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WINDOWS 10 Pro


SPAK

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Just gone belly up and given in to  MS's aggressive move  to this OS .. Seems to be loads of bloat and startup takes longer than with 7pro . Felt I had to move to this OS eventually and I didn't want to move to MAC as I have a desktop in the studio and it's easy to swap out hardware that needs updating ... just asking if anyone has input to reduce the bloat ... there doesn't seem any speed reduction once it's up and running but it's new to me so any views may help. Plus I seem to have a blurry text  on some software (could be my old eyes) which I didn't notice B4 with W7 ...  I run Sonar Plat + Bandlab's version and Cubase Pro10 ...

Thanks in advance for helping

SupaReels Music

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Tried upgrading to the free Win 10 on an older HP laptop. Worked fine for a few months, then a major Win 10 update came along and hosed the laptop to a point where it wouldn't work. So, beware upgrading older hardware to Win 10. 

I bought a new HP Zbook to replace the old laptop. Runs Sonar & Bandlab on Win 10 perfectly. I don't see the bloat you mention probably because the new laptop has a lot more power, memory, etc. 

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I just finished installing WIN 10 pro on my new i9900k with 64G of memory. These new motherboards for the i9900K series CPUs will only load Win 10 from a fresh install.

I am 3 days into the new OS and have been impressed. I don`t hardly notice anything as far as bloatware.  In fact, compared to my other win 10 AMD machine I built 2 years ago, this install was closer to feeling like a win 7 PC.  My main screen looks and feels like Win 7.  I was like wow!

I recently downloaded the latest (6-18-19) USB boot drive from MS, things went very well.  I had to reinstall everything from 8.0 Sonar thru X 1 2 3, and even platinum.

A big thanks to Meng for keeping the older Sonar web site active. Everything I pre owned was still downloadable even using  the previous "command center app".  I had no problems with serial numbers or activation. I`ve been running Bandlab every day since day 1 and have been doing every update.  

For a quick test of the i9900K CPU I loaded 40 tracks of Ozone 8 adv, vocalsynth2,  Insight, Nectar,  Alloy2, Prochannel Bverb2, Concrete Limiters,  Gloss EQs, channel console emulations, Sonitus Delays  and 1 instance of Addictive drums2. This pushed the CPU performance meters to 65% across all 16 threads. No overclocking  of the CPUs  and were running at 3.1Ghz. 

This weekend I plan over clocking to 5GHz and running a fresh install of the latest Melodyne Studio 4.2.2.004. 

I very much recommend moving into Win 10 with the latest USB boot drive from MS. I think any Win 7 users would be pleased. I was still using Win 7 until last night. 

 

Edited by don belisle
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You don't say whether you did it as an upgrade or a fresh install, but I found out that it does make a big difference.

Microsoft allow you the option of "Fresh Start" so that even if you did it as an upgrade, you can go the fresh install route.

Also, 4G RAM is absolute minimum, 8G if you want to be okay.

I run Cakewalk on Windows 10 Pro just fine on an old Dell i5 laptop with 8G of RAM, so what you're trying to do is not out of the question.

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I don't know if this qualifies as bloat, but for me there was a bunch of start-up apps running that I currently have no use for, such as OneDrive, Edge, and just a bunch of stuff that didn't need to be running on my internet daw so I disabled them. You can search "Start up apps" and see what you want running at all times and what you don't. 

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4 hours ago, Christian Jones said:

I don't know if this qualifies as bloat, but for me there was a bunch of start-up apps running that I currently have no use for, such as OneDrive, Edge, and just a bunch of stuff that didn't need to be running on my internet daw so I disabled them. You can search "Start up apps" and see what you want running at all times and what you don't. 

Many thanksfor the heads up  CJ,  did that and it's so much better ..👍

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On 6/21/2019 at 9:15 AM, SPAK said:

Just gone belly up and given in to  MS's aggressive move  to this OS .. Seems to be loads of bloat and startup takes longer than with 7pro . Felt I had to move to this OS eventually and I didn't want to move to MAC as I have a desktop in the studio and it's easy to swap out hardware that needs updating ... just asking if anyone has input to reduce the bloat ... there doesn't seem any speed reduction once it's up and running but it's new to me so any views may help. Plus I seem to have a blurry text  on some software (could be my old eyes) which I didn't notice B4 with W7 ...  I run Sonar Plat + Bandlab's version and Cubase Pro10 ...

Thanks in advance for helping

SupaReels Music

Have had no issues whatsoever with Windows 10  - either on new machines or on machines upgraded from Windows 8.x

Anything that shipped with Windows 7 is out of commission here:  In a closet, or thrown in a dumpster.

Windows 10 actually uses less resources than Windows 7.

It has much better memory management.

It performs much better with some file system operations - like bulk copying or moving files (where it is much faster).

A lot of the subsystems are more optimized.  It is also more fault tolerant.  It supports a lot of file formats out of the box that require 3rd party software on Windows 10.

It is far more power efficient, which also means it can eek out more performance out of your system with high sustained workloads (as the same machine will often generate less heat, and the Windows 10 code is better optimized/cleaner).

People saying that Windows 7 runs better than Windows 10 are either regurgitating FUD, or running on machines so old that they do not have good Windows 10 drivers (or buggy drivers for the hardware that are exposed by Windows 10).

This is simply not true.  Windows 8 already had many of these advantages over Windows 7, it's just that the UI was so segregated that working on it was a nightmare.  However, this is not a problem with Windows 10 - which has also actually done a lot of work to remove deprecated components out of the OS than ever before.

This is why you often  gain drive space after Windows 10 updates.  Microsoft is removing a lot of legacy code and components that are absent in Windows 10, but actually bloating up Windows 7.

The primary (and basically, only) reasons to stay on Windows 7 is to not upset the apple cart.  This is important for the enterprise market, which often pays a lot of money for support and has to invest heavily when they upgrade their tech infrastructure.  For the average media professional, this simply isn't the case.

Latest update allows you to remove most of the preloaded UWP apps - within reason.

If Windows 10 is "bloated," then Windows 7 has the kitchen sink in it.

Also, Microsoft hasn't really "aggressively" moved to Windows 10.  They are still supporting Windows 7 and 8, and most 3rd party developers still support those versions.  Most of the launch complaints have been addressed over the past 4 years.  You will not get support for a 10 year old OS in the Apple ecosystem.  Go and see 😉 So one could say Apple pushes their OS upgrades far more aggressively than Microsoft.

3rd Party Pro-Level software packages are having more success moving many people off of Windows 7 than Microsoft's free upgrade program, Lol.  They are actually starting to drop support for those old OSes.

Some newer technologies simply aren't supported on Windows 7.  Sooner or later, you're going to have to move on... and Microsoft is maintaining Windows 10 in a fashion comparable to Apple and macOS... so unless you want to go macOS, you're better off just dealing with it and getting it over with - until you end up in a situation where you're forced to do so and don't have the luxury of a test machine to acclimate yourself to whatever seems different about it.

Most complaints about Windows 10 "wrecking" their machines are largely placebo and confirmation bias.  A quarter of them are likely fiction, as happens often on the internet.

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OneDrive is an app you can uninstall.  It's a normal app.  Uninstall it, and it is gone from the system.

OneDrive.png.2ab0059dc60172b779a11a48a8507209.png

Edge has a process that runs at all time, but Windows 10 suspends this process when the app isn't being used, so it actually uses no CPU and almost no RAM.  This is similar'ish to App Nap on macOS.

90275118_ProcessSuspending.png.ceee11547f86e0299498214cbdb33f89.png

Most operating systems prefetch processes to improve load time, etc.  macOS does this.  It will load Safari processes on boot, even if you never use Safari, unless you hack your system to remove it (it's protected by default, like Microsoft Edge on Windows).  Same with Spotlight, etc.

Operating Systems like Windows 10 Pro and macOS Mojave are not configured out of the box for "locked down" Workstation use.  So people who want minimal services and a locked down machine have to do that themselves - regardless of which OS you choose.  For Linux, you can get halfway there by simply configuring the firewall to not open any ports by default during installation, and customizing which packages you install onto the system.  The default configuration is for the broader market - like an Ubuntu install off the Desktop ISO.

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Also, 4G RAM is absolute minimum, 8G if you want to be okay.

I honestly wouldn't run Windows on anything with < 8GB RAM, as these OSes (both macOS and Windows) use 2.5-3GB RAM out of the gate (after a fresh boot).  You will not be able to get anything done, and even browsing the web will be painful.

8GB Minimum, and the developers are tuning increasingly for systems with solid state storage, as that is fairly ubiquitous right now (at least for boot drives) - old machines notwithstanding.

Windows 10 is fine.  Just right click the UWP apps you don't want, but pay attention because some of them have replaced old Win32 apps that performed the same function (Screen Snipper, Calculator, Voice Recorder - and Photos/Groove/Movies & TV are de facto, as the legacy Photo Viewers and Windows Media Player are based on legacy frameworks which do not support the newer CODECs, RAW Engine, etc. and have awful relative performance).

Edited by SomeGuy
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Thankyou SO much my friend .. I have noted your comprehensive comments/feedback and I would have to say, having used Win10 every day since the install , It is a great improvement and I took a deep sigh when everything worked!

I am printing out your suggestions made here and will carry out a few mods.  I can't thank you enough for the help, must have taken you ages, so very much appreciated.

All the best and thanks again

Steve

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Win10 is an excellent DAW platform (once reined-in). 

The Pro version is helpful in this regard... as the Group Policy Editor makes it quick/easy to disable Cortana, OneDrive, etc.

With the Pro version, you can also add two Registry entries that'll stop all Automatic Updates (including notification).

 

Win10 boots extremely fast here (not slower than Win7).

Modern Z390 and X299 motherboards boot fast.  Use an SSD as boot drive... and the machine boots extremely fast.

 

When applying major updates, check to be sure DAW tweaks are maintained.

Settings like Fast Startup... and power-management features (that were disabled) can be re-enabled by some updates.

 

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Totally agree with Jim on what an excellent platform Windows 10 makes, once reined in!

I will add +1 to the other comments recommending at least 8GB of RAM, and a SSD for the boot/system drive. I have an older home-built desktop that was built for Win7/8 that has these specs and it runs very well with Win 10 after a clean Windows install and a bit of tweaking!

I also upgraded a laptop (not my DAW) from Win 8.1 with 4GB RAM, and it's minimally usable with Win 10, with very little free memory, and a spinning drive. On my system, Win 10 periodically runs a few background processes that access the boot drive.  These  are mostly undetectable on my desktop with the SSD. But on the laptop I can occasionally see them plodding along at 100% disk utilization. Believe me, I have tried stopping all startup & scheduled tasks that I could find and then some, but I can't stop them all. Better to just get an SSD!

And bottom line for the Windows 10 updates is that they come in 2 flavors. (1) monthly quality and security updates, and (2) semi-annual feature updates (aka: 1803, 1809, 1903, etc.).

(1) The monthly updates are usually harmless, and highly recommended for security if your DAW is online. But it is still best to have control over when they happen, so that your workflow is not interrupted by some surprise updater running. Then you will have time to make backups or an image just in case.

(2) The semi-annual feature updates are actually full Windows version upgrades, and run a complete Windows re-installation during the update process. These are more likely to be the system wreckers if your hardware and drivers are not up to par. They are also the culprits that can sometimes reset your DAW tweaks. Keep a list of tweaks handy so that you can check them after an upgrade. Also highly recommend making a system image first.

The difference between Windows 10 'feature updates' and 'quality updates'

https://www.windowscentral.com/whats-difference-between-quality-updates-and-feature-updates-windows-10

 

 

Edited by abacab
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I am a big supporter of Windows 10. I have to admit when I read about people sticking with Windows 7 because they think it is better I often think how ignorant they are. I don't say it but that is what I think. To me it is a position based on fear. 

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I don't think it is always fear or "ignorance". Sometimes it's just better with "the devil you know"!!! :D

We used to have an expression at work, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!!! Plenty of major enterprises will be paying Microsoft handsomely for the privilege of extended support for Windows 7 after its end of life.  At least until they can budget  for the bulldozer upgrades needed to replace all of their aging hardware.

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2 hours ago, abacab said:

I don't think it is always fear or "ignorance". Sometimes it's just better with "the devil you know"!!! :D

We used to have an expression at work, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!!! Plenty of major enterprises will be paying Microsoft handsomely for the privilege of extended support for Windows 7 after its end of life.  At least until they can budget  for the bulldozer upgrades needed to replace all of their aging hardware.

I'm not sure how what a large corporation does has any relevance to this discussion. I sure wont wait for Ford or GM to upgrade in order to decide to do so myself.  I really couldn't care less what a business does about its OSs.  It simply isn't relevant.  

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1 hour ago, John said:

I'm not sure how what a large corporation does has any relevance to this discussion. I sure wont wait for Ford or GM to upgrade in order to decide to do so myself.  I really couldn't care less what a business does about its OSs.  It simply isn't relevant.  

I just thought that your criticism of users as ignorant was a bit over the top John, and I was trying to redirect it. But you seem to want to keep hitting that wall.

I'm done here.

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Hitting what wall? 

Ever since windows came out there have been people that always use bloated as a reason for not upgrading. I would like to know what is considered bloat and why one can't delete those things one doesn't want?

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