Dave-H

That link works for me too in IE8, and in Opera (both version 12.18 and version 36).

Whenever I've tried that, the "http" has been automatically changed back to "https" and it's failed again.

Yes, I found both of those as well, but changing them for another image in the same place with the same name made no difference, the cave picture still obstinately stuck there on the default login screen! I'm becoming convinced that it must be hard-coded somewhere.

Thanks Noel, yes I looked into WinAero, and discovered the same, it used to be possible to change to a custom image using it, but since the Anniversary Update, no longer, all you can have now is the cave image or a plain colour field (which is actually the selected "accent colour" IIRC), not a different image. I'd still like to know where that cave image comes from, as if its source can be identified, the potential must be there to change it, even if it's hard coded into a dll or some such. As I said, there seem to be quite a few conspiracy theories about why Microsoft has removed this facility in Windows 10 Pro!

I've recently "upgraded" to Windows 10, and the first thing I wanted to do was to get rid of that picture of some rocks in the sea through a cave mouth on start up and replace it with a custom image. Unfortunately all my researches seem to indicate that since the Anniversary Update, this is now impossible, at least if you have auto-login enabled, which I have. I can change the user lock screen, and make the user logon screen the same just by using the UI settings, but it seems to be impossible to change the default logon screen (the one you see when you first start the system) unless you have to put in a user password. If the password is bypassed, the default login screen (the rocks through the cave mouth) seems to be fixed and cannot be altered! Has anyone found a way around this? I gather that the gpedit functions which used to control this, so that people could use their own branding on the lock screen for instance, have now been depreciated in the Anniversary Update unless you have the Enterprise version of Windows 10. They've now been removed form the Pro version, which is really annoying! There are dark mutterings that this was removed because it would have enabled people to prevent Microsoft from forcing advertising onto people's logon screens. Does anyone have an answer to this? Presumably that cave picture must come from somewhere (it's not the one in C:\Windows\Web\Screen, I've already tried that!) so presumably it can be changed, even if it's awkward and difficult to do. I can't imagine that I would want to change it all that often! Any advice appreciated. BTW, I know I can change the image for a plain colour field using a registry hack, but I'd really like to actually have a different image!

Thanks Noel. I'm not a big user of the Windows apps, but there are some that I find useful. The Anniversary Update (1607) is the version I have, I never experienced any earlier ones so I've nothing to judge it against, but it does seem to be fine. Cheers, Dave.

Just thought I'd come back here one last time to say that I'm afraid I finally decided to do the "upgrade" to Windows 10! I thought I'd probably bite the bullet and do it sometime anyway, as several of the apps that I was using on Windows 8.1 (including some paid for ones) seem to have now been abandoned in favour of Windows 10 UWP apps, which don't work on 8.1 of course. They are not updating the 8.1 versions any more as far as I can see. I guess they couldn't wait to abandon 8.1, which is a shame, as it will probably be now added to the list of short-lived "Cinderella" Windows versions along with ME, Vista, and to some extent even Windows 2000 (which along with ME was only around for about a year IIRC before they were both replaced by XP). I looked into it, and to upgrade to Windows 10 Pro from 8.1 Pro was going to cost me over £100 if I had to pay for it, so I thought I'd grab it while it was still free if you know where to go. See you on the Windows 10 forum I'm sure (probably many times!)

Interesting idea, although I'm not too happy that I might be being used as a guinea pig by Microsoft! I have my Windows Update set to warn me when updates are available, but not to automatically download or install them (a luxury you don't have with Windows 10 of course!) I was told they were available as optional updates. I installed them anyway and no (obvious) harm seems to have been done, but I don't see what the point of them is, unless they are some sort of test, as you say.

There was "October 2016 Preview of Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2" KB3192404 on October 20th, and "November 2016 Preview of Monthly Quality Rollup for Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2" KB3197875 on November 16th, both offered in between patch Tuesdays. They were both very large updates, pretty much the same size as the "non-preview" updates that were offered on the October and November patch Tuesdays. There's nothing I can see on their Microsoft information pages that says what they are supposed to be for!

@JodyT Hmm, not making it easy are they? @NoelC Have you any idea what the purpose of these strange (and huge) "preview" updates is?

Thanks Jody, I wasn't actually aware of that option!

How do you do that if all the updates are rolled up into one file? Do you identify what's actually in the roll-up and then download and install just the updates you want separately without using Windows Update?

LOL, you're probably right!

Done, thanks very much!

The Windows 8.1 updates are single update roll-ups now every month of course, but what is it with these huge "preview" updates that are appearing in between patch Tuesdays? Anyone know what the point of them is?

Yes it is. Almost every time I run it it updates to a new version, when I checked just now it updated from 13.4.21 to 14.4.19. It's still apparently working fine though, the only thing I have to do when it updates is to disable the DbxSvc (DbxSvc.exe) service, which is not compatible with XP, but this does not seem to affect functionality in any way, and I only disable it to avoid the error messages about it in the event log.

It was pretty slow on both my XP installations, but not that bad!

If you load the Windows/Microsoft Update page in IE8, on the left is a "Review your update history" link to view the installed updates. They're also recorded in the Windows Event Viewer System log, although there is more than one entry for each one there. From heinoganda's list, for me KB3192321 was already installed earlier, and KB3197835 was not installed as I don't have IIS running. That leaves seven, plus three for Office.

Yes I got mine eventually, ten updates in my case (three for Office). Both my XP machines took a huge amount of time scanning for updates, much longer than they normally do, but all installed OK eventually.

No sign of any yellow shield here yet. I got my Windows 8.1 updates yesterday, and my partner's Windows 7 laptop has got them today. I'll wait a while longer and see what happens.

You'll have a job if there is, as everything seems to be rolled up into one big single update now!

Sadly it looks as if using that option on QuickMirror will not solve the problem. With it or any of its variants set, it checks every file really slowly every time I run the mirror, even though the log says it hasn't changed any of them! This is taking nearly as long as actually copying them would, and it's doing it every single time too, not just twice a year! I can only assume this is because it's checking the content of all the files every time, which is always going to be really slow. Unless there is any other workaround, I guess I'm just going to have to accept that it will have to do a full copy twice a year after the clocks change.

Thanks again, I'll change the QuickMirror settings and hopefully I then won't have to re-copy the entire contents of my archive drive twice a year! I just needed reassurance that changing that setting wouldn't have any obvious other disadvantages. Windows Offline Files is there in Windows XP (but only the Professional version I think, not the Home version). It's a way of keeping selected files on one computer synchronised with files on another computer, mainly useful to synchronise files between a portable computer and a fixed desktop, at least that what I use it for! It means I can have a lot of my archive files with me when I go away with my netbook, and I just re-sync before I go away to make sure it's up to date with what's on the desktop. I very rarely if ever make changes to the files on the netbook while I'm away, but if I did those changes should carry back over to the versions on the desktop the next time I sync. Unfortunately it obviously gets thrown when the clocks change as one of the drives it's synchronising is a FAT32 drive and the other is NTFS. It wouldn't be an issue except that it takes so long to re-synchronise everything, even with the two computers directly connected together with an Ethernet cable!

Thanks jaclaz! My backup software is QuickMirror, and I've now done what I should have done in the first place and checked its settings! Do you think the option I have highlighted here will fix the problem, and will it cause any others?! It has always been set to the "date, time and size" default before, which has caused the issue of course! This may well fix the backup problem, but I can't see any way of doing something similar with Windows Offline Files. I've just finished re-synchronising the XP side of my netbook with the XP side of my main computer, and it took about ten hours as every file had to be replaced!

Not sure where to put this as it isn't really OS specific, but I mainly use XP so that's why it's here! We changed from UTC+1 to UTC last weekend here in the UK, and a recurring annoying problem which I always forget about cropped up. I back up my system archive very regularly, and the source drive is FAT32 as I want to use it natively with Windows 98SE. The destination backup drive is NTFS, as it has to be able to cope with files larger than 4GB, such as system image backups. Of course every time the clocks change every single file has to be re-copied across because their time stamps have changed, which takes ages and is a real PITA. I know why this happens, it's because FAT32 and NTFS handle timestamps differently, but is there any way around this? Also I synchronise some of the archive to my netbook, which is all NTFS drives, using the Windows Offline Files system. The same thing happens here, every file has to be copied, including unchanged ones that are several gigabytes, and it takes hours and hours! Is there really no answer to this other than converting my archive drive to NTFS or just putting up with it twice a year?!