Windows 10 Anniversary Update

[JetsetBkk]

On Saturday, August 06, 2016 at 11:39 AM, fvw53 said:

For those like me who are annoyed with the Win 10 Start Up there is a clean and free solution to go back to Win 7 and even WinXP start up.

ClassicShellSetup_4_3_0.exe

Can be found at 

http://filehippo.com/download_classic_shell/

 

Don't get it from there. Be safe, get it from http://www.classicshell.net/

 

http://news.thewindowsclub.com/classic-shell-is-now-safe-to-download-again-85314/

 

[wimkuijp]

Be careful. A lot of Group Policies will not work anymore. For example: you cannot switch off the lock screen anymore... 

[Chicog]

On 8/9/2016 at 6:31 PM, JetsetBkk said:

 

Ditto, almost. Replace Outlook in your post with Outlook Express for me. I collect mail from 3 x Gmail, 4 x Hotmail and 1 x Yahoo accounts. And I use the phone just for reading my main Gmail.

 

I like being a  dinosaur.

 

 

I use CloudMagic on my Android to read Hotmail, GMail, Exchange and Yahoo. A very nice mail aggregator.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloudmagic.mail&hl=en

Edited August 11, 2016 by Chicog

[JetsetBkk]

4 hours ago, Chicog said:

 

I use CloudMagic on my Android to read Hotmail, GMail, Exchange and Yahoo. A very nice mail aggregator.

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.cloudmagic.mail&hl=en

 

Did you ever try "Blue Mail"?

 

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.bluemail.mail

 

 

[Chicog]

Can't say that I did. Is it free? Might try it on one of my spare, rooted phones.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

just an fyi...

 

I got caught unawares, in that it appears the general Windows 10 upgrade, not just the Anniversary update, is incompatible with some or all of the original MagicJack USB silver colored phone adapter devices.

 

I had been using my original MagicJack USB device just fine on my Windows 7 main desktop for years, until the end of July when I finally updated that PC to Windows 10 because Microsoft's free Windows 10 update offer was expiring then.

 

Upon completing the Win 10 upgrade, my MJ device stopped working. Checked around on the internet. There supposedly are some potential workarounds. But I tried all of the seemingly legitimate ones I could find, and none of them worked with my MJ device, which now appears to be un-useable as all my PCs have now gone to Win 10.

 

It's possible MagicJack could update/upgrade their device software/firmware to be compatible with Windows 10. But some of their support info appears to indicate they don't plan to do so -- obviously because making the original device unsupported will force their original customers like me to buy new MJ adapters.

 

FWIW, the MS/Windows system check prior to the Win 10 upgrade didn't show me anything about the installed MJ device being one that would end up being unsupported. In fact, if you go into the Windows drivers profiles for the MagicJack device, they appear to all show functional and working. Nonetheless, the MJ device itself doesn't work.

 

[Jiu-Jitsu]

3 hours ago, TallGuyJohninBKK said:

just an fyi...

 

I got caught unawares, in that it appears the general Windows 10 upgrade, not just the Anniversary update, is incompatible with some or all of the original MagicJack USB silver colored phone adapter devices.

 

I had been using my original MagicJack USB device just fine on my Windows 7 main desktop for years, until the end of July when I finally updated that PC to Windows 10 because Microsoft's free Windows 10 update offer was expiring then.

 

Upon completing the Win 10 upgrade, my MJ device stopped working. Checked around on the internet. There supposedly are some potential workarounds. But I tried all of the seemingly legitimate ones I could find, and none of them worked with my MJ device, which now appears to be un-useable as all my PCs have now gone to Win 10.

 

It's possible MagicJack could update/upgrade their device software/firmware to be compatible with Windows 10. But some of their support info appears to indicate they don't plan to do so -- obviously because making the original device unsupported will force their original customers like me to buy new MJ adapters.

 

FWIW, the MS/Windows system check prior to the Win 10 upgrade didn't show me anything about the installed MJ device being one that would end up being unsupported. In fact, if you go into the Windows drivers profiles for the MagicJack device, they appear to all show functional and working. Nonetheless, the MJ device itself doesn't work.

 

 

Why not downgrade one of the PCs in so that you can continue to utilise MJ?  You can install and reinstall either OS at will.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

1 hour ago, Jiu-Jitsu said:

 

Why not downgrade one of the PCs in so that you can continue to utilise MJ?  You can install and reinstall either OS at will.

 

You're right in that I could recover back to the Win 7 install I had, but I'm not going to do that. I waited the full "free" year before installing Win 10 on my main PC. But at this point, Win 10 is going to be the future, and I'm not going to go back just because of an inoperable MJ unit.

 

I got many years of service out of the original device. But at this point, I figure I can spend another $40 or so to get their newer, router-based device, as opposed to the USB only device I have. I just wish the Windows upgrade system would have warned me of the incompatibility beforehand.

 

[Jiu-Jitsu]

^^

Dual boot my friend.

[eTiMaGo]

Using it about a week so far on my laptop, I like it, Win10 was pretty polished from the start, now it got an extra coat of wax  I like the dark theme, though I wish it would apply to more programs...

[marquis22]

On 06/08/2016 at 2:19 AM, ozyjon said:

I use windows 7, leave me the hell alone,

all good here, keep walking Johnny, walker.

I remember hearing similar back in the windows 98 days, wonder if they are the same as you and still using win 98     5555555555

[Pib]

I'm sure hard core Win 98 users moved on to XP.  Upgrade to Win 7 is still in the planning stage for them.

 

Actually I still have Win 7 running on 1 of my 3 laptops.  I couldn't upgrade a 10 year Toshiba laptop to Win 10 due to an incompatible video chip.  But for my other two newer Lenovo laptops they upgraded to Win 10 no problem.

[Chicog]

A word of warning if you are (dumb enough to be) a McAfee user:

Certain versions are not compatible with the Anniversary update and will cause intermittent freezing.

 

https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB87536

[Pib]

Interesting how McAfee worded their incompatibility article....made it sound like it's all Microsoft's fault.    McAfee article writers must have took courses with Trump University.

[Nicolas32]

Already back on Windows 7 Sp 1 utter complete crap Windows 10.. 

[JetsetBkk]

3 hours ago, Nicolas32 said:

Already back on Windows 7 Sp 1 utter complete crap Windows 10.. 

 

My main PC - this one I'm using now - is XP.

 

3 others are XP/Win10 dual booting.

 

There are some things in Win10 that I like such as "Casting", some things I like because they don't work on XP such as Kodi, but until Win10 provide something close to "Desk Bands", I'm sticking to XP on my main PC.

[JSixpack]

21 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

 

My main PC - this one I'm using now - is XP.

 

3 others are XP/Win10 dual booting.

 

There are some things in Win10 that I like such as "Casting", some things I like because they don't work on XP such as Kodi, but until Win10 provide something close to "Desk Bands", I'm sticking to XP on my main PC.

 

I'm curious why Desk Bands is so essential and no reasonable third-party alternative can be found.

[Nicolas32]

On 8/13/2016 at 8:21 PM, JetsetBkk said:

 

My main PC - this one I'm using now - is XP.

 

3 others are XP/Win10 dual booting.

 

There are some things in Win10 that I like such as "Casting", some things I like because they don't work on XP such as Kodi, but until Win10 provide something close to "Desk Bands", I'm sticking to XP on my main PC.

 

4 Laptops, 5 Hard Drives have died within a space of two years with Windows 10 even the other day with Windows 10 was seeing the Hard Drive loading at 100 percent while just surfing the net and only google open WiFi and Bluetooth has been really bad this time around .. anyway stay well clear of it now and just use Windows 7 at least stable with everything and also not hardware hungry.. 

Edited August 14, 2016 by Nicolas32

[Pib]

Whatever caused your computers and drives to die was not due to Win 10.   Also, Win 10 has only officially been released to the public for a hair over a year, excluding those brave folks testing beta/early/pre-release versions of Win 10.

 

Also, what is your definition of die?  Dead, dead as will not even turn on or just some kind of operating problems?   

 

I have Win 10 on two Lenovo laptops....put Win 10 on one laptop day one of Win 10 release to public date (29 Jul 15....one year and two weeks ago)....put Win 10 on the other one  Nov 15.....both work like a charm....no issues....super stable.

 

Now I still have Win 7 on another 10  year old Toshiba laptop....wish I could have upgraded from Win 7 to Win 10 but the laptop's video chip/card is incompatible with Win 10.  Oh well, it will just go to the grave with the legacy Win 7 on it.

Edited August 15, 2016 by Pib

[JetsetBkk]

 

On Saturday, August 13, 2016 at 8:21 PM, JetsetBkk said:

 

My main PC - this one I'm using now - is XP.

 

3 others are XP/Win10 dual booting.

 

There are some things in Win10 that I like such as "Casting", some things I like because they don't work on XP such as Kodi, but until Win10 provide something close to "Desk Bands", I'm sticking to XP on my main PC.

 

21 hours ago, JSixpack said:

 

I'm curious why Desk Bands is so essential and no reasonable third-party alternative can be found.

 

Is extremely frustrating that there is no third party equivalent to Desk Bands. There are several "dock" type applications that say they do the same job, but they don't. (This was the case up to about a year ago when I last searched.)

 

The problem is that Microsoft removed some functionality in Explorer - as far back as Vista, I believe - that prevented this functionality working.

 

I complained at a computer club about Win7 not having Desk Bands, and the guy who held the meetings (a well know "Windows for Dummies" author) didn't know what Desk Bands were. So the following week I took my XP Laptop along and showed them to him and his response was "Wow! How did you do that?" 

 

So I am no longer surprised when people who say they are "experts" on Windows don't actually know **** all and have no idea how much better XP was than everything else that followed it.

 

/Rant

 

 

 

 

 

 

[JSixpack]

22 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

 

 

 

Is extremely frustrating that there is no third party equivalent to Desk Bands. There are several "dock" type applications that say they do the same job, but they don't. (This was the case up to about a year ago when I last searched.)

 

The problem is that Microsoft removed some functionality in Explorer - as far back as Vista, I believe - that prevented this functionality working.

 

I complained at a computer club about Win7 not having Desk Bands, and the guy who held the meetings (a well know "Windows for Dummies" author) didn't know what Desk Bands were. So the following week I took my XP Laptop along and showed them to him and his response was "Wow! How did you do that?" 

 

So I am no longer surprised when people who say they are "experts" on Windows don't actually know **** all and have no idea how much better XP was than everything else that followed it.

 

/Rant

 

Well, I just hate them charlatans who go around proclaiming their expertise yet actually don't know ****. But then again they give me some good laughs sometimes.

 

I liked XP a lot and moved to Win 7 slowly and reluctantly. I skipped Vista, rightly figuring it was going to be a Windows ME debacle. Some of our cutting edge tech experts here sneered at the time. I didn't use Explorer at all on XP but rather another, faster shell entirely, Blackbox for Windows, bblean specifically. I'd doubt that Desk Bands can do anything that bblean can't do. Bblean is also out for Win 7 64-bit and some are even running it, or attempting to run it, on Win 10. However I got tired of fooling around with it and went back to Explorer. Currently I rub along with a tabbed ObjectDock.

 

So what specifically re: Desk Bands did you show the Windows For Dummies author on your XP laptop?

 

 

 

 

 

[JetsetBkk]

2 hours ago, JSixpack said:

 

Well, I just hate them charlatans who go around proclaiming their expertise yet actually don't know ****. But then again they give me some good laughs sometimes.

 

I liked XP a lot and moved to Win 7 slowly and reluctantly. I skipped Vista, rightly figuring it was going to be a Windows ME debacle. Some of our cutting edge tech experts here sneered at the time. I didn't use Explorer at all on XP but rather another, faster shell entirely, Blackbox for Windows, bblean specifically. I'd doubt that Desk Bands can do anything that bblean can't do. Bblean is also out for Win 7 64-bit and some are even running it, or attempting to run it, on Win 10. However I got tired of fooling around with it and went back to Explorer. Currently I rub along with a tabbed ObjectDock.

 

So what specifically re: Desk Bands did you show the Windows For Dummies author on your XP laptop?

 

 

Thanks for the references to bblean and ObjectDock - I'll Google them later, but I'm pretty sure I've had a look at ObjectDock already.

 

re. the author: I simply showed him the Deskbands that I had on the top, left and right of my laptop's desktop. Apparently it was a feature that he'd never come across and, I reckon, not many XP users had either.

 

I made a Youtube video about it three years ago for a How-to-Geek discussion. Have a look and see if the tools you mentioned can do the same. Simply put, with DeskBands I can access everything on my PC instantly (OK, with just a couple of clicks), but not just folder contents; macros and command files too.

 

So if you know of a utility that can do the same, please let me know!

 

 

 

[JSixpack]

On Tuesday, August 16, 2016 at 6:06 PM, JetsetBkk said:

 

Thanks for the references to bblean and ObjectDock - I'll Google them later, but I'm pretty sure I've had a look at ObjectDock already.

 

re. the author: I simply showed him the Deskbands that I had on the top, left and right of my laptop's desktop. Apparently it was a feature that he'd never come across and, I reckon, not many XP users had either.

 

I made a Youtube video about it three years ago for a How-to-Geek discussion. Have a look and see if the tools you mentioned can do the same. Simply put, with DeskBands I can access everything on my PC instantly (OK, with just a couple of clicks), but not just folder contents; macros and command files too.

 

So if you know of a utility that can do the same, please let me know!

 

 

Wow. I've never seen such an extensive use of Desk Bands. I've used that utility at times for a quick & dirty toolbar but nothing like this! I can see why you'd not wish to give it up and your investment in configuration.

 

Objectdock Plus wouldn't do it for ya mainly because it uses only icons in its bars and to see text you have to hover. It doesn't do menus well. However some other utilities will either do it or maybe offer what you might consider an alternative. I wouldn't recommend bblean or litestep as they require so much config and are a bit onerous to maintain, what with editing text files.

 

First up, the alternative Free Launch Bar http://www.freelaunchbar.com/. Here you'd have menus (with submenus as desired) attached to icons in the taskbar. Menus can have submenus and the subs open on hover. I use this in a quicklaunch bar and a dropdown menu of just a few frequently accessed commands:

 

 

 

It's basic. For autohide toolbars such as you're using, it looks like True Launch Bar (payware) will do the trick and you can perhaps use most of the configuration you have w/ Desk Bands. It's payware but won't break the bank. Quite extensive; check it out:

 

http://www.truelaunchbar.com/features.html

 

The other utility that will definitely do it and can look good too is Windows PowerPro: http://powerpro.cresadu.com/. Not only does it do everything with toolbars & menus but an incredible amount of other stuff as well. I've always used it. Scripts, text expansion, scheduler, messaging, windows management, hotkeys . . . . Each toolbar is created via a command list:

 

 

And each can be separately configured. You can create menus from folders, so you could leverage your present config. Positioning anywhere, autohide. Toolbars can even be attached to particular windows. For example I've got a toolbar of one icon that appears in the caption of Skype: its purpose is to kill skype.exe when clicked. PowerPro has a slight learning curve but it has an extensive help file and discussion forums. And it's free.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited August 18, 2016 by JSixpack

[JetsetBkk]

@JSixpack Thanks very much for your detailed post and suggestions. I'll try them out on my Win10 machine. I don't mind paying for stuff if it does the job, and it is really the lack of Desk Bands that stopped me going to Win7 years ago.

 

Like most things, my use of Desk Bands grew over the years - it wasn't always so "extensive" . But when you get used to just flicking the mouse over to the left or right and getting access to anything on your PC, it's hard to give that up.

 

If you know of a good theme that makes Win10 look more like XP or 7, I'd love to know. Another reason I dislike Win7 - and even more so Win10 - is its look. The windows of tasks on Win10 appear to have no border and the edges can't be easily grabbed to change the width and height. It's as if the borders are 1 pixel thick. On XP you could adjust the border thickness. On Win7 there was less configurability, but better than 10.

 

And Win10 just looks too damn white! XP had grey panels with black text, very easy on the eye. Lord knows what they were thinking with Win10.

 

[JSixpack]

11 hours ago, JetsetBkk said:

@JSixpack Thanks very much for your detailed post and suggestions. I'll try them out on my Win10 machine. I don't mind paying for stuff if it does the job, and it is really the lack of Desk Bands that stopped me going to Win7 years ago.

 

Like most things, my use of Desk Bands grew over the years - it wasn't always so "extensive" . But when you get used to just flicking the mouse over to the left or right and getting access to anything on your PC, it's hard to give that up.

 

If you know of a good theme that makes Win10 look more like XP or 7, I'd love to know. Another reason I dislike Win7 - and even more so Win10 - is its look. The windows of tasks on Win10 appear to have no border and the edges can't be easily grabbed to change the width and height. It's as if the borders are 1 pixel thick. On XP you could adjust the border thickness. On Win7 there was less configurability, but better than 10.

 

And Win10 just looks too damn white! XP had grey panels with black text, very easy on the eye. Lord knows what they were thinking with Win10.

 

 

I've never liked the default look of XP or 7 and hate the look of 10. I like darker colors--easier on the eyes--and thin title bars and taskbar. The 7 Start orb is annoying, sticking out into the desktop.

 

It's been awhile since I last looked at visual styles. But I used Slan XP and Kemikal on XP. Today I'd use Shiki-Colors, which is my fave on Win 7. I've used Slan for 7 and Placebo.

 

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Kemikal-3-98538808

http://mini-slash.deviantart.com/art/SlanXP-2-0-For-7-134955170

http://solmiler.deviantart.com/art/Placebo-for-Windows-7-188414149

http://wintango.blogspot.com/2014/12/shiki-colors-for-windows-7.html

 

I use Classic Shell on 7 and also 7+ Taskbar. Get rid of the annoying previews, ungroup icons, get rid of the Start button.

 

For 10, the latest versions will allow you to color the title bars.

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/222831/how-to-get-colored-window-title-bars-on-windows-10-instead-of-white/

 

I see there are a growing number of visual styles for 10:

 

http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/customization/skins/windows/win10/?order=9&offset=75

http://izzuthug.deviantart.com/favourites/62253769/Windows-10-Themes?offset=24

http://www.geekcosmos.com/best-windows-10-themes/

 

I might try this one: http://unisira.deviantart.com/art/Ades-Theme-for-Windows-10-600210043

 

You could do worse than just changing the look to Ubuntu:

 

http://dpcdpc11.deviantart.com/art/Maverick-10-Windows-10-Theme-619788349

 

I could live with that!

 

Of course if you can't find anything suitable you could also go w/ WindowBlinds

 

http://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds

 

which has a vast number of themes.

 

I read of a way to darken the Win 10 text using the ClearType tuner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[silverhawk_usa]

4 hours ago, JSixpack said:

 

I've never liked the default look of XP or 7 and hate the look of 10. I like darker colors--easier on the eyes--and thin title bars and taskbar. The 7 Start orb is annoying, sticking out into the desktop.

 

It's been awhile since I last looked at visual styles. But I used Slan XP and Kemikal on XP. Today I'd use Shiki-Colors, which is my fave on Win 7. I've used Slan for 7 and Placebo.

 

http://www.deviantart.com/art/Kemikal-3-98538808

http://mini-slash.deviantart.com/art/SlanXP-2-0-For-7-134955170

http://solmiler.deviantart.com/art/Placebo-for-Windows-7-188414149

http://wintango.blogspot.com/2014/12/shiki-colors-for-windows-7.html

 

I use Classic Shell on 7 and also 7+ Taskbar. Get rid of the annoying previews, ungroup icons, get rid of the Start button.

 

For 10, the latest versions will allow you to color the title bars.

 

http://www.howtogeek.com/222831/how-to-get-colored-window-title-bars-on-windows-10-instead-of-white/

 

I see there are a growing number of visual styles for 10:

 

http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all/customization/skins/windows/win10/?order=9&offset=75

http://izzuthug.deviantart.com/favourites/62253769/Windows-10-Themes?offset=24

http://www.geekcosmos.com/best-windows-10-themes/

 

I might try this one: http://unisira.deviantart.com/art/Ades-Theme-for-Windows-10-600210043

 

You could do worse than just changing the look to Ubuntu:

 

http://dpcdpc11.deviantart.com/art/Maverick-10-Windows-10-Theme-619788349

 

I could live with that!

 

Of course if you can't find anything suitable you could also go w/ WindowBlinds

 

http://www.wincustomize.com/explore/windowblinds

 

which has a vast number of themes.

 

I read of a way to darken the Win 10 text using the ClearType tuner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Win 10 upgrade now lets you choose 'Dark Mode" which I quite like.  Basically black and you can choose colors (including a number of grey shades) for task bars etc. 

[JetsetBkk]

11 hours ago, JSixpack said:

I've never liked the default look of XP or 7 and hate the look of 10. <snip>

 

In my Windows XP installation folder I have about 40 "tweaks" that I apply to make it how I like. One of those tweaks is a document that lists all the display properties that I prefer: active title bar, active window border, icon font, icon spacing, menu font, etc. I haven't done that in quite a while as I rely heavily on system images to restore after a screw-up.

 

I've used Classic Shell since I tried Win7. So many stupid issues with Win7 that they never fixed. But Classic Shell did, like clicking on the expander in Explorer's navigation pane... the folder zoomed to the bottom of the pane, thus hiding the very sub-folders that you were interested in. I found that within 2 minutes of using a friend's new Win7 PC. How the *** could they screw up Explorer? Well, obviously by employing fresh out of school hackers instead of software engineers to re-write Explorer.

 

But now is not the time to rant...  

 

So thanks again for all the great links you have provided. I have  previously looked at DeviantArt for XP type themes for Windows 10, but I haven't found a good one yet, so I'll look at what you suggest.

 

[lostinisaan]

On 8/12/2016 at 9:06 PM, Chicog said:

A word of warning if you are (dumb enough to be) a McAfee user:

Certain versions are not compatible with the Anniversary update and will cause intermittent freezing.

 

https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB87536

 

 

    Here's an easy way how to uninstall McAfee...

  

          

 

    

[Chicog]

Well they're being very honest about build 14905!

 

Quote

Known issues for PC

• Support for kernel debugging over 1394 has been removed, but will be available in an upcoming kit release. A work-around will be posted to the Debugging Tools for Windows Blog shortly.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader crashes when you try to launch it.
• Cortana’s text to speech capabilities is not working in this build. For example, Cortana won’t be able to read text messages out loud for you, tell jokes, sing, or give verbal prompts.
• When clicking on the power button on the Start menu, it closes the Start menu without opening the flyout with restart/shutdown options appearing. As a workaround – you can right-click on the Start button (or WIN + X) and choose to shutdown via this menu instead.
• Apps such as Yahoo Mail, Trivia Crack, Google and the Skype Translator Preview app will crash in this build due to a compatibility issue from a recent platform change.
• The Settings app may crash on certain editions of Windows 10 when navigating to different settings pages due to a missing .dll file. We are working on getting this fixed soon.

Read more at https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2016/08/17/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-14905-for-pc-mobile/#mhI5fV956Y3ofZVK.99

 

[rawhod]

50 minutes ago, lostinisaan said:

 

 

    Here's an easy way how to uninstall McAfee...

  

          

 

    

 

Classic..