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Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

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Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#261

Post by alister »

realo wrote: post #172
alister wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What home user even realizes they can change the clock time any more? Indeed. Even if you have the temerity to go and change the clock, the iPhone is secretly maintaining the true time internally and can use it or revert to it at will. I'm making a bold claim, so here are the steps to reproduce: - Go to Settings -> General -> Date & Time -> Set Automatically -> disable - set an incorrect time - Go to Settings -> {W…

Cough ... GPS ... cough ...

I had it airplane mode, but I could see an argument that the GPS is receive-only (it is not transmitting, so not affecting the airplane), so it is not disabled in airplane mode. (I saw comments on the Apple discussion site that they used to turn off GPS in airplane mode but no longer do so on recent iPhone models or versions of iOS.)

Though I didn't mention it earlier, I also had location services disabled:

- Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> Off

The above supposedly disables the GPS or use of the GPS data.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#262

Post by philjohn »

marcosdumay wrote: post #126
philjohn wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marginal gains. 50MB here, 100MB there ... pretty soon you're talking real storage usage.

Some 10 of those and it makes some difference on a phone... In how many places does Windows concentrate the settings for everything?

3 in this case ... registry, registry backup and system restore points.

Makes sense to get rid of one of those, especially as restoring a registry backup can lead to unintended issues if you've installed something since, whereas a system restore point takes care of all of that for you.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#263

Post by hirsin »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #228
pas wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a team that can exterminate other teams in very medieval ways that fail to make stuff installable to non system drive? Because there should be. It's crazy that everything still wants to put stuff on C:\ ... I'm looking at you Visual Studio and Win SDK. Plus Users\Public shared goodies. And the %userprofile%\AppData. I get that every application thinks it needs to put its cache/files there, but then why can't…

> Is there a team that can exterminate other teams in very medieval ways that fail to make stuff installable to non system drive? I'd love if that team would also take a look at Android, where you simply can't not install on the "system drive" aka. main phone flash.

That was a design decision made because install to SD card causes apps to load slowly (to my understanding). It used to be possible but they killed it.

Doesn't hurt that it helps speed up the upgrade cycle since users run out of on-board space sooner.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#264

Post by WorldMaker »

londons_explore wrote: post #66
theandrewbailey wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More info on what that does: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufactur...

I don't really see the need to have the ability to uninstall service packs... Especially not if it's wasting 25% of the space on my tiny SSD! The original windows installation media could be used to restore the system if something went horribly wrong anyway. Why the need to keep every previously used version of every dll?

Because Windows doesn't always have access to the installation media, even when it is a partition on the same drive?

There was an Insider blog post somewhat recently about Windows 10 trying to repack things into installation media over time, when it's a recovery image on the local machine. It sounds like they are working to better the situation.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#265

Post by WorldMaker »

lexicality wrote: post #157
rhinoceraptor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would prefer if it would just give me no results. Half the time when I hit the windows key, type what I want and hit enter it will open an Edge window with Bing search results for what I typed.

You can turn that off. It's not easy and they keep changing how you do it, but with enough registry keys you can kill Cortana and all the associated bollocks and return to an actually useful system search.

Windows 10 is back to system search focused by default in 1903. Cortana was refocused to voice-centric and the interfaces (and buttons) are now distinct between system search and Cortana. Rumors are Cortana may even be an optional install in 19H2 or 20H1.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#266

Post by WorldMaker »

judge2020 wrote: post #106
theandrewbailey wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Patches might happen, but don't hold your breath. It's at Microsoft's discretion. If they are asked why don't they do something about a new vulnerability on an old OS, they'll say they don't support it anymore, users should upgrade, and that will be that. (Did XP ever get Spectre or Meltdown patches?) Maybe more importantly, third parties will notice that MS isn't supporting it and is telling people to upgrade, so th…

Companies will continue to pay for support for Windows 7 for at least another 5 years, so I don't see why Microsoft wouldn't push things like 0-day fixes to all existing computers when they fix exploits for paying businesses.

Metrics are that enough companies have moved to Windows 10 that it is increasingly unlikely that Microsoft will over-extend security support for 7 like they did with XP, and the market costs are likely going to be a lot higher for support contracts.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#267

Post by rrix2 »

justapassenger wrote: post #190
rrix2 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But do they need to?

Does advertising needs to exist at all? Do businesses need to exist at all? Does economy needs to exist? There're issues with current state of online advertising, but when was last time humanity said "improving this would be a great business, but you know what - we don't want it to be better"?

> There're issues with current state of online advertising, but when was last time humanity said "improving this would be a great business, but you know what - we don't want it to be better"?

When you externalize costs like this anything is easy to justify, I will ask a different way: should we be reconsidering forcing the costs of adtech's growth in to an engaged panopticon on to society? Do ads need to be 1000 times more efficient (and profitable, if Alphabet and Facebook's quarterly reports are to be believed) if they have so many external costs which the ecosystem is simply unfit to solve itself?

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#268

Post by dragonwriter »

SmellyGeekBoy wrote: post #238
earenndil wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Print ads have worked for centuries. Digital ads with analytics work 1000 times better .

> Digital ads with analytics work 1000 times better. Have you compared the ROI between the two? Why would anyone bother with print ads at all if this was the case?

> Have you compared the ROI between the two? Why would anyone bother with print ads at all if this was the case

They mostly don't, hence why businesses dependent on print ads have had to radically reinvent themselves or die.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#269

Post by Dylan16807 »

agumonkey wrote: post #234
Dylan16807 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The candycrush install trigger is annoying but mere KB, it's not disk space bloat.

I'm not sure it's always the case. They were accounted for hundreds of MB. Removing them (many games) increased free space.

Looking into it further, apparently windows keeps a secret cache even after you uninstall those apps, so powershell is necessary not just to remove the install trigger but to remove that extra copy. Thanks, windows.

Re: Microsoft explains the lack of Registry backups in Windows 10

#270

Post by Litmus2336 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #203
Litmus2336 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This week in "HN looks at software that took thousands of devs 30 years to write and says 'eh I could've done that in a day!'"

No they're not. They're looking at control panels that were mostly written between 1992 and 2000, and asking why the decade since Win7's release hasn't been enough time to get them all on the same UI framework. " that deep" should be read in terms of the resources of a large company. It's a small fraction of the OS.

I know relatively very little about win32 but I know enough to say that "getting them on the same UI framework" sounds incredibly complicated to me, and I think would entail basically a complete redoing of the control panel, which is similar to what Microsoft actually did.
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