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Everything posted by NoelC

  2. I'm also running Aero Glass on Win 8.1. Ribbon-enabled windows, such as Explorer and WordPad, use an entirely different method to paint the title bar, and thus are not handled by the normal DWMGlass.dll. Big Muscle released some additional components that work with Aero Glass and allow you to resurrect the glow, but there are some downsides. This is from my all too frail memory, but I believe UxThemeSignatureBypass64.dll and UxThemeSignatureBypass32.dll circa March 8, 2015, invoked via the AppInit_DLLs key will color the titles of ribbon-enabled windows. Here's what I see (note that my text is set to be white and the "glow" backing in my theme atlas is actually dark): As you can see in the Beyond Compare Options dialog at the upper-right, it essentially causes any text that uses the same API calls the ribbon-enabled windows use to be painted with the "glow" backing. It's a minor inconvenience I can live with to have the more integrated title bars. It's been a long time since I set this up, but I see I left myself an "InstallSignatureBypass.reg" file... This is what's in it: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows] "AppInit_DLLs"="C:\\AeroGlass\\UxThemeSignatureBypass64.dll" "LoadAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000001 "RequireSignedAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000000 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows] "AppInit_DLLs"="C:\\AeroGlass\\UxThemeSignatureBypass32.dll" "LoadAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000001 "RequireSignedAppInit_DLLs"=dword:00000000 Note also that I stayed with Aero Glass 1.4.5, not the latest, as I saw some visual glitches with 1.4.6. The above is 100% stable for me. I get long uptimes between Windows updates that mandate reboots. -Noel
  3. You can stop unattended Windows Update by stopping and disabling the Windows Update service. There are also some scheduled tasks that seek to re-enable it, and those tasks get re-enabled by an actual Windows Update, so you have to be vigilant. I run a nightly script that logs half a megabyte of data showing the system state so that I can compare with prior runs and see if anything has been changed. In my case I also reconfigure my (3rd party) firewall so that the system can't possibly reach the update servers unless I reconfigure it to do so. It's a good thing I do that because I caught an application install (TurboTax of all things) once re-enabling and starting Windows Update even though I had it disabled. But rest assured it's possible to stop it from doing what it wants. You're still in control, though you have to get geeky to get there and stay there. -Noel
  4. At this point I don't know the detail of what's sending it into these conditions, and it miffs me that I can find no log or error message that describes what went wrong. It may be there, but to be honest I've grown weary of trying to make Windows 10 work right (and by right I mean with the configuration and disabled parts I want). Every new version that comes out I decide I don't want it on my actual hardware, so I think for now I'll just ignore this and continue to run .520 or whatever it is stuck at for testing and whatnot. They have a few more years to make it attractive enough to adopt in place of my Win 8.1 setup, which still works quite well. -Noel
  5. Turns out that's tied to the SuperFetch service, which is supposed to self-disable (and often even does) on SSD-equipped systems. New regression I've discovered: The latest cumulative Windows Update won't install on my test VM. It gets to 98% then reports: I cannot find a reason listed in any log file, at least not one readable by someone who can get pretty geeky as needed. -Noel
  6. Details can matter... Did you get the exact folder name right? Did you match your machine code character for character with the one you submitted? Are you running released code? -Noel
  7. Hard to imagine "much better" when Aero Glass on Win 8.1 works fine and lasts a long time, but I too would be interested in hearing about others who've solved the problem of bringing back style to Win 8.1 desktops... -Noel
  8. Yes indeed, ~28 processes. Well done. Functional and with minimal fluffery. Remember XP? You could get it in the high teens. I don't even remember how many I had tweaked NT 4 down to or the versions before that. God I've been tweaking Windows a long time. First version I remember fooling with was on a PC XT. -Noel
  9. I only have Workstation 11, with an overlaid VMware Tools package from a newer version. I'm waiting until whatever they release this Fall to see whether I want to upgrade. I'm guessing it'll be version 14? -Noel
  10. Indeed. It is the Emperor Darth Sidious of operating systems (even Darth Vader had good in him). I have gone to extremes to try to "feel the good" in Windows 10. I've applied all the tweaks I can find (Classic Shell is just the start of the list) and have invented a few myself. I don't speak in hypothetical terms, I don't go with what others say, I have taken it upon myself to find out personally... Yep, evil. Because Microsoft has turned on us. All I've been able to achieve - ALL I'VE DONE - is made it less apt to do the things I don't want it doing, and to look more (but not fully) like I want it to look. Explorer comes up blank sometimes or Aero Glass crashes WinLogon.exe or it starts several extra "hosts" or it just runs less efficiently than any Windows ever - and that's with extreme tweaking. Microsoft actively breaks some part of all that every month or so. Here it sits - in a Virtual Machine ONLY, because I wouldn't put it on my hardware - if for no other reason than Microsoft ENSURES it will remain unstable. For me Win 8.1 is still holding up, stable and a real workhorse running on my hardware for days, weeks, months. -Noel
  11. I'm not sure anyone ever promised it would all work without at least restarting DWM - or logging off/on - or rebooting. -Noel
  12. Note that Microsoft have recently screwed up (and subsequently fixed) multi-monitor support (in Win 7), so working with rectangles and signed X,Y values is apparently still something that's difficult for even those coding the OS itself. https://www.askwoody.com/2017/microsoft-patches-buggy-windows-7-patch-kb-4039884-solves-the-dual-monitor-rendering-problem/ Any chance the bug at the root of this problem is latent in all systems and could be affecting later Windows versions running Aero Glass for Win 8+? A longshot, I know. Note that one of the workarounds is to ENABLE desktop composition, so maybe not. Still... -Noel
  13. Doctorwizz, don't I recall reading that you are running multiple graphics cards from different vendors (AMD and nVidia)? If I've remembered that correctly, that's an iffy setup, and the Aero Glass package could just be asking it to do something uncommon, which the drivers are unable to work out together. AMD and nVidia have never played well together. That being said, I don't have the ability to extend my Win 10 VM across multiple monitors any more, so I can't verify multi-monitor operation of the latest builds. I wish I did, but I think I'll need an updated version of VMware to accomplish that again. Hopefully they'll release their 2017 version soon (usually they release in the fall). -Noel
  14. >randomly folders that appear to be empty when they are not You sure that's not just Windows 10 Creator's Edition doing that? I saw it both without and with Aero Glass for Win 8+. -Noel
  15. The only App I can check is Settings. That one seems to work okay... The ApplicationFrame.pdb folder contains a file dated June 15, 2017. -Noel
  16. Version 1.5.5 installed and runs fine, once I get logged-in. No interest in Apps here, though it would be cool if it were possible to color and back the titles on ribbon-enabled windows like we once could. Note the Bowpad editor window at the center-right doesn't have the right title coloring. -Noel
  17. Thanks. For a long while I saw no failures, but since I put in the released version of Aero Glass is out it's been happening. I suspect the change in timing, as you have mentioned. Right now winlogon.exe is crashing almost every time I boot up the system, even when I don't set it up to auto-logon. The sequence goes like this: Blue 4 pane Windows logo. Logon screen background showing "Preparing Windows" Brief black screen. Logon prompt. Right now I just booted it up and saw no failures. When that happens, item 3 above is missing. When I find a little time I'll definitely experiment with your idea of using UxTSBLoader to see how that changes the behavior. -Noel
  18. Weird. When I first got v1703 as an in-place upgrade life continued as usual. I was able to re-tweak it, removing all Apps, and still was able to update it. Life was good until somewhere around 15063.2xx. Then it just stopped accepting updates without any usable error message, so I reinstalled v1703 from scratch. After the reinstallation I tried every combination of removing apps, not removing apps, disabling services, etc. I finally landed on a combination where I didn't lose the ability to successfully install Windows Updates, which involved NOT removing the Apps. Funny thing... I just tried disabling all the Apps again with my script using a snapshot of 15063.502 and lo and behold it updated just fine to 15063.540. I guess it was just some update early on that required the Apps to remain in place, where the current cumulative updates don't. Perhaps I'll investigate the viability of App-free and Cortana-free operation again. -Noel
  19. Hm, are you using UAC? (chances are you are; I'm one of the few who still disables it) There is a tweak listed in the WinAero Tweaker application that promises to "Enable access to mapped Network Drives from elevated apps. By default it is turned off, so any elevated app can't access your mapped network drive." Seems like it might be the solution to your issue. -Noel
  20. I am not seeing crashes while using the new Release build. I did see some failures when I set my Win 10 v1703 system to auto-logon via netplwiz, though I'm not sure that has anything to do with Aero Glass. I've disabled that for now. I just installed the Chrome browser to test... I don't seem to be able to crash it by dragging a tab off a window to make a new window. Nor can I reproduce a crash by moving small windows. This is the full set of files I'm running: -Noel
  21. I can only imagine some folks are talking about released Windows versions while others are talking about pre-release Windows. Aero Glass only supports released versions of Windows. People of course TRY it with the insider versions, with varying consequences. -Noel
  22. Or you could just keep notes, if only you had a computer on which to store a file... ;-) -Noel
  23. Thank you kindly for the build, Big Muscle! I just sent you 10 Euro. Aero Glass for Win8.1+ x64 correctly loaded (C:\AeroGlass\DWMGlass.dll). -Noel
  24. To those who have put in effort to make this site what it is: Thanks very much! It's been fun. -Noel
  25. Hi Big Muscle, I'm not sure whether you read this site any more, and I imagine you have found it tedious to try to keep Aero Glass for Win 8+ working with all the new Windows versions, but given that v1703 is now mainstream, might you consider building your current Beta code in Release mode? Build 904 is not perfect - I still see occasional DWM crashes in my VM with IE if I browse to e.g., yahoo.com - but it's not too bad otherwise. Thanks for considering this request. -Noel
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