Windows 10 with disabled DWM

Discussion in 'Windows 10' started by dummekuehe, Mar 15, 2015.

  1. dummekuehe

    dummekuehe MDL Senior Member

    Jan 11, 2009
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    #1 dummekuehe, Mar 15, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 15, 2015
    So I'm still running build 9901 and I tried to see what would happen if I disabled DWM.
    So I renamed the dwm.exe and replaced it with ctfmon.exe (because it was the smallest exe i could find in system32 folder, seems to work well enough).
    Before you do that it is important to enable the autologin (Win+R, 'control userpasswords2') because this will f**k up the login screen as well as the security screen (CTRL+ALT+DEL screen, so don't press that after dwm is disabled).
    After I rebooted I got an almost normal looking desktop. But the upper left corner of the desktop was frozen. If I opened a window it would be hidden behind that frozen part. (also the startmenu did not work)
    I suspected this to be due to some metro crap. When I killed explorer in taskmanager there was no frozen part of the screen anymore and I could run all my programs normally. (You get a black area on the bottom where the taskbar usually is. To avoid that enable auto hide taskbar before you kill explorer.exe)
    Afterwards I checked in taskmanager and found ApplicationFrameHost.exe. I could not kill it. So I renamed it in system32 and restarted explorer. That did not do the trick. So I then I renamed the applicationframe.dll and restarted.
    I got an empty desktop and a taskbar that did not show running tasks anymore. I could bring back the desktop items by right clicking on the desktop and unchecking "view > show desktop icons" and rechecking it afterwards. The systray does not show all icons. I think most of the systray icons are now metro crap too. Before the desktop shows after a restart you can see the tray icons loading on a black screen. I assume they are somehow loaded but without the ApplicationFrameHost dont really know where to go. So you end up with a hole on the taskbar.

    Windows 10 feels so snappy and fast now. And when I checked it used only about 850 MB of RAM.
    Framerates of my games improved noticeably with disabled dwm and explorer.
    disabledDWM.png
    I used the winaero tool to disable the ribbon in explorer because even though the ribbon works just fine without DWM it has a hole in the explorer window above the address bar. Not a really big deal though.


    What I learned through this is what a nice operating system Windows 10 still is below this peace of s**t interface that Microsoft came up with. But because they are replacing more and more things that worked just fine with their metro s**t they leave holes in various places and I fear when they're done, Windows wont be usable anymore without the metro stuff. I just wish they'd admit that the whole metro stuff is going south and restore the explorer shell to what it was in windows 7 and start over. I'm really trying to be open minded. But there really is no reason to use any of the metro apps. They have not enough features and are super slow. (Just look at the people trying to get back their good old calculator.) And I can't just download and install them the way i want. Everything has to run via that stupid store.
    Why don't they get that many people don't want these confines? Why are there so many people that jailbreak their ios devices?

    But enough ranting. If there is anybody who has experimented with disabling dwm and can give me some info or advice, please do so. I think explorer does not finish rendering the desktop because of the missing applicationframe resources. So I'm thinking about replacing it with another shell. (maybe progman because i'm feeling nostalgic) I wish tihiy, the guy that came up with Ex7forW8, would redo his work so we could run Windows 7 explorer on Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.

    EDIT: Taskmanager, Explorer running, DWM disabled
    taskmanager.png
     
  2. RanCorX2

    RanCorX2 MDL Addicted

    Jul 19, 2009
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    #2 RanCorX2, Mar 16, 2015
    Last edited: Mar 16, 2015
    interesting read, i hate metro apps and don't find any of them useful either.

    i always uninstall them when i do a fresh install of 8.x
     
  3. dummekuehe

    dummekuehe MDL Senior Member

    Jan 11, 2009
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    I just found a thread in Windows 8 folder with pretty much the same topic.
    You get a desktop that has less problems and holes than Windows 10. The only real problem I found so far is video tearing. Which is a deal breaker for me. Though there seem to be ways around that, too.
     
  4. bigmuscle

    bigmuscle MDL Junior Member

    Jan 23, 2013
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    Just for my information... what's the sense in moving the desktop composition from fast GPU to slow CPU (and all related data from VRAM to RAM) ?
     
  5. JadenKorn

    JadenKorn MDL Novice

    Aug 6, 2012
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    For a moment, I thought that this was a creepy pasta. Scary. :eek:
     
  6. d1glow

    d1glow MDL Addicted

    Aug 17, 2012
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    That is Hideous, makes me wanna barf
     
    Stop hovering to collapse... Click to collapse... Hover to expand... Click to expand...
  7. dummekuehe

    dummekuehe MDL Senior Member

    Jan 11, 2009
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    well in windows up to 7 i didnt need dwm to be able to watch videos without tearing
    if i dont want the fancy slow metro crap so i can run a new system on weaker machines i try to get rid of the s**tty new ui they force down our throats
    but now i know that this will leave me with an os that is too crippled so ill just have to stick to older windows and hope for ms to die a very fast death
     
  8. lapone

    lapone MDL Novice

    Apr 10, 2014
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    This is why I stick to the editions of servers. I will try the new edition, but I am not really ready to go beyond 2012 r2 update currently.