Recommended Posts

Hehe, nice, disabling the hardware check actually made it work for me...

Despite the User Experience SubSystem crash... :laugh:

Blur effects behind the transparent titlebar, never really noticed from the screenshots. And "folding" window openings... Posting an example.

post-21023-1114468714_thumb.jpg

Hehe, nice, disabling the hardware check actually made it work for me...

Despite the User Experience SubSystem crash... :laugh:

Blur effects behind the transparent titlebar, never really noticed from the screenshots. And "folding" window openings... Posting an example.

585829255[/snapback]

What video card do you have and what exact steps did you take to enable it?

It runs awfully slow here, albeit starting up - gets all the effects with no registry keys, just the DWM start command [not UXSS].

I have a Geforce FX 5600. Nothing too hot these days, really.

The "zoom effects" are actually quite smooth at least if it's about small windows. However, I get choppiness due to what seems to be hard drive work. I guess this early build isn't very optimized, and you'd really do better with 1 GB RAM; I only have 512 MB.

Oh and to enable the stuff in that screenshot, I only edited the registry to disable the hardware check and typed "uxss" in the Run dialog. Crash, but it works as long as you keep the crash window open. :rofl:

If I instead did the startup trick with RunDLL, I got similar results, but no zoom effects IIRC.

I'm also not really sure if it's a great idea to use *both* tricks (rundll + uxss) at once?

I have a Geforce FX 5600. Nothing too hot these days, really.

The "zoom effects" are actually quite smooth at least if it's about small windows. However, I get choppiness due to what seems to be hard drive work. I guess this early build isn't very optimized, and you'd really do better with 1 GB RAM; I only have 512 MB.

Oh and to enable the stuff in that screenshot, I only edited the registry to disable the hardware check and typed "uxss" in the Run dialog. Crash, but it works as long as you keep the crash window open.  :rofl:

If I instead did the startup trick with RunDLL, I got similar results, but no zoom effects IIRC.

I'm also not really sure if it's a great idea to use *both* tricks (rundll + uxss) at once?

585829342[/snapback]

You can create that reg key for UXSS, or just enable the service.

Start -> Run -> services.msc -> User Experience Session Management Service -> Automatic/Start

No crashing for me, but it doesn't work smooth at all, here is what I get.

post-37989-1114471147_thumb.jpg

Oh. Well. Yeah. That's great. Visual effects... and quite nice ones. Oh and I am especially very surprised that someone's Internet actually works cuz it sure doesn't here. Nor Wireless nor telephony networks work.

Well... for someone who waited one year just to see this, I am not surprised at all. Still full of bugs, has a messy interface (still a placeholder after 2 - 3 years of development? What's going on?), it's notreally usable, is not user-friendly at all unlike everything they said (it even makes things harder to do and more complicated to understand).

Now that's pretty much confirmed. May 24th, I am buying a Mac G5 dual. The whole thing. Windows Longhorn will be nothing but what I described up there. If they didn't manage to do much progress in one year, I don't see why I should give them another year or another year and a half (cuz first it's still not enough and second it's too far away)

did this (someone here can take the time to create the batch file as I can't be arsed to do it atm):

Open DOS and navigate to:

c:\windows\system32\

Type this:

rundll32.exe udwm.dll DwmClientStartup

That'll get your glass going. The buttons will be square still but the buttons will have the colors when you hover over them.

To start the effects, use the same registry hacks as you did for 4074:

Start > Run > Regedit

Navigate to:

HKLM>Software>Microsoft>Windows>CurrentVersion>Explorer

Create 2 new keys: MILDesktop and MILExplorer and give them both a value of 1.

Restart.

That's all I did to get where we got for the screenshots. Perhaps on the appropriate PC, the effects will be much greater. Enjoy. happy.gif

-Ref'X

It also looks like cpu killer has some Radeon LDDM drivers (on the DVD?).

:D

585828791[/snapback]

LDDM drivers are available for the 9500, 9600, 9700 and 9800 (and XT) series. If your exact card isn't in the list, choose the closest family, and if its lower than a 9800, use the EnableMachineCheck hack to allow DWM.

Oh. Well. Yeah. That's great. Visual effects... and quite nice ones. Oh and I am especially very surprised that someone's Internet actually works cuz it sure doesn't here. Nor Wireless nor telephony networks work.

Well... for someone who waited one year just to see this, I am not surprised at all. Still full of bugs, has a messy interface (still a placeholder after 2 - 3 years of development? What's going on?), it's notreally usable, is not user-friendly at all unlike everything they said (it even makes things harder to do and more complicated to understand).

Now that's pretty much confirmed. May 24th, I am buying a Mac G5 dual. The whole thing. Windows Longhorn will be nothing but what I described up there. If they didn't manage to do much progress in one year, I don't see why I should give them another year or another year and a half (cuz first it's still not enough and second it's too far away)

585829701[/snapback]

Judging by what we saw today I totally agree with you. Longhorn in it's current state really is a pile of dung. It feels like a dirty and buggy WinXP with bits and pieces sticking out all over the place. That being said, it isn't even in beta so why should we even get all dissapointed about it? I guess it's just hard to understand what they are doing over there with all that money, all those resources, and this is all they are able to produce after three years. We'll just have to wait some more (atleast 6 months) till the betas and RC's are out for a final verdict.

To enable it for other cards create a regkey

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DWM\EnableMachineCheck (Dword) and set it to 0

after that uxss.exe enables the effects and crashes.. but if you just drag the error window to someplace where it doesn't bother you it seems to keep running.

This is the best way to enable it and it's really quite smooth on my 5600. But this isn't all the effects that are possible I would imagine.

It's still an alpha people, we are not in Beta yet, don't judge it until it is final.

Now that's pretty much confirmed. May 24th, I am buying a Mac G5 dual. The whole thing. Windows Longhorn will be nothing but what I described up there. If they didn't manage to do much progress in one year, I don't see why I should give them another year or another year and a half (cuz first it's still not enough and second it's too far away)

585829701[/snapback]

You're going to buy a Mac because you're not impressed, as an end-user, with an Alpha build of an operating system 2 years from release that was designed exclusively for hardware engineers and includes only the bits having to do with driver development on the only part of the OS that is basically complete (the driver framework, LDDM, and Metro).

That's about the most absurd thing I've ever heard.

Several people I know have seen Aero Glass. And that ain't it. Believe me, they've done a lot of User Experience work for Longhorn. But unless you're good buddies with Jim Allchin, you're not going to see it until next year when they want you to.

Oh. Well. Yeah. That's great. Visual effects... and quite nice ones. Oh and I am especially very surprised that someone's Internet actually works cuz it sure doesn't here. Nor Wireless nor telephony networks work.

Well... for someone who waited one year just to see this, I am not surprised at all. Still full of bugs, has a messy interface (still a placeholder after 2 - 3 years of development? What's going on?), it's notreally usable, is not user-friendly at all unlike everything they said (it even makes things harder to do and more complicated to understand).

Now that's pretty much confirmed. May 24th, I am buying a Mac G5 dual. The whole thing. Windows Longhorn will be nothing but what I described up there. If they didn't manage to do much progress in one year, I don't see why I should give them another year or another year and a half (cuz first it's still not enough and second it's too far away)

585829701[/snapback]

And it's for that exact reason that Microsoft isn't showing Longhorn's current state to the general public yet. You can't see what's changed under the hood, nor can you see the other builds - Microsoft have already shown off some of build 5060 so what's the point in judging an older (albeit the most recent we've seen) alpha build?

Oh I give up. Buy a Mac if you want, they're great machines, but I still think making such a comment on an OS that isn't even beta yet is quite pathetic. Being as the build was distributed for WinHEC attendees, it stands to reason that the fancy stuff isn't there yet. Sigh.

To enable it for other cards create a regkey

HKLM\Software\Microsoft\DWM\EnableMachineCheck (Dword) and set it to 0

after that uxss.exe enables the effects and crashes.. but if you just drag the error window to someplace where it doesn't bother you it seems to keep running.

This is the best way to enable it and it's really quite smooth on my 5600. But this isn't all the effects that are possible I would imagine.

It's still an alpha people, we are not in Beta yet, don't judge it until it is final.

585829885[/snapback]

this way works great!!! FYI

Maybe none of you were around back then... but development of Windows 2000 was much the same way. Pre-beta 1 was entirely unuseable. Beta 1 (still called Windows NT 5.0) wasn't even worth running. It was unstable, ugly, and had broken pieces everywhere. The beta 1 refreshes showed very little noticeable improvement. A lot of people thought it would never see the light of day. Then one day they posted beta 2 and announced the name change to Windows 2000 (one of the beta tester's jobs was to make sure all the branding got changed over properly). It still had a ways to go, but the progress from beta 1 was massive, and seemed to happen over night. It was an entirely different beast.

A beta 2 refresh came not much later and suddenly we realized what a massive overhaul this OS had undergone. By this time it was useable for most day-to-day tasks, and was quite exciting to test.

With beta 3 came the polish. Everything came together and finally made many of us go "wow, this is amazing. How did I ever live without this?" And the RCs just cleaned up one or two loose ends.

I expect Longhorn to be much the same way (even though there may not be a beta 3 since they seem to have stopped with those).

Some say it would be better for Microsoft not to show anything until it's ready for public view. And that's the problem... if you let anyone see this stuff, enthusiasts like us are going to eat up every ounce of it that we can get.

On the other hand, letting developers and hardware engineers get their hands on this early improves the user experience for the final product massively. No one wants to install Longhorn the day it comes out only to find that half of their hardware isn't supported. We all want Longhorn to ship with huge hardware support and some awesome new applications to show off the new platform.

If you want to critique Longhorn right now, critique the stuff that they're showing you... not the placeholder items like the UI. Critique the LDDM, since that's one of the largest focuses for this release. Critique the implementation of Metro, and the Windows Driver Kit that they handed out. That's what they want to hear about.

Beta 1 will probably be a more developer-oriented release (this one, for the most part, is not). Although nowadays Avalon and Indigo are being made available to developers without Longhorn, so that's not as important as before. So the real thing to watch will be beta 2. I doubt beta 2 will have the final look and feel of the OS... but it will be a much better indicator than this engineering technology sample.

Maybe none of you were around back then... but development of Windows 2000 was much the same way.  Pre-beta 1 was entirely unuseable. Beta 1 (still called Windows NT 5.0) wasn't even worth running.  It was unstable, ugly, and had broken pieces everywhere.  The beta 1 refreshes showed very little noticeable improvement.  A lot of people thought it would never see the light of day.  Then one day they posted beta 2 and announced the name change to Windows 2000 (one of the beta tester's jobs was to make sure all the branding got changed over properly).  It still had a ways to go, but the progress from beta 1 was massive, and seemed to happen over night.  It was an entirely different beast.

A beta 2 refresh came not much later and suddenly we realized what a massive overhaul this OS had undergone.  By this time it was useable for most day-to-day tasks, and was quite exciting to test.

With beta 3 came the polish.  Everything came together and finally made many of us go "wow, this is amazing.  How did I ever live without this?"  And the RCs just cleaned up one or two loose ends.

I expect Longhorn to be much the same way (even though there may not be a beta 3 since they seem to have stopped with those).

Some say it would be better for Microsoft not to show anything until it's ready for public view.  And that's the problem... if you let anyone see this stuff, enthusiasts like us are going to eat up every ounce of it that we can get.

On the other hand, letting developers and hardware engineers get their hands on this early improves the user experience for the final product massively.  No one wants to install Longhorn the day it comes out only to find that half of their hardware isn't supported.  We all want Longhorn to ship with huge hardware support and some awesome new applications to show off the new platform.

If you want to critique Longhorn right now, critique the stuff that they're showing you... not the placeholder items like the UI.  Critique the LDDM, since that's one of the largest focuses for this release.  Critique the implementation of Metro, and the Windows Driver Kit that they handed out.  That's what they want to hear about.

Beta 1 will probably be a more developer-oriented release (this one, for the most part, is not).  Although nowadays Avalon and Indigo are being made available to developers without Longhorn, so that's not as important as before.  So the real thing to watch will be beta 2.  I doubt beta 2 will have the final look and feel of the OS... but it will be a much better indicator than this engineering technology sample.

585830014[/snapback]

same with xp, hell these guys should have seen win95's beta releases.

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Astra 0.6.1 Beta by Razvan Serea Astra is an audiophile music player designed for local music libraries, supporting MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, OGG, M4A, OPUS, WMA, AIFF, and more via FFmpeg. It offers gapless playback with pre-buffering, multichannel audio remapping, and Dolby Atmos decoding, ensuring albums play seamlessly while maintaining high-fidelity sound. Astra features real-time DSP visualizers powered by a native C++ engine, including an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, and vectorscope. A fully parametric 10-band EQ with live frequency response, built-in presets, and AutoEQ headphone calibration import lets you precisely shape your sound. Playback controls include shuffle, repeat, and drag-and-drop queue management, while the library automatically extracts metadata, album artwork, and supports global search, favorites, and recently played tracking. Additional features include output device selection, delay calibration, customizable themes, fullscreen and mini-player modes, Discord Rich Presence, optional Last.fm scrobbling, and an opt-in local API for integrations. Astra delivers a complete, high-quality desktop audio experience with no telemetry, accounts, or streaming. Astra 0.6.1 Beta changelog: Lyrics Initial XLRC support via @boof2015/xlrc 0.2.0 (#131) XLRC sidecar scanning, manual import, and renderer support Word timing, furigana, translations, voice labels, and translation-priority controls for XLRC Fullscreen lyrics overhaul with additional layout polish Manual lyrics editor with LRC, XLRC, and plain-text modes Drag-and-drop lyrics import plus sync offset controls Clickable synced lyrics for seeking, with popout and transport lyrics updates (#138) Fixed lyrics info sidebar scrolling (#138) Added a workaround for LRCLIB instability Metadata & Library Metadata editor rebuilt as a side panel Virtual DB metadata overrides and optional direct file tag writing Bulk metadata editing for title, artist, album, album artist, genre, year, track/disc numbers, and artwork Undo/redo support for virtual metadata edits Clear overrides action and default save-mode preference Artist page grid view added, with later design and sizing refinements Improved Jump to Playing with smart source, queue, album, artist, and library track targets Fixed smart source jump behavior Playlists Fixed VLC-style M3U import failures (#127) Added playlist export to M3U/M3U8 (#118) Improved imported playlist path resolution and missing-entry preservation Shuffle added to playlist pages (#121) Remove tracks directly from playlist views (#128) Fixed create-playlist-from-track modal closing when clicking inside it (#137) Multi-select quality-of-life fixes Right-click context menus no longer clear multiselections UI & Navigation Fixed UI scaling regressions in sidebar and home surfaces (#122, #123) Fixed transport bar regression (#126) Fixed horizontal scrolling on Home and Library rails Fixed artist grid sizing while searching Updated playlist action buttons and related layout polish Additional fullscreen lyrics visual adjustments Visualization Scopes and visualizers now respect UI scaling settings (#155) Added shared canvas sizing logic for correct DPR/backing-store behavior Canvas sizing tests added for visualizer scaling regressions Discord RPC Discord Rich Presence activity structure refactored Compact status can prioritize title or artist Profile info line can show file info or album Title and artist links can target YouTube Music, Last.fm, or be disabled Optional small Astra badge for cover-art presence Configurable “clear when paused” timing Added Discord activity tests Scrobbling Fixed custom Last.fm2 API profiles being accidentally blocked Expanded scrobbler profile protocol handling coverage Stability & Tests Added/expanded tests for XLRC parsing, lyrics presentation, metadata editor state, playlist import/export path handling, artist grid layout, horizontal scrolling, canvas sizing, and Discord RPC activity building Download: Astra 0.6.1 Beta | 138.0 MB (Open Source) View: Astra Home Page | Github | Screenshot Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • How does it compare to the "SeeStar S30 Pro" and the "Vespera PRO 2"?
    • Indeed. And note that those units are MUCH cheaper than this new Steam Machine...ahem.
    • Microsoft have found a way to convert RAM and SSDs into water.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Week One Done
      Almohandis earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Rookie
      dorf went up a rank
      Rookie
    • First Post
      mike_rumble earned a badge
      First Post
    • Dedicated
      tuben earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Week One Done
      mnsgroup earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      502
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      209
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      100
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      85
    5. 5
      neufuse
      69
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!