Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 04:22:

I bought and used Startallback for a good number of years, but there was about 6 months in early Win11 where MS would update the […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 03:44:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-23, 23:28:

I use explorer patcher myself, I used to use Startallback but they had a period where their updates would keep breaking things so I switched.

Break things in what way?

You seem to be talking about something you don't like rather than something that is broken, but I'm not sure which is why I asked.

I bought and used Startallback for a good number of years, but there was about 6 months in early Win11 where MS would update then Startallback would update shortly after and break explorer and the start menu, this could only be fixed by uninstalling Startallback and reinstalling it from a fresh download, eventually I just got sick of it and switched to Explorer Patcher which so far has not had one single issue.

I don't hate Startallback, its odd you would jump to that conclusion, its more that I find Explorer Patcher to be better for my use case and find it to be far easier to unfuck when MS eventually fucks things up.

If Microslop would just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone things would be perfect but they seem to have this obsession with changing the damn thing all the time, its truly irritating that I even need a program to return it to the Win10 start menu and explorer.

I dont understand what you mean by "just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone"
You mean that change things in the Win11 start menu after an update or you prefer a Win10 style start menu in Win11?

I guess he intended don't touch what works, don't fix what's not broken

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 05:50:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 04:22:

I bought and used Startallback for a good number of years, but there was about 6 months in early Win11 where MS would update the […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 03:44:

Break things in what way?

You seem to be talking about something you don't like rather than something that is broken, but I'm not sure which is why I asked.

I bought and used Startallback for a good number of years, but there was about 6 months in early Win11 where MS would update then Startallback would update shortly after and break explorer and the start menu, this could only be fixed by uninstalling Startallback and reinstalling it from a fresh download, eventually I just got sick of it and switched to Explorer Patcher which so far has not had one single issue.

I don't hate Startallback, its odd you would jump to that conclusion, its more that I find Explorer Patcher to be better for my use case and find it to be far easier to unfuck when MS eventually fucks things up.

If Microslop would just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone things would be perfect but they seem to have this obsession with changing the damn thing all the time, its truly irritating that I even need a program to return it to the Win10 start menu and explorer.

I dont understand what you mean by "just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone"
You mean that change things in the Win11 start menu after an update or you prefer a Win10 style start menu in Win11?

Have you not used Win11 recently? ...they have changed the start menu 3 times in Win11 and explorer twice now, each time its usability has gotten considerably worse.

They need just pick a fucking lane and leave it the fuck alone, the latest incarnation is ....an abomination which is where Explorer Patcher and Startallback come in to save the day to return them both to useability. Hell I have even had to remove and rollback the newest versions of Paint and Notepad due to Microslop fucking with them. (And had to restore the photo editor app that MS decided to remove for some asinine reason)

There is no need to change programs and systems that work, even more so now because all the recent changes are AI EVERYWHERE focused and not useability focused.

Windows biggest issue of late has been lack of stability and focus .. Microslop has far too many RockStars and not enough Roadies and Windows is suffering because of it.

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 06:33:

Have you not used Win11 recently? ...they have changed the start menu 3 times in Win11 and explorer twice now, each time its usa […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 05:50:

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 04:22:

I bought and used Startallback for a good number of years, but there was about 6 months in early Win11 where MS would update then Startallback would update shortly after and break explorer and the start menu, this could only be fixed by uninstalling Startallback and reinstalling it from a fresh download, eventually I just got sick of it and switched to Explorer Patcher which so far has not had one single issue.

I don't hate Startallback, its odd you would jump to that conclusion, its more that I find Explorer Patcher to be better for my use case and find it to be far easier to unfuck when MS eventually fucks things up.

If Microslop would just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone things would be perfect but they seem to have this obsession with changing the damn thing all the time, its truly irritating that I even need a program to return it to the Win10 start menu and explorer.

I dont understand what you mean by "just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone"
You mean that change things in the Win11 start menu after an update or you prefer a Win10 style start menu in Win11?

Have you not used Win11 recently? ...they have changed the start menu 3 times in Win11 and explorer twice now, each time its usability has gotten considerably worse.

They need just pick a fucking lane and leave it the fuck alone, the latest incarnation is ....an abomination which is where Explorer Patcher and Startallback come in to save the day to return them both to useability. Hell I have even had to remove and rollback the newest versions of Paint and Notepad due to Microslop fucking with them. (And had to restore the photo editor app that MS decided to remove for some asinine reason)

There is no need to change programs and systems that work, even more so now because all the recent changes are AI EVERYWHERE focused and not useability focused.

Windows biggest issue of late has been lack of stability and focus .. Microslop has far too many RockStars and not enough Roadies and Windows is suffering because of it.

I was on Win10 up until recently on my main PC, my gaming PC was Win11 but being as how I only ever click the desktop icons on it I never noticed any changes.
MS Paint I dont use... Ever but the changes to Notepad did make me chuckle.
Im sure for a very select few it will be great. But I aint one of them.

Saw a post on a facebook group for retro computing.
A picture of Windows XP running on a Ryzen 9 9900X with 64Gb RAM showing 63.6Gb usable.
The amount of people who say its fake is amazing even though the poster said they are running a PAE patch.

Its quite amazing just how much is spoken online about Windows XP and its 4b of memory and almost none of it right.
"Fake. You need 64bit to access more RAM"
"Those where the days, i ran windows 32bit xp with 6GB ram, 3GB for windows & games and 3GB for a ramdisk."
"I still run XP 64 bit but can't still use the full 3Gig.. Where is the /3g switch?"
"and how did you make the system properties display all the RAM? normally you should be seeing 3.25 GB of RAM."

Some quotes from the thread on the picture...
Interesting?

Many machines then did not have chipset support for more (no PAE), leading to the impression that 4gb was the limit. There was that nasty tit-for-tat about this very subject earlier.

Mainstream discourse said that a 32bit cpu can only address 4gb of addresses. True, but overlooks/ignores how PAE works. (But again, many chipsets just did not support)

The LAA flag would allow a ramdisk to actually be 3gb in size. Many allowed you to overtly specify nonpaged pool as the source pool for the allocation. With PAE and LAA turned on, that will work as described. Not a good use, but not impossible.

To use 3gb RAM inside a process context, you need LAA, which if you didnt have PAE (and thus drivers and pals in a context that has virtual addresses free, LIKE THEY NEED), that could cause all manner of problems.

'Not seeing the ram' generally means you dont have PAE turned on / it's not supported...

Which, given the notion of 'PAE is for entetprise hardware! End users will never need/use it!' And other shameless untruths out there, coupled with it needing a choosy buyer to have available, I can see why.

Depending on the chipset and memory controller configuration in general, XP32bit chould have quite a lot at its disposal.

wierd_w wrote on Yesterday, 16:52:

To use 3gb RAM inside a process context, you need LAA, which if you didnt have PAE (and thus drivers and pals in a context that has virtual addresses free, LIKE THEY NEED), that could cause all manner of problems.

Gavotte Ramdisk is one of the few programs that can take advantage of the unused RAM in machines with PAE disabled, I dont think it has limits other than the unused ram size.

You can even put the swap file there, to earn a some speed and some storage in physical HDDs

Last time I checked it worked well even on W10 x86

ElectroSoldier wrote on Yesterday, 13:54:

Saw a post on a facebook group for retro computing. A picture of Windows XP running on a Ryzen 9 9900X with 64Gb RAM showing 63. […]
Show full quote

Saw a post on a facebook group for retro computing.
A picture of Windows XP running on a Ryzen 9 9900X with 64Gb RAM showing 63.6Gb usable.
The amount of people who say its fake is amazing even though the poster said they are running a PAE patch.

Its quite amazing just how much is spoken online about Windows XP and its 4b of memory and almost none of it right.
"Fake. You need 64bit to access more RAM"
"Those where the days, i ran windows 32bit xp with 6GB ram, 3GB for windows & games and 3GB for a ramdisk."
"I still run XP 64 bit but can't still use the full 3Gig.. Where is the /3g switch?"
"and how did you make the system properties display all the RAM? normally you should be seeing 3.25 GB of RAM."

Some quotes from the thread on the picture...
Interesting?

I feel quity similarly. In some ways, it feels like either the world (some people in it at least) is unintentionally"gaslighting" me or my memories actually are wrong about some rather significant things.

On the flip side, some people, including very vocals ones, seem to be unable to grasp and accept that the world has not stood still and that new approaches, a better understanding of how things work(ed) and the resulting new software tools (including patches), that are recent developments, actually make it possible to do things today with old hardware/software (or old software combined with new hardware) that appeared unfeasible or even impossible years or decades ago.

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 13:23:

I was on Win10 up until recently on my main PC, my gaming PC was Win11 but being as how I only ever click the desktop icons on i […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-09-24, 06:33:

Have you not used Win11 recently? ...they have changed the start menu 3 times in Win11 and explorer twice now, each time its usa […]
Show full quote

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-09-24, 05:50:

I dont understand what you mean by "just leave the damn explorer and start menu alone"
You mean that change things in the Win11 start menu after an update or you prefer a Win10 style start menu in Win11?

Have you not used Win11 recently? ...they have changed the start menu 3 times in Win11 and explorer twice now, each time its usability has gotten considerably worse.

They need just pick a fucking lane and leave it the fuck alone, the latest incarnation is ....an abomination which is where Explorer Patcher and Startallback come in to save the day to return them both to useability. Hell I have even had to remove and rollback the newest versions of Paint and Notepad due to Microslop fucking with them. (And had to restore the photo editor app that MS decided to remove for some asinine reason)

There is no need to change programs and systems that work, even more so now because all the recent changes are AI EVERYWHERE focused and not useability focused.

Windows biggest issue of late has been lack of stability and focus .. Microslop has far too many RockStars and not enough Roadies and Windows is suffering because of it.

I was on Win10 up until recently on my main PC, my gaming PC was Win11 but being as how I only ever click the desktop icons on it I never noticed any changes.
MS Paint I dont use... Ever but the changes to Notepad did make me chuckle.
Im sure for a very select few it will be great. But I aint one of them.

You are one of the lucky ones who don't need to bother with Windows11 and its ...umm identity issues. Me ...Im the family and friends tech support these days and I pray to god every night to give me the strength to maintain composure and patience while trying to explain and teach these now aging family and friends how to use the new updates to Windows 11 every time Microslop changes things.

Oh and to give me the strength to not pitch their computers out the damn window when updates bork the system and require me to fix it.

I got out of IT because of how bad Windows and Microslop were becoming with asinine updates, I'm thinking I could just throw Zoran OS on these family machines and they wouldn't notice a damn thing.

Edit - Yes I have anger issues with modern PCs and Windows ...I blame over a decade of IT support to a bunch of people who didn't have the brain capacity to read an analogue clock and couldn't understand why Turn it off and On again fixed their PC.

Trashbytes wrote on Today, 13:11:

Edit - Yes I have anger issues with modern PCs and Windows ...I blame over a decade of IT support to a bunch of people who didn't have the brain capacity to read an analogue clock and couldn't understand why Turn it off and On again fixed their PC.

Your "anger" issues with new PCs are not anger, they're totally justified reactions to enshittification and forcing change for chage's sake and pure capitalism.

Believe me, I have these "issues" as well. I don't look at them as issues, but as a kind of badge of pride. I was alive during the days when all of this enshittification didn't exist, and damn it, I'm trying to keep it that way. No Win 11, no UEFI-only, non BIOS systems, no crap, little bloat.

It's becoming quite difficult. But, my "newest" system is from 2018 and still functions quite well on Windows 10 LTSC enterprise. For example, no older BIOS laptop is available with an OLED screen. Battery performance and tech is getting much better on new systems, in the sense of weight vs functionality. That I've had to avoid since I won't deal with the forced bullshit that buying a new system forces.

The worst part? You can't install an old OS on a 2026 system. I don't do emulations. Bare metal for raw speed. They're intentionally castrated from the start to make this impossible.

With the memory price explosion bomb, good riddance to new crap. I'm keeping my old gold alive and usable as long as possible. Too bad about the exhortion of SSDs, which ARE usable fully on older systems and the one "upgrade" which GREATLY extends the life and usability of older latops (2015-2018 era).