Thought I'd start a tips topic based on what W10 users experience. Here's a strange experience:
I like to use a simple 4-digit PIN to log in rather than having to always type in a complex password. In a recent update, that ability was broken - startup always required a password. The fix is to go to the PIN setup area, click on "I forgot my PIN", and then choose "Reset my PIN".
Once you delete your PIN, you can simply add it back and all should be working.
Easiest way to get rid of the Win10 surveillance is to use this app:
O&O Shutup 10 (http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10)
Nice one, Stiku - just what I wanted. +1 :-X
Ironically on their site is the bold statement "Microsoft partner" :laugh:
??? :laugh:
That means that they provide advanced support for MS based products, nothing else.
I too got certification for Office, Visual studio, Server, Sharepoint and SQL server.
Yes, but it is so much funnier to think of a company that produces an app that hacks into the OS being a partner of Microsoft 8-X :-D
exactly :-D
It's too bad it's aimed only at Win10 and not the Win7&8 privacy encroachments. :(
there's always the NSA willing to take a close look at that privacy, safety and security nonsense. There's only a problem with those non-disclosure agreements..
Ran across Malwarebytes Anti Exploit, which is supposed to add extra layers of security around your browser helping to prevent exploits.
Anyone know about this application?
https://www.malwarebytes.org/antiexploit/?utm_source=cj&utm_medium=aff&utm_content=11830665&utm_campaign=AFF-CJ_2786910&tracking=cj (https://www.malwarebytes.org/antiexploit/?utm_source=cj&utm_medium=aff&utm_content=11830665&utm_campaign=AFF-CJ_2786910&tracking=cj)
Shields Java :laugh: :laugh:
! No longer available (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fu8T-eUSrBc#)
I only know the company, its a decent company producing popular malware removal and protection softwares.
Though I'd recommend you buy a proper full suite anti-virus from something like Norton,F-secure, Comodo, Panda, they usually have this same shield add-ons for the browser, and you get the added benefit of ontime updates, and usually great support for virus removals etc etc.
:-X :-()
:laugh:
Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to your machine 'just in case' (http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2425381/microsoft-is-downloading-windows-10-to-your-machine-just-in-case)
??? god damn it :angry-new:
Reads like if you opt out of automatic updates, you are relatively safe - no?
*Throws hands in the air*
Who knows anymore? ???
Turn automatic updating off anyway, if you haven't already. I prefer the option of reviewing the updates before they download, as opposed to having them download first automatically and then choosing which ones to install.
Whether this measure is sufficient to fend off MS' advances I don't know. Need can of cyber-mace >:D
Kicking Google to the curb and running searches through DuckDuckGo who bills themselves as "The search engine that doesn't track you" but I'm finding the accuracy and number of hits on a search term are often a lot less precise.
There's also The Tor Project which offers their own browser. Under their "About Tor" link they describe themselves as a network of volunteer servers that routes your encrypted web traffic through a series of continuously random nodes. That is to say that each time you connect with a specific target the node path will be randomly shuffled. None of the intermediary nodes know the Source or Target and only the final node before connecting to the Target has the key to decrypt the web interaction and e-encrypt the information returning to the source (through that web interaction's set node path) all while never knowing the source of the inquiry.
The bounce between nodes out and back I suspect will add to the response times so I wouldn't suggest trying to Tor into an online game.
I compressed that description of the Tor networking process a lot and probably the foremost reason I haven't downloaded the Tor Browser is that I need someone who's more tech savvy than I am to give it a good check out to see if it's legit. :-()
Something related to Dx12 games, some info regarding what games are coming with DX12 support and what games will be updated to it.
PC-Spiele mit DirectX 12 & Win10-Exklusivität: Games-Liste mit Ark, Hitman, Star Citizen und mehr (http://www.pcgameshardware.de/DirectX-12-Software-255525/Specials/Games-Liste-Uebersicht-Ark-DayZ-Star-Citizen-1164994/)
Yes, the article is in German language, but English language is pretty much 1to1 with it, so should be hard to guess the words with common sense.
Most intresting one is the DayZ, which should get a nice boost from this. But there is also Project Cars.
Impressive. I noticed that there will be an ArmA 3 expansion pack that I'm interested in.
Quote from: Stiku on September 08, 2015, 08:10:59 AM
Easiest way to get rid of the Win10 surveillance is to use this app:
O&O Shutup 10 (http://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10)
Have been using this since 9/8/15. How do I remember that precise date, you ask? Because when I check for updates, W10 now reports my PC is up to date, and lists the check date as 9/8/15 ^-^
:-D
I updated to Win10 and my system has seriously slowed down. I typically sleep my system at the end of my computing day waking it the next morning with a tap on the keyboard and basically only restart it when an update demands it.
In Win7 I could tap the space key to wake it and within 10 seconds have a new Firefox browser window open and a website pulled up. Now it takes 15 seconds to get the Win10 "Sign in" screen that has to be clicked with my mouse and another 10 seconds to get the App screen (which I will never use) loaded up and then kicked the freak out of my way so I can access my Desktop. :D
Opening browsers or starting a program I've known more spry and agile old ladies. ???
I suspect it's all the worthless, non-relevant and "No I don't want to subscribe to your freaking Candy Crush" stupid stinking (cr)-Apps that came preloaded with Win10 that are demanding my CPU cycles. I need some info on butchering these processing rate hogs that are frantically gorging themselves out of the CPU cycle slop-trough once and for all getting them out of my system's way so I can reclaim some of my rig's previous nimbleness.
Why on earth does Microsoft think there's need for three different Xbox Apps (one of them animated) instead of one tile that will route a user (who might actually want to access Xbox) to the service they desire? ???
A couple Key Questions I'd like some feedback for from you more experienced Win10 users:
1. Some of the Apps when Right Clicked Offer the option to Uninstall and to Unpin from the Start while other Apps simply only offer Unpin. Does Uninstalling (where available) pull the actual tooth or does it cut it off just below the gum line leaving the rotting festering root still tapped into my CPU w@&k load?
2. Does Unpinning from Start (on those Apps I can't nuke) stop them from opening and running in an idle state or does it just hide them?
3. Is there a way somewhere in the set up preferences to kill the "Sign In" screen so that when I am waking the computer after Sleeping it?
4. Any suggestions on kicking unnecessary processes (beyond Apps) out of the way to regain some system speed?
I also wanted to ask if Win10 has done anything about the poor routing and distribution of data flow over the processing threads for the CPU?
I know the Intel i7 CPU's have 8 threads and it always annoyed me when I would get a system notice about low CPU availability and I'd open the Task Manager and switch over to the Performance tab it would show the w@&k load on each of the eight threads. Invariably the history would show all programs and processes running on one thread and the other seven threads were sitting virtually idle.
********** ********** ********** ********** **********
Unbelievable. I just discovered another thing I don't like about Win10. In asking that last question it occurred to me to try opening my new Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and switching to the Performance tab. I'm horrified that the Performance display in Win10 no longer shows the 8 threads that are supposed to be running in an i7 CPU. There's only one scrolling graph window that tells nothing about how the w@&k is being divided. Wasn't this supposed to be AN UPGRADE??? :o
How are we supposed to be able to monitor this now? >:((
You can no longer tell if you've got one ditch digger down shoveling in the trench while the seven other threads supervising are standing about leaning on their shovels so they look like they are working while only contributing occasional snide comments about hurrying up. What is it Microsoft? Did you intend to make the "i7" stand for a now undetectable "idle 7"? :'(
Looks like you've a bit of w@&k to do to clean up your system, mandru. Not sure why your machine is running slow - I've installed W10 on 3 machines now, and all 3 have dramatically improved their performance.
I'll respond more when I get some time (need to run to w@&k), but in the meantime, click the search icon and type "settings". Open that app and go meticulously through each of the areas, especially the privacy area and turn off anything that looks strange. If you are unsure, post which one(s) and we can let you know what it affects
Thanks PZ, I looked into all that first thing after the upgrade before doing anything else. It's probably because it knows I hate and despise it. Perversity of the (semi) inanimate and all that. :laugh:
I just don't know if Uninstalling and App where it's allowed is in fact a silver bullet or if it's only hiding things. And the same for Unpin from Start only Apps.
As Win10 was introducing itself to me I had to walk through all of those screens and select what processes I wanted my computer to share with Microsoft and I nixed them all. Then the next morning I spent another hour of so burrowing through all of the preference tabs killing every other option in the OS that smelled like a mole in the system that I could find.
I'm convinced it's the Apps and something in the background processes that wasn't there before upgrading that is dragging my system down.
I think someone could make a fair amount of money creating a utility program that would itemize (with descriptions of function) all the applications, programs, and background services and then through a check off boxes block disable and possibly eliminate useless and unwanted CPU gobblers.
Anything I can't straighten out now I'll have cleared up at the shop with some upgrades that I'm going to have done and if nothing else the Linux side of the dual boot I'm having set up won't suffer from WinDown's syndrome. ::)
I know Steam OS is a free Linux distro (**shudders**) but I'm not wiling to go that far to thwart those power drunk villains at Microsot. :)
You can freely uninstall anything from the start menu that will let you do so (the app is actually removed from your system, not just hidden) - there are some MS things that you can't uninstall without going through a few extra steps, but feel free to get rid of the junk. Uninstalling also automatically removes the tiles. By the way, if you have favorite apps, you can right click the title when in search mode and pin it to start, which appears as a tile that you can rearrange. I like to use update, settings, event viewer, and services - all are pinned to the top of my start menu as tiles.
Thanks PZ. :-X
I also have task manager in my task bar because I regularly monitor the processes sorted by CPU usage - if your OS is running efficiently, with no user programs running (computer idling) you should be near zero most of the time in CPU and disk access columns, and some memory % usage (depending on how much you have). I used task manager process monitoring to nail down exactly which services were consuming CPU cycles, and when not needed, disabled and stopped them. All of this greatly reduced the temperature of the Sufrace Pro (the fan formerly ran at times, partly because it sports an i7, but mostly because unnecessary services were running).
You can actually watch which services are running, do searches on the 'net, and disable them through the services manager if not needed.
Now at idle the fan never runs, and it sits on 0% CPU, 19% memory, and 0% disk access, and the machine boots to desktop in less than 20 seconds.
PS: there is a way to get rid of the login required from sleep but it is a registry hack - don't know if you want to go there. As an alternative, you can setup a PIN (4 digits) and they can even be all the same so "logging" back in is almost effortless.
Here's another way to get rid of apps - the ones MS will not officially let you uninstall. They w@&k, and the xbox one is of particular interest because the xbox app limits your frame rate to 60
https://thomas.vanhoutte.be/miniblog/delete-windows-10-apps/
Plus, it is nice not to see the offending apps installed any longer.
Thanks PZ. Since I don't and won't be using Xbox I unpinned it and all the other uninstallable tiles.
Cortana?
"Ask me a question and I will refer you to a web search that you could have gone to in the first place without bothering me and saved yourself a step. By the way I only direct you to non-system results. It's called self defense."
::)
How to reclaim gigabytes of disk space by disabling hibernation in W10, and by getting rid of your old windows installation files
I never use hibernation, but W10 does not give you an obvious way to disable it entirely. Here's how:
Open a command prompt with administrator privileges. Type: powercfg -h off then press the enter key. It won't look like anything happened, but I had Explorer open to my root drive showing system files, and the hyberfile.sys file simply vanished. I regained nearly 4 gb worth of disk space in the root of my boot drive.
You can always turn it on again by using this command: powercfg -h on
Then, if you are sure you are sticking with this version of the OS, you can cut your disk space consumption to nearly half by deleting windows.old (using Disk cleanup) - the OS keeps a copy of your entire old system as a backup in case you want to go back. This is wasted space, and Windows will automatically delete the folder anyway after a month.
After using the disk cleanup utility to get rid of my old windows installation, the entire OS, all the extra files it uses, and MS Office 2013 takes up less less disk space that a single game like GTAV consumes. The space consumed by everything on my PC (W10, downloads, documents, etc.) is a tad over 22 gb.
Want to enable God Mode in Windows?
Create a new folder on your desktop and rename the folder to this: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
What does God Mode do? Sorry if that's some sort of dumb question...
Gives you access to advanced Windows functions along with the standard ones ;)
Yes, a sort of one stop shopping for most of the functions you can tweak without having to go into the registry or other applets
???
OK, cheers
Any name you give the file in front of the "Period" then the file will carry that name on your desktop.
I named mine "Tweaker.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}" and it seems to have properly switched over to the function panel.
:-X
On closer examination of the article I took the above information from the godmode tweak was actually implanted in Win7 but has remained active for the subsequent OS updates.
Funny how time changes things - now I am pleased that my OS consumes less than 22 gb, but when I first started with DOS-based PCs back in 1985 (on the original IBM PC which had 2 floppy drives and sported 256k RAM). I recall 640k being a luxury, and my first "tweaks" consisted of one of the old 5.25 inch floppy drives loaded with DOS, a word processor, spreadsheet, and database - the PFS products. When the machine started, the OS would load everything into a ram-drive with a simple batch file to make choice of what to use.
Today the error log files are larger - what a simple computing life it was back in the day
and what a long way for PCs to become gaming machines. :-D
Indeed :-D
PC gaming is much better than console gaming due to the following:
- No additional online fees, PS+ or Xbox Live gold subscription required on consoles
- Cheaper games and larger library (Steam, GoG and Humble Bundle FTW)
- Higher frame rates and resolutions (60-144 fps or DIE!)
- Backwards compability (can play games released like 10+ years ago, not possible on current gen consoles :laugh:)
- Freedom to use any input device you want (controllers, joysticks and racing wheels)
- Upgrade your PC anytime you want (rather than waiting 5-8 years for the next console generation ::))
+ screenshots and
+ video capturing. :-D
Forgot those 8-X :-()
PS4 now makes it easy to capture screenshots and videos - even lets you capture what has already happened so you don't miss out on that great escape from those nasty villains. :-()
well, good point, PZ. I wasn't aware of those features being generally added to the PS4. :)
All I can say is that I'm glad it is Sony that makes the console, not MS or Ubi else we'd have a platform that deliberately prevents videos and screen captures 8-X
:-D
Fair enough; a major downside of PC gaming compared to console gaming is the large amount of bugs you may be confronted with, since the games must be designed to run on an enormous variety of systems (hardware AND software vary in many ways).
And another difference, which may be considered a down side, but to others a definitive plus; modding, hacking and cheating. :angel:
And poorly optimized ports :'(
This tip is for those with touch screens using W10. If you are annoyed by the touch feature under certain circumstances, and want to disable it, you can do so by going into the device manager and disabling HID compliant touch screen. To reactivate the feature, simply go back into device manager and enable it.
Because I do this so often, I created a shortcut on my desktop to the device manager: Create a new shortcut and put devmgmt.msc as the location. Click OK and Bob's your uncle