NoelC

May I suggest getting an external USB drive and instituting nightly VSS-integrated system image backups (doable by scheduling a wbadmin command). 1 - You'll have your system backed up in case something bad happens. 2 - You'll automatically have volume snapshots made every night, any one of which you can choose to restore data or your entire system from. -Noel Edit: Stupid forum changes b ) (without space between) to b)

Aero Glass for Win 8.1 is working fine after the July Windows Updates. -Noel

Yes, because I'm not sure what security risks might be exposed by posting them publicly. I started with the SIDs then figured what the heck, might as well do everything. -Noel

Seems to me they're referring to the increase in XP's market share, much like saying "these are crazy times". -Noel

Yes, absolutely, since minutes after I downloaded the first Windows 8 developer preview back in 2011. -Noel

Thanks. The devil appears to be in the details with this one, and I need to track the various GUIDs down to try to see what's associated with what. Some additional clues are found at the ends of the command lines: -DeviceGroupId:WpdFsGroup -DeviceGroupId:WudfDefaultDevicePool It's possible that at least one of these is because I've got some ReFS formatted drives in my system. -Noel

Recognition that the past regime were so wrong doesn't necessarily make the next steps right. What if all the really smart people got so disgusted with their company in these past recent years that they bailed out and went to work for someone who appreciates doing things right? Who's that leave left in place now, then? Folks who couldn't do any better than the Windows we see in front of us? You can scram a reactor (shut it down) in short order. It might take time and a great deal of care to get critical mass to start it up again without a meltdown. -Noel

You seem to look for any excuse to slam Windows 8, jaclaz. Fine, but I don't believe Hyper-V is even enabled by default. I didn't have to specifically disable it. And the issue's already been answered. If you need rockin' performance from the latest features, which require more powerful hardware to run, you have to get more powerful hardware. It's really no different than if someone said, "I need 6 GB of address space, but I only have a 32 bit system". Horses for courses. People might want to develop for Windows Phone because it's a realm within which if you strike just the right chord you might be able to sell a bunch of copies of an App and (after Microsoft takes their 30%+ cut) you might make some money. It's too bad Microsoft requires you to enable a performance-robbing option to do so, but... There's always more powerful hardware available. I'm betting somewhere there's a computer that would render video nicely WITH Hyper-V enabled. It takes money to make money... -Noel

Since around the time of the installation of Win 8.1 Update 1 I've had a couple of new WUDFHost.exe processes that run all the time. Today I saw one of them accessing data on a backup volume, which I assume was some kind of maintenance activity - but I'm not sure. My question is this: How can I determine what these processes are doing, why they're here, and what they're associated with (i.e., what feature or device has caused them to be running). I don't suspect them of causing a specific problem - my system's running fine - but I want to know why they're running. Process Explorer shows them to have been started by these two command lines: "C:\Windows\System32\WUDFHost.exe" -HostGUID:{193a1820-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-be817523f6aa} -IoEventPortName:HostProcess-ae18c507-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-ce7a84b73fb2 -SystemEventPortName:HostProcess-76f2d2b0-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-25de41b0af65 -IoCancelEventPortName:HostProcess-52988628-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-54018fc05bec -NonStateChangingEventPortName:HostProcess-c981e37e-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-a8bd344c5791 -ServiceSID:S-1-5-80-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-ddddddddd -LifetimeId:8472fac1-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-680353bbbc7f -DeviceGroupId:WpdFsGroup "C:\Windows\System32\WUDFHost.exe" -HostGUID:{193a1820-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-be817523f6aa} -IoEventPortName:HostProcess-af2e6f5b-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-39a9cc13f6d4 -SystemEventPortName:HostProcess-45e89330-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-9e76811e37aa -IoCancelEventPortName:HostProcess-3007f65c-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-c6cdd5617944 -NonStateChangingEventPortName:HostProcess-efca4373-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-cfc06fd83dee -ServiceSID:S-1-5-80-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-dddddddddd-ddddddddd -LifetimeId:f4aa6ef0-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-d16f4eefddb2 -DeviceGroupId:WudfDefaultDevicePool As you can see, their function isn't obvious from what's showing. What tools can I used to delve further into what these are and why they're here? Thanks for any help or wisdom you can offer. -Noel

Well yeah, considering 90% of Windows users haven't yet touched Windows 8. The loss of the functionality the Start menu provided is real, and every single one of them is going to go "what the..." when they first see Microsoft firing a .454 Casull on its own foot. -Noel

If you don't like the term "bogus", call them "skewed" then. I do actually know what I'm talking about. -Noel

Those 4K writing speeds are simply bogus because they're cached by RAM in the system. You need to research how Intel RST works. -Noel

I don't know what you do with Hyper-V but have you considered VMware? I don't have any experience with Hyper-V, as I used VMware long before Hyper-V became available and it still does what I need. I have been keeping up with all their releases. The Hyper-V feature of Win 8.1 has to absent for VMware to work. Thus you get best performance on your host system, with full virtual machine capability as needed. Just a thought. -Noel

Andromeda, you sound like me; tweaking windows since time began. I guess you don't do anything that needs big RAM and 64 bit address space? Do you run your system 24/7, and if so how long does XP stay up and stable without needing a reboot? I'm not trying to find faults, I'm just genuinely curious. I applaud your choosing to be self-sufficient with XP. -Noel

I think he was joking, f23948 (hence the xD). -Noel

What I want to know is how the people driving development are allowed to continue on with a bogus approach after everyone can plainly see it's broken. The "Emperor's New Clothes" story was supposed to end when someone recognizes the fallacy. Those of us with 2+ brain cells saw it the first hour of the first developer preview. How, in the corporate world, is ANYONE allowed to go on for YEARS with such obviously boneheaded ideas? Do they have pictures of the boss with his mistress? And now they are rich and retired. -Noel

I wonder if a protocol error in Borg communications could result in Borg on Borg warfare... No doubt they assimilated at least SOME Microsoft technology... -Noel

I really can't take much credit. Lots of 3rd party developers (like our own Big Muscle here on the forum) are helping. Funny thing... Someone a few months after Win 8 first released (at a time when I was still staunchly staying on Win 7) said something about how when they used a Win 7 system it felt a bit "old" after using Win 8 for a while. At the time I was thinking "boy, they've really drunk the kool aid". Now I sound like that person. But I've had no MIcrosoft kool aid I assure you. I've just done a full-days technical work. I found and fixed (with the help of Visual Studio) some hard to repro bugs, implemented new code, kept up with my accounting, collaborated online, proofread some documents, did some research, listened to music, kept up with my customer support eMail, helped folks on forums... Looking back, not once did I have to think about my system not working. It just did what I needed and I focused on the work. I remember a time when that wasn't how Windows worked. -Noel

Thing is, I'm perceptive and smart enough to see past the physical differences. It's just barely possible I've been able to create a slightly better configuration based on Windows 8.1 than I was able to do on Windows 7 (on the same hardware). That would mean that Win 8.1, the way I've set it up, sucks less than Win 7, which sucked less than Win Vista, which sucked less than XP, which sucked less than Win 2000, which sucked less than NT4, which sucked less than NT3.5, which sucked less than Win 95, which sucked less than Win 3.1 for Workgroups, which sucked less than any prior version... It also may say that despite a whole realm of bad decisions, that some parts of Windows (and 3rd party applications) are still getting better, moving into the future. -Noel

You might find that the tree edges will be blurred if you align the stars, but you can really supersede the limitations of the camera gear (which are amazingly good already with today's models) by stacking. -Noel

Last night I got a call, and went over and helped a good friend resurrect a Windows 7 system that had corrupted his partition table and MBR. We used the Win Recovery Environment and a few diskpart command lines and got it working. I hadn't used the Win 7 WinRE in a while. It's definitely clunkier than the Win 8 one. And it turned out incapable of automatically fixing some very basic things (like the primary partition not being active) on its own. Once we got it working again, I hung around until we had tested the system a bit, made him his own System Recovery Disc, and started a System Image backup to a MyBook - so he'll be prepared for the NEXT time his disk fails. Hopefully all his data is a lot safer now. I mention this because my overall observation during my several hours experience, having been immersed in WIndows 8.1 on my own workstation myself lately, is that Windows 7 actually felt clunkier than Windows 8.1! I'm not just talking about look and feel, but actual usage. Now, I need to temper that with the observations that I'm comparing someone else's long-used desktop setup with my own highly optimized for me desktop setup, and my system is a good bit more powerful than his to start with. Maybe I'd feel the same way if I were comparing my highly tuned Windows 7 setup from last year instead of my current Win 8.1 setup, I don't know. But wow, I never thought I'd say that a Win 7 system seems clunky by comparison. This reaffirmed my decision to move forward into Windows 8.1. -Noel

My God, what a misrepresentation! That's simply awesome performance for a SATA storage device! Latency is 22 microseconds. Nearly one tenth what it was just a couple of years ago. You need to come to grips with the fact that the connection method (SATA III) is the limit here, not the drive. You cannot get latency below zero!!! There is a theoretical limit to the performance of a device connected via a SATA III link, because of things in the system, not the drive, and the modern drives are all getting close to the limit. From the article: Again, I emphasize that these drives are splitting the hairs of difference between best in show and the theoretical maximum throughput based on today's SYSTEM technology. -Noel

Nice job, Nicholas. I envy you for the dark skies you have. Astrophotography is more difficult than people realize. You're off to a great start! Your shots go plenty deep (i.e., they're brightly exposed), revealing not only the light of the milky way but also a large number of nebulae. Note the small pink glowing areas - that's ionized hydrogen gas. At some point you may want to look into devices that move your camera to track the stars, e.g., an "Astrotrac" or similar. Such devices allow you to take even longer exposures without showing trailing in the stars. Something else to ponder.. You can take multiple shots and "stack" them (e.g., with Photoshop or an astrophotography program), which tends to average out the noise and make things look even more crisp and clean. Keep up the good work! -Noel

As an example: How many folks outside of seasoned software professionals and computing enthusiasts would (could possibly) know they could disable a majority of the things in their Run keys and still not lose functionality they need? Windows doesn't inherently "slow down", but unmanaged users' configurations do! -Noel

I wish I could support that point of view, but I've dealt with enough cluttered, corrupted, hosed systems to think that someone not putting in a modicum of effort to keep their system tidy will end up with a mess in fairly short order. Note this whole "Refresh / Reset your PC" think Microsoft has come out with. I've even met folks who are convinced it's utterly impossible to run a Windows installation long-term and still others who say they reinstall every month on the general principle that it's going to be necessary anyway. And these are halfway tech-savvy people! No, I really believe the telemetry really shows a vast majority of people bungling around with their barely functional systems, doing a few things over and over that they've figured out. With a straight face Microsoft told me they eliminated the UI for Windows Backup because only 6% of folks even touched it, even with the reminders in Windows 7 that would pop up after a time. Rather than increase awareness and education, they decided that too few people used it, so why bother. Ridiculous! -Noel