NoelC

I have never run across hard information from Microsoft that says they are, but you're closer to the internals than most anyone I've known, so I believe you implicitly. Well, then, this fix makes no difference whatsoever to file system performance, whether in real use or in benchmark tests. That's disappointing. -Noel

Specifically, one can disable the UAC facility today in Windows 8 via a registry change. But doing so causes you to lose the ability to run Metro/Modern apps entirely, owing to an arbitrary decision by Microsoft. Microsoft DOES NOT allow a Metro/Modern application to run on a system where UAC has been disabled. There is no good technical reason for this restriction; they've just decided it. Perhaps it suits their "walled garden" goal for Apps. Note that dragging the UAC slider to the bottom in Windows 8 does NOT actually disable it (as it did in Windows 7), but rather puts you in a "just go ahead and escalate automatically without asking" mode. This is not at all the same as just running without UAC enabled! It's important to note that UAC actively lowers your privileges to the level of a lowly user regardless of whether you're running in a privileged account. It's the reason you have to run things "as administrator" sometimes to get what you want done. This dyed-in-the-wool geek prefers to be privileged all the time. That preference is strong enough that I eschew Metro/Modern toys entirely to get it, and I will continue to do so. I understand what I'm doing well enough and take enough care that I don't accidentally break things (with great power comes great responsibility and all that), and I don't have to deal with the system making requests to escalate, denied operations, and this "duality of personality" UAC invokes all the time. In short, I don't need the OS protected from me. I need the OS to do exactly what I tell it, when I tell it, without complaint. I believe that a fair number of people (e.g., Win 7 users who have opted not to adopt Windows 8) feel the way I do, and many of the ones who haven't grokked the issue just feel that Windows 8.1 operates in a generally flaky manner where you never quite know whether you're going to be able to do what you want. Even in the "escalate automatically without asking" mode, there are ongoing niggling problems and unexpected behavior. I've tried it. The system really does act flaky when run like that. -Noel

One has to wonder whether they're going to relax the restriction that to use Metro/Modern apps you MUST have UAC enabled. Methinks, since it doesn't appear they're doing very much right with the GUI design, they'll likely keep that restriction too. The future of computing - down the Windows path anyway - does seem doomed, Jorge. -Noel

The question is, has that hotfix been rolled into the kernel? Is it possible to know? Can't say I've sensed any improvements at all in file system performance lately to be honest. -Noel

Clearly the Marketing toads are still in charge, and they're not learning that people DON'T LIKE ugly, square UI elements, and lacking in visual style. It's as though someone painted the Windows Ferrari with a paint brush and a bucket of Behr paint, and instead of taking the thing down for a full strip and expensive paint job by a professional, they keep trying to touch it up with that brush and more cans of paint. Why are these Marketing people who clearly haven't got a clue about setting style not being hunted down and done away with? They had a layoff, there was already a good excuse. -Noel

Dang, couldn't even get out of the starting blocks... Not sure what else to do... It wouldn't install in either my Win 8.1 Enterprise VM or my Win 8.1 Pro Media Center Edition workstation, with the same (above) error. I'll bet it's either because I took that stupid upgrade to Windows 8.1 Pro Media Center Edition, or because a subsequent update has altered Ntoskrnl. My Ntoskrnl is 6.3.9600.17238. not the 6.3.9600.17237 the article claims is required. Guess I'll have to wait for this to come out in a typical Windows Update. -Noel

Cool, thanks Andre! I've requested it, and I will report back (assuming it doesn't turn my system into hamburger). A web search doesn't turn up much in the way of people discussing this one yet. I did watch that little defrag video segment, and it was very basic indeed. I look forward to seeing how this affects my file system access. If you don't hear back from me in a few days, send a... -Noel

Drat, I posted the wrong screen grab. I meant to put this one up, which does confirm your statement. Sorry about that. -Noel

Updates went into another Win 8.1 system here without any problems whatsoever. -Noel

Sounds like you made a mistake and sent a few Euros to the wrong recipient, and now you feel you've done your part to support the software world. ??? Would it ruin you financially to send a few more Euros to the right recipient? -Noel

AltTab.dll is modification-dated February 22, 2014... In my VM I have found a problem with this set of updates: They break Windows 8.1 system protection, much like what I saw last month with the Windows 7 updates. This shows both the problem and how to fix it: -Noel

Thanks guys. My pleasure. -Noel

Some 12 "Important" updates and 1 "Optional" update have just become available for Windows 8.1. At least one claims to be an August update, even though we're rather well along into September. I've installed them all in a VM and so far nothing's released its magic smoke. Aero Glass for Win 8.1 downloaded a new set of symbols automatically and after that appears to be working fine. Nor have the updates apparently broken any of the other tweaks I've done. What's been your experience with this set of updates? All good? Seen any articles on the subject that say otherwise? -Noel

Seems like expected behavior. That's what it did here. Took care of itself and kept on ticking. -Noel

Hyper-Saturated Super Moon, September 9, 2014 Okay, I let it go a couple of days past full for a bit more drama at the edge. These are natural colors, just more saturated than what you normally see. They show off the different minerals from which the moon is made up. Image created from 17 partially overlapping frames shot through Meade LX200 GPS UHTC 10" telescope with Powermate 2x optic making 5000mm f/20. Canon EOS-40D to capture the pixels at ISO 100, 1/40 second, Camera Raw 8.6 to convert the raw files and Photoshop CC 2014 to stitch it all together on a Dell Precision T5500 workstation. Full sized stitch was a bit more than 17,000 pixels square, and took about 2 minutes for Photoshop to do... -Noel

Yes, getting lost isn't something easily remedied. Of course, you're assuming they'll be able to execute a return to the straight and narrow. I'll believe it when I see it. I'm just imagining the culture changes that must have occurred in a company that's been so long driven toward the mountains when that doesn't make sense. What kinds of employees left in disgust and who stuck around? The ONLY thing I see that may save their butts overall is that it's not been as easy to find alternative jobs in high tech as it once was. Some of the smart geeks may still be there simply because they couldn't find other, better work in the interim. -- And now it's off to install the big list of September Windows Updates, some of which I see are labeled as August updates, and which list many, many fixes to problems I didn't know I had - then try to discover if there's a non-zero "newly broken" to "newly fixed" ratio... -Noel

Hey Big Muscle, I was just sitting here thinking what a pleasure my desktop is to use, and I just have to say again that I've really enjoyed the improved UX your product has given me - and continues to give every day - while using Windows 8.1. Thank you. -Noel

Hate to say it, but a 30 inch monitor, while expensive, would get the job done. IE at, say, 250% zoom is reasonably readable. So I guess you could say it's relatively hard to find a computer for a cheap elderly person. But I'm half joking. I agree, everything is optimized nowadays for people who can see things down to the microscopic level. -Noel

I would wait until halfway through the life of Windows 10 to buy Windows 9 if Microsoft starts making me pay for them to fix their bugs. As it is now I wait until "service pack 1" before adopting a system. I never did adopt WIndows 8, and only ran it on test VMs. -Noel

Good analogy. It fits nicely with something I'm fond of saying: that Microsoft needs to "get back on the straight and narrow". I imagined Microsoft leadership driving down, say, Route 66 in the southwest US, then suddenly, without good reason, just turning off the road and driving straight into the desert, claiming they were "reimagining" where the road goes. -Noel

For what it's worth, my fully up-to-date system, including the above KB2975719 Mark II update, has been working perfectly. -Noel

Well, maybe spontaneous quantum photon emission at the cosmic background frequency. I have fiber optic service. -Noel

We did more investigation and testing today and came to the knowledge that there are many, many rapid errors being introduced on my collaborator's last mile link. The excess of data is actually retransmission. The amount of bytes sent to get the same amount of data through varies a good bit from transfer to transfer of the same file. The protocol's logic to detect and correct errors is covering up the real problem, which I'm guessing is probably something like an overwhelming 50Hz buzz in the circuit. The next challenge is to get British Telecom to do something about it. -Noel

I also thought maybe it was just in-line translation between English and Anglish. Them thar Brits talk funny. :-) -Noel

That would be a consideration, save for the fact that I've spot tested with others and have no such failure. The thought crossed my mind, but wouldn't they have to be idiots to alter the transfer process so obviously? I mean, if the data's all there, couldn't they just lap it up without altering it at all, no? And as far as I'm concerned, they're welcome to it. We don't do illegal things, nor would I trust ANY communications process (including that BitTorrent Sync thing above) to not be tapped in some fashion. Something along these lines also occurred to me, and I really do need to capture some of the data packets and look inside them. The images have been things like Canon .CR2 raw files (as shown in the screen grab example), TIFFs, JPEGs, etc. We've noticed it with images, since those tend to be large. It happens with both compressible and substantially uncompressible data (I even thought maybe it might be a compression algorithm gone awry). I tested with the very same .CR2 file with someone else (both of us here in the US) and the data bloat did not occur. My observation of this so far has been with one particular user, someone I collaborate with a lot. He's only partially computer savvy, and it's entirely possible his system may be infected with something, or that his (ironically AOL-provided) communication line is faulty or tapped. He has reported some mysterious issues he's attributed to his router lately. Oh, and I almost forgot: Yes, the problem is bidirectional with this one user. I have begun to most suspect a faulty communication line on his end, causing massive retransmissions. Now, to be fair, we don't get any obvious problems with our voice communications, but I don't know the level of redundancy or error correction in that. If he IS corrupting large numbers of packets, that could possibly explain what we're seeing. All these things need to be checked further. Thanks for the conversation; it helps clarify things. -Noel