NoelC

With Windows 8 making "ugh, desktop" development unfashionable, and with obvious reductions in desktop functionality (e.g., the removal of Aero Glass, etc.), I've wondered whether the software may be suffering neglect under the covers, in the parts we don't see. I can confirm that it is. It's a trend that will spell the demise of Microsoft if left unchecked. No, I'm not talking about the debacle with the August updates. Lately I've been working to bring some software to release, and we have a LOT of instrumentation inside it to catch unexpected errors, leaks, etc. With Windows 8.1 we're seeing a lot more unexplained system errors (the kind you can retrieve with GetLastError()) between events. What I mean is this: We get an event from Windows, do a GetLastError() call, and unexpectedly instead of ERROR_SUCCESS there's an error such as "Invalid Window Handle" or "Access Denied" just sitting in there. This is a difference in behavior as compared to Windows 7 and earlier. That's not to say we never saw errors this way with Win 7, but for the most part when we did we were always able to trace them back to a particular source and actually DO something about it. Sometimes it was the background code we are running, and occasionally it was a problem in a common control that's well-known. Microsoft documents many of its API calls as setting the "last error" value if there's a problem, and specifically documents that the "last error" may not be cleared if a call succeeds, but in practice it's been rare that you get a success status back and GetLastError() returns something other than ERROR_SUCCESS. Now there are whole new sets of these errors showing up with Windows 8. Anyone who appreciates the rigor it takes to make an application work perfectly will see this for what it is - a very bad trend. To me it indicates a whole new low level of discipline or possibly even lack of knowledge in Microsoft's technical ranks. -Noel

I'm really never at the lock screen. My monitors go to sleep on inactivity and awake right back to the desktop. If my CPU usage DID kick up I imagine I'd hear the system fans speed up. I do not. And many times the messages are logged at almost perfect 1 hour intervals. Plus I've seen those warnings logged while just working steadily, at times when I know the monitors haven't gone to sleep at all in the past hour. -Noel

Does anyone think there's any merit to a "rapid release" strategy? What do people want? Richer, more, better applications. What do programmers want to be able to create richer, more, better applications? A more mature, more productive ecosystem in which to work. An ecosystem in which they've had time to get their footing, time to develop those applications, time to test those applications, time to market those applications. Time, time, time. That means keeping the OS the same for years, then migrating, evolving, improving, not "making it 'legacy'" every year. You most certainly cannot come out with a "whole new paradigm" and throw away the old, without years - maybe decades - to get programmers working smoothly in it. For these people, even more so than users, it has to work. Who really thinks releasing new operating system software every year is helpful in any way besides theoretically bolstering yearly sales for the OS company? I mean, geez, we hear over and over how people don't want to let go of XP! Why do you think that is? It worked, and it represented a stable environment in which to work! Microsoft needs to distance themselves from everything done since the success story that is Windows 7. -Noel

Sounds like you prefer a simple and functional desktop. That's my goal also. I use the Windows 8.1 standard theme with Aero Glass for Win 8.1 and a minimalist theme atlas file here. I've reduced the size of the window chrome by importing registry values saved from a Windows 7 system. -Noel

I see those messages logged too. They seem quite bogus to me, almost along the lines of the snake oil marketing that tries to get you to buy this or that cleaner program. Only time they stop is when the monitors are off (sleeping, i.e., zero desktop use). For what it's worth, everything is instantaneous, and my System Idle process shows numbers like 99.52% just sitting here running Process Hacker, which refreshes every second, and it might go all the way down to 98.28% idle if I do stuff like minimize/restore windows continuously or move windows around. There's certainly no CPU overutilization. -Noel

Conspiracy? Maybe. Someone in that darkest of professions, Marketing, once said something like "news is free advertising". Do you know anyone personally who had actual problems with the updates? For me my system remained stable. So why not manufacture a little buzz and make themselves look like heroes for caring so much about our computing experience that they would call back a potentially unstable update? Who knows whether the ones they claim we should uninstall actually do anything? I'm Imaginining a think tank of these folks who have made a list of everything having to do with Microsoft's good reputation (e.g., in this case that they roll out Windows Updates that fix our problems) and then discussing how to leverage each item into something newsworthy. Marketing at the pHD level. -Noel

Microsoft has backpedaled on part of the update package (thanks to TELVM for pointing it out in another thread, and Jaclaz for expanding). Just for reference: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2982791 I've no .otf fonts installed anywhere but in C:\Fonts but I went ahead and uninstalled KB2982791 and KB2975719 anyway as Microsoft has advised. The other two, KB2970228, and KB2975331 were apparently never installed here. This leaves 13 of the August updates still intact. I did verify that the content of the font cache file that Microsoft suggests deleting is now different than before the deletion. My system, which wasn't unstable with all the August updates in, apparently isn't unstable without KB2982791 and KB2975719 either (it's already crunched through a few terabytes of data), so for me personally this is all a bit academic. However, in the grander sense, it's disturbing that Windows Updates now must be regarded with even greater suspicion. Perhaps when the next set comes out I should run them for a week or more in a VM before deciding to update my workstation. -Noel

Dang. Well, I don't have any .otf files in alternate places, so I guess that's why I'm still stable. -Noel

Let's see whether this turns up any answers: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/fd890ca3-6bb8-4806-9638-8b583d6eb9a3/why-is-wudfhostexe-running-for-my-two-external-usb-wd-mybook-drives?forum=w8itproperf -Noel

I had thought that it didn't used to show up, but I did a search of the process list logs I've been accumulating daily, and sure enough one WUDFHost process has been running since the day I installed Windows 8.1 (I did so as a clean install after having been running Windows 7). That the second one showed up is why I started this thread, and now I have verified by my logs that it happened when I installed VS 2013 back in March. Jaclaz, does the media transfer protocol even apply with just a USB disk drive? I've deconfigured many of the media sharing features. That being said, Windows Media Player still DOES seem to want to scan my backup drives for media content from time to time. -Noel

Well, I think Mark Russinovich works for Microsoft now, so in a way Process Explorer is already what you ask - though as you say, the bold new Task Manager should have integrated a lot of that code right into itself, so that it could actually BE a better Task Manager. Notably I didn't make progress in identifying what WUDFHost was doing until I tried Process Hacker with Andre's guidance, though. As far as why a USB disk would require a driver... In the big sense, doesn't everything require a driver? In the small sense, maybe wrapping it with WUDFhost is Microsoft's way of mitigating all the system crashes reported through time from USB drivers. -Noel

Well, I found a few posts by people who said they solved problems by removing the driver, implying it's not going to end the Visual Studio world to do so, and I couldn't find any overt setting that turns it off in Visual Studio, so it may just be as simple as disabling it via the Device Manager... Now that I think back, I think the second WUDFHost may have shown up at the time Visual Studio 2013 Update 2 came in. At that time I recall it saying something about updating the Windows Phone components, which I thought was odd because I don't develop Windows Phone software and don't even have that option checked in the Visual Studio installer. In any case, Visual Studio seems to come up and work just fine with the location simulator driver disabled, so I'm a happy camper. I just leaned my system down by one more process. -Noel

Wow, fantastic. Following your footsteps, Andre, in just seconds I have determined that one of my two WUDFHosts is also the SensorsSimulatorDriver as you've shown, and has been installed by Visual Studio 2013. The good news is that it may not need to be running as I am not developing location-aware software (though I have more checking to do on whether and how it can be safely disabled). The other WUDFHost is hosting the drivers for my two always-present MyBook external USB backup drives, and quite clearly needs to be left alone. I am always impressed at the depth of your knowledge, Andre. Thank you! -Noel

Ooh, Process Hacker certainly looks interesting. I'd heard of it but hadn't found the time to look it over. Thanks for the tip. guys! Off to do some exploring with a bunch of new information... -Noel

It's an ideal application for a virtual machine. VMware offers "snapshots" that give you the ability to nearly instantly load any saved image, and will start it running right where it was when you made the snapshot.. And at no time do you have to commit to actually USING the thing. Your host system happily remains on the OS you've chosen to use. -Noel

GEEZ, how I hate people who think it matters what the ******* software is called!!! Microsoft needs to fire every ******* one of them with extreme prejudice. I'm holding back here out of common decency. THESE very people are the ones ruining the world!!!!!!!! -Noel

Still a good reason to minimize what's running. This is our goal: -Noel

What I always loved of menuet OS In 1985 as chief architect I lead a team that designed and coded an embedded real-time multitasking operating system and management application that watched over Airport Surveillance Radar for 20+ years without a glitch. The system monitored data on multiple comm lines from radar sites to control towers and switched to backup lines in a heartbeat if there was a problem. If you flew over the US any time between 1985 and 2005 chances are my little system helped keep you safe by making sure the Air Traffic Controllers could see your blip on their radar screens. It ran more than 20 independent tasks simultaneously and smoothly, had a user interface with a keypad and video screen, and was built to last - S-100 buss in a 50 lb steel chassis. The system AND application all fit in... Wait for it... 48 kBytes on an Intel 8085 microprocessor, with 16 kBytes of RAM. I even included a small video game the system testers could use to pass the time while they were awaiting long-term test results (the government required a LOT of testing). Think "light cycles". -Noel

In theory all our computers would be so powerful we could just allow junk to accumulate forever (ultimately having the computer reach a sentient state) but it's not reality. Yet. I'm not having too much of a problem micromanaging this, though I have to admit there are frustrating times (like a major Adobe update) where it puts back a whole bunch of things that have been disabled. Thankfully the "Disable" capability in Autoruns makes it easy to see what's been added back. On a test VM not long ago I achieved a fully functional setup without too much trouble that had 39 processes running (of course without all the stuff I have running on my workstation, especially that SVN Edge server). It would have even been 2 less than that but for the VMware stuff. ProcExp is good for figuring out what service is running inside svchost, taskhostex, etc. It can't see into WUDFHost.exe yet (that reminds me, I should eMail Mark Russinovich and ask him for that feature). -Noel

A conversation with DosProbie the other day reminded me that this should be discussed... Ever look at your list of running processes in Task Manager, and wonder how many don't need to be running in order for you to get just as much out of your computer as you do now, but have it be snappier and with more ready resources for you to use? Read on only if doing tedious, repetitive things, then seeing one less process running will make your day. I try to keep my system as lean as I can and after the August Update I again took stock of what I have running on my workstation. This involved taking a screen grab of Task Manager and categorizing all the processes running. Here's my current list. Note that this isn't a small system, and I run some fairly heavy stuff (marked in blue) on purpose. But it's actually quite fast and useful. If you DO discover a process running that you don't know you need, here's what you can do: 1. Research it online. You'll have to learn to pick out the real information vs. the sites that just say a bunch of generic BS and report how many other people reported a process as good or bad. It's all out there. 2. If you're sure you don't need the process, figure out how to not have it run, which could involve just removing it from a Run registry key (the freeware tool Autoruns is good for this), or maybe if it's a service setting it to Manual or Disabled in the Services.msc snapin. 3. If you're not sure whether it's needed, try disabling it and only it (one thing at a time!), reboot, and see if all the features involved with it that you actually use still work. Sometimes you will be pleasantly surprised. Do more research if you're really not sure. Good candidates for disabling: Auto updaters (though you should have a replacement strategy)Things that hang around and watch for media insertionTools in the System Tray you rarely or never useComponents of big applications that provide features (e.g. cloud services) you don't useThe list goes on. See any processes you have running that I don't? Feel free to discuss them here. See any you don't think I need to be running? Let's discuss them! -Noel

Chances are that's where the most-used parts of it are running from right now. That's what Cache is all about. -Noel

I guess things are bloated all over. But it's all good. Every such incident serves to lower people's expectations of modern technology, which of course sells more modern technology and boosts the economy mightily. Mindless choice making... The new normal. -Noel

One can disable the automatic checking-for and downloading of updates directly. Any reasonable person would want to control when that's done whether traveling or not. I don't know what else relies on BITS, but it seems a bit of overkill to stop the basic service. -Noel

I once ran across a compiler where the author was getting complaints that the compiled executables were too small - people were discounting the products because, well, they just couldn't be substantial and functional if they were only hundreds of kB or maybe a few MB in size. So they added a #BLOAT metastatement and users were happy. True story. -Noel

Presumably they claim you should disable it because they've sensed that the background transfer of data makes a noticeable impact on a limited speed network interface. Is that, in fact, what was happening? Shouldn't be hard to tell with Task Manager and Resource Monitor on hand and able to view Network activity. What about your network connection feels sluggish? What do IP speed tests tell you? -Noel