Why does Microsoft suck so bad?

[Shran]

Most of the issues I've run into lately with Windows 10/11 have been related to disk activity. It seems like nobody is doing decent product testing with traditional spinning disk hard drives. Things that work just fine on SSD's (antivirus products in particular) have become unusable with HDD's.

This... it is super annoying. A task that works perfectly and is quick on a 7200rpm hard drive in Windows 7 (using modern software) is almost certainly going to be deathly slow on Windows 10/11, using the same program on the same hardware.

For the most part I like SSDs but I often run into customers that are still using hard drives and just living with the results. It is frustrating to try and help them.

 

[Roert42]

Storage is so cheap nowadays, but I still run HHDs for everything. If I had to go new, I would use a SSD, but I have a bunch of 1 TB HHDs laying around so no reason not to use them.

 

[Curious Hound]

This... it is super annoying. A task that works perfectly and is quick on a 7200rpm hard drive in Windows 7 (using modern software) is almost certainly going to be deathly slow on Windows 10/11, using the same program on the same hardware.

For the most part I like SSDs but I often run into customers that are still using hard drives and just living with the results. It is frustrating to try and help them.

I just bought a 1tb portable ssd just for the shop computer because I needed room to store pdf manuals, etc. I could try using that as the boot drive

 

[fastpakr]

I just bought a 1tb portable ssd just for the shop computer because I needed room to store pdf manuals, etc. I could try using that as the boot drive

Can the drive be removed from the portable carrier?

If not, a basic 2.5" SSD is pretty cheap. How big is your current boot drive?

 

[Curious Hound]

Can the drive be removed from the portable carrier?

If not, a basic 2.5" SSD is pretty cheap. How big is your current boot drive?

It’s not in a carrier. Just connects by usb cable. Not sure how big the current drive is. I accidentally cheated out thinking I didn’t need a big hard drive for the shop computer(Dell Laptop). But with very little on it, I get warnings about low storage space. Honestly, it’s intended uses are;
1. Play Sirius/XM radio over the shop stereo
system

2. look up parts on internet

3. display pdf manuals, parts pictures, etc.

4. run Forscan

I should also mention, I think it’s just running the “family” or “home” edition of Windows. Maybe in 32bit mode? Not 100%sure on that. But, it was just supposed to be a cheap computer for shop use. I went too cheap.

 

[Shran]

Some of those portable drives are just a normal form factor SATA 2.5" thing and others are NVME/M2/etc and if that's the case, you need a slot in the computer that they will fit into. They kind of resemble a RAM stick and are not usable if you don't have the right slot/socket for them.

 

[fastpakr]

It’s not in a carrier. Just connects by usb cable. Not sure how big the current drive is. I accidentally cheated out thinking I didn’t need a big hard drive for the shop computer(Dell Laptop). But with very little on it, I get warnings about low storage space. Honestly, it’s intended uses are;
1. Play Sirius/XM radio over the shop stereo
system

2. look up parts on internet

3. display pdf manuals, parts pictures, etc.

4. run Forscan

I should also mention, I think it’s just running the “family” or “home” edition of Windows. Maybe in 32bit mode? Not 100%sure on that. But, it was just supposed to be a cheap computer for shop use. I went too cheap.

Can you take a picture of the external drive?

 

[Curious Hound]

Can you take a picture of the external drive?

Not right now. It’s a Samsung s7, I believe

 

[sgtsandman]

I ran ubuntu in Highschool when I built my PC. Most of the things I wanted to do were not supported by Linux so I ran Wine to emulate win7.

I have not had too much issue with windows 10 updates getting in the way. There is a way to stop them from happening. My work computer has updated disable on Win10.


My home PC is still the same one I built in highschool, just updated every once in a while. Almost never use it, once every few months. When I want to use it I will turn it on and let it spend a few days updating. Like you said, those updates will spike the disk usage and kill your ability to do anything. I recently installed a second hard drive to store all the videos and movies, two drives at 50% capacity is much more efficient then one drive at 95% capacity.

I tried Ubuntu but couldn’t figure out to do what I wanted with it. Maybe I got too used to OpenSuse.

I should put more effort into getting the windows based programs to work in wine. Then I won’t have a reason to keep the Windows10 computer.

 

[Fast Eddie]

2 words: telemetry and updates. They are your two main culprits though there are others as well

If you have pro, look into gpedit and Task Scheduler for starters. I also use a few tricks to determine when updates will occur and knocked down windows update and all the telemetry.

I also disabled defrag in Task Scheduler and only run it when I do maintenance (every Sunday night) and monthly backups. There are ways to select which updates you receive so I only grab important and critical updates and leave the garbage they throw in there out of the equation.

I can't discuss the how-to's here without exposing them to big brother bing crawler and MSFT. If I do that, they'll surely shut me down/out.

 

[mikkelstuff]

Micro . . . what? From a Mac/Linux user.

 

[Fast Eddie]

holy cow, got up this morning and my home computer wants to restart for an update AGAIN, yesterday was too long ago apparently...

Quick FYI - the worst thing you could attempt is disrupting the process. The April Upgrade to 22H2 took overnight to download and the computer rebooted no less than 4 times (that I counted). I finally shut the lid and let it do its thing. Go into your power options and Choose What Happens When You Close the Lid - then choose Nothing. Otherwise it'll go into hibernation and pick up where it left off when you 'wake it up' again - by simply lifting the lid and/or touch the keyboard.

 

[scotts90ranger]

Oh, I don't interrupt it, yesterday on the laptop it claimed it was done with updates but was still slow so I restarted and that took like an hour instead of 15 seconds like it should have... I've tried to dumb things down but I haven't tried very hard and just did surface level things, for the most part it's not too intrusive but they always pick the worst times to be a jerk...

 

[Fast Eddie]

D

Oh, I don't interrupt it, yesterday on the laptop it claimed it was done with updates but was still slow so I restarted and that took like an hour instead of 15 seconds like it should have... I've tried to dumb things down but I haven't tried very hard and just did surface level things, for the most part it's not too intrusive but they always pick the worst times to be a jerk...

Do you know how to build a shortcut? If so, paste this into the target box:

C:\Windows\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -NoExit -Command "Optimize-Volume -Verbose -Defrag -DriveLetter C:"

and let her rip. Watch how many passes it makes. That'll let you know how badly it may be fragmented. Run it multiple times if need be. The pass count should go down as will the run time.

If you have multiple volumes, you can simply change the drive letter to do those drives as well. Hope it helps. Sounds like you have a slow disk and fragmentation is usually the first suspect but, on boot, that's usually not a problem unless it's in really bad shape.

 

[RonD]

Well in fairness the computer can only update when its on and most people only turn on the computer when they want to do something RIGHT NOW.........and it wants to update, lol

Most operating systems have an option to "update when I shutdown"
So when you are done using the computer shutdown but leave it plugged in

Or download updates, then run the update at your convenience
I did this one for years and copied/saved all the updates
Which is why I can still run Windows 7(2008), have original disc and all the service packs and security updates

General speaking window versions will outlast the computer for most people
Especially laptops, these all need SSD drives now, lol, as said