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Server 2012 Updates on Windows 8


Jody Thornton

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OK - so we're all up to date (by my own set criteria anyway.)  So far, the system is still running awesome. So a few things:

I intentionally skipped the March 2018 Security-Only Update (KB4088880), since it houses mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown.  I was concerned that skipping it MIGHT introduce performance issues because later updates required it to be present.  So far, that has not happened.

Now remember that I started updating the system with the July 2019 update first, and worked backwards to installing the final update from December 2017.  Three updates were not installed:  December 2018 (KB4471326), February 2018 (KB4074589) and January 2018 (KB4056899) all reported that they were not required for this system, and I'm guessing that these three updates were superseded by later ones.

I shall keep you all posted, and I'm hopeful that I can just continue updating from here on in.

 

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I DON"T THINK it's related, but just keeping my wits about me ....lol

I downloaded and unzipped the x64 version of Matty Tobin's InterLink Mail and News on my system.  The x64 version gave an error saying:

The application was unable to start correctly(0xc0000142).  Click OK to close the application.

Hmmmmm..... the x86 version runs.  Now Matt says on his site that if your x64 processor lacks the AVX instruction set, that you'd get a similar error sating: The application was unable to start correctly (0xc000001d).  Maybe it's the same thing, but I was concerned that one of the Windows Updates I applied might have been the culprit.  Anyway, just putting it out there. If anyone thinks to chime in with anything relevant, by all means do so.

:)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/17/2019 at 8:34 AM, Jody Thornton said:

OK - so we're all up to date (by my own set criteria anyway.)  So far, the system is still running awesome. So a few things:

I intentionally skipped the March 2018 Security-Only Update (KB4088880), since it houses mitigations for Spectre and Meltdown.  I was concerned that skipping it MIGHT introduce performance issues because later updates required it to be present.  So far, that has not happened.

Now remember that I started updating the system with the July 2019 update first, and worked backwards to installing the final update from December 2017.  Three updates were not installed:  December 2018 (KB4471326), February 2018 (KB4074589) and January 2018 (KB4056899) all reported that they were not required for this system, and I'm guessing that these three updates were superseded by later ones.

I shall keep you all posted, and I'm hopeful that I can just continue updating from here on in.

 

well I have not experienced any "slowdowns" with KB4088880 (and/or any recent rollup update like the July 2019 version that includes spectre/meltdown fixes).  also made sure I have both KB2818604 and KB3064209 AMD & Intel microcode updates for 8.0 installed on there.

I'm now using Win8.0 on a backup hard drive on a custom built PC with an AMD Phenom II X4 925 cpu w/ 4gb of RAM.

Edited by erpdude8
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13 hours ago, erpdude8 said:

I'm now using Win8.0 on a backup hard drive on a custom built PC with an AMD Phenom II X4 925 cpu w/ 4gb of RAM.

I don't think the CPU patches for Spectre/Meltdown apply to AMD CPUs. That's probably why you aren't experiencing "slowdowns".

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Spectre can be exploited on AMD CPUs. Plus, updated binaries distributed with MS updates in general since these vulnerabilities became known are probably re-compiled with new compiler flag /Qspectre. MS guys said they did not notice any performance regressions of concern when building whole Windows with this flag enabled. But you know, they have powerful machines.

Maybe mitigating Meltdown alone is more expensive? I haven't dug deep into the whole thing.

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@Jody Thornton  @greenhillmaniac  @UCyborg  & others like @dencorso

can you guys check if the KB4462930 flash update for Win8.0 is superseded/replaced by newer flash updates like a recent one such as KB4503308?

I'm kinda arguing/debating about this with abbodi in another forum as he seems to have some doubts about it

Edited by erpdude8
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On 8/1/2019 at 9:07 PM, erpdude8 said:

can you guys check if the KB4462930 flash update for Win8.0 is superseded/replaced by newer flash updates like a recent one such as KB4503308?

I'm kinda arguing/debating about this with abbodi in another forum as he seems to have some doubts about it

From what I understood, the update is superseded but they forgot to mark it as such in WU.

In fact, if you go to the KB pages for both and check out the file information you can see that both of them update the same components.

https://support.microsoft.com/en.us/help/4503308

https://support.microsoft.com/en.us/help/4462930

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On the subject of performance, it's funny... 

At this point I have two Dell Precision workstations I switch back and forth between to do development work:

  • My personal workstation, a circa 2012 Precision T5500 dual Xeon system with 12 total cores, 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM, an SSD array capable of 1.6 GB/second throughput, and a modest 3 year old nVidia Quadro P2000 graphics card.  This one runs Win 8.1, updated to December 2017 (i.e., pre-Spectre/Meltdown hooey).
     
  • My office workstation, a new circa 2019 Precision T7820 single Xeon system with 6 cores, 2666 MHz DDR3 RAM, an M.2 flash array capable of 4 GB/second throughput, and a rompin' stompin' new nVidia Quadro RTX 5000 graphics card.  This system runs Win 10 v1809, fully updated.

Both systems are tweaked and trimmed as best I can to do engineering work - within the constraints of what each OS will stand for maximum leanness and performance.  Windows 8.1 stands up to FAR MORE such tweaking than Windows 10.  For example, when quiet my Win 8.1 setup has about 42 processes running to support an empty desktop.  My Win 10 setup has to rock 100 processes just to sit there idle (and that's down from some 130+ out of the box)!  Friggin' bloatware.

Since most software is still single-threaded and dependent on I/O speed and RAM speed, you'd think the MUCH newer system, even with fewer cores, should really run rings around the 6 year older system, right?  It is not so

Using them interactively, frankly - and surprisingly - the two systems actually feel about the same to use.  While neither is a slouch, for the things that benefit from more cores the older system even feels smoother and more responsive.  It doesn't "load up" as easily nor feel as sluggish when I fill up the Task Bar with work.

Conclusion:  Windows 10 and all this Windows redesign by patching BS done in the name of "Security" has soaked up and erased 6 years of computer performance advancement.

Seriously.

-Noel

Edited by NoelC
typo
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4 hours ago, NoelC said:

My Win 10 setup has to rock 100 processes just to sit there idle (and that's down from some 130+ out of the box)!

You can tweak that so that it behaves more like previous versions of Windows. MS decided to split each service running into a dedicated svchost. With a simple registry edit that increases the RAM threshold for this splitting to occur (I like to set the limit to 512GB :P) you can get back your low process count. Just follow this guide.

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