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+--- Thread: Windows 10 (/showthread.php?tid=63)
Windows 10 - Mattias Westlund - 06-22-2016
I'm going to post this here as I felt this was the most appropriate subforum; after all "DAW" can refer to both the music program itself and the hardware and OS that runs it.
Anyway, my experiences with Windows 10 have been all over the place so far.
- After upgrading my laptop (ASUS X401U) from 8.1 to 10 late last year, it's a mess. Initially I had a problem where it would grind the hdd for hours on end, despite indexing and stuff like that being turned off. It would also reboot itself in the middle of the night, even if I had stuff open on it. Come the next morning the computer would be up and running, with me logged out. For some reason -- maybe an update -- this doesn't seem to happen anymore. Instead it has started to ignore power schemes, i.e. it turns the screen off and goes to sleep after a few minutes, no matter what i set the timeouts to. A couple of times the last week it has even done this while I'm watching netflix! There's other problems as well, such as some (!) programs in the startup folder refusing to launch automatically, and other programs being uninstalled without notice. Like I said, it's a mess. When I find the time I'm going to attempt a clean install of Win 10. If this doesn't help I guess I'll have to use it as stylish black cheese platter.
- My netbook (Acer Aspire One D250-0Dw) didn't take well to the upgrade either, though nowhere near as bad as the ASUS. Compared to the x86 Win 7 Home that was on it before, it simply became more sluggish. Too busy doing stuff in the background. Running Spybot Anti-Beacon and disabling unnecessary services did little to amend this so I simply reverted to Win 7 while there was still time. To this day I wish I'd had the sense to do this with the lappy as well.
- I also upgraded my daughter's machine, an almost decade-old Dell stationary computer (Core 2 Duo 3GHz, 3GB RAM) from Win 7 Home x64 to Win 10... and it flies. Seriously. It's like a new computer. No trace of all the problems I've had with laptop and netbook, it just works without a hitch and is noticeably snappier than it was with 7.
But I can't stay on this computer forever -- in fact it's overdue for an upgrade already -- and I'll be forced down the Win 10 path sooner or later. So I kind of feel like I should just bite the bullet and install the damn thing. Maybe I'll figure out how to beat it into submission in time for the big hardware upgrade. Then again, doing that means downtime, and that is something I don't need.
What's your experiences so far, fellow Windows users?
Footnote: I haven't touched on the privacy concerns of Windows 10, which are hair-raising and more than enough for me to dismiss the OS completely... if it weren't for the fact that I need a Windows system to do what I do. I just felt it was a separate discussion. Suffice to say that the telemetry, data mining and cloud features of Win 10 detracts from its appeal more than plain bugs ever could. But I'm being pragmatic here.
RE: Windows 10 - Paul Battersby - 06-22-2016
I'm glad I didn't read this before I upgraded from win 8.1 to win 10 on my laptop otherwise I might not have done it. I actually upgraded by accident. I figured I could permit the download of the Win 10 files and then later decide to install them or not. Not so. Downloading them installs them automatically. Fortunately however, all went smoothy for me and I feel that Win 10 is better than Win 8.1.
I tried to upgrade my dad's computer from win 7 to win 10 and it was a mistake. All his desktop icons were gone and his email program was nowhere to be found. If it had been my own computer, I probably would have invested the time (hours or all day) to fix everything but I just regressed back to win 7 and then downloaded some software to remove the win 10 nag messages and all win 10 files to prevent any upgrade to win 10.
A friend upgraded from win 7 to win 10. His keyboard stopped working. Before I could help him he took it to Best Buy to get them to restore Win 7.
Seems hit and miss for some.
(06-22-2016, 07:25 PM)Mattias Westlund Wrote: Now, I still have Windows 7 x64 Ultimate on my stationary DAW system [...] But I can't stay on this computer forever -- in fact it's overdue for an upgrade already
I had to laugh at that. My stationary DAW system is still running Windows XP, though not for much longer. I'm planning to buy a new Windows 10 desktop machine in August.
RE: Windows 10 - Mattias Westlund - 06-22-2016
(06-22-2016, 09:06 PM)pbattersby Wrote: I had to laugh at that. My stationary DAW system is still running Windows XP, though not for much longer. I'm planning to buy a new Windows 10 desktop machine in August.
Nothing wrong with XP! By far Microsoft's best and most reliable OS to date, with Win 7 coming in as a close second. If it weren't for the RAM limitations inherent in x86 Windows I wouldn't have bothered with 7 even
My old lappy, which gets used from time to time, still happily runs XP, and I have a couple of stationary machines running it as well (yes, we have something like five or six computers here). Sometimes I miss it.But yeah, Win 10 feels like a disaster waiting to happen. It runs great on some systems, better than both 7 and 8, but on others it's basically a nightmare of bugs and hardware and software incompatibilities. And you can't really know whether it'll work without trying it.
RE: Windows 10 - Nayrb - 06-22-2016
I upgraded my laptop to Windows 10 because it was free and I figured I should experiment with it because eventually it will be necessary to use it.
I rolled back to 7 after a week.
Ironically the issue I had was some kind of chronic CPU spike that caused everything to lag and for the audio to stutter, jitter and pop every few seconds in all applications. Obviously this was no good for making music and not much good for listening to music, watching videos, or playing games either. It appears the problem was with the Realtek Audio drivers that the computer came with. Looking into it I discovered that many people had had the same problem, even as far back as July 2015, but no suggested solutions were effective.
Other than that, I was reasonably pleased with everything else. Except all the spying and tracking, of course. I only had a week to mess around with it, though.
RE: Windows 10 - Kev Adams - 06-26-2016
I recently came to Win 10 (and to 64 bit) on two new devices- a PC and a laptop. They replaced my old XP desktop (rock solid but beginning to sloooow doown) and a Vista laptop which had become infuriatingly slow.
So far Win 10 has been brilliant for me, though I haven't done much music on the laptop yet. Perhaps going straight to it rather than upgrading is the difference.
The only downside so far is that my Wavelab 6 wouldn't instal. Rather than upgrading that I decided to try Wavelab Essentials 9, and it covers a lot of the bases I need, though I haven't explored it completely yet to find out what I might be missing.
RE: Windows 10 - Mattias Westlund - 06-27-2016
(06-26-2016, 12:14 PM)Kev Adams Wrote: Perhaps going straight to it rather than upgrading is the difference.
So it would seem.
I wiped my lappy yesterday and did a clean install of Windows 10, which was in itself a very quick and painless procedure. The installation took at most 30 minutes and when it was done Windows was activated and ready to go. Knock on wood, but so far the issues I had with the previous installation appear to have vanished and the computer also feels faster and more responsive. I guess there was just some residual Win 8 junk lying around and causing trouble?
So for anyone else having problems with an upgraded W10 system, clean installing might indeed do the trick.
RE: Windows 10 - Samulis - 07-01-2016
I'm going to keep my main computer on 7, I think, but I have plans to build a specialized recording workstation with a rack-mounted computer mounted on a cart with a big touchscreen on top... one of these... years... :/
RE: Windows 10 - Mattias Westlund - 11-21-2017
Well this story just got even more interesting.
Apparently, MS is still offering a free Windows 10 upgrade for anyone using assistive technologies, and since that seems to include things like using keyboard shortcuts I guess I'm eligible. I wasn't really going to upgrade this old hunk o' junk, because Win 7 x64 runs like clockwork on it and I will probably be moving to a new system next year (which will force me to move to W10 anyway), but curiosity got the better of me. If this 7 years old system runs fine with Win 7, there's a chance it will run even better with the more resource frugal Win 10, right?
RIGHT?
Yeah, maybe. I was never able to tell, because upon upgrading to Win 10 I couldn't even log in anymore. Or more correctly, logging in just plopped me back to the login screen, over and over in an endless loop. Known problem, no official solution. I googled the issue and tried various suggested remedies (among other things, restarting in safe mode with networking, and installing all updates) but nothing helped. Yes, as mentioned previously, it's normally a good idea to just wipe the system and clean install the OS. And that might possibly solve this issue. And that's the problem right there -- possibly. With no way of knowing whether even that will help, I'm not going to go through all the pain of a complete Windows reinstall, just to find out that Win 10 doesn't have drivers for hardware X or won't play nice with software Y, which means I have to wipe everything a second time and install Win 7 again.
Sheesh. Am I unusually unlucky or is Win 10 REALLY, REALLY finicky?
Well at least the rollback feature that lets you go back to your previous installation works flawlessly. I'm eternally grateful for that.
RE: Windows 10 - kneedeep - 11-21-2017
I thought Windows "just works".
Anyway, that must have been a really shitty experience.
RE: Windows 10 - Mattias Westlund - 11-21-2017
(11-21-2017, 11:32 PM)kneedeep Wrote: I thought Windows "just works".
I think you might have gotten Microsoft confused with that other prominent and more fruit-themed corporation.