essentially a waste of time, malware, nagware, annoyware, adware, everything s***ty rolled into one OS -- Removes a lot of valuable functionality of Windows XP/7 and even 8 -- Has tons of bugs, serious broken issues and regressions which Microsoft will never fix -- Even if you are a huge fan of Apps and App Stores, you will find Android does everything more intuitively -- Completely ruins the desktop PC experience, and mars whatever little trust I had in Microsoft -- Has a UI so awful that I feel like rage quitting computers -- Whatever features it has are poorly coded, very poorly done, of little value and consume a lot of memory, numerous unnecessary and extraneous processes. -- Essentially by "upgrading" to Windows 10, you essentially concede all control back to Microsoft to abuse you and do whatever the hell they want with YOUR PC, going against the principle of opposing just a hostile and customer-screwing operating system Still, in the worse case scenario, if Windows 10 is ever forced on you because everyone else was stupid enough to "upgrade" to this POS, then Windows Update MiniTool will take out the biggest pain point of Windows 10: forced updates. As for forced drivers, there is already a Group Policy introduced in Anniversary Update to turn off driver update via Windows Update: http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-turn-off-driver-updates-in-windows-update-in-windows-10/ However the argument remains - WHY should you have to do all this and still be at Microsoft's mercy when you can continue using the far more problem-free Windows 7, 8.1 or the venerable Windows XP?

Does anyone have a PCI Express M.2 SSD here and installed Windows 7 on it? Windows 7 when originally released only had support of the TRIM command on SATA SSDs. When NVM Express arrived, Windows 8.1 added support for it. But Microsoft released KB2990941 for Windows 7. This adds NVMe support to Windows 7. But I haven't got a PCIe SSD to test and verify if TRIM command is also enabled for NVMe storage devices on Windows 7. I only have an M.2 SATA SSD. If anyone has a PCIe SSD, can you please install Windows 7 with KB2990941 integrated and let me know if TRIM works? Updated edit: Just got to know from a Twitter follower that it does! Meaning Windows 7 gets full NVMe support with KB2990941 including TRIM command.

Twitter is a great place for ranting against greedy, evil corporations. Plus Twitter poll participants are anonymous.

If you can take a moment to vote at the poll here: What is the worst thing they did to Windows? Twitter unfortunately gives me only 4 options otherwise I would have put in many more

Oh indeed I didn't. Sorry I should've been more clear. Flyouts is the term MS is using in Bob 10 for tray applets since the UI literally flies out. It doesn't have to be a shell command, even if anyone knows a Rundll32 command it would do.

Folders are not the same as tray applets. I asked about tray applets.

Is there a command line way if anyone knows to open the Network flyout in Windows 10? In Windows 7/8 it was shell:::{38A98528-6CBF-4CA9-8DC0-B1E1D10F7B1B}. However this no longer works in 10 unless StartIsBack++ is installed which seems to "repair" shell:::{38A98528-6CBF-4CA9-8DC0-B1E1D10F7B1B}. I would like to know if there is some other way to open the Network flyout (the UI that shows when you click the Network icon in notification area/system tray). Also, does anyone know a cmd line to open the Date and Power flyouts in Windows 7/8?

I am not particularly concerned if Linux looks like Windows (although it certainly doesn't hurt) as long as it works like Windows. Windows made everything easier and productive before they started making it too dumb and oversimplified. I am not in favor of too much and unnecessary complexity which Linux has at the moment vs Windows which now has too much simplicity (and mediocrity). I could send you a big long never ending list of usability issues with Linux GUIs but what good would that be if they can't be fixed by anyone? I would rather tell them to Ivo to make Windows work better since he can develop software to address the awful limitations that Microsoft is intentionally building into Windows. Linux might be better than Windows since it gives more control but I am not sure I need that level of complexity. I'm not saying Linux is hard to use. It's easy enough. It's just not as comfortable or as productive as Windows. Let me give you an example. The MATE Start Menu doesn't select the first result automatically so you can press Enter to launch the topmost program. I had to search the internet for a fix and after hours of searching, I found it buried deep in some forum. I then had to edit the applications.py file written in Python to add one more line to it: shownList[0].grab_focus() JUST to make the MATE advanced menu auto-focus on the top search result. This is not good enough for the average Windows user. Linux community isn't getting usability right.

Well I did make a tremendous effort to learn Linux and set it up close to the desktop I had on Windows. I found Xfce's WhiskerMenu quite decent. But still couldn't get close to Windows-level of usability so gave up: