Bloody Windows!!!

[Refrigerator]

How do i kill Windows modules installer worker? It's eating 60% of my CPU and takes hours to stop. Whenever i end it it just pops back up. I tried disabling it in services.msc but there it won't let me stop the damn thing and when i put the startup on disabled it has already changed itself on automatic the next time i check it.
This pisses me off and i don't care what this program is or what it does, all i want to do right now is to kill it and for it to stay dead. 
What could this program even be doing for hours with 60% of my CPU? Mining bitcoin for microshaft perhaps?

[Refrigerator]

You need an SSD to run Windows 10. Windows installer has a ton of small file IO, and Windows Defender checks every of them.
Solution: disable Windows Defender and take the risk.
Not only WD screws up with Windows installer, it also screws up GCC when compiling large programs, even with NVMe SSDs.

Forgot to mention that i'm running Win8.1, to me win10 is just unbearable. Windows defender, along with superfetch, is already disabled.
Ps; i'd gladly run win7  but the laptop does not support win7.

[rrinker]

 That's not updates, if it keeps on running over and over again. You have something well and clearly borked up that is causing it to keep starting up. I suspect forced stopping it had corrupted the cache. There's not a lot you can do to fix that besides a full reinstall.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2667628/missing-windows-installer-cache-files-will-require-a-computer-rebuild

Defender, at least in Win10, is one of the LIGHTEST AV programs, and it's effective.

And Windows 10 does not need an SSD. It works fine on a regular drive - just not very well when you only have 2GB of RAM. After you get used to an SSD however... they ALL seem slow, no matter what OS. But a Win10 machines on a regular hard drive with at least 4GB RAM will be FINE.

[tszaboo]

You need an SSD to run Windows 10. Windows installer has a ton of small file IO, and Windows Defender checks every of them.
Solution: disable Windows Defender and take the risk.
Not only WD screws up with Windows installer, it also screws up GCC when compiling large programs, even with NVMe SSDs.

It does the same on SSD. My X220 laptop turns into a toaster oven every few days.
And WTF, Microsoft checks files -coming from Microsoft- for virus

[GreyWoolfe]

That's not updates, if it keeps on running over and over again. You have something well and clearly borked up that is causing it to keep starting up. I suspect forced stopping it had corrupted the cache. There's not a lot you can do to fix that besides a full reinstall.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2667628/missing-windows-installer-cache-files-will-require-a-computer-rebuild

Defender, at least in Win10, is one of the LIGHTEST AV programs, and it's effective.

And Windows 10 does not need an SSD. It works fine on a regular drive - just not very well when you only have 2GB of RAM. After you get used to an SSD however... they ALL seem slow, no matter what OS. But a Win10 machines on a regular hard drive with at least 4GB RAM will be FINE.

I agree, 3 of my personal machines have regular hard drives and 4GB ram.  The 4th has 8GB.  These are all older computers, 2 2010 HP Z210 workstations, an HP EliteBook 8560P and a no name surplus XP era workstation.

[Syntax_Error]

So, a confession:

After using Linux for about a year and a half after ditching Windows 10 and all it's associated programs, I just recently gave it another try as I bought a new (to me) mobile workstation with hardware that more than outclasses my old hardware. I have to tell you...I kind of love it. It's wayyy faster than my old computer, regardless of which OS (Linux Mint or Windows 10). I've even been using Edge (gasp!) as my browser and it's fast too. I only downloaded Chrome for a single use so far because a registration I needed recommended Chrome and I didn't want to chance it.

I'm not sure if Windows 10 has been improved since I first tried it or if it is solely superior hardware, but I won't be switching anytime soon. Any dual booting will have to wait until I get an external drive sometime, and that would be the secondary OS, not Windows.

I know this bucks the status quo lately, but it's been a truly remarkable experience. I'm inclined to think it's largely the hardware. I moved from a 2nd gen Core i3 2.1GHz, 6GB RAM, HDD, Intel graphics, to 7th gen Core i7 2.9-3.8GHz, 16GB RAM, NVME drive, 2GB Quadro M620. It's definitely been a noticeable difference.

[Yansi]

Not too surprising. The Intel i3 is not processor, it is garbage!  Even my veeery older PC with the Core 2 Duo crunches numbers  way faster than the i3 shite. Learnt this the hard way, when I bought my notebook I currently use.

[bd139]

For reference, we have seen TrustedInstaller going batshit as well. The funny thing this is on Amazon's AWS. If you stick it on a t2 instance which has limited CPU credits, wham hits a wall straight away when you deploy an instance because it's pissing around consuming one entire core constantly.

Then the CPU gets throttled so you can't even log into it.

[rdl]

The settings for many Microsoft programs run are handled by Task Scheduler, so you may look there for entries on how it is handled as far as restarting if shut down. If the services.msc won't let you shut it down, try doing it from Task Manager.

[Zero999]

So, a confession:

After using Linux for about a year and a half after ditching Windows 10 and all it's associated programs, I just recently gave it another try as I bought a new (to me) mobile workstation with hardware that more than outclasses my old hardware. I have to tell you...I kind of love it. It's wayyy faster than my old computer, regardless of which OS (Linux Mint or Windows 10). I've even been using Edge (gasp!) as my browser and it's fast too. I only downloaded Chrome for a single use so far because a registration I needed recommended Chrome and I didn't want to chance it.

I'm not sure if Windows 10 has been improved since I first tried it or if it is solely superior hardware, but I won't be switching anytime soon. Any dual booting will have to wait until I get an external drive sometime, and that would be the secondary OS, not Windows.

I know this bucks the status quo lately, but it's been a truly remarkable experience. I'm inclined to think it's largely the hardware. I moved from a 2nd gen Core i3 2.1GHz, 6GB RAM, HDD, Intel graphics, to 7th gen Core i7 2.9-3.8GHz, 16GB RAM, NVME drive, 2GB Quadro M620. It's definitely been a noticeable difference.

I've recently upgraded my parent's PC to Windows 10. I have no problems whatsoever with the performance. It's quick enough.

Would I install Windows 10 on my own PC? No way! I don't like the user interface, the advertising, the fact that many of the settings are hidden and that many of the traditional programs have been replaced with poorly designed apps. I don't like the direction Microsoft is taking, with wanting to own everyone's PC and pushing forward a UI aimed at a touchscreen on devices with a mouse and keyboard.

[bd139]

I think the new UI could work absolutely fine. Only problem is all the GUI elements are so large. It’s like a telly tubby play set.

[tszaboo]

So, a confession:

After using Linux for about a year and a half after ditching Windows 10 and all it's associated programs, I just recently gave it another try as I bought a new (to me) mobile workstation with hardware that more than outclasses my old hardware. I have to tell you...I kind of love it. It's wayyy faster than my old computer, regardless of which OS (Linux Mint or Windows 10). I've even been using Edge (gasp!) as my browser and it's fast too. I only downloaded Chrome for a single use so far because a registration I needed recommended Chrome and I didn't want to chance it.

I'm not sure if Windows 10 has been improved since I first tried it or if it is solely superior hardware, but I won't be switching anytime soon. Any dual booting will have to wait until I get an external drive sometime, and that would be the secondary OS, not Windows.

I know this bucks the status quo lately, but it's been a truly remarkable experience. I'm inclined to think it's largely the hardware. I moved from a 2nd gen Core i3 2.1GHz, 6GB RAM, HDD, Intel graphics, to 7th gen Core i7 2.9-3.8GHz, 16GB RAM, NVME drive, 2GB Quadro M620. It's definitely been a noticeable difference.

I've recently upgraded my parent's PC to Windows 10. I have no problems whatsoever with the performance. It's quick enough.

Would I install Windows 10 on my own PC? No way! I don't like the user interface, the advertising, the fact that many of the settings are hidden and that many of the traditional programs have been replaced with poorly designed apps. I don't like the direction Microsoft is taking, with wanting to own everyone's PC and pushing forward a UI aimed at a touchscreen on devices with a mouse and keyboard.

Yeah, it is quite ridiculous, that starting a calculator takes 5 seconds, and you need a spash screen for it. Good thing, that calc.exe from windows 7 is a exe, and it runs without any hackery.

I think the new UI could work absolutely fine. Only problem is all the GUI elements are so large. It’s like a telly tubby play set.

It is for the touch input. I've used a laptop with touchscreen, it actually works quite well. But you need to have it on your lap and it needs to be a 13-14 inch screen. Any larger than that, or further away just doesnt work.

[tautech]

I've just built a Win 10 box but it could've been 7, 8.1 or whatever.
I came from 7 and the wife's runs 8.1 so there was some small familiarity with the 8 and 10 type UI.

I3 3.7G and 8G ram runs just fine, the UI is still getting used to me and I only used the W10 calculator for the first time a couple days back, launches instantly.
Still finding and working out how to use some of the 'apps'  but haven't given a good test with something processor hungry like Altium yet.

[Zero999]

So, a confession:

After using Linux for about a year and a half after ditching Windows 10 and all it's associated programs, I just recently gave it another try as I bought a new (to me) mobile workstation with hardware that more than outclasses my old hardware. I have to tell you...I kind of love it. It's wayyy faster than my old computer, regardless of which OS (Linux Mint or Windows 10). I've even been using Edge (gasp!) as my browser and it's fast too. I only downloaded Chrome for a single use so far because a registration I needed recommended Chrome and I didn't want to chance it.

I'm not sure if Windows 10 has been improved since I first tried it or if it is solely superior hardware, but I won't be switching anytime soon. Any dual booting will have to wait until I get an external drive sometime, and that would be the secondary OS, not Windows.

I know this bucks the status quo lately, but it's been a truly remarkable experience. I'm inclined to think it's largely the hardware. I moved from a 2nd gen Core i3 2.1GHz, 6GB RAM, HDD, Intel graphics, to 7th gen Core i7 2.9-3.8GHz, 16GB RAM, NVME drive, 2GB Quadro M620. It's definitely been a noticeable difference.

I've recently upgraded my parent's PC to Windows 10. I have no problems whatsoever with the performance. It's quick enough.

Would I install Windows 10 on my own PC? No way! I don't like the user interface, the advertising, the fact that many of the settings are hidden and that many of the traditional programs have been replaced with poorly designed apps. I don't like the direction Microsoft is taking, with wanting to own everyone's PC and pushing forward a UI aimed at a touchscreen on devices with a mouse and keyboard.

Yeah, it is quite ridiculous, that starting a calculator takes 5 seconds, and you need a spash screen for it. Good thing, that calc.exe from windows 7 is a exe, and it runs without any hackery.

That wasn't the case for me, certainly not for the games my Dad loves such as FreeCell. I had to download hacked executables from Windows 7.

I think the new UI could work absolutely fine. Only problem is all the GUI elements are so large. It’s like a telly tubby play set.

It is for the touch input. I've used a laptop with touchscreen, it actually works quite well. But you need to have it on your lap and it needs to be a 13-14 inch screen. Any larger than that, or further away just doesnt work.

I'm sure Windows 10's UI is fine on a touchscreen. I just wonder what the hell they're playing at, pushing it on a desktop.

[rrinker]

 Things aren't giant on my laptop screen, except the pinned items on my start menu, which I have organized and labeled by functional groups (MS Office, Electronics, Programming, Utilities, etc.) and even those aren't ridiculously cartoonishly large. And there IS a smaller size they can be set to. Are you still running original RTM Windows 10?

 Calculator starts instantly, with no splash screen. They fixed that a number of updates ago. The start menu the way I have it organized is another addition that came with updates a while ago - the original one only had one panel and icon sizes from tiny to "takes up nearly the whole screen stupid large". That's all been changed, for a while now.

 The only painful experience I've had with Win 10 was setting up a cheap low end Celeron laptop for a friend. With a slow 5400 RPM hard disk plus a mere 2GB of RAM, it took hours to get up to date with all updates. Actually firing it up after that and doing web browsing or other basic tasks, it wasn't horrible - not what I would buy for myself, but for someone on a limited budget it was better than no computer, and usable. Those first few reboots with allt he updates though - yeah, more RAM and a 7200 RPM drive probably would have been OK.

[technix]

Here is how I got my old laptop on Windows 10: more than 2GB of RAM (I went with 3GB as that is how much the BIOS would allow) and SSD.

And it is not going anywhere near my main workstation: it does not handle 4K monitor well with less than 32 inch physical size and mine is a 24-inch (very crappy DPI scaling,) in fact for my Windows 10 virtual machine I am having the macOS host system scaling the entire Windows VM for it instead of relying on Windows 10 itself; and it does not handle mixed SSD-HDD systems well - in fact it does not handle it at all. And Intel SRT is not helping due to its limited cache size and the fact that it is broken on my Gigabyte motherboard. I think so far only macOS handles those two perfectly, with linux/KDE being a close second.

[james_s]

Are you sure it won't run Win7? I have that on all of my home Windows PCs and it still works great. At work I use Linux on my primary PC and Win10 on my corp issue laptop and after nearly 2 years of dealing with Win10 I still loathe it. I've never used an operating system that felt so user-hostile, I feel like I'm constantly fighting with it to keep the OS out of my way. It's like Microsoft copied all the worst aspects of Apple and forgot to copy the "just works" part.

[Zero999]

Things aren't giant on my laptop screen, except the pinned items on my start menu, which I have organized and labeled by functional groups (MS Office, Electronics, Programming, Utilities, etc.) and even those aren't ridiculously cartoonishly large. And there IS a smaller size they can be set to. Are you still running original RTM Windows 10?

The latest Windows 10, downloaded from the MS site last Sunday. I'm aware of the scaling setting but I believe that alters everything. My complaint is that the shitty metro apps have a much larger UI, than the real applications.

MS really need have two different modes, or even operating systems, for desktop and touch devices, with the user interface optimised for each. In fact what would be really good is a library which could help developers produce software for both touch and desktop devices, allowing different user interfaces to be used, with minimal changes to the code.

Calculator starts instantly, with no splash screen. They fixed that a number of updates ago. The start menu the way I have it organized is another addition that came with updates a while ago - the original one only had one panel and icon sizes from tiny to "takes up nearly the whole screen stupid large". That's all been changed, for a while now.

I don't have the PC in front of me. I don't remember calculator having a splash screen, but I do remember it taking longer to start, than the old version. I ditched it because looks ugly, is harder to use with a mouse and keyboard.

The only improvement I've seen in Windows 10 is the command prompt, which can be resized to any size: something Linux could do for years. If they'd included a half decent command line calculator, I'd be happy.

The only painful experience I've had with Win 10 was setting up a cheap low end Celeron laptop for a friend. With a slow 5400 RPM hard disk plus a mere 2GB of RAM, it took hours to get up to date with all updates. Actually firing it up after that and doing web browsing or other basic tasks, it wasn't horrible - not what I would buy for myself, but for someone on a limited budget it was better than no computer, and usable. Those first few reboots with allt he updates though - yeah, more RAM and a 7200 RPM drive probably would have been OK.

Shame, that sounds like a perfectly good machine. There are plenty of operating systems that would run on it and five reasonable performance.

[james_s]

MS really need have two different modes, or even operating systems, for desktop and touch devices, with the user interface optimised for each. In fact what would be really good is a library which could help developers produce software for both touch and desktop devices, allowing different user interfaces to be used, with minimal changes to the code.

That's really what it comes down to, and one of the things that Apple got right. They have a mobile OS and a desktop/laptop OS, both share some elements and have a similar look & feel but they don't attempt to be exactly the same. Now there is a lot to dislike about Apple but that particular aspect they got right.

Microsoft on the other hand continues to forge ahead, steadfastly refusing to admit that going for a unified one-size-fits-all experience is a failure. Win10 feels to me like a spork welded to a knife, it tries to be everything and ends up doing nothing really well. It strikes me as a product nobody asked for, created to push customers toward the needs of the business model rather than a product that puts the needs of the customer first.

[timb]

MS really need have two different modes, or even operating systems, for desktop and touch devices, with the user interface optimised for each. In fact what would be really good is a library which could help developers produce software for both touch and desktop devices, allowing different user interfaces to be used, with minimal changes to the code.

That's really what it comes down to, and one of the things that Apple got right. They have a mobile OS and a desktop/laptop OS, both share some elements and have a similar look & feel but they don't attempt to be exactly the same. Now there is a lot to dislike about Apple but that particular aspect they got right.

Microsoft on the other hand continues to forge ahead, steadfastly refusing to admit that going for a unified one-size-fits-all experience is a failure. Win10 feels to me like a spork welded to a knife, it tries to be everything and ends up doing nothing really well. It strikes me as a product nobody asked for, created to push customers toward the needs of the business model rather than a product that puts the needs of the customer first.

These are really good points that a lot of people overlook. To expand a bit:

The OS components (Mach Kernel, Darwin, Cocoa/Core APIs, Quart Display Subsystem, APFS, Sandboxing, etc.) are shared between iOS, WatchOS, tvOS and macOS. The differences really come down to the UI and input methods (plus the sandboxing restrictions the former three OS enforce, which is only required for MAS apps on macOS).

Now, because of that, porting applications takes a bit more work than just compiling it for a different architecture (i.e., you can’t just recompile a macOS application for ARM and run it on an iPhone). That said, it’s not *that much* more work. If the macOS app respects the App Store sandboxing restrictions, you just need a new UI and appropriate logic; all the under the hood code can be shared between platforms.

The huge advantage to this is you end up with phone/tablet apps optimized for touch input and PC apps optimized for mouse/keyboard input.

Microsoft has never really understood the advantage to this. There’s an interview from a few years back where Steve Ballmer complains that they really invented the Smartphone and Tablet and that Apple stole their thunder with the iPhone and iPad. What he fails to grasp is just how terrible these early PDA/Phone/Tablet devices were.

Starting in the mid-90’s, MS became obsessed with unifying the UI across their product line. By the late 90’s they had three separate operating systems (Windows 9x, NT and CE), each with different—incompatible—APIs, spread over *at least* 8 different binary incompatible platforms (x86, MIPS, SH3, ARM, PPC, StrongARM, DEC, Alpha). All with nearly identical looking UIs (complete with Start Menu).

The Start Menu works great on a desktop, with a mouse, keyboard and large display. Not so much on a tiny 5” B&W LCD with a resistive touch screen as the input. The other issue is that Windows CE didn’t share any of the Windows 9x APIs, so porting applications was a huge pain.

It took them until the early-2010’s before Windows CE/PocketPC/AutoPC/HandheldPC/Smartphone/Mobile/Embedded was fully killed off and replaced with Windows 8, which finally gave them a unified API. Unfortunately, they were still obsessed with having a unified UI, now in the opposite direction (instead of all devices working like a desktop, they wanted all devices to work like tablets). The whole thing was a mess.

They backed off a little with Windows 10, but I still don’t think they truly understand the *reason* behind the backlash to Windows 8.

[amspire]

Microsoft on the other hand continues to forge ahead, steadfastly refusing to admit that going for a unified one-size-fits-all experience is a failure. Win10 feels to me like a spork welded to a knife, it tries to be everything and ends up doing nothing really well. It strikes me as a product nobody asked for, created to push customers toward the needs of the business model rather than a product that puts the needs of the customer first.

Windows 10 is a huge success for Microsoft, because it is achieving what they want. In many ways, Windows XP and Windows 7 have been a bit of a disaster for Microsoft. The reason is that people were happy to keep using them for far far too long. If an average person got an i3/i5/i7 Windows 7 PC in 2010 and it was still working perfectly, why would they need to update it? It is fast enough and PC's of that era can usually handle 8G RAM or more. If they had the choice to continue to use Windows 7 safely that is.

Microsoft may have got $50 for the Windows 7 license seven years ago and absolutely nothing since! Even though they been getting nothing, they have had to provide gigabytes of free updates. Back when XP was created, hardly anyone worried about security. It was OK for an occasional service pack to come out once a year or two. Life was wonderful for Microsoft because Windows 2000 was obsolete after only a year or two and hardware improvements forced people to upgrade. Many Windows 2000 PC's only had 128MBytes of RAM and 256MBytes was huge!

So far Windows 10 has captured over 50% of the Win XP and Win7 users and the process is accelerating. That is a success.

Going forward, the way things are done will be different that probably will allow for a one-size-fits-all strategy. Containers are coming to Windows and I think that will be the way legacy support is managed. It will be a better solution then trying to make Windows 7 32bit 100% compatible with 1998-2000 VB6 programs running Access 2.0 databases - which is exactly what is happening right now at many businesses.  Containers can eliminate the need for installation at all - software is essentially pre-installed into the container once.

If you are wishing that you could somehow stay locked in the Windows XP or 7 era, then I hate to give you bad news. You will have to move with the technology or go to Linux. You can go with Apple if you like, but they will at some point drop the current platforms when it suits them just like they did with the PowerPC platforms.

[Bud]

Next version of Windows will be with oval windows. Guess that is what some people here call "technology".

[technix]

These are really good points that a lot of people overlook. To expand a bit:

The OS components (Mach Kernel, Darwin, Cocoa/Core APIs, Quart Display Subsystem, APFS, Sandboxing, etc.) are shared between iOS, WatchOS, tvOS and macOS. The differences really come down to the UI and input methods (plus the sandboxing restrictions the former three OS enforce, which is only required for MAS apps on macOS).

Now, because of that, porting applications takes a bit more work than just compiling it for a different architecture (i.e., you can’t just recompile a macOS application for ARM and run it on an iPhone). That said, it’s not *that much* more work. If the macOS app respects the App Store sandboxing restrictions, you just need a new UI and appropriate logic; all the under the hood code can be shared between platforms.

The huge advantage to this is you end up with phone/tablet apps optimized for touch input and PC apps optimized for mouse/keyboard input.

Apple is actively promoting the separation of business logic and user interface. Ever since iOS 8 it will load frameworks (dynamic libraries) bundled in applications. This allows the non user interface components to be shared across all Apple operating systems using the same exact binary (a fat binary, also count Linux with GNUstep in with the same code but not the same binary) and build the user interface and user experience separately.

[bd139]

That’s because the MVC model in Cocoa dates back to NeXT a long time ago.

[Zero999]

Microsoft on the other hand continues to forge ahead, steadfastly refusing to admit that going for a unified one-size-fits-all experience is a failure. Win10 feels to me like a spork welded to a knife, it tries to be everything and ends up doing nothing really well. It strikes me as a product nobody asked for, created to push customers toward the needs of the business model rather than a product that puts the needs of the customer first.

Windows 10 is a huge success for Microsoft, because it is achieving what they want. In many ways, Windows XP and Windows 7 have been a bit of a disaster for Microsoft. The reason is that people were happy to keep using them for far far too long. If an average person got an i3/i5/i7 Windows 7 PC in 2010 and it was still working perfectly, why would they need to update it? It is fast enough and PC's of that era can usually handle 8G RAM or more. If they had the choice to continue to use Windows 7 safely that is.

Microsoft may have got $50 for the Windows 7 license seven years ago and absolutely nothing since! Even though they been getting nothing, they have had to provide gigabytes of free updates. Back when XP was created, hardly anyone worried about security. It was OK for an occasional service pack to come out once a year or two. Life was wonderful for Microsoft because Windows 2000 was obsolete after only a year or two and hardware improvements forced people to upgrade. Many Windows 2000 PC's only had 128MBytes of RAM and 256MBytes was huge!

So far Windows 10 has captured over 50% of the Win XP and Win7 users and the process is accelerating. That is a success.

How the heck is that a success? Microsoft offered Windows 10 as a free upgrade to Windows 7 users and less than half of them took them up on their offer, despite being bombarded with adware pushing it. I'd say that's pretty poor. The only other reason for Windows 10 gaining ground is the usual hardware upgrade cycle: new systems purchased with Windows 10 pre-installed.

Going forward, the way things are done will be different that probably will allow for a one-size-fits-all strategy. Containers are coming to Windows and I think that will be the way legacy support is managed. It will be a better solution then trying to make Windows 7 32bit 100% compatible with 1998-2000 VB6 programs running Access 2.0 databases - which is exactly what is happening right now at many businesses.  Containers can eliminate the need for installation at all - software is essentially pre-installed into the container once.

If you are wishing that you could somehow stay locked in the Windows XP or 7 era, then I hate to give you bad news. You will have to move with the technology or go to Linux. You can go with Apple if you like, but they will at some point drop the current platforms when it suits them just like they did with the PowerPC platforms.

I take your point that people tend to prefer what they know, but I don't think that's why people prefer XP & 7 to Windows 10: you don't find many people talking about Vista and Windows 8 with so much affection as XP or 7. Windows XP and 7 both had their teething problems, but neither of them were as difficult to use, on a desktop, as Windows 10.

If Microsoft continue down this path of pushing a tablet UI on the desktop, then they're pretty much fucked. People will start to look for alternatives.