How to remove thumbnail from volume control OSD? [solved!]

[wrybread]

At some point the OSD for volume control on my W530 became really large, with a thumbnail, like this:



I think it happened when I updated the audio drivers awhile ago, but can't remember exactly what changed it.

Does anyone happen to know how to make it smaller, or at least remove the giant thumbnail portion of the popup? It covers a pretty substantial portion of my screen and annoys me every time I see it.

[RealBlackStuff]

Yeah, dump W10.

[dr_st]

Disable media key handling in your browser:
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/134 ... hrome.html

[wrybread]

Disable media key handling in your browser:

Awesome and thank you! Works perfectly.

Yeah, dump W10.

I hear you, I still run Win7 on a few of my machines, but I have to say I've been hating Win10 less lately. The key is to install Open Shell, previously named Classic Shell:

https://github.com/Open-Shell/Open-Shell-Menu

Makes the start menu look exactly like Win7's. And then remove those annoying default "apps" from the start menu. I can't imagine what Microsoft is thinking by filling the default Win10 install with so many little apps that no one can find anything in their program list.

Now that I have things customized in Win10 I'm shocked to say that I'm actually preferring it to Win7. The forced updates are still really annoying though.

[dr_st]

I can't imagine what Microsoft is thinking by filling the default Win10 install with so many little apps that no one can find anything in their program list.

That people will pin the most frequently used programs, or find them is the "recently used" list, and for the rest they will just start typing the name in the search bar and it will bring it up in half a second.

Now that I have things customized in Win10 I'm shocked to say that I'm actually preferring it to Win7. The forced updates are still really annoying though.

The Win10 kernel is better than that of Win7, because kernel-wise every Windows NT version was better than the last with no exceptions. The UI, though, is a mixed bag and a lot of it is a matter of preference. Forced updates can be turned off in Pro/Enterprise, but if you have Win10 Home, you are at the mercy of 3rd party tools which frequently stop working when Microsoft changes something.

[wrybread]

That people will pin the most frequently used programs, or find them is the "recently used" list, and for the rest they will just start typing the name in the search bar and it will bring it up in half a second.

Sure, it's workable, just brutally cluttered, and with total junk. And a good example of the way the user has to constantly fight the OS with Win10, especially compared to Win7.

Fortunately Classic Shell makes it easy to clean the clutter and win that particular battle.

The UI, though, is a mixed bag

To put it mildly!

Forced updates can be turned off in Pro/Enterprise

I'm running Windows 10 Pro, I can turn off updates for specific wifi connections by setting them to "metered" but I don't know of a way to turn them off globally. As it is currently if I connect to a new wifi connection it'll start updating and then go through the rigamarole of nagging me to reboot, and sometimes rebooting without my permission. Unbelievable.

Edit: whoo hoo, looks like there's now a way to disable automatic updates with Group Policy Editor:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop ... windows-10

More fighting against the OS but at least that's another winnable battle.

because kernel-wise every Windows NT version was better than the last with no exceptions

Even Vista versus XP? I'd say even if someone somehow argues that the Vista kernel is better than XP's kernel, all the cruft piled on top of it makes it irrelevant. A bit as I used to view the cruft of Win10 versus Win7, but now I think it's gotten a bit more user friendly or at least manageable.

[dr_st]

Sure, it's workable, just brutally cluttered, and with total junk. And a good example of the way the user has to constantly fight the OS with Win10, especially compared to Win7.

Fortunately Classic Shell makes it easy to clean the clutter and win that particular battle.

This is because there was a paradigm shift. The expectation is that the users are not supposed to navigate the start menu anymore. So the clutter doesn't matter. The pinned apps is what you should use, together with quick search that actually works. Yes, the default apps Windows sticks there are mostly junk, but are quickly removed.

I used to use Classic Shell on my Win10 installs at first, until I realized that I simply don't use the start menu in the old way anymore. Since then I no longer install Classic Shell.

Edit: whoo hoo, looks like there's now a way to disable automatic updates with Group Policy Editor:

https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop ... windows-10

NoAutoUpdate has been there from day 1. Not sure if it was exposed in the group policy, though.

Even Vista versus XP? I'd say even if someone somehow argues that the Vista kernel is better than XP's kernel, all the cruft piled on top of it makes it irrelevant.

Especially Vista vs XP - that was one of the major changes. In fact that is one of the reasons for Vista's problems - many things changed in the kernel, and third-party driver readiness was low. The other issue with Vista was UI sluggishness, which mostly affected low-end PCs, and was very much improved by SP1. Post-SP1, Vista is much nicer to use than WinXP.

[wrybread]

This is because there was a paradigm shift.

I get it, I just strongly disagree with it and think it's a clunky UI decision especially given their implementation. As does everyone I know by the way. I don't think I have 2 friends who use Windows anymore, they all switched to Mac right around when MS was making these horrible decisions with Win10. (And yes I know Mac lists programs the same way, but the implementation is so much better than MS's). And why wouldn't they switch, Win10 is just such a combative bear to use, it fights the user at literally every step. I write Windows software for a living so have to stick with it, otherwise I'd be out the door as well.

I guess the MS Phone had a bunch of "paradigm shifts" as well, ha. "Software that works on every device".

quick search that actually works

I'd say it depends how high a bar you have for "actually works". It works better than Win7 in some ways, but is also full of issues. It comes up with so many extraneous results that I cringe every time I use it. Compare it to Spotlight on Mac, that works beautifully. And my personal pet peeve is how it always finds one more thing a few seconds later causing the results to jump so I can't simply type the app name and press enter. The Mac version doesn't find 20 things that parenthetically mention the thing you're looking for.

Another peeve of mine is that the search no longer accepts CLI parameters. So for example I can't type "putty mydomain.com" to SSH into mydomain.com anymore (worked on Win7), I need to type "putty" then enter the domain. Clunky. Edit: aha: windows-R works well, another Win10 battle won.

Interesting perspective on Vista. I've never heard anyone tout it's kernel as superior and can't find any link on it. Is this just your opinion or is it a widely held belief? Got a link?

[dr_st]

I get it, I just strongly disagree with it and think it's a clunky UI decision especially given their implementation. As does everyone I know by the way. I don't think I have 2 friends who use Windows anymore, they all switched to Mac right around when MS was making these horrible decisions.

Given your location, the bubble you describe is not surprising.

(And yes I know Mac lists programs the same way, but the implementation is so much better than Win10's).

What do you find better? I haven't used a Mac ever, so I cannot judge myself.

And why wouldn't they switch, Win10 is just such a combative bear to use, it fights the user at literally every step.

I really don't feel this (and I use Win10 on 3 personal computers + all my work computers). The only actual issue is the forced automatic updates that cannot be turned off on the Home version.

It works better than Win7 in some ways, but is also full of issues. It comes up with so much extraneous garbage that it's just barely usable.

I feel you are exaggerating. Mine doesn't do this. Installed applications always precede web results. Frequently used applications are further prioritized.

Compare it to Spotlight on Mac, that works beautifully, the Windows version works somewhat adequately in my opinion.

Again, I would be curious to learn how the experience is different.

And my personal pet peeve is how it always finds one more thing a few seconds later causing the results to move so I can't simply type the app name and press enter. On Mac you can simply type the app name and press enter and it almost always finds the correct result.

I don't know what I'm doing different, but on Win10 I always get the right thing by typing the app name (usually just the first few characters are enough) and pressing Enter. Of course if I misspell it, I may not get quite what I expected, but that's a different scenario.

Interesting perspective on Vista. I've never heard anyone tout it's kernel as superior and can't find any link on it. Is this just your opinion or is it a widely held belief?

It's not a matter of belief, and it's not something that should be "widely held" to be true. To get good perspectives on the relative merits of OS kernels, you should consult kernel developers/analysts, not survey a bunch of "average Joes" who barely know what an OS kernel is. For example, start with the guys who wrote the "Windows Internals" books - Mark Russinovich and others.

As for the general comment on "pleasantness to use" - that's a personal opinion, which is based on using a Vista system for 12 years, of which for at least 8 of those it was my primary home desktop. During the same time period I've used a number of XP and Win7 systems, and at some point Win8.1 and Win10 got thrown into the mix.

So, even if I'm an obvious minority here, my opinion carries more weight than that of any number of users that used Vista for 2 months back in 2007, concluded that it's garbage, never touched it since, and base their perspective on the collective experience of similar users.

In a more general sense - I feel that in terms of desktop UI - Vista and Win7 (which are pretty much the same thing except 7 improved usability in a few places) were the pinnacle of Microsoft Windows. Since then it's gotten inconsistent. In some things it is better, in others - worse.

[wrybread]

I haven't used a Mac ever, so I cannot judge myself.

Aha, well that explains much. So much of Win10 is a bad imitation of OSX. I really wish Windows would stop trying to imitate it, since it always falls so short. Same goes for the hardware and all the atrocious touchpads that badly imitate a Macbook's touchpad.

given your location, the bubble you describe is not surprising.

True, here in San Francisco there's other reasons to use Mac, but I travel all the time for work. It's the same thing in NYC, Paris, Oslo, Brussels, Tokyo, you name it... Pretty much everywhere I go, I'm the only one using Windows these days. Except people who have to use it for work like me. The only place I've been recently where Mac users weren't the majority of the people I met was the Philippines, where price might be the big issue. Interestingly there most people just didn't have a laptop at all, they were entirely mobile based.

Installed applications always precede web results.

Why on earth would I want to see web results? It's just so silly. (One example among many of course).

It's not a matter of belief, and it's not something that should be "widely held" to be true. To get good perspectives on the relative merits of OS kernels, you should consult kernel developers/analysts, not survey a bunch of "average Joes" who barely know what an OS kernel is. For example, start with the guys who wrote the "Windows Internals" books - Mark Russinovich and others.

To be clear, I'm not talking about "average Joes", I'm talking about experts.

And on a sidenote, as someone who's interested in OS kernels, you're not curious about the POSIX implementation of OSX?

[dr_st]

Aha, well that explains much. So much of Win10 is a bad imitation of OSX. I really wish Windows would stop trying to imitate it, since it always falls so short. Same goes for the hardware and all the atrocious touchpads that badly imitate a Macbook's touchpad.

You still haven't actually explained the differences, and where exactly it falls short.

Pretty much everywhere I go, I'm the only one using Windows these days. Except people who have to use it for work like me.

I wonder how you judge which of the folks in the airport / cafe use a laptop for work and who does it for recreation. Surely you didn't ask each and every one of them.

I don't even know how to address obviously false statements like "I'm the only one using Windows these days". OS market share statistics, no matter where in the world you focus, will show at least a 2:1 (in some cases 4:1 and more) ratio of Windows vs OS-X users. Of course it accounts for people's work computers too, but surely only a negligible number of these people actually develop Windows software like yourself. So why do they / their companies use Windows if it is so universally bad?

Why on earth would I want to see web results? It's just so silly. (One example among many of course).

Is this another case of "if I don't need it, no one does"? I don't need the integrated web search in the start menu either, but if you survey some people, enough of them will tell you that they like it. Nor do I dislike it enough to disable it, which is of course doable. And if there are many more examples - could you share just a few?

To be clear, I'm not talking about "average Joes", I'm talking about experts.

Well, then, did you ever have a Windows kernel expert tell you that the opposite of what I said? Like that at any point in time, the Windows kernel ever went backwards?

And on a sidenote, as a kernel expert you're not curious about the POSIX implementation of OSX?

Well, I'm not sure there are many things in the world I'm curious about. Also, to be clear, I don't consider myself a kernel expert by any stretch of imagination. I have spent a good chunk of my career working on drivers for Windows and for Linux, so I know some, and I understand some of the tradeoffs of both worlds. The Apple world shares similarities with Linux/Unix/POSIX for sure, but as far as I know, Apple develops almost everything in-house, so I wouldn't get any real experience as an Apple kernel developer, unless I went to work for them, which is extremely unlikely.

Back to the topic of the Windows kernel - in a nutshell, what I have learned about it is that kernel development in Microsoft is very incremental and very conservative. New features are added all the time, but the rate is sometimes quite slow (slow enough to drive some of their IHV partners crazy), and one of the reasons is that they go through a lot a lot of testing. This also means they tend to be rather stable. That is not to say they don't have bugs (they sure do, and sometimes they take frustratingly long to fix them), but it is rare for something like this to survive long enough and be disruptive enough to actually make a new kernel less stable. At the same time, backwards compatibility in the kernel is very high - legacy feature EOL rate is very slow. Putting these together means that any new kernel version is likely to give you more features (some of these features are in the realm of improving performance), without taking anything away that is still actively being used.

Virtually all issues and complaints about every new generation of Windows are either about the UI or about the application layer. These are developed by different organizations within Microsoft, and for whatever reasons that I cannot really know (not having ever actually worked in the company), they don't use the same rigorous approach as the kernel team.

P.S. Sorry for turning this into a general offtopic on the good and bad of Windows, but I figure since you are the OP, and your original problem has been solved, no one should mind. Maybe at some point I'll split it off to a different thread.

[wrybread]

I wonder how you judge which of the folks in the airport / cafe use a laptop for work and who does it for recreation. Surely you didn't ask each and every one of them.

I'm talking about people I meet, not people I see at airports.

I'm excluding app developers from that by the way since that's too easy. Mostly because of the POSIX compliance of OSX every app developer I know uses Mac. Well almost, a few use Linux, but none that I know use Windows.

I suppose someone, somewhere, is developing apps for Windows Phone though on Windows... It's rare enough that the show Silicon Valley snuck in a pretty funny joke about it (the guy in the pic is a terrible dev, so of course, by the show's logic, he's developing for Windows Phone):

https://imgur.com/a/AkFTe

And yes I know some people still use Windows, I just don't know any of them. It's rare enough that when I meet someone who uses Windows it's almost a bonding experience, ha. A lot like Mac was 20 or so years ago.

[dr_st]

OK, well, we can end this discussion then. You and I obviously live (and travel) in very different bubbles. However, I would trust the global OS market share stats before I trust any of our individual experiences.

[wrybread]

However, I would trust the global OS market share stats before I trust any of our individual experiences.

Certainly not as a measure of quality though. There are so many other factors. As they say, checkers sells better than chess.

As far as comparing OSX to Win10, if you haven't even used OSX it would just be too time consuming. Give it a try sometime! I can't imagine being interesting in operating systems and never having tried OSX. That's just completely amazing.

[dr_st]

Certainly not as a measure of quality though. There are so many other factors. As they say, checkers sells better than chess.

This isn't about quality. I was merely responding to claims along the lines of "Pretty much everywhere I go, I'm the only one using Windows these days".

The quality discussion is a whole different topic, which I didn't bring up and have no intention pursuing, other than trying to understand which specific aspects you felt were better implemented in OSX search compared to Windows 10.

[wrybread]

other than trying to understand which specific aspects you felt were better implemented in OSX search compared to Windows 10.

All of them! All the aspects! Ha. Give it a try sometime. It really is amazing that someone who thinks so much about OS's has never even used it. That makes it especially interesting to note that the two aspects of Win10's UI that you say you like in this thread (no program list and a dependence of searching) came straight from OSX.

But also I've literally never met anyone who sings the praises of any aspect of Vista, so we may just have radically different taste in OS's. Everyone I know thinks about Win10 what RealBlack does above. Except instead of sticking with an old OS they get a Mac.

At the moment I'm reminded of this old classic, "Every OS Sucks":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPRvc2UMeMI