Windows 10 build 10162 Released

Not caring about long rants, please jump to </End Rant of a Satisfied User> tag at bottom.

<Start Rant of a Satisfied User>

Back in my native greatly missed native Finland we have an old saying "One likes the mother, another prefers the daughter", meaning people tend to have different opinions and like different things. No two minds alike.

In Windows there's a feature or let's call it a procedure I have always liked, I would say loved if it wasn't so ridiculous, a grown man "loving" something in his operating system. I have done this procedure on every Windows machine, real or virtual since the first beta versions of Vista. It has never failed me, never caused any issues, always served me for the best. Yet, as in that Finnish saying, some users hate and object it from the bottom of their hearts although (usually) these opponents have never even tried it.

It's the process of using Sysprep even before any user accounts are created to relocate, completely move the main profile folder Users to another drive. Everything, all user profiles that will later be created, all Temp and AppData folders and so on. It is the absolutely easiest, fastest and most secure way to save space on C: drive. One command, given once, no need to individually move this user's Documents folder and that user's Music folder. All user profiles, all folders, new user accounts automatically created on the drive I have set up.

Until now there's only been one thing, one extra time consuming step this procedure has caused for me: If and in my case when the Users folder has been relocated to another drive, you cannot in-place upgrade. Luckily there's a quite simple workaround for this as seen in my tutorial, when upgrading I just have to use Sysprep again to put the Users folder back to C: drive, edit two registry DWORDs and now the upgrade works. When upgraded, again changing those two registry DWORDs, delete one key and Sysprep the Users folder back to another drive. This has made my upgrades taking about 20 minutes longer than yours.

But Build 10162 seems to have changed this and I am really falling in love with it! Clean install Build 10159, the Users folder relocated with Sysprep to drive E:. I put it to slow ring to get more time to do the workaround to prepare for the upgrade. Forgot to do it, didn't notice that 10162 was released to slow ring yesterday when suddenly just after 3:30 AM last night my browsing was interrupted when Windows restarted and started the upgrade process. Wanting to do this correctly I just decided I let it try to upgrade until the system notices that the Users folder is relocated, and then revert itself back to my old 10159. Went to bed, sure about that I would find my old 10159 this morning with a notification that "Windows Upgrade failed due system folders being on another drive than C:" as usual.

I was so thrilled now to see this is not the case. The machine is upgraded to 10162, all my user profiles on E: drive intact and working :). Absolutely no issues! Of course I need to test this several times before I can remove the upgrade warnings and workaround from my tutorials but as it is now, it seems that the one and only slightly negative and time consuming part of this super space saving method is finally gone!

Yes! Geeks, I have no issues in understanding that my rant might be naive and make you wonder the level of my stupidity, but for me this is about the best Windows related news I could get.

• Windows 10: Users Folder - Move Location in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums
• Windows 8 & 8.1: User Profiles - Relocate to another Partition or Disk
• Windows 7: User Profiles - Create and Move During Windows 7 Installation - Windows 7 Help Forums

</End Rant of a Satisfied User>


I just love 10162 :)

Kari

STEVAE said:

ok, so for those who want to have colored title bars, just follow the steps below. i have done it, and it is working perfectly. i have mine set to change color with the accent colors of the background, and i have my backgrounds set to change every minute with a different pic. so i never get bored with the colors. if you have any questions, please feel free to ask them, and i'll do my best to help.

Step 1: Go to C:\Windows\Resources\Themes
Step 2: Copy the "aero" folder and paste it into the same Themes directory. Confirm the User Access Control request (UAC) and skip for all MSS files when prompted.

Step 3: Rename the "aero - Copy" folder to "windows" and confirm the UAC request if prompted.

Step 4: Go into the "windows" folder you just created and rename aero.msstyles to windows.msstyles. Confirm the UAC request.

Step 5: Go into the En-US folder and rename aero.msstyles.mui file to windows.msstyles.mui.

Step 6: Hit the back button twice and return to the Themes directory. Copy the aero file and place it on your desktop. Rename it to windows and open it with notepad.

Step 7: Under the [VisualStyles] section, find: Path=%ResourceDir%\Themes\Aero\Aero.msstyles
Step 8: Replace it with: Path=%ResourceDir%\Themes\windows\windows.msstyles
Step 9: Save it and then double click the file to enable colored titlebars! Go to the Settings app > Personalization > Colors and adjust your accent colors to your liking.

it adds quite a bit of color to your desktop, and gets rid of allllllll of that white.

I just tried that, and was overcome with joy. I could see Win 10 properly at last. Those bland, white title-bars with no text are a game-breaker for me. At 58, my eyesight isn't great. Not all of us want the Vista/Win 7 eye-candy back just for fun!

I changed a few colours and did a bit of experimenting. Very happy. Very happy indeed.

BUT... there was a catch - I needed to reboot for an unrelated reason. And it went into a burlesque routine of random black and white screens.

It would not, using any threat or cajoling, let me restart in safe mode to re-edit (I ended up crashing the repair mode by using my Win 8.1 RTM disk to boot from, it then gave me the Win 10 repair menu) so I'm now on my original 10162 install (with no drivers, and eff-all working properly). At least I've already downloaded most of what I'll need, which, on a 15gb/month connection is important. The mere installation (NOT including the download, which I did elsewhere) took ove 2.5gb of that 15. And I have a fortnight to go. Still wonder why I don't like forced updates??

NOT happy, but certainly NOT blaming you. Actually, I think I may be at fault, because after completing step 9, I deleted the file I'd saved to the desktop. Is that where I effed up?

Anyway, I'll try again, but will be imaging and doing an ISO to DVD burn first so I can use a startup disk to repair it if it goes for a Burton, and an image so I can restore it, likewise.

With colour and text on the title-bars, and the ability to control updates (which I'm doing now thru gpedit), I might just consider 10 as a viable side-grade over my beautifully usable and visually gorgeous 8.1.1, I can put-up with most of my other dislikes.


Wenda


Oh, and if they really must have a Start Menu - make it a fly-out one! Sheesh! (Or let me CHOOSE to use the 'Metro' All Apps screen as my start menu on a non-touch, non-tablet machine. I forced myself to like this in 8.1, ended up loving it, and do NOT wish to go back to a start menu. I do not have a touch screen).

Just one from left-field - with the new start menu - wouldn't it be nice if, when you clicked on 'All Apps' you actually got APPS, and not PROGRAMS?

Where the apps are now, is where my bloody PROGRAMS should be. Editable and customisable.

Thank Ivo there's still Classic Shell...


Wenda

I don't EVER remember having to go through so much crap to get even the original Win 8 (which i hated at first) to work the way I want. WHY is Microsoft so determined to make me dislike 10??? Or at least, why make it so hard for me to change it so as I DO like it?

They're close, but, so far, no cigar.