NoelC

WinAero Tweaker has about the most comprehensive set of appearance settings panels I've seen lately. -Noel

What you describe as "normal" would better be called "optimal". People pretty much everywhere it's been discussed have reported heat-related failures in their systems after errant Windows update CPU looping. Do you think they're all lying? I don't. We're in agreement that software should not be given the power to actually destroy things if it is not also given serious engineering consideration to ensure that all reasonable measures have been taken to prevent such failure. Microsoft has certainly put no effort into mitigating the hard CPU looping thing. Maybe Apple just didn't think things through (or secretly thinks that if you run Windows on your MacBook you should be punished). I suspect that software in modern times is ever more apt to just fail without warning or reason, because - frankly - building robustness into any system takes more thought than not doing it, and people for some reason seem to HATE thinking more now than ever. It's not REALLY necessarily more expensive to good work, except perhaps that you have to pay well-educated engineers to get good engineering (opposed to sending the work to a 3rd world country to have it done as cheaply as possible). Whomever thinks software development is a labor job and should be low-paid is an id***. A freaking id***. I know for a fact that some such people work at Microsoft. Poor software work isn't faster to get done either. I have in my career shown again and again that smart, well thought-through engineering where something is gotten right the first time is virtually always more efficient than starting with slipshod, incomplete programming done by sloppy workers who don't care - primarily because the problems caused are not insignificant, and lead to much rework by someone like me. I've been saving poorly done projects from abysmal failure my entire career. With lousy, rushed software, support costs to go up and future business to go down. There's an old saying, "There's never enough time given to do it right, but there always seems to be time to do it over." I was the adept troubleshooter that did it over for over 30 years, until I started my own company. -Noel

EVERYTHING is more stable than 10, which even beyond its "always beta level" instability reboots itself on purpose any time an update rolls out. Since it does this, it's not hard to imagine it won't be long before Microsoft will feel it's okay to deliver system software that REQUIRES a reboot every few days (shades of pre-NT OSs). Microsoft is regressing, presumably so they can start all over again and have another 30 years of success. Thing is, they're not as smart as their predecessors. On topic for this thread: It sounds like some major changes are coming up architecturally in FireFox soon, so I think I'll just hold on the current version I have for a while even though I'm not running it under XP. -Noel

>OMG, how the h3ll is it supposed to occur to a normal customer to "change the user agent mode" when the sites he visits are suddenly broken?!? I think the intent with making such changes is that sites are supposed to be suddenly fixed. Potential downsides are all too often ignored, and for some reason it's considered bad form to pop up messages and actually tell people things. It would just upset the poor dears. As with most things high tech, the devil is in the details, and the only way to be in control - especially if you're going to run a non-mainstream browser - is to become more knowledgeable. So I guess it's time to go back to college, get a degree in computers, then spend a few decades writing software. Of course I'm being facetious. It would not have occurred to me to check the user agent string and I've done all of the above. There are probably browser extensions you can add to get it to send just the right agent string to each individual website. The whole thing is like a big costume party where no one's quite sure who's talking to whom. Our problem is that we expect it to work. Oh, and remember to consider the agent string next time you look over web usage statistics. At least you had the wherewithal to research the problem online and find the root of the problem. Well done, and thanks for sharing the solution here. I don't mean it as an insult, but I think you're already more "geek" than "customer", Jorge. P.S., you consider yourself a "customer", but how much did you pay for the software? Maybe for free open source software you should think of yourself more as a "co-developer"... Apparently the folks who made the decision to change that agent string default didn't include you. Just thinking out loud here. -Noel

I think Microsoft may have led that charge with CPU overheating due to the "hard CPU loop during Checking For Updates" problem. -Noel

I'm not sure being patient is enough... I ran a test and stopped it after over 81 hours of Xeon x5690 CPU time was wasted. -Noel

So Microsoft copies Apple when they move toward removing user control... Apple furthers the effort seeing that their approach is validated by the behemoth. Google copies everyone, of course... Maybe a fully open source Linux really is the future and To Hell with the big companies. Time was it was good to partner with a big commercial entity who had at least SOME ideals aligned with your own. Now where is that alignment? It's becoming all about taking control from users because clearly We Know Best (how to fleece them). Is that good for most folks? Have so many folks just reached this stage that it's hopeless to try to THINK any more? -Noel

You have it essentially right: Have the DNS provider your system relies upon return a "not found" response for sites you don't want visited, and voila, a site is essentially blacklisted. In my case I'm doing it with a dedicated DNS server package that supports local resolutions, and will return a "not found" response as a special case when a particular site is defined in a local list as 0.0.0.0. The DNS server package I use scans its blacklists, and for sites not found in the lists forwards the request to an online DNS server (in my case, OpenDNS), then routes the response back to the requester all in a few milliseconds. It's amazingly responsive. Blacklisting can also be done with a specially crafted hosts file, though that doesn't provide wildcard capability. There are some who say doing it with a big hosts file causes undue overhead to the system, but with the normal DNS caching subsystem left in place I've not seen it become an issue, even with 60,000+ entries in the file. Of the two methods, even if you don't have a dedicated system to run it I'd suggest implementing a DNS proxy like Dual DHCP DNS Server (with my mods) and having the system contact that service on the same hardware to resolve DNS requests. Going further... If you want to take controlling network access to the next level, a deny-outgoing-connection-by-default firewall setup will make sure nothing gets through without your prior approval. There is a product, Sphinx Windows Firewall Control, that's about to be released that embraces DNS name resolution as well, so you can manage your firewall configuration by name, not by IP address. This makes a huge difference with regard to maintainability. Once you have things set up initially then it becomes almost "set it and forget it". Right now I haven't had to think about my firewall configuration on any system for weeks. If software makes some new attempt to contact another system online, the firewall just pops up a notification that it was blocked, so what little maintenance remains is reactionary. With all the above in place, you have gained the ability to see what DNS requests are being made, AND what connection requests are being refused or allowed by the firewall, and that can lead you further - to being able to find the tweaks / configuration options that will stop the requests from even being made to start with. Just as an example, one might notice (from the DNS log and/or firewall log) that Windows is regularly trying to contact these servers: spynet2.microsoft.com spynetalt.microsoft.com So besides blacklisting them and continuing to see the names resolved to "not found", one can research these sites and find that they're the telemetry portals for Windows Defender and the Microsoft Malicious Software Removal Tool. That research will turn up the fact that there are registry settings you can change that will stop the system from trying to report to these servers to begin with. So between the blacklisted name resolution, the reconfigured registry settings, and the firewall, the attempts to send information elsewhere are blocked multiple different ways. Other results of having this information include Disabling some services (e.g., DiagTrack), disabling some scheduled tasks, finding various supported but sometimes not obvious settings, registry tweaks of course, etc. Do all this for a while and you have a pretty private system that doesn't even try to spill the beans, and if it does try it fails. With suitable configuration, things like certificate chain verifications still occur unhindered. Best of all worlds. I've done the above on Win 7, 8.1, and 10. It's quite pleasing to see a Win 10 system not even trying to go online except for approved comms. -Noel

Jorge, are you blacklisting sites? Maybe something has gotten into a blacklist that is necessary? I saw, for example, the Quero-hosted black list the other day take on something it shouldn't (they blacklisted code.jquery.com - I've since reported it and it's been removed). Edit: FWIW, I'm able to edit this post here with FireFox version 50. -Noel

Don't confuse disabling a scheduled task with disabling a service. I have the osppsvc service on Manual. On my systems the osppsvc service still starts up AOK when an Office 2010 application (e.g., Outlook) is run. I don't know about newer versions; 2010 is the one I use. Perhaps the "\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform\SvcRestartTask" scheduled task shouldn't be disabled. The name implies it might fix things if a service exits abnormally, though I'm not seeing that happen at all, so for me the task remains disabled. That reminds me, there's a registry tweak that gets the osppsvc to exit after a small amount of idle time if no Office application is running: Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\OfficeSoftwareProtectionPlatform] "InactivityShutdownDelay"=dword:0000000F -Noel

You're welcome. I run it under Win 8.1 as well. I failed to mention above that there are extensions worth considering. Those that I use include: AnkhSVN, which integrates SubVersion access into Visual Studio. Line Endings Unifier, which helps keep Unix vs. DOS line endings straight. NoMorePanicSave, which saves all files that have been altered when Visual Studio loses focus. Open Command Line, which adds as a sub feature Batch file code coloration. VSColorOutput, which colorizes things in the Output Window (handy for spotting errors and warnings). Windows Installer XML Toolset, which aids in making installers. Of course, everyone has their own favorite set. -Noel

Good, rational thoughts, ProfessorUltraviolet. Regarding taking control of what your system is doing online, it's still possible even with Win 10 if you're willing to shun the cloud integration and the Apps. But that's not a configuration Microsoft supports any more. Some random suggestions: Look into the upcoming version 8 release of the Sphinx Windows Firewall Control product. That version is going to make it practical (dare I say easy?) to manage a deny-by-default firewall setup. Address-based firewalls are simply impractical now, and this new version is going to do it by name! Also consider implementing a DNS proxy server that can blacklist sites by wildcard. That makes it possible to blacklist things such as... vortex* *vortex.data.microsoft.com *vortex-win.data.microsoft.com *settings-win.data.microsoft.com *vo.msecnd.net *telemetry*microsoft* a-*.a-msedge.net *smartscreen*microsoft* ...and many, many more. In fact, my wildcarded blacklist has over 21,000 entries right now. That does not include non-wildcarded entries, which number over 55,000. It's a VERY effective way to just ignore the worst parts of the web. -Noel

I suggest reading AskWoody.com for info on updates. -Noel

Though I was already disappointed in some things in Vista and 7, I truly lost faith when I first downloaded the preview build for Windows 8. Then it was obvious the company had turned off the straight and narrow. -Noel

Yeah, well, I've managed to get online forums working often enough by trashing cookies to make me realize web programmers don't have a clue about what happens when an upgraded forum package tries to read old cookies. That's why I mentioned it. -Noel

And you can exclude the telemetry code by linking to notelemetry.obj. I personally find VS2015's enhanced code coloring logic worth the switch all by itself. And generally speaking it just feels like it helps you handle bigger, more complex projects. However, there are other things where they've just changed the way things work (e.g., finding things) where it takes some getting used to, and it wouldn't be Visual Studio if it didn't have one or two things that aren't *quite* right and just nag the hell out of you. It pops a heckuva lot of stuff up by hovering and while typing in code, to the point where sometimes it's hard to see the code. But that can be dialed-back or deconfigured as desired. We've found that the optimizer does a better job of making faster native machine code, which is important if you have compute-intensive code. Be aware that VS2015 Community Edition tries to contact Azure servers and a few others, and while it doesn't REQUIRE you to be logged-on with a Microsoft account, it occasionally needs to refresh its "license". The online chattiness can be muzzled in various ways, but I'm worried that upcoming updates will enforce cloud connectivity ever more until there's no way to use it without giving away the farm. That being said, we've gotten value out of VS 2015 so far. Bear in mind there are release candidates out already for the next major version, so maybe VS 2015 is reasonably safe to adopt. -Noel

FYI, Windows Vista right now (literally since about June of this year) for most folks can't complete a Windows Update operation. It just goes into a hard loop on one core. Win 7 has also been reported to have reached this condition, and I've even seen Win 8 reports of it as well. I once would have advised getting a newer version less than 10... I've settled on Win 8.1 myself, since it's supposed to be supported for some years to come, and it's moldable into a decent desktop setup, but nowadays the task of installing a Win 7 or 8.1 system then getting *just* the right updates has gotten more complicated than just running Windows Update and taking those you need while hiding those you don't want. -Noel

Age old advice to try to recover non-working forums is to delete cookies. Note that this advice is not specific to this problem or site; just something that every site manager I've ever asked "Why doesn't the site work with my browser any more?" has suggested first. Just remember that if done bluntly (as in deleting ALL cookies) it could mean you will need to remember/retype every password and redo every preference you've ever asked the browser to remember. Again, I've no specific experience with FireFox or its derivatives and cookie handling, just passing on what everyone suggests as a first try... -Noel

That's why I really want an expensive professional OS, where you pay for the software and don't have the OS vender trying to snatch value from you at every turn. It was nice when the OS cost a few hundred dollars every few years, and Microsoft certainly didn't go broke with that model. But honestly, if Microsoft were to offer a worthy, professional Windows 7 successor at many hundreds of dollars for the upgrade, I'd buy it. Microsoft's problem is that they seem unable to run a business that serves multiple facets of the software market. It's as though the task of building systems for more than one market is too complicated for upper management. -Noel

I don't think I have any particular wisdom on this issue beyond what JorgeA said. I believe, as Jorge does, that in Microsoft's small minds removing "extra" features somehow serves to make the newer system seem seem "better" by comparison. I guess it was just Too Darned Hard to think of good new things for Windows to do beyond what 7 offered. I'm fond of saying Microsoft manages mediocrity better than any company I've ever seen. I think this is just more of the same, and is a reaction to having top notch software engineers on staff replaced by low-paid programmers. -Noel

OK, so the current Win 10 has ads in Apps. I don't use Apps. I've read they're in the Start Menu. I don't use the Win 10 Start Menu. Where else might they be found? I believe I've heard they can show up in the Lock Screen. Are they actually showing up there? Anywhere else? At this point I have no idea what servers the system may be contacting to get ad info. Are they coming in through 3rd party servers (e.g., like web pages) or do the ads come through Microsoft? Do they come through in real time or are they pre-loaded with Windows Update? -Noel

Imagine that the "oversimplification" disease in the minds of Microsoft management were somehow cured, and they released a worthy successor to Windows 7. All business, everything "modern" set to be optional. It would be traditionally licensed, it would work fine with a local account, it would make ALL cloud operations optional, it would push forward all the tenets of Windows 7 for serious business use and concentrate on increasing productivity on the desktop - which may include compatibility with Modern Apps, but certainly not be focused on them. Everything "Windows As A Service" is not. In short, it would continue to advance the state of the art in general purpose computing. Every remaining Windows 7 user on the planet would pay for such an upgrade! That's what, 500 million upgrades at a few hundred dollars a pop. You could start a whole new country with that kind of cabbage. Thing is, without having designed this into Windows 10, it'll never happen technically. They made a MUCH larger decision than anyone realized by focusing simplistically on mobile to the exclusion of all else. -Noel

I presume you haven't bought a brand new camera lately. What will you do when you get a new one that Adobe only directly supports in Photoshop CC? I mean, I have a 2007 dSLR myself which shoots as good 10 MP photos now as it did then, so for me it's not a necessity to get the latest, but... There ARE people taking fast, noise-free images in virtual darkness now. I can't do that. If I had to do that in order to be competitive as a photographer... The last Camera Raw release for Photoshop CS6 to add new camera support was over a year ago. Of course, they offer the DNG converter but that ups the pain level... So it's the age old value proposition: Cheap and painful or more expensive and more pleasant. There are some nice new features since Photoshop CS6, such as Select & Mask (Formerly Refine Edge) that can save a product photographer serious time if they need to mask a subject to put it on a custom background. Use Liquify on big images? Now it has GPU acceleration. Oil Paint is just cool, though possibly not for the obvious reasons you think of (it can be a very good anisotropic noise filter). Panoramic stitching has improved. Plus there are some bugs left in CS6 that have long since been fixed in the various CC releases. I admit, the differences are subtle and often in the details, but there are actually good reasons a photographer (or web designer or ...) could want Photoshop CC. IMO what Adobe ought to have done was to continue to offer both "perpetual" licenses AND subscriptions. Clearly it must be more lucrative to lock people into renting "Software as a Service", but hey, so price the "perpetual" license up then in order to make it more profitable too. Someone who feels strongly could still, for a price, get the software licensed as they wish. The way it's run now it feels like greed. That brings us back to discussing Windows. Not everyone wants a Windows version that changes continuously, is inextricably linked to the cloud, and we SURE AS HELL don't want to have to pay for it over and over! Yet we all know that's coming. Thing is, for some reason these software companies don't seem to think that paying top engineers to make complex products, and more importantly to run multiple product lines simultaneously, is any more necessary. It's like the jocks are running the show and need to simplify the company so that they can understand it. Thus we are faced with oversimplification of complex products into things we don't want at every turn. I suppose there must be some user out there somewhere who finds Windows 10 is delivering, out of the box, the exact features he/she always dreamed of having, and because it fits their life so well they'd happily pay by the month for it. I hope at least that person is happy as a clam while the rest of us suffer. For my American friends here, Happy Thanksgiving! For everyone else: Happy Thursday! -Noel

Except that I sell permanent, perpetual licenses. The world is a big place, and I make major new releases from time to time with features people find valuable in order to sell upgrades. Besides having a unique product, it's possible one would have to be too big to fail and have questionable morals in order to force people into subscriptions. -Noel

Uh, no. There is not really any reasonable substitute for Photoshop for professional imaging work. And in my case I sell my products into the Photoshop market, so I have even stronger ties to it. And of course, with Adobe offering only subscriptions there are certainly a lot of folks who would prefer permanently licensed software, not software that will stop working if they stop paying. That being said, Adobe's subscription prices aren't terrible; I always used to buy the upgrade for all new versions released, so I was paying pretty much the cost of a CC "Photographer's Bundle" subscription anyway. But I only bring up the latest Adobe software features to show that they're becoming more and more dependent on their "cloud". It's just another example of the direction things are heading. I just can't believe that the way the big companies are choosing to implement their "clouds" makes sense. I mean, right now we have the most powerful computers in history in front of all the users, yet Microsoft and the others are sending the low level data to the mothership to have it processed? Wouldn't it make more sense to do most or all the work on the users' systems? I mean, sure, things like "OK Google, what's Windows 10's market share right now" can't be answered locally, but it's not hard to imagine only forwarding queries, after all the interaction with the user has been worked out, rather than sending the digitized audio. The server farms may be really heroic in size and scope, but we're talking about data from thousands of millions of people! -Noel