NoelC

Something basic is wrong with this thread... It locks up for some seconds after following the link in my Content list to the last post. I've seen it in two different browsers. Maybe it's got something to do with that big block of text, I don't know. -Noel

The MVPS hosts file redirects parasite web server names to 0.0.0.0, not home (127.0.0.1). No connections show up (e.g., in Resource Monitor). After a long day of using my system pretty heavily, and listening to Pandora, the command ipconfig /displaydns shows that I have 7503 entries, which have a TTL of 1 day. Thing is, a modern CPU can search a table of tens of thousands of lines in a few microseconds, maybe less. And what's even more important, the whole set of local table searches likely takes less time than resolving any one of the blocked site addresses via online DNS. I suggest this will actually make browsing faster, not degrade performance. Table lookup time is really not a practical worry. And this proves out in practice - from where I sit, with literally 15,801 lines in it, I browse virtually instantaneously to any site I choose with Internet Explorer. I've set up IE's network trace, browsed to a site I haven't been to any time in recent history, and haven't seen anything that makes me think there's any slowdown worth mentioning. Example: Apple.com's first response got back to me in 16 ms (that's 1/60 of a second). That did not change with the hosts file renamed and out of the way. Can you suggest alternate ways to measure degradations or compare performance? -Noel

Curious. What does HWMonitor show now? Notwithstanding what Andre said, I've watched Process Hacker, et. al. and I just don't see whatever background activity it is using the CPU. I wonder if it really just is a shortcoming in the power management logic that manifests when it's sitting idle. I guess I'll have to fire up the performance toolkit at some point and make some traces. -Noel

OK, I have made some measurements. I'm afraid they may not help clear much up... I found a YouTube video (Avengers 2 trailer) that will play on both boot setups (Win 7 and Win 10 build 10074). Win 7 package temperature: 35C - 39C Win 10 package temperature: 45C - 49C Here are the screen grabs of the measurements. Some of the other things, such as power levels, are quite interesting. Here are the measured temperatures across a run of the PassMark PerformanceTest... Note that the CPU package got just about as hot, but that Win 7 seems to have a lower base temperature (Andre's comment was likely on the mark). The minimum clock speed numbers are interesting. I do have the power plan for Win 10 set to run the processor at 5% if it is not needed. Either the system thinks it's needed or that's not functioning properly. -Noel

My two stumbling blocks at this point, since I have just one hardware system that dual boots I can test on, are: 1. Acquisition of a complex enough UHD video to test with that shows with the Win 7 standard codecs. I can't justify risking installation of a possibly questionable codec pack or much other software just to do this test. It's a live system at this point that just happens to have a second disk drive that will boot up Windows 10 build 10074. 2. Time to take the machine offline, swap the boot order, and perform the tests. Actually, this afternoon wouldn't be a bad time... I think maybe I have an alternative... I'll try running Passmark PerformanceTest and record the temperatures. It kind of measures something different from what is being described in this thread, but it would be interesting nonetheless... -Noel

What Andre is trying to say is that maybe there's more heat already built up during non-intensive operations, so you see the temps go higher during intensive things such as video rendering. Heat transfer is a dynamic thing, and can sometimes be non-intuitive (think Chernobyl, for example). Also, two different systems may have completely different cooling characteristics, with one having more reserve capacity than another. A difference in observed temperatures could be something as simple as the fan speed being increased more on one than the other after the temperature crosses some threshold. -Noel

"Meant to be used"? Who set that? Some ancient Unix author? You can't argue that it's not effective. Personally I cannot see how repurposing a feature that's otherwise generally unused is "misuse" by any stretch of the imagination. In my hosts file I have a couple of entries at the top that do some special things for me, and the bottom part is all the hosts file from MVPS. It works, plain and simple. In fact, it's one of the most effective things you can do to make the Internet safer. Do you anticipate performance problems on today's computers?Do you imagine it's blocking things you DO want to see? Per your linked article, "The Hosts file should only be used for redirecting a website or a new IP address." Redirecting a malicious parasite web site to a non-existent IP address sounds like a perfect use to me. Please, by all means, elucidate the disadvantages that lead you to classify locally blocking known malicious domains as "misuse". -Noel

Thanks for noticin' me. I'm trying to remain moderate, as I cannot fully form an opinion on something until I have all the information. Call it an analytical mind at work or whatever. I'm not particularly rude by nature, and I like to think I try to be helpful when I can. I honestly don't know whether Windows 10 will be worth having - yet. I absolutely am NOT a "hater" nor "fanboy". I'm a "get it to work" kind of guy. I certainly cannot say Windows 10 won't be any good - yet. Nor can I say it's good - yet. Ultimately I'll probably adopt some version of it - perhaps not on the day of release - for my systems here. I always have so far. And I have always maintained the capability of dropping back if the meadow I think I'm stepping into unexpectedly becomes quicksand. I honestly don't know if the advantages of giving over one's information to Microsoft for cloud management could provide value that could outweigh the potential disadvantages. I also don't know whether the disadvantages we imagine will actually materialize. Certainly Microsoft hasn't a track record of tightly and perfectly managing privacy or quality. Take for example that they made everyone's Skype profile available to the world. Now we get unsolicited contact requests. Nor are they particularly good about delivering updates that are always perfect. There have certainly been reports of problems after updates. But on the other hand, I've personally gotten value by keeping current. My interactive systems here (save for a server I just set up that runs Win 7) are running Win 8.1 x64 Pro or MCE. Regardless of whether I'm a nice guy or aggressive, I'm trying to be moderate. I really do want to keep an open mind about many things, no matter whether others want to pigeon-hole me as a "hater" or a "fanboy". I have a crapload of real world experience and I know what works and what does not. Some parts of that are beyond needing prefix of "in my opinion". I am willing to share my experience and insight with those who'll listen. Those who don't, well, that's their problem. -Noel P.S., Jaclaz, since you mentioned it I do respect you and your experience - very much - and I'm glad you feel (as I do) that our debates can be generally positive for both of us. I hope I haven't come across as too much of a @$$#@+.

It's not implausible, because of a few things... 1. Microsoft did publish that SSE2 is a requirement for Windows 8+. 2. There is a setting in Visual Studio (which I assume is what they compile the Windows sources with) that says, "compile this to use SSE2 instructions". Thus DLLs that the OS provides, even without re-coding at all, may well use different instructions in newer Windows versions, even though they offer the exact same sets of entry points. This is one of the reasons using DLLs was supposed to be better than static linking - you could get advantages that weren't available at the time the original software was coded. 3. Since Microsoft made SSE2 a requirement, there's no reason the boys and girls involved with the coding of things like Media Player and whatnot couldn't re-code critical parts of the software to specifically use the intrinsics that generate SSE2 instructions. I recently went through the same advancement of requirements for my own graphics software, and re-coded routines that do things like resample images. Large reductions in execution time can be seen. 4. Since you can easily query the processor capapbilites, it IS possible in the application itself that different linkages can be set up depending on machine capabilities. I do this in my software. Also, I know Adobe Photoshop does this under the covers, even taking it so far as to move some operations to the GPU when it's possible, all the while keeping the intent that the software operates the same for the user. Taken to an extreme, an installer could install an entirely different application for an older OS vs. a newer one. The advantages of using the better instruction set can be very significant, making it worth the extra complexity. -Noel

I wondered whether the guy with the Pokemon avatar over there is a developer. In other news, speaking of impressions... As an exercise, since my Win 10 systems in VMs are all throwaways anyway, I re-enabled UAC and converted over to a full Microsoft cloud account. As might be expected, the process is utterly painless. I imagine they've put in man-centuries on making sure no one has a problem with going through it. Everything just continued to work, and I think something that wasn't starting up quickly during logon is now happier, as the logon process is quicker. I talked to Cortana a little and re-confirmed that the feature is still just a curiosity, and I explored what might be different (better/worse?) than the other extreme I had been experimenting with (UAC disabled, local account). I still am keeping OneDrive synchronization disabled, though I have no problem accessing the online server storage through more conventional means. It seems a bit less "we've got you in our cloud now, here's what we're going to do to you" than I had been thinking. Clearly any new value that one will derive from this OS will be in finding ways to embrace the new parts, as Microsoft hasn't really done anything to improve desktop operations. Rumor has it Microsoft is re-introducing some Aero Glass, but whether they will touch the parts of the theme that really matter remains to be seen. They may make it possible to have translucency, but keep all the controls as undifferentiated as they possibly can (e.g., square-edged, flat). I'm betting they'll make it as little like the Aero Glass Win 7 people know and love as they possibly can. One can't help but feel they're being almost childish about it. It seems to be the same kind of thing as a car maker that refused to paint any cars yellow, orange, or red because, well, that just wouldn't be considered "green". I've got this version pretty well tuned up now... Time for a new build to break things again. -Noel

Well, for what it's worth, as of 10074 at least Classic Shell is a little bit broken - nothing shows up in the Apps list. Normally we'd see all the Metro/Modern apps there. I've let the author know about it, though I imagine he's not keen to try to keep up with the changes in every build that Microsoft releases. -Noel

Can you suggest a link to an online video that would stress a modern (Haswell) processor? I tried with some HD video I have on hand with Win 7 and got a range of 33C - 37C in Win 7. EDIT: Found several I'll try from this page: http://box.houkouonchi.jp/4k/ SECOND EDIT: Hm, I'm having difficulty finding one that'll play with the codecs out of the box on my Win 7 system, and I'd rather not install extra software. -Noel

Glad to hear it wasn't an infection. Why would Microsoft intentionally change the text like that, so that you could still read it? That's just weird! -Noel

So, given that one person has found Win 10 to run the CPU hotter, while another has found it to run the CPU cooler, is there anything at all we can infer? I'm thinking it's a bit too course a measurement to be meaningful. Might need multiple iterations averaged to be more certain there's not just normal variation in the numbers. Thinking on this a bit... Didn't Microsoft make having an SSE2 instruction set necessary for Win 8 or later? The use of such instructions can make a HUGE difference in the amount of brute force CPU time spent in graphics processing. -Noel

Seems very suspicious that the letters are readable, but with wacky visual mappings (e.g., the pi symbol for 'n'?). That looks to me like the kind of thing malware might do. I'd certainly suggest a scan for a rootkit with MBAM. -Noel

Hm, I'm not seeing the _ploc suffixes or font corruption here. I thought maybe it might some kind of nomenclature related to it being a local account on a system tied to a cloud account, so as a test I converted to use a cloud account. No difference... Still doesn't show anything like what you're seeing. -Noel

The extra heat from Win 10 - assuming we do find it to objectively run hotter - might just be the added load from Microsoft sending all your private data to their cloud servers for, er, later analysis to determine if your Windows experience can be improved. -Noel

Absolutely terrifying, to be honest. The electronic world as we know it could be crumbling before our very eyes. But try and speak up about it anywhere besides here, where we're (mostly) friendly to people who actually think, and most assuredly we'll be labeled as "haters". Such is the universe of users Microsoft has cultivated. -Noel

I interpreted that seemingly illogical move as just a first step to discontinuing it entirely, because at some point they'll be able to say "NOW really only a tiny number of people have opted in to get this info, so it's not really needed." I always think about the things that caused something to be done in the first place, and what has changed... Has computer security become less important?Do people rely on computers less for important business?Has Microsoft reached a point where they feel they're invincible, and don't actually have to provide value? I can't shake the feeling that one day they'll raise their collective heads above the cubicle walls and say, "Wow, we're failing! Who could have seen this coming?" Death by a thousand small cuts. Edit: I'm imagining the justification for the removal of the UI (but not the guts) that made Windows Backup work in Windows 7 (well, really 8.0) and earlier, and which was subsequently removed on justification of "only 6% of users set up Backpup". Sure, the geeks amongst us figured out the wbadmin command line and moved on, and many others just bought (quite likely better) 3rd party backup software. So Microsoft figures they get to keep being the OS supplier for everyone while not actually having to do the hard work to make it do what everyone needs. Trouble is, it's a balancing act, and at some point, even with a long pole and all the effort he can muster, a tightrope walker can actually fall... Remember when they actually used to be able to get a few hundred dollars a license for Windows? Now... -Noel

"Most don't use it, so we'll stop doing it." Completely rational at the first sniff. Makes business sense, right? But does it? What if, say, 1% of 1 billion users were to find it important? Microsoft just drops millions of users on their heads. Millions! "Meh, I'm feeling lazy, and since only 10 million people need this feature I think I'll just delete it instead of my continuing to maintain it." I wonder if a majority of users do any one thing in Windows. I wonder if 1% fewer people will choose to use Microsoft software without this feature. -Noel

If there is a next time this happens, rather than a "PC reset", I suggest you examine each of the registry entries you find documented here, and ensure all are in range: http://www.glass8.eu/guide.html -Noel

F23948, may I suggest the "Testing version of GUI application to modify Aero Glass parameters" from this page: http://www.glass8.eu/download.html -Noel

Unfortunately, the new system I have dual booting on 7 / 10 is now online in a kind of critical role, but if I take it down for maintenance I'll check. -Noel

I don't know if this can even apply to what you're doing, but I disable all forms of Homegroup networking on all my systems. I've always found that the ancient "workgroup" way of Windows Networking was the most deterministic. -Noel

You're welcome. By the way, for those running Win 10 build 10074, I have made some minor updates over the past week and I'm not sure I posted all the latest files... If you prefer no colorization of active vs. background windows to come from the theme atlas: http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10074/RoundedCornersNoColor.png This next file adds just a bit of blue to the active window borders, since with the above it's difficult to get enough color in the borders, and I like the active windows to be nice and blue with a fairly low opacity. http://Noel.ProDigitalSoftware.com/ForumPosts/Win10/10074/RoundedCornersBlueActive.png -Noel