See if at the end you could post a couple screenshots, or even a video of your finished work highlighting what you've done. Maybe even a tutorial?
Seems quite an interesting project. Looking forward to try/experience and use it when available. Keep up the good work
project will be a little over 10mb now that i've added some stuff to restore some cpl features and some old apps; the cpl's listed above + regedit, task manager, calc, msconfig didn't bother with paint or wordpad, the ribbon ones have a few more features they will replace the existing ones rather than add renamed files or install to another folder, think direct replacements is better, will make a batch script to automate the replacements.
managed to restore the fully working cpl for display scaling settings, resolution settings still not working though, just pops up an explorer error saying module not found. used display.dll from windows 8.1 update 3 + a few keys with the guid of {2B6DA137-316E-458B-A0AB-BE48C8EC39B9} which are missing from windows 10 rs3, might be present in 10240, still gonna test the display.dll from that build. also after replacing bthprops.cpl in the syswow64 the tray icon has changed to the w7 version and the settings option works as does show bluetooth devices, add devices does nothing on the menu but who cares, can add devices in the window that pops up! scaling settings are weak on w10, w8's are better, more settings.
i hope this project succeeds. i can't stand windows 10 + all junk. still using windows 7. hope to update to new OS without junk
Cool m8. Also, be good to have a way to disable all ClearType font smoothing and font anti-aliasing if you can find a way. I hate ClearType so much. In Win 8 and Win 10, this is on by default and no way to disable/turn off, especially applications using WPF rendering engine. This is one major reason I have not updated. Also, installing anything above IE8 in Windows 7 makes WebView / embedded ActiveX controls in OS render with font smoothing. So, I have to intentionally run nothing better than IE8 in Win 7. this is okay because I never use IE for anything, only use Chrome and Firefox. There seems to be no way to disable font-smoothing in Windows 8 or Windows 10 that I have found. I have bad eyes to see and all fonts with smoothing look blurry. This is why I have not updated to Windows 8 or 10.
i'm amazed how much bloat was added to windows since 7, most of the new services / drivers weren't even enabled or set to manual, around 3x the amount scheduled tasks, 52 eventlogs on w7 sp1 vs 134 on w10 pro and when looking in the packages folder a big chunk of components is just hyper-v (the amount of hyper-v .mum / .cat nearly makes up the entire package count on w7 sp1) as there's only 509 files in the package folder compared to the almost 3,000 on w10 pro. i know that doesn't mean much as they are just files that show which packages are installed & which opt features are availablbut still...just shows how bloated windows has become. boggles the mind why users don't provide feedback like "stop adding features we don't need".
another minor feature restored, windows 7 display switch, replaces the metro flyout. still got to see if it's possible to get the old network settings back, till then there's plenty of alternatives like the great netsetman. i know van.dll is responsible for the flyout but replacing the dll & mui didn't work, so there's gotta be more to it, but it may turn out like the old display settings, not possible. either way, my vm w10 is feeling much more like 7 now, if anyone wants the w7 aero style back, look for UltraUXThemePatcher 3.3.4 + aero_7_themes_for_win10_final_by_sagorpirbd-d8nypid and you will be set! I'll just remind anyone new reading this thread, the idea of this project is to return windows back to something resembling the last proper desktop os. (i.e. removing as much of the metro / tablet junk as possible) while keeping the os working for music, video, gaming, web browsing etc.
I'll see what I can do when it's all ready to share, i've never done a video of anything before and put it online, guess i need to find some capture software.
just finished the driver service removals; removed keys from reg under system\services removed .sys files from system32\drivers removed folders from driverstore\filerepository removed .inf files from windows\inf currently removing folders from winsxs; appx - done drivers - done windows runtime - 30%