JorgeA Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 ...and a suggestive report of a brand-new Windows 7 installation that slowed down after recent Updates and then speeded back up when the updates were uninstalled: I am not in a position to accuse MS of sabotage, but I can say this. I noticed my win 7 partition was getting a little lethargic in the past several weeks, especially boot times. I acquired this PC in Dec, so I just uninstalled all non-security and non-hotfix updates since Jan. What a difference. The improvement in performance for me was very noticeable. They wouldn't stoop that low, would they? --JorgeA 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 (edited) I believe they could (especially in the name of "security"), though I doubt they'd do so in a way that's easily detected. In the spirit of detecting such activity, I have carefully been documenting benchmark results going back years that show progressive slowdowns, with specific categories of slowdown tied to Windows Update installations. But it's impossible to put your finger on just how. From a usability perspective this particular workstation IS crazy fast, and WAS crazy fast, so it's hard to say there's been any degradation. But the numbers say there is. One of the things I'm noticing is that the results are no longer consistent as they were back a year+ ago. Consider these overall ongoing results... Things to note: An overall small reduction in performance after the (fresh, clean) installation of Win 8.1 in November 2013; and then a change recently around November 2014 where the results get a lot more variable: I know enough about the components of my system to eliminate failures or system problems as the cause for these issues. The system is as trim and well-tuned as it has been in the past, yet there are these odd variations - which stem mostly from file system speed variations. The file system was MUCH faster in Windows 7, hands-down. On the other hand, to augment the report at your quoted link, I have a system here running a fully-updated* Windows 7 x64 OS that boots up really, really fast (the swirly things don't even come together and boom, I'm on the desktop), and seems to run its benchmarks faster even than a Win 10 OS booted up on the same hardware. -Noel * Fully updated Win 7 system except for several updates that facilitate the upgrade to Win 10 (KB2952664, KB3021917, KB3035583, and KB3068708). Edited June 21, 2015 by NoelC 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 It's fantastic that you have such a systematic record of Windows performance going back years! A quick look at the stats for the first few scans, relative to the most recent scans, suggests about a 14 percent decrease in performance. As to what might be causing that, we can (and probably should ) speculate, but as to the degradation itself there seems to be little room for argument. One thing I'm not clear on: you mention a decrease in performance after the installation of Windows 8.1. Was that installation in addition to Windows 7, i.e. to create a dual-boot system? --JorgeA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 21, 2015 Share Posted June 21, 2015 The other day while surfing the Web on Win10 I ran into a site that told me my Silverlight was out of date: Then when I clicked on "Update" I got an error message: So much for Win10's vaunted automatic forced updating feature. I eventually managed to bring Silverlight up to date the old-fashioned, manual way, and the objecting page loaded. --JorgeA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 One thing I'm not clear on: you mention a decrease in performance after the installation of Windows 8.1. Was that installation in addition to Windows 7, i.e. to create a dual-boot system? --JorgeA No, that was a clean break - from a perfectly functioning Win 7 x64 Ultimate system to Win 8.1 Pro. A complete fresh install of the OS, from a Microsoft disc. FWIW, I added Media Center later, in August 2014, and saw no appreciable performance change at that time. The Windows file system is what seems to have suffered the most, and is most of the reason for the overall performance degradation. What's also interesting is that my system performance remained stable all the while I was running Win 7 (not all my measurements are shown, they go back even further. They were also quite stable for a year after installing Win 8.1. Varying performance measurements vs. relatively stable performance have been the norm since November 2014. Every low level measurement and test I've done of my SSD array says that it should be performing just as well as before November, but somehow the file system literally is slower. I figure this would be the ideal place (and way) to add some intentional degradations, so that Win 10 will actually seem faster by comparison. For what it's worth, I've hidden the Windows Updates that facilitate the Win 10 upgrade on this system as well, so they're not coming from the same place as reported at the link you posted above. By the way, here's an interesting test to make if you have both Win 7 and 8.x/10 systems to compare: 1. Open an Explorer window and navigate to the root folder of drive C:.2. Select all files in the Files pane.3. Right-click and choose Properties.4. Time how long it takes to count up all the files, then divide the files counted by the number of seconds it took. The above gives an indication of how much overhead you're seeing to navigate through the file system directory structure. With Win 7 I would see between 30,000 and 50,000 files per second counted up, depending whether the information is already cached or not. With Win 8.1 it's 8,000 to 12,000. Try it yourself. -Noel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 That news upthread about Insiders getting a free copy of Windows 10 has become as clear as mud. Read these three posts in the order given; to get the fullest effect of the sequence of events, make sure to delay reading the "updates" at the top of the second and third articles until you finish reading their original articles: Microsoft clears up confusion, reaffirms free Windows 10 for Insiders Windows Insiders get Windows 10 for free, Windows 7/8.1 not required *updated* Microsoft backtracks(?) on free Windows 10 for Insiders... again *updated: maybe not* If I read these right, the bottom line is that Insiders will NOT be offered anything at all that won't also be offered to the mass of users of Windows 7 or 8.1 -- namely, a "free" Win10 license if you turn in your Win7/8.1 license. IOW: "thanks for all your feedback, here's what it's worth to us: ." --JorgeA 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 By the way, here's an interesting test to make if you have both Win 7 and 8.x/10 systems to compare: 1. Open an Explorer window and navigate to the root folder of drive C:.2. Select all files in the Files pane.3. Right-click and choose Properties.4. Time how long it takes to count up all the files, then divide the files counted by the number of seconds it took. The above gives an indication of how much overhead you're seeing to navigate through the file system directory structure. With Win 7 I would see between 30,000 and 50,000 files per second counted up, depending whether the information is already cached or not. With Win 8.1 it's 8,000 to 12,000. Try it yourself. That sounds interesting, I will do that. My test laptop has both Win7 and Win10 on it, so the comparison will take place on the same hardware. --JorgeA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 If I read these right, the bottom line is that Insiders will NOT be offered anything at all that won't also be offered to the mass of users of Windows 7 or 8.1 -- namely, a "free" Win10 license if you turn in your Win7/8.1 license. IOW: "thanks for all your feedback, here's what it's worth to us: ." Well, personally I would consider that an "offer" when the good MS guys will propose to pay me some good amount of US$ (Euros would do also nicely) in order to download and install that crap.... jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 The other day while surfing the Web on Win10 I ran into a site that told me my Silverlight was out of date: 10130 Silverlight out of date.png Then when I clicked on "Update" I got an error message: 10130 Cant update Silverlight.png So much for Win10's vaunted automatic forced updating feature. I eventually managed to bring Silverlight up to date the old-fashioned, manual way, and the objecting page loaded. --JorgeA FYI, I find the Microsoft Silverlight Add-On that I have on my fully updated Win 10 build 10130 system is 5.1.20513.0 dated May 13, 2013 (and is 32 bit only), while the one on my fully updated Win 8.1 system is 5.1.40416.0 dated April 16, 2015 and is 32/64 bit. A casualty of the Win 10 Windows Update process changes? Very interesting. More research is warranted on what happened here. -Noel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Not sure what a "UAP wrapper" is. Does his answer make sense? When using Metro apps, are we merely getting a Web page with a severely limited feature set? UAP seems to be User Account Protection, a term from Vista which is now just UAC. You can make a Modern app (appx) using HTML5, but I do not think they are exclusively using just webpage technologies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jaclaz Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 You can make a Modern app (appx) using HTML5, but I do not think they are exclusively using just webpage technologies. Sure , that would be too simple (and smart ), surely they managed to put some Silverlight and some .Net and some super-sharp C or D in them. As said elsewhere I find it fun that the actual contents of - say - 90% of "apps" (including the iOS and the Andorid ones, not only the Windows ones) could be relatively easily reproduced in a "common" browser (using HTML5), yet they are "packaged" into an "app". jaclaz Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NoelC Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Do you think maybe someone somewhere may have said, "Dang, these computers are getting too darned fast; we need to create a design language that can be executed and is much less efficient. Something even slower and more resource hungry than scripting."? Ahh... Ahhhh... Ahhhhhhh... XAML!!!! (bless you) Heyyyy.... Or maybe "Let's throw some big fonts at the screen and see what sticks"? Perhaps "My grandma can't use Windows, it's too complicated." "No one ever failed by underestimating the intelligence of the public." -Noel Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 The other day while surfing the Web on Win10 I ran into a site that told me my Silverlight was out of date: 10130 Silverlight out of date.png Then when I clicked on "Update" I got an error message: 10130 Cant update Silverlight.png So much for Win10's vaunted automatic forced updating feature. I eventually managed to bring Silverlight up to date the old-fashioned, manual way, and the objecting page loaded. --JorgeA FYI, I find the Microsoft Silverlight Add-On that I have on my fully updated Win 10 build 10130 system is 5.1.20513.0 dated May 13, 2013 (and is 32 bit only), while the one on my fully updated Win 8.1 system is 5.1.40416.0 dated April 16, 2015 and is 32/64 bit. A casualty of the Win 10 Windows Update process changes? Very interesting. More research is warranted on what happened here. -Noel Maybe Microsoft is phasing out Silverlight, and therefore not paying much attention to it? Still, it doesn't speak well for that new "keep everybody up to date by force" model. You make people dependent on it and then don't deliver. --JorgeA Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JorgeA Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 Do you think maybe someone somewhere may have said, "Dang, these computers are getting too darned fast; we need to create a design language that can be executed and is much less efficient. Something even slower and more resource hungry than scripting."? Ahh... Ahhhh... Ahhhhhhh... XAML!!!! (bless you) Heyyyy.... Or maybe "Let's throw some big fonts at the screen and see what sticks"? Perhaps "My grandma can't use Windows, it's too complicated." "No one ever failed by underestimating the intelligence of the public." LOL The irony of that would be that one of the supposed reasons for killing Aero Glass was to speed things up on less-powerful devices. And then they'd turn around and cripple things by adopting XAML? --JorgeA 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tripredacus Posted June 22, 2015 Share Posted June 22, 2015 About the 404 pages... I've been getting that a lot recently. Mostly on the SBLicensing pages where it will go to 404 in all browsers I try, yet they can be accessed by other computers. One link last week was doing this, but today it is working fine. This is the link:http://www.microsoft.com/OEM/en/salesmarketing/Pages/media-replacement.aspx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts