Soldato
Just tried the Spybot app - said I was 15% protected on LTSB, that's even after using the ShutUp10 app. Interesting stuff, but seemingly worth doing if you fancy turning some of the new 'features' off on 10. Thanks for the tip.
So has anyone found out why Windows likes to use your CPU so much?
- Thread starter asim18
- Start date
Just tried the Spybot app - said I was 15% protected on LTSB, that's even after using the ShutUp10 app. Interesting stuff, but seemingly worth doing if you fancy turning some of the new 'features' off on 10. Thanks for the tip.
Chuffed and surprised you had so much mileage, good stuff. And no problem mate, I'll let you know my results after I checkout the app you mentioned.
To be fair there are always complaints/ recommended changes by users and beta testers but Microsoft will do what THEY think is best, end of the day I just adapt to the OS (regardless of Windows or Linux) which to be fair is not rocket science or hard at all, a lot easier then trying to get Microsoft to change things, even if they did change the OS they would still be users out there saying that is wrong or you need to change or redo that etc so in a way they are in a no win situation, regardless Windows has come a long way (in a positive sense) to the the very early days of Windows. Last point, it is true there is no perfect OS or ever will be, users have too many different opinions/priorities and needs when it comes to Operating Systems.
That is why you put options into an OS as much as is reasonable/possible - an OS should be about enabling the end user, sure you can't keep everybody happy but there is a lot of things you can do towards that end that isn't being done in 10. Some of the reasons XP and 7 were popular were because you could take control of or tweak things if you didn't like them that are far less the case in 10.
Soldato
Seeing how much the Spybot one has found, I'd imagine that the ShutUp10 does little/nothing, or gets its changes disabled after a reboot!
I will say that sometimes big updates can re-enable a few of those processes/reg keys. As I said before I tend to run it once a month and after any significant update, it's probably overkill as it's only occasional that I find things re-enabled.
Genuinely pleased you like the software. They're the makers of SpyBot search and destroy, which is one my all time favourites.
Soldato
People shouldn't have to resort to using stuff like Spybot to actually take control of their OS for regular use
That's the thing, you don't have to, at all. Out of the box Windows 10 is fine for probably 90 odd percent of users, in business or home environments. The tweaks we are dabbling with are simply because we are "overclockers" - as in, we have a keen interest in IT/Computing/Operating Systems/Software/etc. Others that may use these, are people who are security conscious, and don't believe that Microsoft have their best interests at heart, and wish to block some of the guff.
But, again, for the masses - people may not actually care that Windows 10 is phoning home; the old adage of 'nothing to hide' applies to most I guess. For me though, I like to fiddle around in whatever o/s I have (not Linux though, urgh), and apps such as this SpyBot one are more of an interest than a necessity to me.
Soldato
Not touch SpyBot for years and years, shifted over to MalwareBytes and often find I have zero items found - maybe I ought to run a SpyBot scan too; just to make sure that MB isn't missing a lot of stuff
People shouldn't have to resort to using stuff like Spybot to actually take control of their OS for regular use
Couldn't agree more, but the age of Apple and smart devices has changed the expectations of the masses. They aren't tinkerers, they expect everything to be simple, pretty and 'just work'.
I find Win10 to be very customiseable, we still have the registry editor, the powershell, services.msc and many other routes of customisation, and Pro provides Group Policies for further manipulation. Apps like Beacon just leverage these methods and provide a simple user interface and a one click solution.
Think I mentioned before; after any fresh install I spend a good amount of time stripping out everything; Cortana, OneDrive and other baked in stuff, services, etc
What I don't like is underhanded telemetry and vital processes that for some reason are constantly accessing the internet.
GlassWire and Pandas Application Blocker are a brilliant combo, alongside the other apps I've mentioned are awesome, but you're right; they shouldn't be necessary.
Not touch SpyBot for years and years, shifted over to MalwareBytes and often find I have zero items found - maybe I ought to run a SpyBot scan too; just to make sure that MB isn't missing a lot of stuff
It's actually its other tools I love. It's evolved massively and the process / startup control is bonkers in its granularity. I had a nice immunisation features and some brill recovery / rescue stuff. It's a little too powerful sometimes, I keep away from some of it.
Malware bytes is a corking bit of software, i too am a regular user. I trust it's scanning, but I still use a paid for AV.
Increasing numbers (check out the official Windows 10 discussion forum) of people are starting to run into the problems with things like automatic updates and the various problems related to having so much going on in the background and potential for going wrong - its finally starting to spill out of the power user area.
Soldato
In all the years of using PCs personally, I don't think I have ever paid for AV - other than whatever it was (Norton probably) that came bundled with our first home PC in 1997 - a Compaq Presario P2 iirc. Since then, it's been Avast for a very long time - until it became far too annoying with it's "buy my pro edition" prompts, then I dabbled in Panda, before settling on Sophos Homes - completely free, deployed to numerous family devices, and all managed via an online portal. Just hoping it remains free, and I haven't missed a bit of small print
Soldato
I've not dipped into that thread lately, so I'm no au fait with it.
But I just want to point out, that from my experience, Windows 7 also had many issues with Windows Update. I have lost count of the number of times I have had to stop the WU service, then delete %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\ and restart the service - in order to resolve a seemingly endless number of 0x0.... type errors. So I'm not buying the extra bumph in Windows 10 being the source of all those issues.
That's not to say Windows 10's updating capabilities are infallible - I have had issues where updates refuse to install, regardless of how many times I hit the "Retry" button. Issues where the CPU and Disk are hammered, and on lesser devices, updates that take hours and hours to install. But I have yet had to use the above 'fix' for any update issues. But I am very dubious of the assumption that more background processes = a cause for updates failing (as an example).
I'm meaning the official MS run forum for Windows 10 not the thread here. Its slowly descending into a bit of a mess lately with moderators threatening to "throw" people out for voicing frustration with the OS which is kind of unprofessional. While telling people they should be submitting feedback through the hub which is fair enough but those issues have been being complained about and often in the top 10 complaints for like 2-3 years now and ignored so it doesn't seem to be working.
Windows 7 was far from ideal update wise - it could easily tie up the system for hours, fail entirely or just fail leaving the system unusable but the key thing was you had front end control over when and how it worked and could better organise doing it when you had time to sort out and fallout, etc. and it wouldn't interrupt what you were doing.
There is an increasing amount of background stuff going on in 10 that is likely to break at any time - see all the people who randomly have the start menu stop working entirely, explorer suddenly going super slow, etc. etc. with 7 mostly once you had a working install it stayed that way unless the next lot of updates messed it up and while its become a lot more complicated recently (fortunately someone has been posting lists of which updates contain telemetry, etc.) you could fairly easily just not install non-critical updates, etc. and keep the system as free of extra stuff as possible.
My current Windows 7 install hasn't had any major updates, other than selective security patches, since ~2014 and is working fine, reliably and smoothly.
I have not had any problems with Win10 end of the day, I just let it do it's thing including auto updates etc, as I stated earlier I abuse my Win10 ie overclocked cpu/video card, run four different registry/software cleaners etc and it's ticking over fine. As to spyware etc I think some people are too paranoid about what Win10 does, if you use legit software then you have nothing to worry about.
Having some users take too much control can cause more harm then good especially those that think they are computer savvy and are not, I have seen some destroy Windows OS over the years.
That is ultimately on them and a choice they should have, end of the day they can reinstall and learn from the experience.
Telemetry, etc. is a concern for many businesses and hard to justify when it doesn't seem to be being effectively utilised to improve the OS - MS have been bulk collecting it for several years of development of 10 now yet many of the same fundamental issues remain.
Having too many options can cause bloat and confuse users, especially those that are beginners or not too hot on their computer skills, WinXP was popular for a reason since it was over six years before we even saw Vista and even longer before they retired XP, don't forget how bad XP was for security(nightmare to put it mildly), Win7 was really based on Vista but with refinements ie performance, so nothing really unique in 7. Don't forget the bad rep Vista got due to manufacturers releasing hardware(to use with Vista) below Vista's minimum specs and a lot of companies very slow releasing drivers for Vista, by the time Win7 was out it had a driver base to work with especially 64 bit drivers (ie from Vista) and also faster/ better hardware available that actually met the Win7 minimum requirements.
I have used them all since DOS days and can say none were perfect, even the so called popular ones. Having full control of OS is not the most important thing end of the day, things like stability, compatibility, security of OS etc, again every user has different opinions and needs on the use of Windows in general.
There are ways to implement options so as to reduce the potential for confusion - even if that is to have a different setup for different versions of the OS i.e. I can understand why they might take the approach with the Home edition if say the Professional edition allowed you to properly take advanced control over the OS but it doesn't - sure there are some options with GPEdit or resorting to LTSB but even they aren't ideal.
You have a choice you don't have to install or use Win10, plenty of Operating Systems out there, I'm the sort of person that if I don't like it won't use it.As to business choice wise you get paid to work with the tools they give you, so sorry no sympathy here especially if you are hired to work with Windows 10, it comes with the job as they say.