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Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

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Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#62

One time Windows got a "feature update" that made it not boot. Apparently it was an issue with Lenovo motherboards that is still not fixed to this day (afaik). In any case, that was the kick in the pants I needed to switch to Linux. Everything has gone swimmingly since!

May I ask which distro?

Not OP, but I went to Ubuntu at first, but since it didn't like my Lenovo Yoga's tablet mode and screen rotation I gave up fighting it and went to Fedora. Works perfect out of box, I only had to change a few personal preferences to get it how I like it (changing touchpad so tap-to-click works, and using two finger tap for right click instead of lower right)

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#63

I built a Windows PC after 3 years of using my 15 inch 2018 MBP (which is by far the worst machine I have owned considering the price). Windows has gone to shit, I have visual glitches in the UI using dark mode (even the search box on bottom left doesn't render correctly in dark mode until I hover it). They preinstall some shitty "news" bar right there on the task bar and hide disabling it behind a submenu of a right…

Windows has gone to shit

I feel the same way and it makes me sad.

I've kept a death-grip on Windows 7 in hopes there would be a Windows 11 one day despite all the naive "last version ever" messaging. Now it's been announced, and I pray it's more than just a paint job. My asks are simple: more stability, better performance, and axed telemetry.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#64
post #9

On my current gaming PC (i7-7700) I have installed W10 in 2017 and... no problem whatsoever? SSD, 10s boot. idk how do people end up with all the problems. I'm really curious because there must be an underlying reason

I think the Startup Processes really gets abused and people default to blame Windows for it. My time to a usable desktop seemed slow until I removed Teams, Steam, Dropbox and some other update utilities from Startup. Now it's pretty much instant.

Yes. All of those. I also disable the various iTunes and Creative Cloud 'helpers'

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#65
post #9

On my current gaming PC (i7-7700) I have installed W10 in 2017 and... no problem whatsoever? SSD, 10s boot. idk how do people end up with all the problems. I'm really curious because there must be an underlying reason

In my experience it depends on drivers. I bought a PC, I think it was 2017 too. Nvidia drivers were unstable and I was getting BSoD every few days. But at some point they fixed it. It was quite stable since then, no issues either.

That said, I'm trying to be careful to my Windows setup, avoiding installing anything that could tinker with kernel or deep OS integration. Basically it's clean Windows with simple software, no antiviruses, firewalls, registry cleaners, etc. May be it's getting slower with time, but it's barely noticeable.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#66

Any chance some of this could be due to sidechannel exploit mitigation? The timing seems about right.

Almost certainly. Several of the worst benchmarks (Win32 App launch, UWP App launch, and Explorer stress test) all start increasing in the 2018 H1/H2 releases. That matches the timeline for the Spectre/Meltdown fixes, and those are the benchmarks that I'd expect would be most effected.

17134 = 2018 H1 (1803)

17763 = 2018 H2 (1809)

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#68
Some remarks:

I used Hyper-V as the hypervisor of choice

That is not how most end user installations are configured (aka, not as a virtual machine).

32GB fixed disk for each build.

That is much much less than the typical Windows 10 hardware.

the fast boot feature has been disabled for the purposes of this measurement.

That is not the default and not reflective of most installations.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#69
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is, why does OP need to spend money on an SSD (and create e-waste in the process) when an HDD used to be reasonably fast for the same task?

LOL! No, the HDD never was reasonably fast. Our expectations changed. I booted up an old Windows XP box about two years ago before recycling it. It took almost TWO MINUTES to finish booting to the desktop. Some kind of fairly standard 500 GB Western Digital Blue drive. No, I don't know if it had ever been defragmented or had its TEMP files cleared or had old driver modules removed... It was just slow.

> LOL! No, the HDD never was reasonably fast. Our expectations changed.

If the anecdotes of this thread are to be believed, it's not that our expectations changed but that the software has changed.

Re: Did Windows 10 slow down with each feature update?

#70

I built my mom a moderate Windows PC for her accounting work a few years ago. Pretty standard Intel build, no graphics card cause it's not like she needs that. And for the most part it works fine, until every few months it'll slow down to an unusably slow crawl and I'll have to hop into task manager, see what rogue Windows service is bugging out this time, Google it, and find some forum post somewhere telling me what…

IME windows takes more work to administrate than many Linux distros at this point.
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