weedeewee wrote on 2021-06-17, 20:03:

O&O Shutup, tried you have?
though that wasn't enough the last time I used it because... Windows 10 has the 'Windows Update Medic' service, which re-enables some disabled update settings...

Yes. I've given up on all the third party tools, and just tell people to only use Win10 Pro that has a built-in official way for disabling auto-updates.

Oh my god...

Microsoft merged KDE with Aqua and Android..
How worse could it get ?

matze79 wrote on 2021-06-17, 20:06:

Oh my god...

Microsoft merged KDE with Aqua and Android..
How worse could it get ?

Don't worry it probably will.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:05:

Windows itself isn't really bloated. If there is non-essential stuff that you don't want loading on boot, it is easy enough to m […]
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robertmo wrote on 2021-06-17, 18:12:

we just need to use some nice debloating software

Windows itself isn't really bloated. If there is non-essential stuff that you don't want loading on boot, it is easy enough to manually disable said stuff.

I used to do this on XP and probably Vista but it is not really needed anymore IMHO.

The real "bloat" comes from the junk that OEMs install on their systems. No.. I don't want your crappy Norton or whatever other crappy crapware you are trying to pedal.

Does that still happen? When wifey got her new HP laptop about a year or so ago I was very very surprised how free it was of that stuff. It was just loaded with WPS office(which I can use on my linux laptop as well) and a few other smaller applications.

Nortons was offered as an a extra. Of course see took her husbands advise and vehemently refused the offer.

When she is using it she often swears at it because some weird thing happened in the ui. I've offered to put Linux on it but just get that evil ye to eye stare over her glasses 😉

If you want Windows not to break, then just use a VM 😉

I would say that it is common sense, perhaps not for everyone, that software involving kernel-mode or user-mode drivers are going to be delicate and risk of Operating System internal changes. VMware or Intel HAXM could break, too, but it is less likely for Hyper-V or anything that use WHPX. Sadly, Microsoft did break WHPX once and only on CPUs with AMD-V. It was truly unacceptable for Microsoft to have such test escape. They fixed it and provided feature update after several months. They had it on Insider Previews, but I refused and complained in Microsoft official forum. One could have DOSBox fully integrate Munt MT32, that way it would be more resistant to OS internal changes. Oh yeah, if one really had to have user-mode or kernel-mode drivers, then make sure they are signed. That's one of the ways for software quality assurance. If one had to use tons of software that require interaction with user-mode &/or kernel-mode drivers, then one would better make sure their supports still exist whether they were paid or grabbed from open-source. Some companies will charge for upgrade or require subscription plans, fairly common nowadays.

Creative's own line of SoundBlaster products for PCI did not have a good history in their drivers department. That was before they started acquiring several companies such as ESS. I am not sure if they had improved over time, since I don't pay for sound cards these days. Intel chipsets robust concurrency designs saved them. The entire Intel Compatibility Validation Engineering knew about it. If one just used HD Audio or USB audio, then I guess it would be less troubles with keeping OS updated. Or, maybe the vendors' drivers were replaced by Windows Update versions at reduced features.

If one elects to halt OS updates, then one would also be prepared to face risks & troubles out of such decision on modern days' computing. If one practices "good" habits of internet surfing, then I would say "...maybe it's OK...".

robertmo wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:59:

let's just mention as an example ms office with only word installed. You will get updates of all the other uninstalled apps. or phone part of the system of the win8.1

And why is that a problem? The office applications are pretty interwoven so it surprises me not that the updates for the whole suite get installed. It also probably cuts down on a ton of support issues as well as time since MS doesn't need to check a literal metric ton of different configurations when releasing the Office updates.

Why are you still using Windows 8.1? 10 is way better.

Edit: If MS had to test all the different possible install variations, it would either be 2^7 (128) or 2^8 (256) different configurations instead of just 1 configuration when it comes to the standard Office applications.

How would that make any business sense whatsoever? Not like people would be willing to pay 128 or 256 times as much for Office just so they could have the updates completely separated by application.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-17, 20:39:

robertmo wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:59:

let's just mention as an example ms office with only word installed. You will get updates of all the other uninstalled apps. or phone part of the system of the win8.1

And why is that a problem? The office applications are pretty interwoven so it surprises me not that the updates for the whole suite get installed. It also probably cuts down on a ton of support issues as well as time since MS doesn't need to check a literal metric ton of different configurations when releasing the Office updates.

Why are you still using Windows 8.1? 10 is way better.

What is better is just a matter of option. If the OS is still receiving regular why not keep using it?

robermo may have customized Win 8.1 to a point were he is quite happy still to use it and not upgrade to Windows 10 then get it to a point were he is happy with the set up. This could take a few weeks of tweaking .

No OS is perfect for an individual out the box. And that goes for any computer operating system.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 20:47:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-17, 20:39:

robertmo wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:59:

let's just mention as an example ms office with only word installed. You will get updates of all the other uninstalled apps. or phone part of the system of the win8.1

And why is that a problem? The office applications are pretty interwoven so it surprises me not that the updates for the whole suite get installed. It also probably cuts down on a ton of support issues as well as time since MS doesn't need to check a literal metric ton of different configurations when releasing the Office updates.

Why are you still using Windows 8.1? 10 is way better.

What is better is just a matter of option. If the OS is still receiving regular why not keep using it?

robermo may have customized Win 8.1 to a point were he is quite happy still to use it and not upgrade to Windows 10.

And that is fine. But as a longtime IT professional, I rather like having a supported OS that will be getting security updates.

If you want to see what is possible in regards to an unpatched OS, go ahead and take an clean install of XP and hook it up directly to the internet with your router's firewall disabled. Then give it about 15 minutes and that computer will be completely unusable due to it having so much malware on it without you even having done anything but booting it up and logging on and letting it sit there.

I actually did this very test out of curiosity a few years ago just to see what would happen.

I don't recommend having any other systems hooked up at the same time as doing this test.

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

Falcosoft wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:29:

I'm really upset because of undocumented but intentional modifications from updates that break software/hardware. Since you wanted some references here are some that heavily affected me and the VOGONS community:

1. Breaking changes in the method how user mode drivers should be installed: Affected all the community written software synths such as Munt, Coolsoft VMS, OPL3 Windows driver etc.

2. Breaking changes in driver requirements that killed all Audigy/Audigy2/Audigy4 cards on Win 10:

Another thing I've noticed Windows 10 breaking is the "Compatibility mode", compared to 7 and XP most of the shims don't seem to work properly (alot of shims are missing entirely if you look in the Compatibility Administrator tool) and the fact Windows 10 (since 8?) can't be taken out of compositing mode, it's mandatory. So it's a huge hack in of itself to even try to use the compat option to disable compositing when running something.

Most of the old stuff I tried playing on Windows 10 would outright crash UNLESS I turn off all compatibility shims...???

And then there's the horrible framerate issues people have in some older games unless you specifically enable this one shim that's only shown in Compatibility Administrator. Or resort to using wrappers like DxWnd or dgvoodoo2.

It really does not make a whole lot of point these days by comparing the OS memory footprint and make up which one is more or less "bloat". We have been out of DOS eras for a long, long time and DOS is about to be really killed. If the OS will show its memory in used, then it is just stats. Linux could be more precise in categories break-down than Windows but those were just numbers. IMHO, reclaimable memory, system/filesystem cache, write-buffers etc. should not be considered as OS footprint, but sometimes it could be really hard to isolate them.

What I really care is the OS snappiness. If I had 32GB memory and the OS would use all of them and make the system really, really snappy out-of-box, then I would love it. It has to be "out-of-box" experience rather than explicit tweaking. Between Windows and Linux, I think Linux had done a better job in this department regardless of their memory footprints. There has been so much research in modern OS memory management to achieve this, OOM Killer, memory pressure, virtual memory compression etc. What really annoying is poorly written software that locked huge chunk of memory, a mechanism that makes memory unreclaimable, that defeats the OS memory load balancing mechanism. Sometimes, this could be the easy solution to address mysterious bugs that were hard to reproduce consistently coupled with poor management decisions out of schedule deadlines.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

Heh.. apparently you haven't worked with some of the people I have had to work with and their systems I have had to work on.

There are also people running way outdated routers which have security holes.

If everybody was smart enough to not run on an admin account then a lot of issues would maybe go away.

But people can't be bothered to have to input admin creds whenever they want to do admin related stuff. Plus even if they did, they would still end up allowing 99% of the stuff they shouldn't.

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:19:

Heh.. apparently you haven't worked with some of the people I have had to work with and their systems I have had to work on. […]
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Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

Heh.. apparently you haven't worked with some of the people I have had to work with and their systems I have had to work on.

There are also people running way outdated routers which have security holes.

If everybody was smart enough to not run on an admin account then a lot of issues would maybe go away.

But people can't be bothered to have to input admin creds whenever they want to do admin related stuff. Plus even if they did, they would still end up allowing 99% of the stuff they shouldn't.

I prefer specifics. Personally I don't give a hoot that you are in IT. There is this thing called common sense . If one uses that one is not going to have many issues at all....

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:39:

ZellSF wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:08:

Personally I would recommend against both "debloating" and "privacy" software fixes for Windows 10. They usually do more damage than they help. If you want Windows not break, avoid third party modifications to the system itself. Also avoid any modifications to the system you don't need, even if they don't require third party tools (people hard linking Windows system directories to another drive comes to mind).

Kee?

Of course you are joking aren't you?

About what?

My advice against debloating or privacy software, or the fact that people are dumb enough to hard link Windows system directories elsewhere? Neither of those are jokes.

Falcosoft wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:29:

ZellSF wrote on 2021-06-17, 19:08:

...If you want Windows not break, avoid third party modifications to the system itself. Also avoid any modifications to the system you don't need, even if they don't require third party tools (people hard linking Windows system directories to another drive comes to mind).

If you want Windows not break, also avoid 1st party modifications to the system by MS itself...
Jokes aside I'm really upset because of undocumented but intentional modifications from updates that break software/hardware. Since you wanted some references here are some that heavily affected me and the VOGONS community:

That's fascinating, I was unaware of any driver changes in Windows 10 updates, they've certainly haven't affected me even though I use some weird hardware here and there.

DracoNihil wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:06:

Another thing I've noticed Windows 10 breaking is the "Compatibility mode", compared to 7 and XP most of the shims don't seem to work properly (alot of shims are missing entirely if you look in the Compatibility Administrator tool) and the fact Windows 10 (since 8?) can't be taken out of compositing mode, it's mandatory. So it's a huge hack in of itself to even try to use the compat option to disable compositing when running something.

Most of the old stuff I tried playing on Windows 10 would outright crash UNLESS I turn off all compatibility shims...???

And then there's the horrible framerate issues people have in some older games unless you specifically enable this one shim that's only shown in Compatibility Administrator. Or resort to using wrappers like DxWnd or dgvoodoo2.

Pretty sure the context of the post your quoting is about Windows 10 automatic updates breaking things, not Windows 7 vs Windows 10.

Backwards compatibility was negatively impacted by changes in Windows 8, but it hasn't gotten much worse since then. But on modern hardware, a lot of the same games will crash in Windows 7 too. So if you stick with Windows 7 for playing old games, you have to stick with old hardware to take full advantage of that.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

I've disabled defender and firewall in windows 10 🤣 and several other useless to me processing power guzzling bs like the search indexer *sigh*
😁

weedeewee wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:34:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

I've disabled defender and firewall in windows 10 🤣 and several other useless to me processing power guzzling bs
😁

Good on you...The ISP hardware filewall in your router /modem sorts that all for you anyway.

Seems to be something most folk can't get a handle on 😉

If you are paranoid about what is going in/out use something like wireshark then just go and have peek.....

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:27:

cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:19:

Heh.. apparently you haven't worked with some of the people I have had to work with and their systems I have had to work on. […]
Show full quote

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

Heh.. apparently you haven't worked with some of the people I have had to work with and their systems I have had to work on.

There are also people running way outdated routers which have security holes.

If everybody was smart enough to not run on an admin account then a lot of issues would maybe go away.

But people can't be bothered to have to input admin creds whenever they want to do admin related stuff. Plus even if they did, they would still end up allowing 99% of the stuff they shouldn't.

I prefer specifics. Personally I don't give a hoot that you are in IT. There is this thing called common sense . If one uses that one is not going to have many issues at all....

When I was doing mostly onsite repair for people years ago, the most common issue was computers that were chock full of viruses and malware. People will click on absolutely anything and install absolutely anything.

Ever run across a computer that has multiple useless spyware toolbars installed in the browser?

Then when the computer becomes infected and those fake AV popups start happening, those same people will click on those as well.

People also don't like to pay for anything, including anti-virus / anti-malware software. At least there is basic protection included in newer versions of Windows.

Nor do they like to let their computer take time to install updates. With Windows 10 Home, it is a great thing that updates are forced.

As far as routers, a lot of the older ones use a default password and of course the users never bother to change them or even do any real configuration besides maybe setting up the SSID. As long as somebody can get connected, they have a really good chance of being able to do whatever that want on the network.

Even now, when connecting to a new Wifi network, most SSIDs that pop up are the default ones. At least the default passwords are usually some randomly generated password which is different for every router.

Why people leave those crazy default passwords is beyond me. That is just being lazy.

Even with consistent training, usually about 30-50% of people in a corporate environment will still click on links in phishing emails. This was proven over and over again each time our security team at the last place I worked would send out fake phishing emails.

If you watch what is going on IT wise, there are still companies and governments that have issues with getting ransomware even with all the available security devices and software packages out there.

People will literally click on anything and companies and governments apparently still let regular users run on admin accounts.

Absolutely insane.

Did I mention using common sense at all.

I never had issues with Win98 or XP using the interweb.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:34:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:00:

No body would be stupid enough to disable their firewall in the first place. It your first line of defense 🤣

I've disabled defender and firewall in windows 10 🤣 and several other useless to me processing power guzzling bs like the search indexer *sigh*
😁

Windows firewall, maybe ok. Indexing sure.

Defender should only be disabled if you actually have some other real security suite. I use Bitdefender Total Security.

It is catching stuff on a regular basis on even legit web pages that have apparently been compromised.

It also catches malicious links very well.

Stuff defender would not have caught in the first place. It is also pretty much the least resource hungry security package I have used that actually works well.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-17, 21:57:

Did I mention using common sense at all.

I never had issues with Win98 or XP using the interweb.

Neither did I. But the vast majority of users don't have much common sense, if any at all.