Chaos Corona Forum
General Category => Off-Topic => Topic started by: Bormax on 2016-07-27, 22:27:12
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Hello!
I have Windows 7 now and I don't want to switch to Windows 10 atleast now. But I know that some people already have problem - win 7 automaticaly upgraded to win 10. I don't want get suprised like that. I don't like this agressive pressure from Microsoft at all. This is why I switched off windows automaticaly updates and uninstalled update which was offering upgrade to win 10. But now I have some problems with Corona, because it needs latest windows updates for it's work. For example I have problem with Building acc. structure (reported here https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12556.0.html). I've checked threads on this forum and found this https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12563.0.html and of course this one https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12409.0.html. And it seems to me that my problem can be solved by windows updating.
Do you guys know the way how to get windows updates and do not get Windows 10 as a surprise one day? Or maybe you know the names of updates which contain those windows upgraders/installers, so I could install all updates exept those ones?
Also would be interesting to know opinion about Windows 10 from those who already have it.
Thanks in advanced!
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Hello there!
I heard this thing is effective -> http://blog.ultimateoutsider.com/2015/08/using-gwx-stopper-to-permanently-remove.html but I have literally no experience with it. Just putting it out there, hope it is useful :)
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Thanks nkilar!
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What's wrong with W10? I see your point in the aggresive pressure that Microsoft is doing, but from my personal opinion I don't have any problem with the OS and all the installed programs run fine. I even heard Ondra saying that Corona even runs better under W10.
Just make sure you avoid the express install and untick all the options you have. I updated only because I could access the 32 Gb of RAM which was unavailable for W7 Home edition, but never regret it actually.
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Also would be interesting to know opinion about Windows 10 from those who already have it.
Here's mine:
https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,12107.msg81849.html#msg81849
Good Luck
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Frood, that post of yours tipped the scales in favour of upgrading to win10 for me couple days ago :] That was my smoothest ever experience of changing OS - virtually no difference from win7. And Corona runs great, as it did in win7. No regrets so far.
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I even heard Ondra saying that Corona even runs better under W10.
To be honest, Corona runs fine on all OS as long as you have windows updates installed. So Windows 10 is better in this regard because you cannot stop updates :D
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No regrets so far.
And somehow it´s refreshing not to see that old win7 who** for another seven years almost every day :o)
Good Luck
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And if you're planning on upgrading better be quick because the free update will last till the end of this friday. Otherwise it'll cost you.
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And if you're planning on upgrading better be quick because the free update will last till the end of this friday. Otherwise it'll cost you.
AFAIK, you can upgrade your Windows and down grade again. Your key will then be life-time licenced for Windows 10. So you can actually migrate to Windows 10 at a later date.
Don't quote me on that though :D
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Yes, almost. Because it has to be the same computer where you do this. There is no "key" anymore, it´s bound to the hardware configuration and this is saved on deep, sinister, evil M$-servers ;]
Good Luck
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So I've upgraded today to get it for 'free'. It went super smoothly, didn't expect that. Everything seems to work fine and Win10 feels much snappier.
One thing that makes me really happy is that for some reason network connection to our NAS are much faster now. Before, it took sometimes a few seconds until I could access a folder or files and now they display instantly and load faster... not sure why, it maybe 'repaired' some wrong settings upon installing.
I have Win10 running on 4 PCs now without any additional costs, not bad if you ask me.
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Interesting albeit a little off topic debate going on here :P
Personally I don't like the direction they went with spyware, removing a lot of the windows update controls and introduced a couple of extra steps when it comes to working with the computer. I don't even want to go into the depths of the whole "forced upgrade" stuff. That is the reason I am voting with my wallet and staying with 8.1 - which has its own problems but has worked great ever since (yes, some extra steps of doing everyday stuff are in there too, at least compared to W7) especially if you are checking which upgrades get installed.
But bottom line, to each his own. If it works for you, if you are happy with it, its your call to make! :) Have fun!
edit: with regards to avoiding the upgrade, could you report back if the link worked for ya? I've heard it does for some people but other people's PCs just auto-upgrade over night...
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Personally I don't like the direction they went with spyware, removing a lot of the windows update controls and introduced a couple of extra steps when it comes to working with the computer.
None of the old interfaces are gone, just disabled. I re-enabled all of them , since I hate the new one as well. Especially the system control panels, which hide quick to access things like adapter settings behind awfully laid out submenus.
First thing I do when I install Win10 on any machine (half of it by script I wrote), is uninstalling all cortana, xbox, search index, telemetry, windows defender, etc. -services, -files, purging directories, disabling windows update service after a manual update, fix sizing the pagefile and disabling superfetch and the whole prefetch sub system.
Only then am I happy and everything boots fast, runs fast and never slows down.
I don't exactly agree with windows 10 being the main offender here, since this stuff did slowly get introduced when we made the jump from windows build 5 to windows build 6 with Vista. Feature creep was always a thing, it was just in the background up to Win8. Many features are really smart in the context of a laptop and low end systems, but with high end workstations it get's only in the way of performance.
But other than that, each new release did introduce at least something that made a general improvement, regardless of the main target device group.
For me with windows 10 it actually was not compressed desktop background images as an optional windows 10 regestry edit :D
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Yeah, they come a bit dirty from the shop. Tho, if you're able to dwell into, it gives much more than any other version before. God mode on ;)
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Thank you guys for your responds!
Reading those I've made a decision and now I'm writing this message under Window 10 :)
As you said upgrade was really fast and smooth. I hope whole work of this new system will be the same.
While my computer was busy with update few new posts appeared here
First thing I do when I install Win10 on any machine (half of it by script I wrote), is uninstalling all cortana, xbox, search index, telemetry, windows defender, etc. -services, -files, purging directories, disabling windows update service after a manual update, fix sizing the pagefile and disabling superfetch and the whole prefetch sub system.
Only then am I happy and everything boots fast, runs fast and never slows down.
SairesArt, could you tell more about this, please?
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SairesArt, could you tell more about this, please?
Ehh, why not, just delivered an application update, might as well type out all of the fun :D
Let's dig in:
Microsoft's recent fad is programming on their new app framework. The only way to delete those is by inputing commands into powershell.exe (not cmd). These include, but are not limited to (all out of my head): bingweather, bingnews , windowsstore, "people", bingsports, which power the windows tiles and phone home to get info.
Then there is the unholy grail: Cortana. It taps into Window's search index and constantly phones home for god knows what. You need a tool to get rid of it, a powershell command is not enough. Be aware, that if you do this, you effectively kill the windows start search. You cannot replace it with the old windows 7/8.1 search bar.
All of these apps either fully load on start and you cannot disable them by killing services, or preload, which happens outside of the window's prefetch, like bingweather to phone home and get weather updates. It ain't much, but for people looking for max performance (and privacy) these have to go to.
Telemetry is the service (also DiagTrack.exe), that collects OS data and keeps the info. Whether it keeps the data or sends it off to Microsoft is dependant on the system's setting, but it always collects data regardless and provides no benefit to the user. This can be removed aswell.
Windows defender ain't bad actually, it serves the purpose. But as a programmer, no matter what antivirus I have, sooner or later by using tools or writing code of my own, either heuristic or the standard search always catches on and makes my life hell. It is a definite performance eater and never in my life have I been saved or helped by anti virus software. I always check stuff on virustotal.com if I don't trust dlls or executables, which is more accurate anyways, since it scans across all known anti virus' software.
No antivirus software can save you against rootkits anyways. If you use a thirdparty one, deleting it is actually better than letting it be disabled, since then windows won't update that service. An antivirus is essential if you can't guarantee yourself or an employee not doing stupid stuff. (My father had his HDD encrypted, for accidentally clicking allow script run on a Music sheet pdf, no antivirus helped there either :| )
Search index... nom noms a bit of HDD space and requires a dedicated service to run, called "windows search". If you kill it and unindex all your files, it won't actually break windows' search bar in the explorer, it will still work, but it will rescan the directory you search in, making system wide searches unusably slow.
But windows search ignores half the goddamn system. As a programmer it kills me, that it ignores system dlls.
Just use god damn Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/), it quickly writes an index of EVERY single file that exists and the search is ultra fast. Within a millisecond you have found your file, no matter how many harddrives, no matter how many files. Also sort by type is the best implementation out there.
Disabling windows update service, not just disabling, but also blocking it from running as a service is the real kicker. No more interruptions, no more random home-phoning. Need to update? Just do it manually every other month and you are good. This kills me as a customer if it is left on. I never had any unwanted delays or "pls wait for windows.... bla bla" It also limits HDD fragmentation. (will touch on later)
Superfetch and prefetch... is a great system, that preloads the first couple percent of often used programs, but this does increase start times a touch, not much, and fills out ram with stuff you use often. This is great on laptops. On fast, well defragmented HDDs and especially SSDs it can lead to absolute moron behavior of the OS. If you fill out your ram with, let's say Corona, it sometimes purges the prefetched data and sometimes starts paging it, dependant on the OS's algorithms, which are impossible to know. Now, if it starts paging, you get your read speed cut in half, while it loads in for instance a scene file and offloads the prefetched data. Then, if you look into the prefetch folder you see sometimes absolute nonsense files being prefetched. It is being quickly sorted out, but it is sometimes random in what it picks and what it considers "used often". So you get a bit of junk loaded aswell, to not much benefit in the first place if you have fast storage. Also it makes some people freak out, as it seems they have no RAM left.
A laptop with 4gbs of ram is often capped at 90% RAM, although if you add up the memory from the taskmanager, it comes no where near as close. This is prefetcher reserving ram. Again, a bit scratching from performance.
You can disable superfetch ( service ) and the prefetch subsystem by editing the registry. For powerusers, an inivisible system at best and a tripwire at worst.
Fix sizing pagefile is to limit fragmentation, make it generously big and if possible, put it on a second harddrive, so if windows accesses it, it doesnt slow down other read/write operations.
Disable window's scheduled defragmentation.
Now, the interplay with proper defragmentation: You can shortstroke a hardrive, since at the other edge the read and write speeds are faster. And you can use a not stupid defragmentation program like Auslogic's DiskDefrag, which has an optional "put system files at Harddrive beginning" algorithm, which takes forever to do the first time, but puts the most important stuff at the outer ring of the disk. So the first time setup for me is: Install and update windows, disable page file, reboot, push all systemfiles and generally all files to the outer ring, renable page file. This will put the page file on top aswell and not cut it in half. If you leave pagefile on auto, it will resize, slice, move it around so godamn often, that window's defrag won't keep up with the amount of HDD rattering it induces. One manual god damn defrag and every HDD runs fast, doesn't frustrate with slow copies, moves and Firefox startups and keeps the user happy.
This keeps everything running fast for me for years and I don't feel the urge to upgrade to SSDs as bad as other people. Everything starts up as fast, as on the first day of a windows install. I can't complain.
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SairesArt, could you tell more about this, please?
Just use god damn Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/), it quickly writes an index of EVERY single file that exists and the search is ultra fast. Within a millisecond you have found your file, no matter how many harddrives, no matter how many files. Also sort by type is the best implementation out there.
Made my day :) and thanks for the in depth behind the scenes of W10!
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Ehh, why not, just delivered an application update, might as well type out all of the fun :D
Thank you so much for so detailed information! Definitely I'll go thru it step by step to make my system work faster.
Thank you!
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Then there is the unholy grail: Cortana. It taps into Window's search index and constantly phones home for god knows what.
Well, you can just block Cortana/searchUI.exe by firewall rule.
No antivirus software can save you against rootkits anyways.
While it´s tricky to detect rootkits, offline scans are better than nothing. The next Windows feature upgrade will provide an option to do offline scans directly. Totally agree with the user as the biggest danger here btw. And additionally: one out of 20 (offline or not) scanners will be able to detect a specific rootkit when it´s not about a simple one made of components you can find in the wilderness :)
This could get some interesting sticky topic btw:
1. General performance optimizations (services, pagefile etc.)
2. Performance optimizations for workstations (indexing, removing bloatware apps etc.)
3. Performance optimizations for render nodes (e.g. windows search and other stuff is really not needed at all here)
4. Regain privacy
Even when there are a lot of tools/scripts available, they always have to be customized. And a render slave is something very special. For example it´s the other way round with the RemoteRegistryService which is needed for remote CPU monitoring readings by powershell. It´s switched off by default in Win10 and without a special RegSetting it turns itself off after a while being idle in Win10 :)
Good Luck
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Well, you can just block Cortana/searchUI.exe by firewall rule.
Leaving a heavy app to start each time you reboot :|
A sticky is great idea, I doubt you will easily come across a windows customize guide for render slaves.
Also: https://forum.corona-renderer.com/index.php/topic,9728.msg67964.html#msg67964
Hope pre initilized 3dsMax for Corona distributed comes soon.
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Leaving a heavy app to start each time you reboot :|
SearchUi.exe is currently on position 14 here, even my 3D mouse driver needs more ram :-/ Basically you are right of course. But currently there seems to be no other option if you want to keep windows search.
Good Luck