Latest Windows Update changes Setting

[chris.r]

1 hour ago, Starship Krupa said:

So there are audio people who leave that thing turned on in their BIOS.

Since my winXP 2006 Philips laptop (rebranded from Twinhead, some Taiwan maker) and now updated to Win7, I never disabled the onboard realtek, even not in windows device manager . For years I was using it with asio4all with good results (except recording  audio obviously), although latency wasn't great, but last few years I've got Echo Indigo PCI express audio card which has awesome latency and great sound, it's literally a PCI card for the laptop. They both live alongside and I can switch anytime from one soundcard to the other. Once I installed the right driver version for my realtek, never had any problems with dropouts or anything. I don't use games other than minesweeper though, lol.

I'm affraid Win10 would mess my drivers anyway with any major update, so I'm considering 8.1 as an alternative. It's tough decision and I'm approaching the moment of changing old laptop for a new one, mainly because it's 32-bit only, and then the 4GB memory limit. It still does great for the age, dual core 2x2Ghz is dealing well even with many decent VI's like Pianoteq (maybe not for live use, but for producing does a great job), that's probably why I still don't feel like hard-pressed, but I'm seriously on the fence about Win10.

[abacab]

3 hours ago, chris.r said:

Since my winXP 2006 Philips laptop (rebranded from Twinhead, some Taiwan maker) and now updated to Win7, I never disabled the onboard realtek, even not in windows device manager . For years I was using it with asio4all with good results (except recording  audio obviously), although latency wasn't great, but last few years I've got Echo Indigo PCI express audio card which has awesome latency and great sound, it's literally a PCI card for the laptop. They both live alongside and I can switch anytime from one soundcard to the other. Once I installed the right driver version for my realtek, never had any problems with dropouts or anything. I don't use games other than minesweeper though, lol.

I'm affraid Win10 would mess my drivers anyway with any major update, so I'm considering 8.1 as an alternative. It's tough decision and I'm approaching the moment of changing old laptop for a new one, mainly because it's 32-bit only, and then the 4GB memory limit. It still does great for the age, dual core 2x2Ghz is dealing well even with many decent VI's like Pianoteq (maybe not for live use, but for producing does a great job), that's probably why I still don't feel like hard-pressed, but I'm seriously on the fence about Win10.

I would probably stick with Win7 for that older gen PC in that case, until you acquire a new computer.  But once Win7 hits end of life, do  realize that there will be no more security updates for it.

I have heard that it can be difficult to locate a legit Win 8 upgrade at this point.  And I would wait for newer hardware before I jumped on Win10, and then I would say get Win10 Pro so that you can defer updates as needed.

I still have a PC running Win7 that I plan to keep running after EOL, but it isn't my main PC, just use it for fun n games.

I like Win10 Pro for my main rig these days...

[chris.r]

22 minutes ago, abacab said:

I would probably stick with Win7 for that older gen PC in that case, until you acquire a new computer.

That's exactly what I have planned for this laptop. The next PC will be Win10 ready, but I'm seriously considering going with 8.1 instead and having all that updates mess off my head for next couple years.

[Starship Krupa]

Gaming, gotcha. Might have done a bit of that myself back in the day....Macromedia had a (gasp) T1 in '97, and I used to crawl home at 11PM with raw red eyeballs and aching finger joints from 5 hours of Quake deathmatching. Thought that hearing the shells bouncing from one speaker to the other on my Yamahas was pretty cool. Via the same damn Realtek chip they're probably still using....

Oy, what a pain, then. I wonder if there's some Policy Editor thing that people could apply after each silly Windows 10 update that would ensure that the onboard audio was once again turned off.

There has to be an easier way to go about this business.

@chris.r, I heartily endorse the Windows 7 plan. If you tune it well (by that I mean turn off most of the visual fruit salad), spend $30 and put an SSD in there, you could squeeze a lot more useful life out of that system. A fresh install of Win 7 64 on an SSD system drive? Shoot, it'll feel like you got a brand new computer.

And as far as Microsoft's security updates....sigh. You have to weigh how important they really are. My understanding is that you've been running an "unsupported" OS for some time now and the sky hasn't fallen. Those security updates cover every little thing that pops up, and for MS' business customers to feel safe they have to include some really obscure exploits that we individual users are not likely to ever be vulnerable to as long as we stay behind a good firewall and don't do anything stupid as far as clicking on sketchy email attachments. If you run 3rd-party anti-malware software, I don't think you have anything to worry about.

Windows 8 introduced some annoying things as far as the UI went. They were really pushing for everything to resemble tablet computing I think, and made it less mouse-friendly, IMO, YMMV. I was one of the people who hated it on sight. You can switch over to something that looks more like the Windows 7 interface, I think.

Some say that by the end of Windows 8, MS had ironed it out and made it less annoying, but by that time, Windows 10 was ready to go. I just leapfrogged it. Maybe it's better than 7.