jonah8208

I have gone through the Codec / Dependency / Driver hell period on Windows all the way through to Win10 today but I don't have any deep coding knowledge beyond a bit of VB for Excell and Access Databases. Last Linux I played with was Mint15 about a year ago. To be fair Mint installed everything I needed out of the box - Media worked with VLC, MP3s played, Wireless networking just worked - it was just fine. So why not use it - well because most of the stuff I do requires Windows or Apple and I just can't be arsed to put the time in to learn Mint and commit to it, I am not that enthusiastic. It has taken years of head banging frustration to get where I am now where nothing much causes me more than 10 minutes to reserach and fix in Apple or Windows, but I occasionally have a look at a new Linux distribution for what reason I have no idea, I am never realistically going to use Linux as anything but a curiosity. I think the PC world has wedged itself in a cul - de - sac of Windows or Apple where there is no incentive for coders to build a new OS although I agree it could be done it just needs funding, organisation and support from devs which is crucial. Now I am stuck using OSX because Windows 10 is too mickey mouse and Linux is just tedious.

So you got a VR machine setup there near identical to my rig which has an ASUS 980GTX card in it and a creative ZX soundcard. I am told that VR (Oculus Rift in my case when it arrives) will only run on Windows 10 which is why mine runs on 10 not 7. Do you have any plans to run VR on your XP box and if so what is the plan? The only reason I am running Win10 is because I want to play Elite Dangerous in VR.

OK thanks for that Noel I have just done all the above and checked it. I will check the updates when I do all the Win7 machines once a month. I was concerned Win10 would be unstable if I turned off updates, but the checking them / fixing it after installation has been very tedious with my test machine so I wanted to avoid the same problems on this VR box. It has been a real pain to set up without Win Updates automatically borking my drivers. Thank god its not a business production machine huh!

I need an update strategy for my games box I don't really know which way to go here. I have 1 Windows 10 box specifically built to run VR Games on Occulus Rift. I don't have the VR Headset yet but I should get mine soon as a funder of the hardware. Anyway I have set up the Win10 box and removed all the Metro Apps and disabled the phone home stuff as per Noel's posts pretty much. I have installed and got the my Elite Dangerous profile running in 2D for now and got all the Saitek controller drivers running fine, so apart from the VR headset I am good to go. This box does nothing else but Games, no email, no photo editing - nothing and has its own internet connection (shared with the TV and Sat Box) separate from the general PC connection on a different line so it does not have any AV or Firewall running. Therefore do I disable Windows Updates completely and just install hardware drivers manually as required or allow Windows updates to run and possibly (probably) cause havoc? ??

So I dunno - put everyone back on Windows 7 I think is the way I am going to go now. Jonah I came to the same conclusion long ago. Windows 10 for PC is not better than any other previous Windows OS for Pc owners but rather a serious jump back towards insecurity and disorder. Microsoft should reflect seriously about their role on Pc OS. If they don't do this as soon as possible they could arrive too late. Many people I know have already left aside Windows for ever. Yeah me too. I have a big games machine awaiting Occulus Rift which I built specifically for VR. Other than that I use OSX day to day. My clients that I have retained (I don't do PCs any more I do aviation stuff) are all on Windows 7 or 10 so I have to support it - well at least know more about it than they do 8-)

Seen this issue myself a few times now. If the user has a cloud enabled account not a local one it can be a pain, also getting into BIOS and getting the NT reset disk to mount can take a while and a lot of language - and even then after resetting the corrupted password and getting back into the user account myriads of problems present an increasing level of frustration until when trying to restore............. its easier to wipe the thing and install Windows clean ..... Again! I did find a registry fix a few months back for a corrupt Win10 system partition where you use cmd line on a restore disk to restore the registry to the last working version it had which cured a lot of start up issues, but it is hugely irritating to have to do all this faffing about merely to reset a password corruption. I think the answer for my stuff and clients is to keep a backup image of every one I do for easy reset, but then I have tried this and have a 50% success rate - it either works of windows cannot find a valid restore image. So I dunno - put everyone back on Windows 7 I think is the way I am going to go now. Jonah

Thanks for all the above insight into your tweaks NoelC, I do a very similar setup myself on Windows 7 and 8 - 10 takes a lot more tweaking so I will be very happy to beta test your script - I do about 6 PC builds a month usually. I was not advocating Win8 over anything else I was interested if you guys thought it was the least worst option currently and was a little surprised Win8.1 was even in the mix. Most of my customers are a generation or two older than me except for a few gamers I build boxes for (there are a few who don't care how or why it works they just want WOW on the latest CPU and Graphics NOW!). The older folk like the average small business like stability and they absolutley hate the metro / apps stuff so I guess I am thinking of them when I advocate using Windows 7 with Classic Start. its familiar and I don't spend half my life trying to run support on my moby from wherever I am. I want Windows 10 to deliver, I really do, I like it just fine and I think with fairly small tweaks to the set up we will all get what we want including Microsoft. First need is installation options - just 2 - Desktop Classic or Modern / tablet Version Then similar Modern or Classic options to handle windows updates Job done in my opinion. Oh yeah according to Paul Thurrot on Windows Weekly he reckons they will make Windows 10 free after July as it makes no sense to charge for it when the goal isn to get everybody on Windows 10 asap. I think he is right I always doubted it made sense to give it away then charge for it if users don't bite because 90% of people will get 10 when they upgrade the actual PC itself and the people who won't upgrade will not care if it is free or not - more than that they will pay to stay on legacy systems to avoid it for years to come. Jonah

So the impression I am getting here is that Windows 8.1 is the way to go until Microsoft sells LTSB to anybody who wants it, most importantly small businesses and to a lesser extent power users. Not because Windows 8.1 is any good just that its the least bad option currently and is controlable by users and not subject to the whim of the children at Microsoft who want to be Apple when in fact their bread and butter is providing a stable and secure (rolls eyes ironically) platform for SMBs - everything else being a bi-product of the core raison d'etre and optional to a greater or lesser extent. I did try the LTSB code and it is exactly what I wanted from Microsoft 20 years ago let alone now - no bells and whistles just a base OS I can add the parts I need to in order to run a business, or a games machine, or a basic browse and facebook platform or whatever. In fact the LTSB code is the best I have ever seen from Microsoft it is ideal. Not for everybody but for business and power users - and specialist users who generally use Linux boxes set to to do exactly & only what they want, (I am thinking of the aviation and scientific / research communities here). I am going to stick with Windows 7 and Windows 10 only on test boxes and VMs for the forseeable future, I hope Microsoft recognise as I am sure they will sooner or later that the massive segment of their user base I belong to require fine control of drivers, updates etc otherwise Microsoft going forward is finished as anything more than a toy and as we all know nature / politics / economics hate a vacumn. Jonah

PC Pro - Its a Magazine At the time I had just had a facelift so the Mrs said I look better with the lid on - aparrantley I still do. Oh yeah the Mrs is from another planet - (aren't they all) that's why she looks like a giant rabbit in the reflection on the photo. hth

I have read through a lot of this thread and found some interesting and useful stuff in here. I agree with NoelC Win10 should only be run on a test box or VM because it is a bit difficult to control privacy wise. Out in user land I have had maybe 10 requests to get rid of an unwanted update from Windows 7 to windows 10 and restore 7 (never same request from Win8 users - funny that!). Most seem to get on OK and unlike teccies are totally unbothered by privacy issues, ignorance is bliss, they don't care as long as it works. And I think this is the bottom line - normal users do not seem to care about how it works and how much personal info it uploads any more than they care about facebook privacy issues. I think I (like a lot of you guys) am over paranoid about Win10 but I can live with being overcautions cos I am not in a state of ignorant bliss. So perhaps there is a happy medium to be struck somewhere but Win10 is not it as is. Meanwhile I use Windows for gaming these days, most of my computing is done on Macs or old win7 machines, the only windows 10 I have is a big gaming box and a VM fast track upgrade I have had since the insider program launched. Overall I am quite impressed with Win10, once all the useless apps are removed and the start menu is fixed it is OK, it just takes days to set up and tbo I am tired of having to gut Windows machines just to get a useable system free of Mickey Mouse rubbish and crapware every single time I install, one or more often unbox an OEM machine and boot it up for a customer. Now the crapware comes as standard - terrific! Anyway some great tips on here, I am specially grateful for the "lose Cortana" thread. Cheers

Hi I'm Jonah I work in Aviation but have run a side-line in PC repair for 25 years now since Win3.1. Saw a link in PC Pro to remove Cortana from Win10 and followed it here. Like what I see. Do I use Windows myself as a everyday production machine - not a chance i-Mac & OSX me, I just have windows around so I can play games and stay on top of fixing / tweaking it. However I have just built a ludicrously big Gaming Win10 machine for Elite Dangerous + Oculus Rift so I am spending hours at the moment taming the massive spyware that is Windows 10.