Windows 10

So they jumped to Windows 10 and are going to be doing a continual update of it instead of a completely new OS every 2 years?

Sounds like what Apple did 10 years ago...

I'm really hoping it turns out to be a standalone OS. The incremental update of 8 to 8.1 has caused massive stability problems; most notable is the SSD snafu;

The Windows Experience tool not only spits out a rating, but sets many registry values to allow for proper maximization of SSD usage, and allows you to defragment your SSD. The Windows Experience tool (WET) was removed in 8.1 on systems that originally had windows 8, and cannot be added. It is present on standalone installs of 8.1 though. The result is that if your pc came with 8 and you upgrade to 8.1 (as I did), you're stuck for the life of the computer getting registry errors, mediocre SSD timings, and an inability to fully defragment your drive. You can't even go in and manually correct the errors because it is hard coded into windows 8.1 upgrade OS to set these values on startup. The W.E.T. overrides the on-startup values and disables the startup writing subroutine on future startups.

This is just one of the many issues I've had with win 8.1.

Another notable one is that many bios chipsets had their certificates revoked by microsoft in a windows update about three months after 8.1 was released. Anyone who has a mobo with one of these chipsets would find the computer would not boot the OS after install of the update. The workaround is to load up from a recovery disk and either remove the update or disable secureboot - microsoft's new bootloader agent. I was one of the afflicted, and I have a high end name brand mobo, and as a result had to disable secureboot; greatly slowing my boot speeds.

I built my PC desktop about a year ago and put Windows 7 on it. JATE windows 8 but I will give 10 a chance when it is released.

USAbro said:

So that means I suppose you'd have several OS's installed on your HD or SSD? Or would you run it off of a flash drive?

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I had almost every distro of linux on seperate flash drives just to see which one i liked. Its funny there are even distros of linux that you run before windows startup to remove passwords etc. Shows the security level difference.

Sigurthr said:

I'm really hoping it turns out to be a standalone OS. The incremental update of 8 to 8.1 has caused massive stability problems; most notable is the SSD snafu;

The Windows Experience tool not only spits out a rating, but sets many registry values to allow for proper maximization of SSD usage, and allows you to defragment your SSD. The Windows Experience tool (WET) was removed in 8.1 on systems that originally had windows 8, and cannot be added. It is present on standalone installs of 8.1 though. The result is that if your pc came with 8 and you upgrade to 8.1 (as I did), you're stuck for the life of the computer getting registry errors, mediocre SSD timings, and an inability to fully defragment your drive. You can't even go in and manually correct the errors because it is hard coded into windows 8.1 upgrade OS to set these values on startup. The W.E.T. overrides the on-startup values and disables the startup writing subroutine on future startups.

This is just one of the many issues I've had with win 8.1.

Another notable one is that many bios chipsets had their certificates revoked by microsoft in a windows update about three months after 8.1 was released. Anyone who has a mobo with one of these chipsets would find the computer would not boot the OS after install of the update. The workaround is to load up from a recovery disk and either remove the update or disable secureboot - microsoft's new bootloader agent. I was one of the afflicted, and I have a high end name brand mobo, and as a result had to disable secureboot; greatly slowing my boot speeds.

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I know that this thread is ancient, but since this isn't a particularly busy section I don't feel bad about bumping it.

There's one issue in particular about your post I have to address - you do not need to defragment an SSD (ever) and in fact should NOT be doing so in the first place. Defragmenting was designed for mechanical hard drives and is neither use nor ornament on SSDs as any part of the drive can be accessed instantaneously. In fact, needlessly shifting data around an SSD (which is exactly what happens when you defragment) is bad for it.

I can't speak for the rest of the Windows 8.1 related problems - I waited a while before making the jump to it. In fact I have been lucky with my system, which had Windows 7 and was then upgraded to 8, and then 8.1 - never with a fresh install - and has been largely problem free. The only notable point being that I usually have Windows updates turned off.

I wouldn't worry about the bump honestly, it's relevant content addition in any case.

You're right about SSDs and defragging, but that doesn't mean the OS doesn't continually yell at you for not defragging, or rather, not scheduling in regular defragging. That is of course inconsequential compared to the SSD optimization problem with WET being broken.

Win8.1 as a whole I've enjoyed the feature set (predominantly the ease of access of certain core functions, settings, and increased performance tracking), but the bugs just keep compounding.

I'm now regularly having Windows Store registry corruptions that prevent any live tiles from updating, and prevent most metro apps from launching at all (including the irreplaceable Mail app). Running the windows store diagnostic diacab fixes the corruptions temporarily, but there is no cure. You can't even run WSreset.exe (the windows store reset tool) when the corruptions are in place as that crashes out too.

I managed to correct the problem I had with certain program's files being overwritten/erased with every boot up, so preferences and changes are now being retained, but it took months of fiddling, and I'm not even sure what exactly fixed it.

Periodically there is still the issue of an explorer.exe hang upon bootup. It is caused by windows trying to access the internet (usually for live tiles or a 3rd party app) while initializing the apps/programs on boot, and a timeout exception being thrown because the NIC hasn't fully booted/connected yet. The system catches this explorer.exe hang when the user attempts to reach the Start screen, it then closes and restarts explorer.exe. Until the hang is caught and explorer is restarted the entire desktop subsystem is hanging. Any apps or programs which were starting up while the initial hang happened have their processes terminated and are NOT restarted. The end result is that the user not only has to initiate the restabilization by accessing the start screen, but then either has to manually open all of the stopped startup items that should have started but didn't, or reboot the entire machine and hope for a better timing scheme with the boot process. I usually opt for the reboot because my UPS controller software doesn't like to actually connect when you have to start the program manually. There have been times where it takes ten reboots in a row to get a non-failure boot.

Windows 10 preview is out and I'm really hoping it turns to be a good stable OS. I'm staying away from it until all the driver makers have had time to release the applicable drivers. I will most likely both get the standalone install and the live-upgrade, so that if the live-upgrade produces similar errors to the 8-to-8.1 upgrade, I can lop off the head and have a truly clean install. Once having to live with this nightmare is enough.

Looking forward to 10, looks like windows 8 without all the stuff I hate about windows 8.

I've generally had luck skipping every other version of consumer-grade Windows, even if the "version" definition is kind of blurred. It's kind of like taking the "Tock" processor released by Intel. Skip Win95 -> Use Win95 OSR2 -> Skip Win98 -> Use Win98se -> Skip Win ME -> Use Windows XP -> Skip Windows Vista -> Use Win 7 -> Skip Win 8 -> Maaaaybe use Win 10?

To me, Windows 8 and 8.1 just felt so unnecessary. Win 7 wasn't even out that long compared to Win XP, and is still pretty nice. That tile thing was also too much. I'm not even sure what Win 8.x and 10 bring to the table. At least with 7 it had the hardware accelerated desktop of Vista without all the bugs.

All I wan't is for Windows 10 to be solid like XP. Minimal bugs/glitches, and ones that do crop up are quickly and effectively dealt with.

Thats why I think XP lasted so long. It was well crafted, and after a few years it was rock solid and had little to no problems. The only real reason we needed a new OS was to better support emerging technologies like 64-Bit (yes there was 64-Bit XP, but theres no support for it), multi-core CPU's and Hyper-threading. (Yes XP supported them, but wasn't truly optimized for them.

IMO no version of Windows has been as solid and just plain good since XP. It feels like MS tries to cram too many new "features" into each new OS instead of focusing on the core functionality.

Part of the problem with post-windows-7 developments is that MS is desperately trying to carve out a new niche for its OSes because they feel that the traditional role won't be around much longer.

Their argument is this; tablet and phone markets/usages are skyrocketing while desktop/laptops are slowly receding. They're convinced that in the future the average (read: majority) "computer" user won't have any use for a traditional desktop or laptop (remember that MS has stake in the console gaming industry, so they are completely fine with the (false) idea that PC gaming has no solid future, plus they make no money off of PC gaming - that's NVidia and ATI's cash cow) because what they predict is that people will pretty much entirely be using "computers" for accessing social media and as content delivery devices (think kindle/netflix/hulu/etc).

This is a parallelism to in the 50s and 60s when computers were entirely the realm of mainframes for industry and military. No one predicted they would be a household staple. Well, now everyone is predicting that the future of the desktop and laptop is once again solely relegated to industry and out of the personal computer user's hands.

This is why MS decided to really push the "metro ui" and "modern app" format since Win8. This is why Win10 will essentially be a hot-swappable dual-OS of tablet and desktop modes bundled together. They're trying to transition users away from the traditional desktop and to a tablet OS format, because that's where the money is.

Btw, someone asked/mentioned what Win8/8.1 brought to the table; pretty much it is just optimizations for very large amounts of ram and programs that use such, multi-tasking performance optimizations, and SSD timing optimizations. They also brought some diagnostic performance data sets to the surface where it is more easily accessed by the user (for example the new task manager is freaking fantastic).

The only reason I want Win10 is because my win8.1 is so plagued with bugs and instabilities. I'd go back to windows 7 but support for it is going to end (if it hasn't already, I think I saw a notice that official support has ended already) and it has a hard time working with >16GB of ram. Win10 should be fully capable of working with up to 64GB of ram from what I hear, leaving plenty of headroom.

Ugh, Tablets aren't THE future. They are part of it to be sure, but Tablets aren't going to replace a high end PC.

Of course MS wants PC gaming to go away (It won't. Steam is the overlord now) how else would they convince an otherwise sane human being to use an Xbox One as their primary gaming machine (Fun fact, my MacBook plays games better than an Xbox One).

Windows 10 having the Metro+Traditional UI is how 8 should have been. If your on a tablet, great, heres a tablet optimized UI (and I admit Metro is waaay better on a tablet than the regular UI is) but for us desktop and non-touch laptop users, its not well optimized for mouse+keyboard.

Anyways, I hope at least if desktops fade away in the mainstream market that at least people such as myself will still be able to build our own machines. I really don't want to run 3D modeling software off a itty bitty ARM cpu.

Blarg King said:

Anyways, I hope at least if desktops fade away in the mainstream market that at least people such as myself will still be able to build our own machines. I really don't want to run 3D modeling software off a itty bitty ARM cpu.

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Totally agree with all your prior points btw. I can't help but think Gates stepping away from active duty has allowed this change in direction to surface and take hold.

re:above quote;
I don't think we really have to worry. As much as MS wants and will push for the desktop market to close, it isn't going to happen. There are innumerable companies with strong foundations which rely on the Personal Computer, some stand out names are of course NVidia, ATI, Kingston, Corsair, Gigabyte, Thermaltake, etc etc etc. There will always be a demand for build-it-yourself PCs, even if the off-the-shelf version falls out of favor and isn't a major market share (though I think Dell will keep it alive, not that dells are worth their weight in circuit boards, but I digress).

You can look at NVidia as an example of what MS should be doing now; diversifying their portfolio instead of pidgeon-holding their customers in the direction they want the market to take. NV is still powering their aims at powerful desktop GPUs full force, while simultaneously developing powerful mobile architectures and solutions.

No one hated Windows 7, but there was tremendous outcry about both 8 and 8.1. That alone should have told them they're alienating their customer base and they need to rethink their path.

Besides even IF MS did go bananas and cease development for desktops one day, it would leave a void that is ripe for profit that would attract new players to fill and thrive in. I've always thought Linux really had something, and I've barely used it at all (RedHat back in early 2000, and Ubuntu as a HDD rescue/live-boot service currently). If Linux got its arse in gear so that current windows applications could run natively AND so that the gaming market could painlessly/natively run on Linux I think there'd be a solid migration of Windows ex-pats, even without a MS seppuku.

I really want to like Linux, but I absolutely despise how so many things you do on it are through command line. Call me lazy if you want, but I love being able to just download a program, and then click the icon to install it. No downloading packages and resources and refreshing libraries and digging through directories just to install a bit of software.

If they made Linux as easy to operate as Windows or Mac OS (It would probably run more like a Mac since they're both UNIX based) then I don't see why it couldn't fill the void, so long as 3rd parties are willing to support it.

And more on tablets, while Nvidia does have its own tablet chips now, you think they are going to give up selling 1200$ Titans or 3000$+ Titan Zs to enthusiasts? Or selling their 6000$ Quadros to studios? Or Tesla cards to the military to build super computers? Nah. Ain't happening.

Totally agreed.

Ubuntu seems to have a fairly decent GUI for most things, though I haven't actually used it for installing anything since I just use it as a rescue live-boot OS (it seriously has one of the best HDD tools you can buy, and it's free!). Anyway having to use CLI for so much is what keeps me away from doing a dual-boot system.

Sigurthr said:

Their argument is this; tablet and phone markets/usages are skyrocketing while desktop/laptops are slowly receding. They're convinced that in the future the average (read: majority) "computer" user won't have any use for a traditional desktop or laptop (remember that MS has stake in the console gaming industry, so they are completely fine with the (false) idea that PC gaming has no solid future, plus they make no money off of PC gaming - that's NVidia and ATI's cash cow) because what they predict is that people will pretty much entirely be using "computers" for accessing social media and as content delivery devices (think kindle/netflix/hulu/etc).

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I just wish Microsoft wouldn't forget that tablets, etc. have really taken off mostly because they're just a new device people buy for mostly entertainment purposes. The PC will not die, it'll only evolve, usually by becoming smaller and more useful.

The problem for Microsoft, and for desktops/laptops manufacturers in general, is that computers and their OSes are so good now that there are no compelling reasons to upgrade. It used to be that I'd upgrade every two (2) or so years, but after having built an i7-920 machine, I've felt no compelling reason to upgrade the hardware except to buy more SSDs and a refresher video card every few years or so. The Core i5 and i7 line are now "8-year-build" type products, and that just kills PC sales. Even my 7-year-old laptop is still very workable with a Core 2 Duo.

As for Microsoft, what are they going to sell that people want? Metro is only different, not necessarily must-have. After Windows 7 finally came out with hardware acceleration on the desktop, there really wasn't anything more they could really offer besides maybe an "app" subsystem. Ironically, they actually had something like that with their "gadgets" but never capitalized on it.

I just wish Microsoft would get back to basics and not try to make their OS do everything. A desktop/laptop really can't really sell the whole real-time "connected" experience with Metro because people don't want to be tied to their desktops. At the same time, people can't do "real work" on their phones or tablets. Why not just ensure that people can do both things really well, and have close integration between the two? It's like Apple's close integration between their computers and devices without feeling the need to merge the two into a big annoying conglomeration.

The only reason I want Win10 is because my win8.1 is so plagued with bugs and instabilities. I'd go back to windows 7 but support for it is going to end (if it hasn't already, I think I saw a notice that official support has ended already) and it has a hard time working with >16GB of ram. Win10 should be fully capable of working with up to 64GB of ram from what I hear, leaving plenty of headroom.

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Really? I've never had any problems with Windows 7 properly using RAM, and I've had 24GB on this machine for ages. WinXP didn't do very well, even the 64-bit version, and some apps like Firefox are still 32-bit, but otherwise, I've been able to make use of as much as 18GB dedicated to single programs without a hiccup. No swap disk is just awesome too.

Blarg King said:

I really want to like Linux, but I absolutely despise how so many things you do on it are through command line. Call me lazy if you want, but I love being able to just download a program, and then click the icon to install it. No downloading packages and resources and refreshing libraries and digging through directories just to install a bit of software.

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I dunno, I think of Linux's OSes as simply wrappers around the shells. The GUIs are so poorly integrated, and there are so many different GUIs that do different things in different ways, that it's hard for me to rely on the GUIs to do things right. Then again, I don't use Linux for a desktop OS all that much except for development.

What I do miss is a more robust way of installing and uninstalling things that aren't in repositories. In Windows I can grab an update from a website and install it, or uninstall it, and it won't get "lost" in the bowels of my file system. In Linux, if something isn't already in the repository, to "install" the new version I have to rely on the installation scripts (like those in Makefiles) to install or uninstall stuff into the system, potentially affecting things in ways I don't want. So every time I install something like that I worry that now my system has been tainted.

Bionic-Badger said:

Really? I've never had any problems with Windows 7 properly using RAM, and I've had 24GB on this machine for ages. WinXP didn't do very well, even the 64-bit version, and some apps like Firefox are still 32-bit, but otherwise, I've been able to make use of as much as 18GB dedicated to single programs without a hiccup.

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If you have Windows 7 Pro you can use more than 16GB but the home basic and home premium ones aren't supposed to accept more than 16GB.

One of the reasons I wen't with 8 instead of 7 for my workstation is so I can hassle-free upgrade my system to 32GB later on.

But yeah. Hardware is so good now and advancements have slowed to a point where high end components will be top performers for at least 5 years, depending on the parts.

When is the average consumer going to need an 8 core CPU like my workstation? Probably never, but they'll eventually sell them anyways because it sounds impressive. The 3 year old GPU on my old laptop still has no trouble playing modern games at high settings.

I think a good example is my mother's computer. She just has a little Mac Mini with a dual core i5 and 4GB of RAM and it doesn't have a problem doing any daily use tasks.

I always roll my eyes when I see someone build a gaming PC with a 1000$ 8 core CPU. No game uses that many cores. You'll get the same performance off a 400$ i7. The only people who truly need and fully utilize these 8 core CPUs are people who create video/3D content.