Hi Aaron, Tech Staff and all you Guys and Gals: I would like to know if GW needs any of the below features, except sound of course, to provide programibility to their app or their main code block. Also, if they have tested any of them or any that I have missed to improve WE stability and performance with W 8.1, perhaps with IE 11 also. WE became so bad after a time it became pretty much useless and I uninstalled it. Narrator is running stable without the jumping around and triggering Context Menu s automatically when navigating with arrow keys and tabs. When In some object WE would seemingly stop speaking and the title bar would read, usually, the item I was moving to or into but the summary bar would have an active Context Menu listed, does this sound right? Sometimes it just stopped, no title bar, no summary bar, no text on screen I could hear - seemingly nothing sometimes a few minutes sometimes I just ReBooted. But now that WE is uninstalled and since Narrator is running well, very stable, it had to be something with WindowEyes and I will try to see if I can make it more stable and performant. I dont know what blew WE out of the water all I had was Windows Essentials, perhaps the bloody Mcafee Security carp they loaded on my machine trashed WE - dont know ant that is slated for removal in favor of MS Defender along this path. Could you comment on the below items and let me know if I missed anything?
Here are some things I will be looking at and likely trying out over the next few days to try and improve WE performance and stability with w 8.1: Some of these I had turned off in Visual Studio to make WindowEyes more stable and responsive so I am guessing they will help make WE more stable with W 8.1 - just a guess until I try them out. If you have any comments on any of them Please let me know before I muck something up! One thing, I know there are active corners in w 8.1 where just passing mouse or focus will trigger User Interface events and I am going to try and find how to turn them off unless WE needs them left active for some reason - this is aa question for Aaron or one of the GW Tech guys. Here are all the things I will look at over the next few days to see if I can help WE out. Item 1)Customize System Properties to Disable Shadows and Animations By default Windows shows many eye candy effects such as animations, shadow effects, etc to enhance user interface. You can turn off these kind of effects to speed up system performance. A. Press "Win+R" keys together to open RUN dialog box. Now type sysdm.cpl and press Enter. It'll open System Properties window. B. Now go to "Advanced" tab and click on "Settings" button present in "Performance" section. It'll open a new window. C. Now uncheck following options: Animate controls and elements inside windows Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing Animations in the taskbar Fade or slide menus into view Fade or slide ToolTips into view Fade out menu items after clicking Save taskbar thumbnail previews Show shadows under mouse pointer Show shadows under windows Show translucent selection rectangle Slide open combo boxes Smooth-scroll list boxes Disable_Windows_8_Start_Screen_Animation.png 4. Apply the changes and close the window. Item 2: Change Folder Options to Disable Unnecessary Features You can disable a few features of Windows Explorer such as tooltips, etc to improve Explorer functionality: A. Open My Computer and click on "View" tab present in the Ribbon. Now click on "Options " button present at the end to open Folder Options window. B. Go to "View" tab and uncheck following options: Display file size information in folder tips Hide empty drives in the Computer folder Hide extensions for known file types Show encrypted or compressed NTFS files in color Show pop-up description for folder and desktop items Customize_Windows_8_Folder_Options.png C. Apply changes and close the window. Item 3: Disallow Unnecessary Windows Services to Start Automatically There are many built-in services in Windows which automatically start with Windows and always run in background even if the system doesn't need them. You can disallow many unnecessary services to start automatically with Windows to improve system performance. Check out following tutorial to learn which services you should disable in Windows 8: Windows 8 Services Configuration Guide Item 4: Disable Unnecessary Programs from Windows Startup Many 3rd party software add their entries in Windows startup list so that they can automatically run as soon as Windows starts. Many of those startup items are unnecessary and can be removed from startup list to speedup Windows. Follow these simple steps to disable unwanted startup items in Windows 8: A. In previous Windows versions the startup items list was present in system configuration manager which can be accessed using msconfig command. But Microsoft has moved the startup items list in Windows 8. Now it can be accessed using Task Manager. Right-click on Taskbar and select "Task Manager " option. Alternatively, you can directly open Task Manager by pressing " Ctrl+Shift+Esc" keys together. B. Now go to "Startup" tab and here you can click on the unwanted item and click on "Disable " button to remove it from startup. Customize_Windows_8_Startup_Items.png Now the disabled program will no longer run whenever you start Windows. It'll only run if you launch it manually. Item 5: Remove Sound Notifications of System Events [RtNote: I may see if I can change the current sound settings there to have nicer sounds for specific events.] By default Windows plays sounds for various system events such as error messages, device connect, device disconnect, command success, battery status, UAC prompt, etc. Sometimes many of these sound notifications might cause a little bit slowness in your system. If you have a slow computer system, you can disable some or all sound notifications in Windows 8 to speedup your computer system: A. Open Control Panel and click on Sound icon. Alternatively, you can directly open it using mmsys.cpl command. B. Once you open Sound window, go to "Sounds " tab. Here you can click on desired program event which you want to disable and then select " (None)" from "Sounds" drop-down list. Customize_Windows_8_Sound_Scheme.png If you want to disable all sound notifications, select "No Sounds" from "Sound Scheme" drop-down box. C. Apply the changes and close the window. Item 6Boot to desktop [RtNote: did it following Marks' Podcast instructions, doesnt work on boot up, works sometimes when closing a screen or window or whatever these bloody things might be called] right-click the Taskbar > Properties > Navigation tab. Under Start screen (bottom pane), tick the first option that says, " When I sign in or close all apps on a screen, go to the desktop instead of Start ". Then click on OK or Apply. Item 7: Disable Charms [RtNote Is this needed by WindowEyes internally and what about other corners or active roll-over type thingys?] Charms in Windows 8.1 aim to speed up access to menus. But if you find yourself inadvertently activating the menu with your mouse, it's possible to disable it. Go to Taskbar > Properties > Navigation and untick the "When I point to the upper-right corner, show the charms." Item 7: ) Turn off notifications to minimise distractions If you want to get work done without being distracted by notifications Windows 8.1 has got you covered. Go to PC Settings > Search & apps and then make sure the Quiet Hours switch is on. You can then choose which times you want to be left in peace. Item 8: Search locally and on the internet The search function in Windows 8.1 searches files on your device and also for answers on internet simultaneously. When you enter a term, the local files will appear as normally, but swiping to the left will bring up other web pages Bing has trawled through. This also shows up files on SkyDrive too. Item 9: Get SkyDrive under control SkyDrive is baked into Windows 8.1. Files stored here are listed alongside other categories, such as downloads and documents. Whilst cloud storage is a boon to those who use files across multiple machines, you may not want all you fires in the cloud. To ensure that Windows 8.1 isn't storing stuff in the cloud without your permission, go to PC Settings .. Here there are settings for the cloud storage tool that will determine whether it is enabled by default as well as how specific content types are handled. SkyDrive also tries to save space on the hard drive by using what it dubs "Smart Files". This is a great feature as long as you have an internet connection, but useless when you don't. To make sure that all SkyDrive files are accessible when you need them go to Windows Explorer > right click SkyDrive > select Make Available Offline .. This will download all files stored in the cloud and save them locally. Item 10: Ditch Command Prompt and go for PowerShell [RtNote: This is a whole other animal than dos and alien to most WE users - is the wave of MS future though for scripting me thinks.] In Windows 8.1 right clicking on the Windows icon in the taskbar brings up a list of power user commands. [RtNote, since I dont hear that icon is it possible the mouse or focus is hitting it and causing some inadvertent event to fire mucking up focus, mouse or UI?] For those of you that need to carry out more intensive, complex tasks using DOS-style commands you can replace CMD with Windows PowerShell. To do this go to Navigation Properties > Tick the box marked Replace Command Prompt with Windows PowerShell in the menu when I right-click the lower-left corner .. Item 11: Show all apps instead of live tiles [RtNote: dont know about this one but perhaps put all apps in start screen then will work with the WindowEyes TreeView UI of the Start Screen? just a wild thought at the moment and I dont know why WE didnt add a TreView of the Apps Screen like the one for the Start Screen. If you want to retain the Modern UI start screen but want to change the layout, it's possible to display all apps. To make this more productive in use, it is best to tick all of the last four boxes in the Taskbar and Navigation Properties dialogue box. When you click on the Start button you will see all your desktop applications first on the list (Modern UI apps appear at the end). Of course you can still go back to the live tiles by clicking the little arrow at the bottom to go back to that view, but why would you? Final Note: There is a Start Button list in w 8.1 and what about putting apps or programs in there? Would that be easier to setup as folders and files with some type of Tree Structure for GW? And what about that Apps list combo box where it has a selection of things like sort orders, is that for the Apps Screen and how do we get to the Start Button and Apps ComboBox on a regular basis, I didnt get them until just before WindowEyes became pretty much completely nonresponsive. That is all I have so far. EndOfFile: Rick USA If you reply to this message it will be delivered to the original sender only. If your reply would benefit others on the list and your message is related to GW Micro, then please consider sending your message to [email protected] so the entire list will receive it. GW-Info messages are archived at http://www.gwmicro.com/gwinfo. You can manage your list subscription at http://www.gwmicro.com/listserv.
