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Microsoft Windows 10

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superleeds1 said:
Bit of a walkthrough here for switching things off etc.

Am sure there will be better ones out there.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article...y-default-heres-how-you-can-protect-yourself/
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I switched off all those settings that were mentioned in this article + all others too (such as microphone, camera and others), but what makes me worry in that article is that it states: "But, if you installed Windows 10 using Express settings, you can still disable some of the default privacy settings."...
If it only some, then were are the others or only way then is to revert back to Windows 7 and upgrade one more time, but this time by using custome install, because that's the only way how to get rid of this spying bullshit that Microsoft have come up with?!?
 
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http://www.alphr.com/microsoft/micr...sable-your-pirated-games-and-illegal-hardware

some food for thought, take this as you find it but thought I would post. Remember that windows 10 is final windows so now until god knows when you have only choices this O/S uses.

Before people post "dont use warez" its not the point, this is about a very grey area and open ended EULA much like a false positive with anti-virus, how far this goes to intrude on what it "thinks" or "decides" is the case.

Dual boot is recommended, for varying reasons.
 
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I am curious at what will happen if there is a false positive. For example, Kerbal Space Program that I play is on Steam. But games developer has clearly stated, both in license agreement and on multiple occasions at games official forums that they allow users to make multiple copies of the game to use on the same PC (for backing up of older versions, or for having different mods for different installs).

Would be interesting to see what happens if I use one of my copies that I run outside of Steam and if Microsoft will count that as pirated software
 
It could be all hype and nothing in the end, but the concern is how it deals with it and so far not much official response to it either which does not help.

If its anything like some trojan DRM then MS has gone back on stopping what they tried with games for windows (failure).

I don't feel an O/S should have any sort of power to decide or disable anything - because it can be badly implemented causing more issues than it solves .. well .. just like DRM.

Especially when its the one and only ever O/S you will ever use and no way to return from it, thats why I mention dual booting with prior O/S .. I think I would advise this for anyone installing windows. Even when I get a new rig I will dual boot it.
 
Would just like to update that I'm finally on Windows 10.

Apparently the issue was with my boot file, the BCD and recovery. Had to rebuild my BCD. Then to make sure all is good I also added a recovery on my C drive and registered it. I don't know what Lenovo did but I had "one key recovery" that came installed with the laptop that never worked. So got rid of it earlier.

Anyway, just in case anyone faces a similar problem, Windows 10 update failing at 24% and getting the silly and very informative "Something went wrong" message, error 80070003, I'll leave the solution here :)

Note: Because I didn't have a working recovery, I couldn't reboot in recovery mode. So what I did is I booted into Windows 10 like I'd normally do to install, then click on repair, advanced settings, and open CMD from there. You cannot rebuild the BCD after you've booted into Windows obviously since the file's in use, so you'll have to do it after booting from recovery mode. :)

"I had exactly the same problem. Fixed it by rebuilding BCD - boot configuration data. You can find numerous tutorials on how to do that in the Internet. However keep in mind that the process is slightly different for EFCI boot mode and legacy boot mode.
Just in case, here is the instruction that I followed. It's for EFCI boot mode, for legacy boot mode there's a good one here.
(enter commands in command prompt in system recovery):
diskpart (opens Disk Partitioning tool)
select disk 0
list volume (please note the number of the volume that has no drive letter assigned and has FAT32 listed in Fscolumn)
select volume <the number of ~500 MB FAT32 volume with no drive letter, or with label ESP>
assign letter=Z: (gives drive letter Z: to EFI System Partition)
exit (closes Disk Partitioning tool)
cd /d Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\ (changes current folder in Command Prompt window)
attrib Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD -h -r -s (removes hidden, read-only and system attributes from BCD folder)
ren Z:\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\BCD BCD.old (renames BCD folder to BCD.old)
bootrec /rebuildbcd (retries the rebuild)
Now, in the Add installation to boot list line, type Y and press ENTER. Now, it should say something like "completed successfully". The new BCD is ready, close Command Prompt and restart your computer."

Cifad's response in http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...431a-b4e4-9ae12cfd89a2?page=~pagenum~#Windows.

Use this if you don't have a working recovery mode/image/disc to create a new one :) Do this step after you've rebuilt the BCD above.

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/restore-deleted-recovery-partition-windows-8/

Hope this helps whoever's in need and great credit goes to Cifad from Microsoft's website.

I'd like to point out that these so called IT Support "Pros" are useless idiots who just parrot solutions without thinking.
 
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Just upgraded, pretty smooth for me fortunately! Kept all my files and settings (as I can never download the damn Witcher 3 again, that sh*t is HUGE) and it's purring along.

Reasonably impressed by the process, but am now looking for any differences - haven't noticed many real ones from 8.1!
 
beachryan said:
Just upgraded, pretty smooth for me fortunately! Kept all my files and settings (as I can never download the damn Witcher 3 again, that sh*t is HUGE) and it's purring along.

Reasonably impressed by the process, but am now looking for any differences - haven't noticed many real ones from 8.1!
Click to expand...

To be honest I don't think you will notice much difference between 8 and 10, especially performance wise.

Windows 10 seems to take slightly longer to boot than Windows 8.1, I think people will only notice the difference between 7 and 10. As IMO Windows 8.1 performed alot better than Windows 7 especially with an SSD.
 
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bsmaff said:
As IMO Windows 8.1 performed alot better than Windows 7 especially with an SSD.
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I totally agree.
Windows 8.1 is a huge improvement over Windows 7. It still is my OS of choice and will probably be so for a long time (I already got myself a Windows 10 license and ISO via DreamSpark should I decide to upgrade sooner or later, but I don't really feel the need to upgrade right now).
 
My First Impressions:

Personally Windows 10 is just an OS to appeal to the consumer.

There was absolutely nothing wrong with Windows 8.1 once you got used to the metro system. It performed incredibly quick and booted instantly.

The problem is Joe Public didn't like it.. it changed too much, so Microsoft have basically given us Windows 8.1 with a re-skin and a massive invasion of privacy(although in this day and age everyone sells personal information to someone else).

Most of my initial issues about upgrading were quickly fixed as drivers became available very quickly for my components, Intel were very quick with the drivers available the day before Windows 10 was launched, even Creative got their drivers out pretty quickly which was a massive shock.

The OS itself performs on the same levels as 8.1, although my system does take a little longer to boot(but this is probably more to do with it being an upgrade and not a clean install), I have not run any benchmarks though on either games or system to see if there is any improvement.

I think we need to wait and see if DX12 actually makes a difference to gaming they are claiming it will, which I doubt it will. It will more likely benefit the crap frame rates on Xbone more than PC gaming.
 
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I'm really happy with it overall. I realise it's essentially a reskin with some fixes here and there, but overall it seems smoother and easier to operate overall (or at least, less fiddly).

I've installed it onto a laptop and a tablet, and it's particularly good on the tablet (the laptop has suffered from the touchpad being disabled every tenth boot or so, no idea what that's all about because the driver is fine).

My one wish with the tablet is that finger scrolling could be "forced" into older apps, and included in newer apps. For example, even on the bundled web browser, I can't seem to scroll web pages using my finger on the middle of the screen - I have to try and touch a tiny little scrollbar and drag it.

For web browsing it's a pain, but for games (such as Football Manager) with an even smaller scrollbar, it's a nightmare.

I've read that you can use two fingers on the screen to scroll in 8.1, but I can't seem to get that working in 10?
 
I'm super happy with Windows 10 atm. Windows 7 was great. I had it for about 5 years? And I didn't have to reformat my PC once. Zero problems with it. but I'm not regretting my choice either. Getting Windows 10 was the right move.

Oh... and I haven't had the necessity to get an AntiVirus in almost 7 years now. Not a single problem without an AV.
 
Zakov said:
For those who value privacy and/or is paranoid.

https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking

This is an app that can disable some of the tracking features found in Windows 10.
Click to expand...

I dont think paranoid comes into the equation, its all over the net about calling home features even when switching things off, so yes these types of tools and callback server lists for router blocking are all welcomed.

For more basic reasons than this I wont switch to 10 until the day they kill support for other O/S versions much like I did with XP, almost to the week they stopped support did I switch permanent with my win7 boot O/S, and then on new rig with 10 I will still as I mentioned before dual boot with prior O/S, all about the options for me.

Here are some references for call back servers for router/blockers:

All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to:

oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
pre.footprintpredict.com
reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com

Telemetry is sent once per 5 minutes, to:

vortex.data.microsoft.com
vortex-win.data.microsoft.com
telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com
telecommand.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com
sqm.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
This allows them to track you very accurately.

Typing the name of any popular movie into your local file search starts a telemetry process that indexes all media files on your computer and transmits them to:

df.telemetry.microsoft.com
reports.wes.df.telemetry.microsoft.com
cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net
vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
pre.footprintpredict.com

When a webcam is first enabled, ~35mb of data gets immediately transmitted to:

oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net


Everything that is said into an enabled microphone is immediately transmitted to:

oca.telemetry.microsoft.com
oca.telemetry.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
vortex-sandbox.data.microsoft.com
pre.footprintpredict.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com
i1.services.social.microsoft.com.nsatc.net
telemetry.appex.bing.net
telemetry.urs.microsoft.com
cs1.wpc.v0cdn.net
statsfe1.ws.microsoft.com
Click to expand...
 
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All text typed on the keyboard is stored in temporary files, and sent (once per 30 mins) to:

Typing the name of any popular movie into your local file search starts a telemetry process that indexes all media files on your computer and transmits them to:

When a webcam is first enabled, ~35mb of data gets immediately transmitted to:

Everything that is said into an enabled microphone is immediately transmitted to:
Click to expand...

Can't believe they are doing this and i bet that aint the half of it.
 
pesmonkey2013 said:
I dont think paranoid comes into the equation, its all over the net about calling home features even when switching things off, so yes these types of tools and callback server lists for router blocking are all welcomed.

For more basic reasons than this I wont switch to 10 until the day they kill support for other O/S versions much like I did with XP, almost to the week they stopped support did I switch permanent with my win7 boot O/S, and then on new rig with 10 I will still as I mentioned before dual boot with prior O/S, all about the options for me.

Here are some references for call back servers for router/blockers:
Click to expand...

I have looked into this and it is no different from what Apple have been doing for years.

But for some reason when Apple do it no one minds, but when Microsoft do it...
 
bsmaff said:
I have looked into this and it is no different from what Apple have been doing for years.

But for some reason when Apple do it no one minds, but when Microsoft do it...
Click to expand...

I'm using Little Snitch on OS X, so I do mind to a certain extent.
 
I have looked into this and it is no different from what Apple have been doing for years.

But for some reason when Apple do it no one minds, but when Microsoft do it...
Click to expand...

So, its a windows 10 thread and people who own PC clearly give more of a shit to know what's happening in the background, don't care for mac or apple, and two wrongs dont make a right either.

Its just helpful for techies to know whats what, if you dont mind or care, dont worry about it and enjoy 10.
 
Has Windows 10 now changed to accept windows 8 keys for activation? That was my experience just now with the latest insider preview build!
 
Unsure but all I can say is - anything that seems a give away to get folk to move over aint always is what it seems.

My trust of this O/S has wained dramatically, a wolf in sheeps clothing in my view ( and this is of course my own view only) :)
 
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More interesting things with Windows 10 update on Windows 7 ...

Only in the last month or so I noticed windows update will not show notification on the task bar (by the clock) the shield icon - (I have it set to notify me of updates but dont download until I request it) .. this has been fine for along time but then I realised I had missed about 150MB of updates recently as it wasn't notifying ... hmmmm.

So, I decided to set it to "auto download updated but inform me" when to install them. So far this now works .. but on the most recent update if "failed". So I went to windows update under control panel and clicked "check for updates" as soon as I did the this GWX window popped up shoving windows 10 upgrade in my face (never happened before).. I used the X to close and carried on checking updates.

When I went to update it had "windows 10" in the list to update?? So I checked "optional updates" and out of all of them windows 10 was ticked .. I had never selected it, never under GWX told it I wanted to be included with the upgrade or anything.

So now it seems people who haven't upgraded try to have it "crow barred" into your updates .. which, to be fair, pisses me off.

I need to check further how to kill GWX applet and stop this crap pestering me ... F***k off MS I dont want your customer friendly spyware thanks.

My point here is the irony of "optional" and yet it was selected FOR me :RANT:
 
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pesmonkey2013 said:
More interesting things with Windows 10 update on Windows 7 ...

Only in the last month or so I noticed windows update will not show notification on the task bar (by the clock) the shield icon - (I have it set to notify me of updates but dont download until I request it) .. this has been fine for along time but then I realised I had missed about 150MB of updates recently as it wasn't notifying ... hmmmm.

So, I decided to set it to "auto download updated but inform me" when to install them. So far this now works .. but on the most recent update if "failed". So I went to windows update under control panel and clicked "check for updates" as soon as I did the this GWX window popped up shoving windows 10 upgrade in my face (never happened before).. I used the X to close and carried on checking updates.

When I went to update it had "windows 10" in the list to update?? So I checked "optional updates" and out of all of them windows 10 was ticked .. I had never selected it, never under GWX told it I wanted to be included with the upgrade or anything.

So now it seems people who haven't upgraded try to have it "crow barred" into your updates .. which, to be fair, pisses me off.

I need to check further how to kill GWX applet and stop this crap pestering me ... F***k off MS I dont want your customer friendly spyware thanks.

My point here is the irony of "optional" and yet it was selected FOR me :RANT:
Click to expand...

Are you talking about Windows 10 being downloaded in the background even though you are on Windows 7?

If you are then you need a registry patch in order to stop the download and it ever appearing.
 
That is what bugs me too with Win 10. I have selected that I don't want Win 10 to automatically download and install new versions of drivers for my hardware, but few days ago it ignored my settings and installed newer version of graphics drivers for my HD 7850. I wouldn't notice that if I didn't get problems with that. When playing games or watching movies my screen would flicker few times and then either everything will freeze, PC would automatically restart or I will get a notification that my graphic drivers stopped responding and have recovered. I downloaded drivers from AMD site, uninstalled those that Win 10 has installed without my approval but before I managed to install those that I have downloaded Win 10 had already installed those same ones that I had just deleted. And all that while I still had auto install for drivers set to OFF. But seems that problems were because of corrupt installation because since it was installed for 2nd time everything works just fine.
 
bsmaff said:
Are you talking about Windows 10 being downloaded in the background even though you are on Windows 7?

If you are then you need a registry patch in order to stop the download and it ever appearing.
Click to expand...

Not exactly, Im referring to windows auto selecting 1 optional download via the tick box list (that being windows 10) "for" me when it comes to simply checking new updates for windows 7.

I just had 10 more updates downloaded for 7 as normal , all was ok - restarted, then when I went back to windows update .. there it is ... windows 10 optional ticked ready to go, have to keep "un" ticking it each time ... very annoying, and only started recently.

As I mentioned the GWX applet that lets you "opt in" should be the only place, not keep ticking it under your updates FOR you each time, someone not looking could start updating when they never even asked for it.

Will seek out the reg thing you speak off, need to kill this shit, its annoying.
 
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