How to download and install the v16.6 beta:

1. Open WorkShelf, Nexus Ultimate or Nexus Preferences.
2. Go to the Advanced tab.
3. Check if the 'Notify me of beta (test) versions' setting is enabled.
If yes, go to step 7.
4. Enable 'Notify me of beta (test) versions'.
5. Press Ok in Preferences to save the setting.
6. Open Preferences again.
7. In the About or Advanced tabs of Preferences, click the 'Check for Updates' button.


Once that setting is enabled, in the future and provided that the 'Notify me when new updates are available' setting is also enabled, the Winstep Update Manager should automatically pick up new betas within 24 hours of their release.

If you find any issues with this beta release, please post them on this thread.


Highlights in v16.6:

* UWP (Metro/Universal) apps in Windows 10 are now handled like any other Win32 applications, i.e.; they display the proper icon instead of a general 'App' icon, can be pinned to docks and the NextSTART taskbar, show a running indicator when the app is running, etc...



* Added a 'Fast Boot' option to the General tab of Preferences, which, when enabled, makes Winstep applications start a lot faster after a system reboot or user log out, especially under Windows 10.

Please note that, given the method used to accomplish this, some watchdog applications such as WinPatrol may issue a warning when this option is enabled.

* The User Interface no longer uses hard-coded colors, which should make it compatible with different Windows system colors and Stardock WindowBlinds themes.

If you are also running WindowBlinds, please report back how well this new feature is working.

* The 'Colorize with dominant color of the desktop background' setting should now work with the Windows 10 wallpaper slide-show feature under all circumstances.

Fast Boot makes an obvious improvement (win7)

Thanks

Thanks for the feedback. If it makes an obvious improvement in Win7, you really should see how much an improvement it makes under Windows 10. My jaw truly dropped.

Loads incredibly quickly in Win10.

After a reboot on Windows 10 the fastboot gives a warning message that Winstep is in elevated mode and in this mode no icons can be dragged to docks and suggests closing Winstep Extreme and restarting it in normal mode.

Thanks, Hankers!

I've actually seen this happen *once* when Windows 10 forcefully updated itself today on a Windows 10 machine I have here. However, a manual restart did not show this problem happening again. A Windows 10 VM I have here also restarted itself after the latest Windows updates but without this happening, so I'm not sure yet what could be going on.

Can you please manually reboot your system and see if this happens again? My guess is that it won't, but I would like to make sure.

The problem is related to the method used to make Winstep applications start before all others and immediately after the shell (Explorer): I use the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE RunOnce key for this.

This key's true purpose is to be used by setup applications to finish their business, e.g.: you run a setup program, but setup cannot complete until all the files have been replaced with their new versions. Unfortunately some files will be in use at the time (locked), so the setup application adds an entry to this RunOnce key and reboots the system.

Rebooting the system clears all file locks and, because anything executed from the RunOnce key runs before anything else except services and the shell, the setup application is now able to finish the job. Since this is a one-time thing, Windows also automatically removes the entry from the RunOnce key.

Now, here lies the problem: because this key is intended to be used by Setup programs (which require admin privileges), any applications listed in RunOnce are run by Windows with elevated privileges.

This is clearly not something we want. The problem is that anything launched from an elevated application will itself run elevated, and there is no simple way to make an elevated application launch another WITHOUT it also running elevated.

This is a bit complicated technically, but the Winstep launcher (I use winstep.exe with a special /speedboot switch), which is now running elevated after being launched from the RunOnce key, tries to get around this by stripping the admin privileges from the token(s) of the application(s) it is about to launch, while still running them from the context of the currently logged in user.

Seems it might not be always successful in doing this, which would result in what you saw.

Same deal.

Restarted Windows 10 twice and both times the message came up.

Hmmm... Good thing this is a beta.

I might need you to test a few changes to the launcher then, to see if we can figure out what is happening.

Anyone else having this happen to them?

Manually rebooted just now with no Winstep issues.

Thanks, Chuck.

Hankers, what user account are you using to login to Windows 10? Anything special/different about it?

Also, are you running a shell other than Explorer?

Just a regular user account and I do have WindowBlinds running. Latest version.

Ok, please do me a favor then (sorry about this being a manual process):

Download an updated copy of winstep.exe from HERE.

Unzip and copy the winstep.exe file inside into

C:\Program Files (x86)\Winstep\

replacing the file that is currently there.

Then reboot (or simply log out and log in again) and let me know what happened, please.


EDIT: Oh, and by the way, since you have WindowBlinds running. Any chance of posting a screenshot here of the Winstep UI (Preferences) skinned with WindowBlinds?

One of the changes I made in v16.6 (and it was a lot of hard, boring work) was to stop hard-coding UI colors in Preferences. It should work great with WB now, but since I'm not running WB I need some external confirmation.

Before getting your last message I unloaded WindowBlinds and did a restart.

There was no elevated message and everything loaded properly.

I will load WindowBlinds up again and try your suggestion to see if that works.

The new winstep.exe worked with WindowBlinds loaded.

No elevated app message.

Yay! And did it still seem to load faster than when 'Fast Boot' is not enabled?

Also, did you notice my request regarding WB and Winstep Xtreme's UI?