Win 10 MINUS

With each new major Update of Win 10 we lose more of our personalisation settings, things we set once to suit ourselves & then forget.

With Creators Update (1703) we lost text sizing but there are Registry tweaks to overcome this.

With Fall Creators Update (1709) we have lost the ability to set up or change file associations.

In the Default Programs CP both:

• Set up Default Programs
• Associate a File or Protocol With a Program

go to a Settings app window instead of the old Windows one. These can be re-invoked by issuing the following commands:

1. To invoke the old "Set your default programs" interface in 1709:
   
   • control /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageDefaultProgram
2. To invoke the old "Associate a file type or protocol with a program" interface in 1709:
   
   • control /name Microsoft.DefaultPrograms /page pageFileAssoc

These can even be made into shortcuts on a menu.

Don't worry. Microshaft will create paid-for apps to restore this functionality.

Here's my opinion piece from 2015.

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 19-Dec-17 17:59:14)

Why do you guys use Windows if you hate Microsoft so much?

It seems rather perverse.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Why do you guys use Windows if you hate Microsoft so much?

It seems rather perverse.

Legacy apps + I can't afford to switch to Apple + I don't like Linux very much.

Microsoft are good at supporting old apps. I'll give them that. If only hardware manufacturers would give us 64-bit drivers for their older hardware.

I would be willing to pay a reasonable subscription price to revert to and stay on Windows 7.

Edited by micksharpe (Tue 19-Dec-17 19:19:18)

So, basically, Windows is better than anything else.

In reply to a post by TinyMongomery:

Why do you guys use Windows if you hate Microsoft so much?

It seems rather perverse.

lack of viable alternatives?

I use windows 8.1 for my main rig, which at least lets me escape most of the weird design decisions microsoft are putting into win10.

If every game moved to vulkan tomorrow, and all my apps worked on linux i would ditch windows in a heartbeat.

I would rather say it has the most support from third parties. That doesnt mean its better.

Windows 7 was lovely. Windows 10, not as good, but it's bearable. It's the direction in which Microsoft is taking it that I don't like. It's beginning to smack of Apple's (apparent) indifference to what their existing user base actually want (and like). Microsoft's position was always "the customer knows best." Now, it's changing to "we know best."

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Don't worry. Microshaft will create paid-for apps to restore this functionality.

In most cases these functions are not being removed, just being moved from Control Panel to Settings.

One thing they really messed up with is File History. You cannot connect an old File History backup to a new PC with the Settings app, it has to be done with the Control Panel. I'm unsure if this is a (ridiculous) design decision or a bug.

One thing that they have never done (and I think that it's lamentable) is to allow you to place the /Users directory on a separate partition. Having it on the system partition is an abomination.

Many people have little choice unless they stop using computers. The software I use works on Windows, sure i could get a Mac, but they are over priced and not easy to update, in fact the latest ones they are almost impossible. Linux whihc i do like, do not have the software i need to do my hobby, sure i could stop doing my hobby.

I would have stayed with windows 8.1, but Ms made sure that would not work with my new processor.

then you have people who need Windows for the job they dd, but again i suppose they could give up their job like some idiot said in another forum.


windows 10 is getting worse, sooner or later it will be apps from the store only and only if you have a MS account.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

windows 10 is getting worse, sooner or later it will be apps from the store only and only if you have a MS account.

Thats windows 10s. I had it on my new Surface laptop until I downloaded Pro from the store

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

Thats windows 10s. I had it on my new Surface laptop until I downloaded Pro from the store

Give it time and slowly it will spread to normal windows, maybe not the Enterprise version, but I can see it coming to Windows 10 home and then to pro.

More and more of Windows 10 is going into the cloud.

Microsoft wants our data.

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Microsoft wants our data.

I'm not too worried about that personally - I want to prevent them getting their mitts on my cash!!

In reply to a post by micksharpe:

Microsoft wants our data.

Getting as bad as Google,. but at least with google you are getting services with it and you can runt it off. Try turning off Windows 10 telemetry.
Still at least I can get rid of Cortana, until the next update and Windows re-enable it.

Newer doesn't necessarily mean better. I still use XP on two PCs with no adverse affect. People worry too much about viruses.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

Newer doesn't necessarily mean better. I still use XP on two PCs with no adverse affect. People worry too much about viruses.

I 100% agree with you, I know someone who still uses Xp and have no problems, in fact due to the fact that Ms is not mucking around with it any more, it seems to be more reliable than it ever been.

I would love to put windows 8.1 back on here, but MS do not like that idea and have done their very bets to make sure windows 8.1 or lower do not work on this machine correctly.

Windows 10 seems to be all about how MS can get us to use their cloud service, I do not understand why they are trying so hard to get us to use their free services. I can understand google doing it because they use our data to sell advertising, but by all account MS do not, not that I believe that.

If only I could continue to use XP but my (> 10 year) old XP PCs are now so sluggardy. What is it about OSs that make them go slower over time?

Things like the registry clutter that builds up over time and broken shortcuts in the system.

Try a 30 day trial of AVG PC Tune UP which will clean up these things.

You have to take into account while the trial is 30 days they will take payment 14 days before trial ends so use PayPal and if your not interested in buying cancel after 10 days in your PayPal account.

I already clean the Registry regularly. I can't see how a broken shortcut can slow things down, just fail when you invoke them.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

If only I could continue to use XP but my (> 10 year) old XP PCs are now so sluggardy. What is it about OSs that make them go slower over time?

i am not sure if they really do slow down that much, mucking about with the registry is not advisable and these software that says they make your computer faster by so called optimising the registry is just a swizz. Defrag the drive will help speed the machine up, Xp it is not automatic so need to be done manually,
I think as computers get older we want things to go faster we see faster machines and our old machines seem slow.
Saying that my old machine before this one was still super fast for a 5 year old machine.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Things like the registry clutter that builds up over time and broken shortcuts in the system.

Try a 30 day trial of AVG PC Tune UP which will clean up these things.

You have to take into account while the trial is 30 days they will take payment 14 days before trial ends so use PayPal and if your not interested in buying cancel after 10 days in your PayPal account.

I would not touch it, these tune up software are just a total waste of money.

Suit yourself.

NT Registry Optimizer was written by M$.

In reply to a post by XRaySpeX:

What is it about OSs that make them go slower over time?

Unnecessary processes, services, scheduled tasks and programs. Get CCleaner, swot up on what you have running and whether you need it on / enabled / autostart, and disable or uninstall.

I have 16 of 22 startup items disabled, 6 of 7 scheduled tasks disabled, and if necessary, I could make it 18 and 7 respectively, if I didn't want a personalised startup. The four 'necessary ones' are 3rd party keyboard, mouse, security and audio software.

Processes (not including this browser and the task manager) - 10.

Services - 39 Auto, 4 Auto(DS), 11 disabled, 124 manual (they start when a program requests them).

Vista 64 with boot up memory usage of about 1.1GB out of 6GB. SSD boot time of 22 seconds on a three year old system.

It's all about taking back your hardware from your software. Ok, so there might be superfetch (a good thing - not sure if it's worth it on XP), but it's going to be next to useless if you're maxing out your RAM on boot up due to 100 processes that all want to be on at startup.

I used to offer folk help with this, but so few folk believe that their setup is the problem. They think that chucking more RAM and HDD space at the problem is the answer. Or upgrading to the latest version of a one size fits all operating system. And the last thing you ever want to install are programs that 'speed up the system' (other than ones that delete or disable things). They just add to the load.

Said it all before - http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/windows/t/4227430-r...

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

i am not sure if they really do slow down that much

They definitely do slow down and a large difference can usually be seen by doing a clean install of an OS. However, I am not sure I would risk that with XP as I suspect that the MS download servers no longer provide any patches for XP and so it would only be patched to the point of the install media and that could be very old.

In reply to a post by ian72:

However, I am not sure I would risk that with XP as I suspect that the MS download servers no longer provide any patches for XP and so it would only be patched to the point of the install media and that could be very old.

Windows Update stills carries legacy Windows NT patches from Windows 2000 onward, so after installation they can be updated to the point extended support ended (not that I'd ever recommend running an OS out of its support lifecycle).

Thanks, wasn't sure if MS still carried them as haven't run an unsupported OS for a long time.

In reply to a post by ian72:

Thanks, wasn't sure if MS still carried them as haven't run an unsupported OS for a long time.

If they still do updates for an old OS, it would only be security updates and no new features like service packs etc.

Paul

It will only be security patches/etc to the point it became unsupported. Effectively they would just be providing whatever existed when the support ended (unless you are paying for extended support but with MS you have to be a fairly large organisation to buy into that).