I'm a business entrepreneur / software engineer. I use a workstation for engineering work.
At this point I have accumulated a bunch of knowledge about how to make Windows 10 more tolerable.
Would any of you like to discuss how to:
Resurrect Aero Glass and make the desktop prettier?
Re-theme the common controls (something I've not managed yet, but it's a matter of time)?
Remove Cortana and other Metrotard Apps so you can concentrate on the desktop?
Run with a local account and UAC disabled?
Shut Windows up from sending data all over the world?
Optimize performance?
Manage it for the long-term?
This info is available all over the place in various forums and stuff. I've managed to put a bunch of it together into a nice combo (well, as nice as Win 10 gets) in a VM and am willing to share. Talking about it will help me organize my thoughts; maybe I'll ultimately put it in a book.
Having done this same thing to all prior versions of Windows, I can say with authority that my best effort at tweaking Windows 10 doesn't leave me compelled to upgrade over my best Windows 8.1 setup, which runs my nice Dell Precision workstation very well indeed.
Just say what you'd like to hear about and I'll retrace my steps as best I can. Plus, if you've got experience integrating a good 3rd party theme that restores skeuomorphism to controls, I'd love to talk about that too.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
First off, are you running Win 10 build 10240 or a newer one? Aero Glass resurrection pretty much requires 10240, as the software hooks the system in undocumented places.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
no I was on 10565 you can always try it and see if the hooks still work. actually I think the hooks will be fine its the code injection that would fail. im certain the method he uses is to simply locate the entry points based on an ordinal instead of a name and the ordinal can change at any time.
From what I've read by others, Aero Glass support is not working solidly in the latest pre-release builds. I can't try myself because I am no longer updating to the pre-releases as they come out. Life's complicated enough and I've lost interest in "seeing what Microsoft's up to". Frankly it's just too disappointing when I do. At this point all my tweaking knowledge is oriented to build 10240 (and earlier versions of Windows as well).
The author of the Aero Glass product is really pretty good about releasing new versions that do support the latest actual releases, so I suspect he'll have a version working when the next release comes out or very shortly after.
If trying Aero Glass out is interesting (e.g., on build 10240)...
Here is a distilled overview:
1. You unzip some sets of files into C:\AeroGlass
2. You make a few registry changes. 3. You start aerohost.exe via a Task Scheduler entry. 4. You adjust the look and feel via a small desktop application.
Components to acquire include:
The base package including the code that augments DWM
DLLs that primarily disable the system's theme replacement restrictions, but also help color title text.
The Aero Glass configuration tool, which can be used to various colors and transparencies.
The graphics atlas resources files I've created to update the look and feel.
Other files that have been available for download at various times.
Sounds like a lot, but it's really just a few files. Here's what's in my AeroGlass folder:
The places to get these files are mostly from the author's page (http://www.glass8.eu/download.html), as well as my site. I have listed specific links below.
Once you've extracted the above files into the C:\AeroGlass folder there are just a few steps needed to make it run...
Overview:
Set the theme signature bypass DLLs to be loaded by your system via the registry.
Set the ModernFrame.dll to be loaded by your system via the registry.
Set up the Task Scheduler entry to run aerohost.exe on system startup.
Adjust the appearance by running AeroGlassGUI.exe.
I suggest doing these one at a time, in the order given, making sure that the system reboots and works after each step.
To load the theme signature bypass DLLs, which work around Windows' need for Microsoft's signature on themes and (importantly for Aero Glass) also tweak the color of title text in ribbon-enabled windows, and the ModernFrame.dll, which seeks to change the chrome around Modern App windows,two registry keys need to be modified, as shown below.
The way AppInit_DLLs works is that Windows will load these DLLs as a part of every executable.
NOTE: If you've done any other system tweaking, open the registry editor and note whatever else might be in these keys first. In fact, I suggest Exporting the pertinent keys so you'll have a record of what was there before.
After making the above changes, reboot your system. It should come up and look no different.
Next, add an aerohost.exe Task Scheduler entry that will start the program on system bootup. The easiest way is to open the Task Scheduler and import the C:\Aerohost\Aero Glass Task Scheduler Entry.xml file I have provided into the Task Scheduler Library section.
Once the entry is added, in the Task Scheduler panel right-click the entry and choose Run. You should immediately see a change in the look and feel of your desktop.
Now run the program AeroGlassGUI.exe. If prompted, I suggest choosing only Current User settings; don't use both that and System-wide settings.
If you're on a laptop, go to the System tab and uncheck Disabletransparency effect when running on the battery. It really makes no difference to battery life.
Go to the Theme & appearance tab and check the Theme atlas image box and Browse to the RoundedCornersBlueActive.png file I have provided. Also change the Caption colour to white.
Go to the Glass colors tab and adjust the Glass color to taste. You'll be able to set the colors for both active and inactive windows, but the transparency isn't separately adjustable for inactive windows (that's a shortcoming of Windows 10).
Hit [Save] before closing the dialog.
One last tweak... If you like reduced chrome size around windows, I have captured Window Metrics settings from a Win 7 system that I like, and these still work in Windows 10.
Ok now I want to install 240 again just to try this out. ill try it in a vm sometime today. This thread really needs to be a sticky. Ill ask Michael if he can do that
Looking forward to seeing your screenshots, and hearing whether you like the caption button graphics, drop shadows, et. al. For me it really turns around the feel of the desktop so I find I don't immediately loathe it. Whatever design hipster came up with borderless windows completely forgot we need to have something visible to grab to resize windows. I guess Windows 10 is not about resizing windows any more... Sigh.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
Assuming you mean, "does it fix that damnable problem where you can see the edge of a window but can't click it", kind of yes and no. For normal windows, adding a border does mean you won't see others where you can't click 'em. But windows from applications such as Visual Studio and Office don't get borders added because they draw everything themselves and those go off the theme reservation (goddamn Microsoft idiots).
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
no im thinking about the fact that I can resize a window 15px away from its border. win 10 doesn't handle WM_NCHITTEST properly. It still has the same size border as 7 does it just doesn't draw it so when you attack it from the left side you can see the curor switch to the sizing cursor 15 pixels before it reaches the visible border
15 pixels seems like a lot. That .reg file at the end of my post above should affect that. From what I can see my Win 10 setup behaves like normal Windows with regard to non-client hit tests and other mouse operations. A screen grab of a cursor approaching the window border of one of my Photoshop plug-ins, magnified...
Assuming you mean, "does it fix that damnable problem where you can see the edge of a window but can't click it", kind of yes and no. For normal windows, adding a border does mean you won't see others where you can't click 'em. But windows from applications such as Visual Studio and Office don't get borders added because they draw everything themselves and those go off the theme reservation (goddamn Microsoft idiots).
-Noel
"windows from applications such as Visual Studio and Office don't get borders added because they draw everything themselves and those go off the theme reservation"
Maybe we can take a lesson from THEM and write a simple wrapper toolkit to _RESTORE_ the WINDOWS 7 and XP look for OUR APPLICATIONS!
We've already been working here to implement our own controls so we can have a measure of subtle skeuomorphism and have our application interface both usable and elegant with polished edges, yet not look outdated. In addition, we're doing a better job dealing with display scaling. That Microsoft can't manage anything more than flat rectangles is deplorable.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
15 pixels seems like a lot. That .reg file at the end of my post above should affect that. From what I can see my Win 10 setup behaves like normal Windows with regard to non-client hit tests and other mouse operations. A screen grab of a cursor approaching the window border of one of my Photoshop plug-ins, magnified...
-Noel
actually i was referring to plain win 10. that's where the problem is
ya i can see it works on that. That's probably because the only change MSFT made was to "Just not draw" the lines for the border. They still however pass HTBORDER as a return value to the WM_NCHITTEST message at the same Cursor Pos as before. In essence the "Reserved" space for the border is the same its just not visible because they don't draw it. The effect is the cursor changes to a resizing cursor at the point it "Thinks" its on the border. Your method redraws the border back so it looks properly. Im fairly sure you knew all this so i don't know why i mentioned it. Maybe for others reading who don't know however this is a very extremely super basic noob error. In fact i don't think i made that error when i was a noob. I mean its MSFT ffs how could they fuck it up so badly? Its their own work!! they have the source code it boggles my mind. And the idiots who just love sucking on Windows 10 act like that's a feature?
Yeah, that's pretty much my understanding. The out of box configuration probably has the borders really big, and not shown. The "big" part probably comes from someone complaining that windows are hard to resize without borders.
I imagine that their marketing hipsters said "We MUST have borderless windows.", and the engineers said, meekly, "But the border is an actual control - it's how users see where to click to resize things...". The Marketeers then obviously said, "So?!? Silence! Make it so, minions! We don't fucking care whether it's got a function, Windows 10 has to look CLEAN and NEW."
Hipsters notwithstanding, lack of design is not design.
I'm reminded of a book that came out (and was about as ridiculous as Microsoft is today). I believe title was "If it ain't broke, break it!". It was once of those Dilbert-esque fads... Break It Thinking.
Yeah, that works.
-Noel
Author of the "How to Configure the 'To Work' Options" series of Windows books. Not feeling enough love to do one for Windows 10.
heh ya that's probably how it went. What i don't understand is how does no border make something look clean? Im a janitor (well i own a commercial cleaning company) i clean TGI Fridays restaurants. I know clean. No matter what it is or where it is 80% of ANY mess is clutter. Whether its paper clothing dishes or icons clearing clutter is what makes things look clean. My windows 7 desktop is clean it only has 2 icons. My start menu is clean and organized. Looking at my start menu from 10 it was 3 times the size with dozens of 64x64 or higher icons scattered out in groups how the fuck is that clean? Windows 10 or 8 for that matter isn't any cleaner that's up to the individual user and how they use their shit. That's why i say the whole its cleaner shit is not only a fad but a bandwagon blanket statement. the go to response when someone has a serious issue. Idiots nothing more.
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Last Edit: Oct 19, 2015 19:46:14 GMT -6 by Techie007
Microsoft, is Windows 10 the best you could do? Really? After promising to listen to our feedback, what a letdown!
<Rick> Good video. It's almost hard to believe that at one time Windows 98 was the resource hog, but even then, it still ran circles around what Windows 10 can do on today's modern hardware and look a heck of alot better doing it.
May 25, 2021 22:55:12 GMT -6
<Rick> As stated elsewhere, So much for the launch of Windows 11, "The Great Crash." Myself, I had a hard time getting into the site listed above, when I did get in, the video was partly done and then it crashed. There has been many other reports of crashing.
Jun 24, 2021 9:52:33 GMT -6
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<Rick> I see Microsoft has been very quick to pull down reports of site crashing regarding the Launch of Windows 11 on the Microsoft Insiders forum.
Jun 24, 2021 9:57:31 GMT -6
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<Rick> The rebroadcast is working okay.
Jun 24, 2021 11:00:25 GMT -6
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Jul 2, 2021 7:32:53 GMT -6
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<dozrguy> laptop shit out and am stuck buying a new one. os win11 as fucked as win10 was?
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Oct 4, 2021 18:25:49 GMT -6
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<Rick> On the plus side, Microsoft is supposed to be supporting Windows 10 for some time to come for those of us still using systems with I7 or older processors.
Oct 4, 2021 18:44:35 GMT -6
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<dozrguy> i tried installing win10 om the 'shitout' pc this morning usung media creation. EPIC FAIL! went into an endless bootloop. win7 reinstalled just fine
Oct 21, 2021 11:23:38 GMT -6
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<Rick> Hello. Just checking in.
Mar 17, 2022 10:46:54 GMT -6
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Mar 27, 2022 16:14:51 GMT -6
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<dozerguy> still traffic here?
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<Rick> No, there does not seem to be very much traffic these days. I still check in from time to time.
Oct 9, 2022 20:08:58 GMT -6