NoelC

Hm, a thought occurred to me... Microsoft has chosen to give away the OS, probably both because they know its essentially worthless and because people are smart enough to see that. That's what, $30 less than the last one? Win 8 was $29.95 as an upgrade initially, right? I sense a trend. Will you adopt Win 10.1 if they paid you $30 cash to take it? $100? More? At the price my time is worth, I've put thousands of dollars into testing Win 10 for them. If they actually listened to any of my feedback (and surprisingly I believe they actually have, though not nearly enough) it would be more than worth it in the long run. Personally, the price they charge for a license is no object (or incentive) to me - one day I'll pay $200 for a fresh, new license once it actually improves the ongoing value I get from Windows over and above what I'm running now. But that day is not this day, and I have doubts it'll be within a year. All in all I'd rather they built a serious, high quality OS for engineering use that delivers excellent value then charge a healthy sum for it. Making free software liberates them from having to take anything seriously. I believe they'll be pushed down this path when enterprise thumbs its nose at the toy that is currently Win 10. -Noel

The image shown above is Windows 8.1, build 9600 (it's in the screen grab). The point of this thread is NOT to have to upgrade to Win 10 to get an updated user experience. When I do test Win 10 right now I'm on 10130. With Big Muscle's latest test build of Aero Glass you can do full translucency and theme atlas replacement there, but the Aero7 full theme (and probably most others available online) don't work properly. I'm sure that'll change in time. -Noel

I don't believe there's a difference in format between those for 10074 and for 10130. -Noel

Heh, that's kind of like the difference between using Nitrous Oxide in an engine and just having an engine that can generate Real Power all day. Radish, SSDs don't have mechanical parts to wear out. Yes, flash memory does have a limited life, but given a very conservative 1000 write cycles capability per flash block, you'd have to write 250 terabytes to a 250 GB SSD before getting close to wearout. Most people would take decades to write that much. Do a bunch of peer to peer networking and you might get that down to 10 years. Show me an HDD that will last that long. As an example, I have 480 GB SSDs that run all the virtual machines I use to test with. These systems - especially the Win 10 ones - do quite a bit of writing. So far, per their SMART stats, I've written less than 1 TB of data to them per month. At this rate projected wearout will be in the year 2055. -Noel

Seems to basically work here in 10130, though not on all windows (e.g., the Calculator or Spartan). It had to get symbols for the build to work at all (which may require some special attention about where you put a copy of symsrv.dll, per info Big Muscle posted), but after that... Those of you trying to use my recently linked theme atlas file, make sure you're not using a 3rd party theme. The atlas file I posted above matches only the default stock theme. -Noel

Sure, just don't lose sight of the fact that the thread started with "I intend getting more RAM". FYI, I bought 3 120 GB SSDs from eBay last month for $45 each. They're not exactly worth their weight in gold. People who have not used an SSD-equipped system often don't understand the potential for the increase of the level of responsiveness. I perceive that's what this thread is about. But hey, I understand. People mostly have to learn things for themselves. -Noel

Good points, but we're talking about the Win 7 / 8.x SKUs that we're really running, not those others. I still think that putting one leg off the Windows Update train could be dangerous (i.e., invite instability) in ways we don't foresee. As far as holding the updates until the future... I'm not convinced installing a previously-hidden old update after newer ones have come along is a good idea. I see the decision to hide as more permanent. Who knows, those "improvements" joscon described may just be peer to peer networking or something we don't really want on our older systems anyway. But I'm going to stick with my decisions on the assumption that I want to stay firmly on the "Microsoft fixes my bugs" train a little longer. I don't think everyone there has turned evil. Rest assured I'll post back here if I sense something going wrong as a result of installing/hiding the particular set of updates I've chosen. -Noel

Good examples. These are on my systems, yes. The Windows Servicing Guy Joseph Conway (joscon) has described those as important even if you don't plan to upgrade to Windows 10. Specifically, "For all operating systems, there are improvements in the overall Windows Update client which is why it was released as Important". Like I said, Microsoft is moving on to their Win 10 future. You have to judge whether an update is solely to support an upgrade, or in general to support further Windows Update processes moving forward. I judged these as important even though I don't plan to upgrade on their schedule. -Noel

Just poking around in the Weather App, I see a few basic configuration options, plus the following: A monstrous "Privacy Statement" shrouded in legalese and advising on the myriad ways Microsoft will be collecting information on you. An even more daunting "Microsoft Services Agreement" spewing forth such gems as: SECTION 10 CONTAINS A BINDING ARBITRATION CLAUSE and 1.3 Can Microsoft change this Agreement after I've accepted it? Yes. A link to a Microsoft Online Advertising Privacy Statement that sees fit to use some very fine print in place. Wasn't this supposed to be the new age of the 48 pt font? A link to a Third party software acknowledgements page with even more legal fine print. This is the Weather App, right, not the Legal Paperwork App? -Noel

I'm not being critical, don't get me wrong - but a balance must be struck. It would be easy to shut off Windows Update entirely but that's not what's being discussed here. This thread is about specific updates to hide, presumably to be able to continue to enjoy all the good parts of getting Windows Updates while avoiding the bad parts. There's no easy, quick way to make the decision how to go about that - that's all I'm saying. Knee jerk reactions do not a stable, long term strategy make. -Noel

You do know about hiding updates, right? Right click on an offered update and choose Hide. -Noel

The trouble with avoiding each and every one of the updates that remotely pertain to Win 10 is this: You may be giving yourself the greatest chance of averting Microsoft from getting a foot in your door, BUT... Are you ready to seal the divorce? Microsoft is most assuredly going to be changing the Windows Update system to feed data to all the Win 10 systems that get upgraded (and make no mistake, hundreds of millions will still trust Microsoft at the end of next month). Plus, moving forward, further updates will be tested on systems for which all available updates have been applied. So... 1) You may be opting out of being able to receive Windows Updates at all moving forward, or worse 2) you may be setting your system up to become unstable, because moving forward you can bet Microsoft is going to rely on the prior Windows Updates having been installed. I believe the best approach - assuming you don't want to opt completely out of receiving updates forever - may be to MINIMIZE the number of updates hidden, ideally to just those that directly cause known problems or add overhead to your system solely for someone else's benefit. On my Win 8.1 workstation, which I plan to keep on 8.1 for quite some time, I'm hiding these... KB3035583 - the GWX shill update - definitely don't let this one in. KB3068708 - adds telemetry to your computer to help Microsoft. Just what we need, more stuff running to benefit them. Not. KB2976978 - diagnostics to run on our systems to help Microsoft determine compatibility with Win 10. KB3046480 - something that logs whether you use the older .NET frameworks. This one is probably okay, but unneccesary. On my Win 7 system, which I plan to keep on 7... KB3035583 - the GWX shill update - definitely don't let this one in. KB3068708 - adds telemetry to your computer to help Microsoft. Just what we need, more stuff running to benefit them. Not. KB2952664 - hard to tell, but looks like it changes an existing system to become less capable and/or nag you; no thanks. KB3021917 - diagnostics to run on our systems to help Microsoft determine compatibility with Win 10. In all seriousness, once you start down this path, prepare yourself mentally to be completely out on your own. Unless there's a huge shift in direction there will come a time when it will be prudent to just stop accepting Windows Updates entirely. -Noel

You should re-think that. What's the downside? SSD storage is cheap nowadays, and the responsiveness of the very same computer running from HDD and SSD is night and day. FYI, I have 6 SSDs in RAID 0 my main workstation and 2 SSDs in RAID 0 in my small business server. Once you run a system from SSD storage and gargantuan I/O speeds with near-zero latency, you begin to understand what the original designers of virtual memory systems were dreaming of. Such a system just doesn't bog down. And you'll never, ever be able to stand to go back to an HDD-based system. -Noel

The system to system comparison is important, but it seems to me that the most interesting fact is that the newer system takes so much longer to read the information from RAM (i.e., the second time, after the data's been cached). THAT defines how fast it can be on a given system, no matter how good you make the I/O devices. Just what we needed at the time when SSDs are becoming the norm - a system that does I/O much less efficiently. Now, NTFS is supposed to have been improved in Win 8 - to be more robust and self-healing (not that I ever had any problem with it before)... But the interesting thing is, per my tests, the slowdown happened at the transition from Win 8 to Win 8.1. Nothing particularly important about the file system was noted then as best I recall. -Noel

Yeah, that was supposed to be the don't be evil wiki. I'll fix it shortly. -Noel

Do you think maybe someone somewhere may have said, "Dang, these computers are getting too darned fast; we need to create a design language that can be executed and is much less efficient. Something even slower and more resource hungry than scripting."? Ahh... Ahhhh... Ahhhhhhh... XAML!!!! (bless you) Heyyyy.... Or maybe "Let's throw some big fonts at the screen and see what sticks"? Perhaps "My grandma can't use Windows, it's too complicated." "No one ever failed by underestimating the intelligence of the public." -Noel

Thanks for your comment, dhjohns. SOMETHING has to be made pleasing about Win 10. I suppose Microsoft could have broken the ability to have translucency again. Sigh. Clearly they don't want us customizing Windows' look and feel, or they wouldn't be changing the DWM code so much between builds. I really can't understand why a company would want to force everyone into one and only one usage state with their software. It's clear what company Google was looking at when they set their corporate motto. -Noel

Dhjohns, don't forget that the Theme Atlas file I published a while back (when we first lost transparency) with "Opaque" in the name won't support transparency. The title bar and border coloration elements are opaque. -Noel

FYI, I find the Microsoft Silverlight Add-On that I have on my fully updated Win 10 build 10130 system is 5.1.20513.0 dated May 13, 2013 (and is 32 bit only), while the one on my fully updated Win 8.1 system is 5.1.40416.0 dated April 16, 2015 and is 32/64 bit. A casualty of the Win 10 Windows Update process changes? Very interesting. More research is warranted on what happened here. -Noel

Lost the plot indeed. To me it's pretty clear someone of great power has stated: Chop Windows down to a new 1.0 so we can have another couple of decades of success improving it. -Noel

Here are my suggestions that will make IE a browser that runs well and for a long time without problems. 1. Disable the installation and run of all ActiveX from the Internet Zone. Allow scripting, but lock virtually everything down to the most conservative settings. If a site you need to see absolutely MUST run an ActiveX control, you can add the site to your Trusted Sites list - but be aware that almost no sites will require ActiveX since other browsers won't run such controls. 2. Review your list of installed Add-ons in IE and disable all of those you don't know you need. You may have accumulated bunches of them. I have less than 10 (e.g., from Classic Shell and a few other packages I've installed). Be ruthless. IE can run with no Add-ons at all - and run very well. If you disable one that it turns out you really needed, you can always re-enable it. Disabling ActiveX in step 1 above helps ensure no more will be added. 3. Assuming your Windows hosts file is still in its default state (i.e., with nothing in it except comments), install the MVPS hosts file to block tens of thousands of sites that host malware or otherwise seek to deliver crap into your system. Do not change any service configurations as that site advises. If any so-called experts show up and dispute using a hosts file, do some research make your own decision after mulling over what could motivate someone to advise you to allow your system to allow the download of ads and malware. You'll be surprised to find that this one change alone will improve your internet browsing experience in several different ways. More detail here: http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/173660-anti-malware-suggestions/ -Noel

I don't know about you, but I'm not seeing "IE has stopped working" messages. It's possible that Add-Ons you have installed are leading to this behavior. I have very few Add-Ons, I don't allow ActiveX to run from the wild Internet, and I block a lot of sites with the MVPS hosts file. I can offer some specific suggestions that may make IE work better for you if you'd like. -Noel P.S., I did some head to head tests loading various sites. In virtually every case Internet Explorer loaded pages as fast or faster than Spartan, such as it is in recent Win 10 builds.

No, that was a clean break - from a perfectly functioning Win 7 x64 Ultimate system to Win 8.1 Pro. A complete fresh install of the OS, from a Microsoft disc. FWIW, I added Media Center later, in August 2014, and saw no appreciable performance change at that time. The Windows file system is what seems to have suffered the most, and is most of the reason for the overall performance degradation. What's also interesting is that my system performance remained stable all the while I was running Win 7 (not all my measurements are shown, they go back even further. They were also quite stable for a year after installing Win 8.1. Varying performance measurements vs. relatively stable performance have been the norm since November 2014. Every low level measurement and test I've done of my SSD array says that it should be performing just as well as before November, but somehow the file system literally is slower. I figure this would be the ideal place (and way) to add some intentional degradations, so that Win 10 will actually seem faster by comparison. For what it's worth, I've hidden the Windows Updates that facilitate the Win 10 upgrade on this system as well, so they're not coming from the same place as reported at the link you posted above. By the way, here's an interesting test to make if you have both Win 7 and 8.x/10 systems to compare: 1. Open an Explorer window and navigate to the root folder of drive C:. 2. Select all files in the Files pane. 3. Right-click and choose Properties. 4. Time how long it takes to count up all the files, then divide the files counted by the number of seconds it took. The above gives an indication of how much overhead you're seeing to navigate through the file system directory structure. With Win 7 I would see between 30,000 and 50,000 files per second counted up, depending whether the information is already cached or not. With Win 8.1 it's 8,000 to 12,000. Try it yourself. -Noel

What makes you believe you should disable the page file? Installing more RAM will likely help, but the best general advice is to just leave the page file alone. There are some things the system uses it for that are not a result of running short of RAM. Also, what makes you feel you will increase performance by using a RAMDISK? Your file system already provides you with RAM caching, which becomes quite effective if you have a lot of RAM. There's a setting you can throw - "Turn off Windows write-cache buffer flushing on the device" - that makes the file system cache fully write-back without waits as well, improving performance of most things that write to the disk. Since in general it sounds like you are striving for increased system responsiveness, may I suggest - if you haven't already done so - migrating your system to use SSD storage. THAT is the single biggest thing you can do nowadays to increase the responsiveness of a system. -Noel

I don't use that product, specifically, but in general numbers often get appended to filenames when a copy is done into a folder where the files already exist. Done anything like that? -Noel