JorgeA Posted June 5, 2016 Share Posted June 5, 2016 A commenter down in the discussion section for The Register's post on that seeming "no choice" Win10 downgrade, offers this interesting advice to avoid the GWX nag: Quote Actually there is a simple way to avoid having it come up at all. I have a Win 7 machine that never showed that popup from MS once. I had disabled the update to IE 11. Turns out that if you don't have IE 11, it doesn't nag you as, for some reason known only to someone at MS, IE 11 is essential to the update trigger. --JorgeA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rn10950 Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 3 hours ago, JorgeA said: A commenter down in the discussion section for The Register's post on that seeming "no choice" Win10 downgrade, offers this interesting advice to avoid the GWX nag: --JorgeA That will probably work for me. I never update IE because I just install Firefox the first thing I do and never look back. (of course, on my Win7 machines that'll never be an issue as I don't install KB3035583 and I have GWX Control Panel and the registry tweaks enabled.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ralcool Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) If life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion... The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Chapter 11. Douglas Adams. RIP. Edited June 6, 2016 by ralcool HHGTTG. Read It. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Formfiller Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) Does Microsoft makes any sense to you? The way they handled W10 (GWX) looked as if they get paid by the NSA for every successful installation. They are just asking for such theories (?) with their behavior, it looks like deliberate sabotage inside the company. If they toned down W10 a bit: Make the LTSB available to buy for everyone, even if the price would be higher than the ultimate versions of W7, make updates optional again, scale back GWX etc. it would be accepted far more easily. It's like with IE during the browser wars: Sure, IE was pre-installed, but it was very easy to make it almost invisible if you wanted to: Install another browser, delete the IE shortcut and you wouldn't have noticed it was pre-installed in the first place. If MS behaved back then like it does today, the IE shortcuts would re-appear all the time and IE would open up automatically after booting up, creating bad mood all the time. Most people have the default settings on regarding privacy and updates, so MS would still be able to data-mine a massive amount out of the "willing" default-participants with Windows 10. But in trying to force the remaining reluctants into this (forced updates, forced telemetry, reverting privacy settings on updates etc.), they create MASSIVE negativity. It backfires even more, because the reluctants are also usually the more outspoken ones and tech-savvy and act as negative multipliers ("let me re-install W7/W8 for you again"). Microsoft sabotages Windows out of control-greed. That's the same reason W8 bombed: If it would had an official switch during installation and in the control-panel to revert back to the W7 UI on desktops and laptops, it would have never created the backlash it did. I am pretty sure the windows app store would have been more successful too if it would have been just a link in the start menu with free stuff inside it after pulling the W7 UI switch than the hostile forced UI crapatacular anything "metro" came across. GJ NuMS. Your 100% greed is killing you. Edited June 6, 2016 by Formfiller 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) It seems to me they want to get out of the operating system business; probably even the software business. "Sensible" as we know it - or can even imagine it - just doesn't apply at Microsoft's scale. The original visionary has moved on. Perhaps it's a move set to stimulate the Indian or Chinese economies, who knows? Whatever's going on, we can't possibly hope to understand it. Why a software company with a billion established customers would want to leave that behind is anyone's guess, but diving the Windows operating system into the ground is the clear goal. Too many smart people have looked for too long - there's no reasonable but hidden agenda waiting yet to be discovered. It may help to think of Microsoft not as an evil monolith but more like, say, Superman with cancer. Most folks working there probably hate their current direction and are trying to make the best of it, and there must even be some who won't let go of their ideals even though being directed to do so. But with the kind of culture their current moves must be creating, it's got to be the case that many are leaving. Engineers in general really don't know how to be evil. The worst they get is typically just "incompetent". -Noel Edited June 6, 2016 by NoelC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dibya Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 20 hours ago, NoelC said: Are you speaking of a theme replacement, helpdesk98? I don't find the newer icons difficult to deal with myself. I see you have Classic Shell. It's Very Good. Better than ANY start menu Microsoft ever coded. Some suggestions... You can double click the tab heading to shrink the tab area at the top of the File Explorer window. Then the headings become more like menus. I don't personally use any of the Classic Shell tool icons in Explorer, so I hide them (right click in the open space to the left of them). Customize the look and feel of the start menu to make the first panel have small entries as well. Through configuration Classic Shell can facilitate translucency of the Taskbar and menus. Overall it integrates well with Aero Glass for Win 8+. It supports being run on a system that's tweaked to run with UAC disabled and no Apps in sight. You can hide the Windows status bar near the bottom, the Classic Shell one is the only one you need. You can set the Explorer address bar to show a true path, not breadcrumbs. A bit more advanced stuff... There are various ways to trim what's shown in the Navigation (left) pane in Explorer. You can cause darker fonts to be used in Explorer and the Details view entries to be spaced more tightly together via a little tweaker called Folder Options X by T800. WOW! GroundBreaking Customization Which things have you used? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BudwS Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) On 6/5/2016 at 3:24 PM, JorgeA said: Great idea! What was the name of the process that you killed in Task Manager? Readers discovering this thread may find it useful to know what to look for. --JorgeA I don't remember the exact name. The window was the actual download for Win 10 that was running. I stopped the task with Task manager instead of Xing the window. For good measure, I restarted the PC. I like 64bit IE 11 for Win 7. But I usually install it with the downloaded IE 11 from MS that I keep on a thumb drive. On Win 10, I pin IE 11 to the taskbar from windows accessories and then select it as the default browser. Also, Waterfox gets installed on the 64bit computers so there is a backup browser that for me has been very stable. Yes, Ghostery addon gets installed, too. I'm still waiting for the negatives to show up with Ghostery. So far, not there. ****************************************** Edit: Another thought about stopping the automatic Win 10 upgrades. This will be seen as obvious by many people but because of it I haven't seen it written down. Most PCs are set up to install the Windows 10 update at 3:00 am in the morning when the PC is left on over night and the user is sleeping. Stop the upgrade by turning the PC off at night! The PC can not upgrade with no power. Yup, so obvious it's not worth mentioning. Except when I remember my hotshot tech self troubleshooting the power problem on a PC and the end user plugs the power cord in and the PC starts up. So, turn the Win 7 off at night and Win 10 can't start. Edited June 7, 2016 by BudwS Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) 20 hours ago, Dibya said: WOW! GroundBreaking Customization Which things have you used? I mentioned many of them above. Let's see, what didn't I mention... Aero Glass for Win 8+ with my own "Rounded Corners" theme atlas: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/RoundedCorners.zip Removal of stuff from the navigation pane via setting various registry entries. The specifics (among most everything else I've done) are embedded in my Windows10ReTweaker script: http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/thread/100/interested-participating-tweaker-development-test Though the default config is good, there are a large number of look and feel things you can configure in Classic Shell. I reworked my own shell icon that animates the pressing of the start button better for top-screen location and fits with my preferred color scheme better: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10586/ClassicShellReplacementStartButtonIcon.png Caveat: All of the above make Windows 10 usable (for me) but Microsoft's insistence that some of it will be broken every 6 months or so - even in light of being able to build much of the customization into a re-tweaker script - is just too much to bear, so I'm not making it the system I rely on for my day to day work. If I were going to adopt Win 10 full-time I might consider seeking out a full theme replacement in order to better be able to even better visually identify things like scroll bar thumbs, buttons, and the like. Personally I like rounded corners on everything. -Noel Edited June 7, 2016 by NoelC 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aviv00 Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 6 hours ago, NoelC said: Removal of stuff from the navigation pane via setting various registry entries. The specifics (among most everything else I've done) are embedded in my Windows10ReTweaker script: http://win10epicfail.proboards.com/thread/100/interested-participating-tweaker-development-test how much handles explorer.exe takes after the regs ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helpdesk98 Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 (edited) I plan on customizing some more the folder thing was just me messing around with some icons I had from my fedora setup. I will have to check out your Windows10ReTweaker script @NoelC . If I get some time tonight I am going to lock my W10 VM down and play with it some more. I will also have to figure out how to make snapshots in VM Ware Play I just started using it. Prepare your tinfoil hats: on a random note: NSA or should we be looking at some other government entity I just feel like the NSA is the "fall guy" the mystery entity wants us to be looking at as they do the things that they do. Eh? Edited June 7, 2016 by helpdesk98 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Formfiller Posted June 6, 2016 Share Posted June 6, 2016 Spread the word: https://www.change.org/p/the-electonic-frontier-foundation-have-the-eff-investigate-microsoft-for-malicious-practices-regarding-windows-10 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 Just in time for Microsoft to make its big push for mobile-oriented Windows 10: People are spending much less time on social media apps: Report Quote Facebook's Instagram saw the biggest year-over-year drop — usage was down 23.7 percent this year, closely followed by Twitter (down 23.4 percent), Snapchat (down 15.7 percent) and Facebook (down 8 percent), the study found. [...] Current installs — the number of apps installed on devices — for the big four social media apps among Android users in the countries studied were down nine percent year over year... New company slogan: Microsoft -- Fighting the Last WarTM --JorgeA 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 3 hours ago, helpdesk98 said: Prepare your tinfoil hats: on a random note: NSA or should we be looking at some other government entity I just feel like the NSA is the "fall guy" the mystery entity wants us to be looking at as they do the things that they do. Eh? IMHO the NSA is a good enough focus of attention. --JorgeA 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 (edited) 11 hours ago, BudwS said: I like 64bit IE 11 for Win 7. But I usually install it with the downloaded IE 11 from MS that I keep on a thumb drive. On Win 10, I pin IE 11 to the taskbar from windows accessories and then select it as the default browser. Also, Waterfox gets installed on the 64bit computers so there is a backup browser that for me has been very stable. Yes, Ghostery addon gets installed, too. I'm still waiting for the negatives to show up with Ghostery. So far, not there. Huh, I didn't know it was possible to run IE from anywhere other than the Program Files folder. Learned something new tonight! --JorgeA P.S. My experience with Ghostery has been pretty good. My only gripe is that the UI before the current one was easier to navigate and to understand. But what do I know, I like having lots of options and information set out in front of me. Edited June 7, 2016 by JorgeA addition 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
helpdesk98 Posted June 7, 2016 Share Posted June 7, 2016 i am a bit too into conspiracy theory's, but I think everyone is a bit too worried about the obvious suspect and not the one living right next door. I swear my neighbor is an NID operative! lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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