Personal computing discussed

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synthtel2
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Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 3:06 am

I found myself with a terrible laptop I had no use for a couple weeks back (1 GHz dual-core bobcat, so really really terrible). It had a Win7 home premium sticker though, so I decided to use it to try out Win10. After all, I'll presumably be asked to repair something running Win10 at some point, so it would be good to know my way around it. Also, if I'm going to be critical of it, I'd rather know firsthand what the problematic points are. Things generally worked well enough to be useful in short order, but there was plenty of trouble to be found:

- It came with Flash installed, and it wasn't uninstallable. What?

- There are two control panels - no big deal there, but it seems some stuff is only accessible from one or the other. Who thought that was a good idea?

- Auto-adjusting visuals to match the hardware apparently means it's going to use all the eye-candy even if it's running on a toaster. Basic desktop animations were doing <5 fps and it didn't figure out to scale back on it's own.

- I'm used to starting programs in Windows by going [winkey --> [type program name] --> enter]. Apparently in Win10, if you do this faster than the internal indexing can keep up, it'll just boot up Edge and search for whatever you typed. Since this computer is garbage, this happened to me a lot. :evil:

- I told it to not automatically connect to the network I first hooked it up to, but it did anyway.

- HP said it had drivers for Win10, but the download page didn't actually have any downloads. It just said to tell Win10 to sort it out. That would be fine if it worked, but it didn't. It spent an awful lot of time churning around looking for drivers (and presumably more mundane updates), and didn't accomplish much of anything.

- In the process, it burned up all the CPU time and network capacity. This computer is borderline unusably slow to start with, and this made its performance drop all the way to death valley. Also, I spend significant time on very slow networks that I have to share with other people, and Windows deciding to hog all the bandwidth whenever it feels like it is one of the most anti-social things an OS could do there.

- Since it wasn't getting anywhere on graphics drivers, I installed some from AMD. They didn't seem to have any effect, though (basic desktop graphics were still very slow). AFAICT, Windows decided it didn't like them and that it should do its own thing instead, except that whatever it was doing wasn't working.

I gave up about there. Plenty of this stuff is well-documented, and some is definitely not. Where exactly did Flash come from, for instance? I do not want Flash. Kill it with fire. Oh wait, I can't. Why? (Geniunely curious.) To my keyboard-centric workflow, [winkey --> [program name] --> enter] seemed to be about the only sane way to do things in Windows, and now it's broken. Is there an option to fix that somewhere? Finally, how is it supposed to work if multiple people with Win10 computers try to game on rural DSL? (It works fine with Win7/Linux, but only if we're careful about downloads/streaming/whatever when anyone's gaming.) Without some kind of answer to these last two in particular, other people's computers are going to get much much more annoying to me once Win7 goes EOL.
 
just brew it!
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 3:41 am

I'd tell you to try Linux on it, but with marginal (and marginalized) hardware like that, the results may not be a whole lot better. Still might be worth a try; if you set the bar suitably low, maybe you won't be disappointed. (And it sounds like Win10 has already done a pretty good job of lowering your expectations...)
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synthtel2
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 4:12 am

Linux is what I usually do, and what I had on it before. The results were much, much better. I don't really care about this hardware in particular, I just have a feeling I haven't seen the last of these problems more generally (if nothing else because people come to me when things break).
 
meerkt
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 9:09 am

To my keyboard-centric workflow, [winkey --> [program name] --> enter] seemed to be about the only sane way to do things in Windows, and now it's broken. Is there an option to fix that somewhere?

http://classicshell.net/

Finally, how is it supposed to work if multiple people with Win10 computers try to game on rural DSL?
I'm guessing Microsoft's user tracking and "we control your machine" attitude take precedence? :)
 
blahsaysblah
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 9:59 am

- It came with Flash installed, and it wasn't uninstallable. What?
You do not have to use MS Edge. Feel free to use Chrome and its built-in custom/hardened Flash instead... You can change your default browser...

- There are two control panels - no big deal there, but it seems some stuff is only accessible from one or the other. Who thought that was a good idea?
Yes, most of the good stuff is only available through the classic control panel. The new one is way too dumbed down, the old one a little cumbersome/hard to find stuff.

- Auto-adjusting visuals to match the hardware apparently means it's going to use all the eye-candy even if it's running on a toaster. Basic desktop animations were doing <5 fps and it didn't figure out to scale back on it's own.
No different since Vista days: System->Advanced-Settings->Advanced tab->Settings->Custom-> Turn off everything except "Smooth edge of screen fonts" [edit: run "winsat formal" to re-run windows experience to detect your hardware capabilities, after your system is finished updating]

- I'm used to starting programs in Windows by going [winkey --> [type program name] --> enter]. Apparently in Win10, if you do this faster than the internal indexing can keep up, it'll just boot up Edge and search for whatever you typed. Since this computer is garbage, this happened to me a lot. :evil:
Turn off cortana/web search. winkey+S or winkey+R, there are quite a few winkey combos starting in Win 8. Yes, you might have to wait a bit for indexing to finish so when you type "system" proper hits come up. If the system is really slow, give it a while. I learned to have task manager open to see if a Windows Update was really done installing(sometimes takes a really long time) after it says safe to reboot(on my old system).

- I told it to not automatically connect to the network I first hooked it up to, but it did anyway.
Never seen such an option, but if you are talking about Windows Update, that setting sets it so that it only searches for patches and shares with your local network and does not turn that feature totally off. Its under advanced options in Windows update, "how windows updates are delivered"... The November update also changed it so that unless you go and hit windows update, it will not do an update. Because there were conflicts with folks updating drivers, than updater kicking in and overwriting during first boot after install.

- HP said it had drivers for Win10, but the download page didn't actually have any downloads. It just said to tell Win10 to sort it out. That would be fine if it worked, but it didn't. It spent an awful lot of time churning around looking for drivers (and presumably more mundane updates), and didn't accomplish much of anything.
Dont install anything other than what windows update gives you in Win10, unless you absolutely must. Learned hard way with Intel NUC, go figure, Intel's own drivers are bad. Even new system, i dont install anything unless i must. Finally did Intel Graphics because i isolated rare hang to graphics crash, not system problem.

- In the process, it burned up all the CPU time and network capacity. This computer is borderline unusably slow to start with, and this made its performance drop all the way to death valley. Also, I spend significant time on very slow networks that I have to share with other people, and Windows deciding to hog all the bandwidth whenever it feels like it is one of the most anti-social things an OS could do there.
If its really bad, make sure to turn off the system pagefile(system, advanced, settings, advanced, virtual memory, there is bug in Win 10 where setting to 0 doesnt stick sometimes, but once you get it to turn off, it does. Win 8+ footprint is tiny. Make sure its not using the HDD as virtual memory. You can turn off hibernate but that disables fastboot, if you just want fastboot, do a "powercfg -h -type reduced" in admin cmd shell. It just the nature of patching. Turn off Cortana/web search, other wise it seems light weight to me. Always at 0% idle. Also, dont forget reboot and possibly a clean >Windows only< install. At first, official Intel driver was causing high CPU usage. I did clean install with only Windows Update for drivers,... and system behaved nicely.

- Since it wasn't getting anywhere on graphics drivers, I installed some from AMD. They didn't seem to have any effect, though (basic desktop graphics were still very slow). AFAICT, Windows decided it didn't like them and that it should do its own thing instead, except that whatever it was doing wasn't working.

I have Intel and two different Nvida drivers(no fan geforce 210 and real GTX card) and swapping among them has been no issue as i tested new computer. No need to reinstall drivers or anything.


I gave up about there. Plenty of this stuff is well-documented, and some is definitely not. Where exactly did Flash come from, for instance? I do not want Flash. Kill it with fire. Oh wait, I can't. Why? (Geniunely curious.) To my keyboard-centric workflow, [winkey --> [program name] --> enter] seemed to be about the only sane way to do things in Windows, and now it's broken. Is there an option to fix that somewhere? Finally, how is it supposed to work if multiple people with Win10 computers try to game on rural DSL? (It works fine with Win7/Linux, but only if we're careful about downloads/streaming/whatever when anyone's gaming.) Without some kind of answer to these last two in particular, other people's computers are going to get much much more annoying to me once Win7 goes EOL.
At least you are trying. Win 10 kernel and OS have so many years of security updates/knowledge built into them versus 7. You know they are working on using same second level address translation opcodes(what allows VMs) to have an isolated and trusted kernel. Look up "Isolated User mode", you can provisionally turn it on in Windows Features(might be required for Hyper-V forget).(along with removing IE11, windows media player(replaced by groove) if you want, and adding Hyper-V to browse inside a checkpointed VM, revert check point when done...)
 
localhostrulez
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 1:11 pm

For what it's worth, I feel like the majority of what I need is in the new settings panel with 10 (unlike 8, where I completely ignored it).

As for drivers, keep in mind that 10 loves to force its way. Let it install drivers automatically, then install your own to fill in the missing gaps. Kinda curious that the graphics are slow even with proper AMD drivers installed.
 
synthtel2
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Re: Win10 problems

Sat May 21, 2016 4:22 pm

meerkt wrote:
http://classicshell.net/

I'll keep that in mind in case others have to use 10 but hate the interface, but it doesn't solve everything since at some point I'll be using/fixing computers I can't install that on (and that will be the most annoying issue when I do).

blahsaysblah wrote:
You do not have to use MS Edge. Feel free to use Chrome and its built-in custom/hardened Flash instead... You can change your default browser...

Nah, I was mainly confused why Flash showed up in the control panel (!) and wasn't removable. That one isn't an actual problem, I'm just wondering why it happened.

blahsaysblah wrote:
No different since Vista days: System->Advanced-Settings->Advanced tab->Settings->Custom-> Turn off everything except "Smooth edge of screen fonts" [edit: run "winsat formal" to re-run windows experience to detect your hardware capabilities, after your system is finished updating]

I know how to change it manually, I was just annoyed that it didn't figure out to change stuff on its own (it was set to "automatically adjust" after all).

blahsaysblah wrote:
Turn off cortana/web search. winkey+S or winkey+R, there are quite a few winkey combos starting in Win 8. Yes, you might have to wait a bit for indexing to finish so when you type "system" proper hits come up.

That sounds useful. Thanks!

blahsaysblah wrote:
Never seen such an option, but if you are talking about Windows Update, that setting sets it so that it only searches for patches and shares with your local network and does not turn that feature totally off. Its under advanced options in Windows update, "how windows updates are delivered"... The November update also changed it so that unless you go and hit windows update, it will not do an update. Because there were conflicts with folks updating drivers, than updater kicking in and overwriting during first boot after install.

Nah, I'm talking about strictly networking stuff, not update stuff. When you bring up the list of available wifi networks and click on one, before connecting it shows a checkbox that says "connect automatically" or similar. It's checked by default and most people most of the time are cool with that, but I didn't want it remembering that network, and it did anyway.

blahsaysblah wrote:
Dont install anything other than what windows update gives you in Win10, unless you absolutely must. Learned hard way with Intel NUC, go figure, Intel's own drivers are bad. Even new system, i dont install anything unless i must. Finally did Intel Graphics because i isolated rare hang to graphics crash, not system problem.

Windows hadn't been finding anything. I'd already given it a few hours to churn (and a reboot or two), and as far as I could tell it had made no progress at all. Among other things, the touchpad didn't have any way to scroll, the fn key combos didn't work, and the graphics were bad enough to make basic desktop animations hopelessly stuttery. The touchpad was the only one of those I ever did get sorted out.

blahsaysblah wrote:
If its really bad, make sure to turn off the system pagefile(system, advanced, settings, advanced, virtual memory, there is bug in Win 10 where setting to 0 doesnt stick sometimes, but once you get it to turn off, it does. Win 8+ footprint is tiny. Make sure its not using the HDD as virtual memory. You can turn off hibernate but that disables fastboot, if you just want fastboot, do a "powercfg -h -type reduced" in admin cmd shell. It just the nature of patching. Turn off Cortana/web search, other wise it seems light weight to me. Always at 0% idle.

This system only has 2 gigs of RAM, so disabling the pagefile isn't a good idea. It's easier to make a system look lightweight than to make it actually run well on bad hardware.

blahsaysblah wrote:
Also, dont forget reboot and possibly a clean >Windows only< install. At first, official Intel driver was causing high CPU usage. I did clean install with only Windows Update for drivers,... and system behaved nicely.

I tried that first. As I said, it didn't work.

blahsaysblah wrote:
At least you are trying. Win 10 kernel and OS have so many years of security updates/knowledge built into them versus 7. You know they are working on using same second level address translation opcodes(what allows VMs) to have an isolated and trusted kernel. Look up "Isolated User mode", you can provisionally turn it on in Windows Features(might be required for Hyper-V forget).(along with removing IE11, windows media player(replaced by groove) if you want, and adding Hyper-V to browse inside a checkpointed VM, revert check point when done...)

I'm not trying. Yes, it looks like Win10 is somewhat more capable than Win7 on average, but Win10 has a massive problem with thinking it's smarter than it actually is. I want computers to do what I say and not try to interpolate what I mean, because they're most likely going to get it wrong and waste a lot of resources doing it. In this aspect, more recent versions of Windows are diverging from Linux at an ever-increasing pace. If that's how things are going to be, it's hard to overstate how thoroughly I'm in the Linux camp. I'd like to know a thing or two about Win10 so I can fix it effectively (or use it in a pinch), but at this rate, hell will have to freeze all the way to the cosmic background before I'd consider bringing Microsoft back into my core workflow.
 
SoM
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Re: Win10 problems

Sun May 22, 2016 12:15 am

i don't want to hijack this thread but i have a quick question.

i'm the only user Win10 Home as an administrator and it won't let me save my bookmarks from FF 46.0.1 to c:\ , i gave everything FULL CONTROL and it still won't let me save saying i don't have the privilege o.O.

help plz...

Win 10
InWin 303
Asus z170a
i7-6700k - H60
G.Skill 2x16GB 2400
M.2 950 Pro 256GB
EVGA GTX 1070 FTW
EVGA Supernova G2 750w
Acer XG270HU
HD 280pro
 
meerkt
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Re: Win10 problems

Sun May 22, 2016 8:34 am

synthtel2 wrote:
it looks like Win10 is somewhat more capable than Win7 on average, but Win10 has a massive problem with thinking it's smarter than it actually is.
You can also use Win8. The core is closer to Win10, the annoying online/updating aspects don't exist. The main thing that needs fixing, after adding a Start Menu, is the ugly looks and lack of contrast .
 
Flying Fox
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Re: Win10 problems

Sun May 22, 2016 10:18 am

SoM wrote:
i don't want to hijack this thread but i have a quick question.

i'm the only user Win10 Home as an administrator and it won't let me save my bookmarks from FF 46.0.1 to c:\ , i gave everything FULL CONTROL and it still won't let me save saying i don't have the privilege o.O.

help plz...

You don't have write access to C:\ by default ever since UAC was introduced in Vista. Did you move from XP directly? With UAC, they tried to maintain some compatibility with older apps allowing you to be an "administrator", but they neutered it a little. So you end up in a situation like you are an admin but not quite. Learn to use a different folder under your profile or in some other drive. Since this is your data it makes sense anyway and not making C:\ a dumping ground for all kinds of "stuff".
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SoM
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Re: Win10 problems

Sun May 22, 2016 11:38 am

Flying Fox wrote:
SoM wrote:
i don't want to hijack this thread but i have a quick question.

i'm the only user Win10 Home as an administrator and it won't let me save my bookmarks from FF 46.0.1 to c:\ , i gave everything FULL CONTROL and it still won't let me save saying i don't have the privilege o.O.

help plz...

You don't have write access to C:\ by default ever since UAC was introduced in Vista. Did you move from XP directly? With UAC, they tried to maintain some compatibility with older apps allowing you to be an "administrator", but they neutered it a little. So you end up in a situation like you are an admin but not quite. Learn to use a different folder under your profile or in some other drive. Since this is your data it makes sense anyway and not making C:\ a dumping ground for all kinds of "stuff".


i upgraded from 7 couple months ago, but yeah, i'll just save to documents, problem solved.

Win 10
InWin 303
Asus z170a
i7-6700k - H60
G.Skill 2x16GB 2400
M.2 950 Pro 256GB
EVGA GTX 1070 FTW
EVGA Supernova G2 750w
Acer XG270HU
HD 280pro
 
Bates228
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Re: Win10 problems

Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:36 am

I don't want to spoil this thread. But I graetly appreciate for these comments. 
I had a bad experience with Windows 10. And if I read this before, I would never upgrade my OC. 
 
LostCat
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Re: Win10 problems

Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:41 am

The C50 and early E series AMD laptops aren't worth anyones time and effort from everyone I've heard from.  Leave the OS that's already on em as is and let it die.

I can't speak for the E-6xxx and past that (if they still make em) but the early ones were just barely better than first gen Atoms, which wasn't saying much.
Meow.
 
synthtel2
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Re: Win10 problems

Thu Aug 25, 2016 1:32 am

Surprisingly, it wasn't that bad with Linux, though I didn't try anything more intensive than web browsing. (It was Mint Xfce running from a low-quality flash drive.) Of course there are plenty of things it'd choke on, but it could make a passable email / word processor / basic internet machine for someone. Previous OS was a terribly infected Win7 install, so no keeping that around (and no valid datapoint from it).

I'm pretty sensitive to OS responsiveness, and a C-50 + cheap flash drive + Mint Xfce is in the same ballpark as a 15W i7 + 2.5" spinning rust + average Win7/8/10 install. Whatever Win10 was doing to that poor C-50, it was worse by one to two orders of magnitude.

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