SpectralMeat wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 10:09:
Also for anyone interested Windows 10 Is Spying On You: Here’s How To Stop It

FYI all that stuff has been in since Windows 8, the only new one is for wifi contact sharing. The 'MS personalized ad preferences' has been in there since 8 as well, why it's suddenly 'big news' I have no idea.

The following XP games work fine on 10

1. Solitaire & Freecell... Both Sol.exe and Freecell.exe must be in the same folder as cards.dll, which is in XP's system32 folder. Do not put them in your system32, they just have to be in the same folder.
2. Minesweeper...Winmine.exe (nothing else needed, it just works)
3. Pinball...Pinball.exe, copy the whole pinball folder.
4. Spider Solitaire... Spider.exe is stand alone and does not require the cards.dll.

Works on Windows 7 and Windows 10, did not test 8.1 but I bet it works.

I made a self extracting archive of the above, donations are

Finally a use for Win 7 Pros ability to run Windows XP mode.

Just curious about this spy thing and app monitoring how does it detect apps on the system ?.
Devious mind thinks what about simply creating fake mega bundle with registry entries for hundreds of apps and perhaps dummy install files.
dont fight it but feed , give it what it wants it and bring it to its knees with garbage

descender wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 14:43:
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional
SB0886
October 2015

That's the card I'm using and it works fine, but like I had said earlier I wasn't using Creative's drivers before the upgrade.

You should be downloading and installing this: http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2015/07/sb-x-fi-series-support-pack-34.html

Waiting for official Creative drivers that will only give you half of the cards functionality anyway is a waste of time.

Thank you. Good to know it is working fine for you, as that is the same exact one I have as well.

Try this link Windows® 10 - Software Availability Chart

Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Professional
SB0886
October 2015

That's the card I'm using and it works fine, but like I had said earlier I wasn't using Creative's drivers before the upgrade.

You should be downloading and installing this: http://danielkawakami.blogspot.com/2015/07/sb-x-fi-series-support-pack-34.html

Waiting for official Creative drivers that will only give you half of the cards functionality anyway is a waste of time.

Drayth wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 13:56:
I've been thinking of moving back to an X-Fi. My old one died a few months ago. One thing I like is you can force hardware sound for about 95% of the games out there using ALchemy in Win 8.1. Will need to check if *that* still works in Win 10.

Here is a link to Creative's Windows® 10 - Software Availability Chart , which I think is an 'Official' software/driver release out of Beta.

Looks like the ones I need won't be available until October 2015, which is 'about' how long I was planning on waiting to upgrade.

I hope that helps.....

I've been thinking of moving back to an X-Fi. My old one died a few months ago. One thing I like is you can force hardware sound for about 95% of the games out there using ALchemy in Win 8.1. Will need to check if *that* still works in Win 10.

During the upgrade process you are given the option to retain your data/settings or not. If you choose not to there is fundamentally no difference between that and a clean install. It's been this way since windows 7. If it detects an existing oS on the drive it moves everything currently on your c: into windows.old and then the install from that point forward is "clean".

Blue wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 09:57:

SpectralMeat wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 09:52:
Looks like the clean install is still kinda messy.
I don't understand why is it so hard to put an option into the installation menu to do a clean install.

Agreed. MS used to be friendly to this, just requiring you insert the disks for qualifying products to do a clean install of an upgrade. I found this changed with Windows 7, however, as I was told by MS tech support that getting it to actually do a clean install from an upgrade disk was not possible. I was finally able to find a registry hack to allow this anyway, but it made me feel like a pirate just doing a clean install of an upgrade for which I paid. Not cool.

I was hoping for a better clean install option too. I'll still go through the process, but I won't be happy about it .

My X-Fi works just fine in W10, even the front panel works. I had the danielK drivers installed on 7 previously and whatever drivers it automatically installed during the 10 upgrade have not caused any issues so far.

If you have one of those pci-e x1 riser xfi cards packaged with a motherboard then you don't have a real creative card and that's probably why it doesn't work.

i have been thinking about buying a new sound card for a bit and moving away from creative. Their driver support just plain sucks. My X-Fi won't work in windows 10, they plan to release drivers late next month...

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 11:25:
I log in to Win10 with a local account and disable anything that looks like it could leak private information. It's pretty up front though. You're not having to dive into the registry to make these changes.

I'll probably uninstall Solitaire just because I never play it.

When an OS vendor has network "cloud" syncing services then there is going to be some tracking involved just to get it to work. That's the nature of it.

Sometimes I think about setting up a dual boot Linux system but last time I tried it still couldn't use the Sound Blaster Z card I have. (It's a long story as to why I still have a dedicated sound card.)

I still have a dedicated sound card because how a game (or music)sounds is just as important as how it looks (which is why you use a dedicated video card).

Is the SB working ok in W10?

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 11:25:
I log in to Win10 with a local account and disable anything that looks like it could leak private information. It's pretty up front though. You're not having to dive into the registry to make these changes.

This is assuming there are no additional hidden shenanigans, which I believe we have right to question due to recent history. Or do we have different levels of concern? Gov't being fed data vs Commercial Companies getting data sold to them? Are they different to you? One worst than the other?

Personally I have settled that if my computer is connected to the Internet anything on it and anything I do is considered "doing it in public". I have to assume my actions are being or can be recorded at levels I'll never understand.

I can not like that and I do not like it. But then there are realities, if they can't just call it for what it is I can. The only way to accept it imo is to take my position, that your internet connected pc is public.

Now for the person that hates this to the point they can't live with it. Then imo you have to think a lot more then I do, you have to use another O/S and really question if the PC can really be hooked to the internet and be safe no matter any O/S. Personally I assume that anything connected to the internet is unsafe in terms of one thinking they are totally private.

This comment was edited on Jul 30, 2015, 11:55.

Verno wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 10:43:
I haven't dumped the traffic myself yet but I will probably do that later today. I suspect its much ado about nothing, peoples phones and search engine use gather way more information on them every day. That being said I see the potential for abuse there and think it should be closely watched.

Because they can and will update the software, what it's capturing today is only part of the picture. The EULA seems to give a very wide lateral as to what they can do on our devices going forward. It is cause for concern and diligence on our part.

I log in to Win10 with a local account and disable anything that looks like it could leak private information. It's pretty up front though. You're not having to dive into the registry to make these changes.

I'll probably uninstall Solitaire just because I never play it.

When an OS vendor has network "cloud" syncing services then there is going to be some tracking involved just to get it to work. That's the nature of it.

Sometimes I think about setting up a dual boot Linux system but last time I tried it still couldn't use the Sound Blaster Z card I have. (It's a long story as to why I still have a dedicated sound card.)

I haven't dumped the traffic myself yet but I will probably do that later today. I suspect its much ado about nothing, peoples phones and search engine use gather way more information on them every day. That being said I see the potential for abuse there and think it should be closely watched.

One thing that didn't get a lot of press play is their P2P Windows Update mechanism. Fine in theory, I download the update on one machine and don't need to repeat the whole download on others, its just grabbed across the LAN. I see a huge potential for malware there though, checksums or no.

Verno wrote on Jul 30, 2015, 10:22:
I keep hearing about the potential privacy problems of Windows 10 but you can disable the vast majority of it at install time, the post install setup literally asks you for your preferences on it. I went one step further and blocked the telemetry servers on my router just because I'm paranoid though :)

This (router blocking) would be the only reliable way to block it for Win 10 Home and Pro users by the way. The registry hack where you disable telemetry only really works for Win 10 Enterprise but Home and Pro will still send data even if it is set to '0', and as far as I have read, even on the lowest spy level, Win 10 still sends a list of all installed programs to MS.
Win 10 is spyware extraordinaire but I guess that was to be expected from a "free" upgrade.
Oh, and as for the Solitaire thing... this is only the beginning. Only a matter of time until they offer ad-free (waiting time free) logon screen subs.

They still do hardware hashes for activation which makes it a pain if you're clean installing on new hardware. The phone support thing is fast and has good results but its annoying having to do it in the first place.

I had no problems clean installing on my machines at home which were upgrade path, no mess or problems.

I keep hearing about the potential privacy problems of Windows 10 but you can disable the vast majority of it at install time, the post install setup literally asks you for your preferences on it. I went one step further and blocked the telemetry servers on my router just because I'm paranoid though

I will wireshark it sometime to see what they're sending out of curiosity.

Also for anyone interested Windows 10 Is Spying On You: Here’s How To Stop It