Windows 10 experiences on cMP

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

EFI = significantly faster Windows boot times.

I will report when I move Windows to an Evo 850. Frankly I think moving from HDD to SSD is all I need to see a faster boot and no noises. I will only use EFI install if Apple updates Boot Camp to officially support it.

Yesterday I signed up for Office365 and installed it with OneNote on Windows, Yosemite and iPad. The syncing between them is flawless and the new version is much better than Office 2011 or iWork.

 

[kennyman]

@SoyCapitanSoyCapitan

Thanks for reviewing the OS at this stage (preview release). I think better to wait for the final release to test and review how it runs.

 

[IowaLynn]

10 now runs very nicely but those Boot Camp drivers are another matter, always late, not all of which may be needed. Easy to test though.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

10 now runs very nicely but those Boot Camp drivers are another matter, always late, not all of which may be needed. Easy to test though.

It's a compatible driver model, latest 5.1 drivers enable Magic Mouse, Apple keyboard HUD, sleep, eject, Boot Camp etc

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Ah well El Capitan PB2 broke my Boot Camp. Even if I reboot into Yosemite I'm getting the same messages from Sys Prefs and Boot Champ. I can't find a solution to fix this.

 

[666sheep]

Reset PRAM?

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Reset PRAM?

Is that the official solution? I'm not sure if I'm in the mood to take out the 980 and install the 120

 

[666sheep]

It worked in the past for this (it isn't new problem). Update most likely wrote something to NVRAM what confuses the bless tool.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

It worked in the past for this (it isn't new problem). Update most likely wrote something to NVRAM what confuses the bless tool.

My main man, it worked! I triple reset just for good measure.

Just when I want to game there's new Nvidia drivers for Win10 in Windows Update.

 

[ActionableMango]

Is that the official solution? I'm not sure if I'm in the mood to take out the 980 and install the 120

In the future if you want to do this without an EFI card installed, do "nvram -c" in terminal. Because you cleared the nvram in terminal instead of during bootup, you can simply set the nvidia driver manager back to the web drivers right then and there's no worries about needing the boot screens.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

After one day with Windows 10 and El Cap PB2, observations

1. This is the first time that OSX is as "snappy" and fast as Windows. Considering it's a beta with beta GPU driver that's even more excellent.

2. Windows has better included apps, except for maps and excluding office apps. The News and Weather apps are standouts. iOS has comparable versions but OSX does not.

3. The Photos apps are quality good, but the Windows variation has more substantive features.

4. Maps. Apple wins hands down.

5. The biggest surprise is Task View. It's a little more polished and faster than Mission Control.

6. Split View is great on OSX but Aero Snap gets it done quicker without creating a virtual space automatically. And you can exit out of it quicker too.

7. Office365 runs almost identically on both and sync quick with the iPad version of the suite. OneNote syncing is more instantaneous than OSX's Note app.

8. Creative Suite runs almost identically. Video scrubbing feels faster on Windows. Photoshop is identical and benchmarks the same.

9. Cortana is not active yet in Europe and I don't have a mic to test it anyway. OSX doesn't include Siri yet.

10. Both use natural language search. Only Windows offers a list of suggestions while you are typing. You can also initiate a quicker web search from the search box in Windows than El Cap. Just clicking on the search without typing displays latest news articles from around the web.

11. Administrative tools. El Cap simplifies Disk Utility. Windows still includes a very thorough set of tools in Computer Management.

12. Both appear to charge an iPhone slower than their predecessors. iPhone does not charge when El Cap is in sleep mode!

13. Both include Dark Mode themes. Windows does it a little sleeker and keeps it just to the Taskbar. And Start Menu. Setting the dark mode in Edge browser looks awful. Avoid it at all costs.

14. Interface. No doubt El Cap is more consistent as every onscreen element was recreated for Yosemite. Windows still includes a lot of legacy contextual menus and panes that date back almost 15 years.

15. System Preferences is as always super easy to use. The new Settings app in Windows is a mess. There are large blank spaces, missing options, and links to Control Panel when those options are missing.

16. Netflix. Doesn't work in Safari even with the required Silverlight plugin. Works fine in Edge, but you have to enable JavaScript first as it is disabled by default. To enable JS you have to go to Internet Option...in IE.

17. File management. Finder is its usual self. File Explorer is a mess by default and needs to be manually configured to get rid of the myriad of shortcuts and panes you don't want to see.

That's all that can be compared for now. Hope to test Metal vs DirectX 12 in the coming months.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I have confirmation from two sources that WinClone 5 works with El Capitan and can back up Windows 10. They will do further testing after 29 July. I will test it today by moving Windows 10 from cranky big hard drive to Samsung 850 Evo and then install Samsung Magician for speedy caching.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Thanks to amazing WinClone I migrated the Windows 10 install to Samsung 850 Evo. Observations...

- Windows won't boot from Sonnet Tempo Pro
- Windows will boot from optical drive bay but it won't work properly
- Windows boots perfectly from SATA drive bay 1 and 2.
- Boot time is 15-16 seconds from when the SSD started loading. Very good for SATA 2 and non AHCI.
-Samsung Magican RAPID mode doesn't work yet because the app doesn't recognise Windows 10 yet.
- WinClone recommends you run CHKDSK before you clone Windows. Only do this if you can leave your computer alone for two days! CHKDSK is an old DOS app that isn't suitable for today's hundreds of gigabytes drives. Once you start CHKDSK it is not advisable to quit the process as it could damage files. Be warned.
-WinClone doesn't copy software licenses so you have to activate all your software again. The same thing happens if you clone OSX with SuperDuper.

 

[hfg]

Thanks to amazing WinClone I migrated the Windows 10 install to Samsung 850 Evo. Observations...

- Windows won't boot from Sonnet Tempo Pro
- Windows will boot from optical drive bay but it won't work properly
- Windows boots perfectly from SATA drive bay 1 and 2.

Thanks for the reports regarding these beta releases ... so far I am only running Windows 10 as a virtual machine, not BootCamp yet. Really glad for verification that WinClone is OK with Windows 10 as I will probably be using it next week on final release day.

FWIW: The above issues are not unique to Windows 10 ... they existed with Windows 7 and 8 as well. I was never able to get Windows to boot from the Sonnet Tempo Pro and this was confirmed by their tech support. I don't believe Windows has ever been able to run from the Optical Bay (motherboard) SATA data connectors, although I don't remember why at the moment, but it should run fine from any of the tray drive positions.

Good luck ... and keep posting your experiences ...

-howard

 

[wwanthony]

Good news and bad news.

First the bad.

Windows 10 boots slower.

It forces updates on you for all software, hardware and features in your system. Your only choices are to let the computer restart automatically 'FAST RING' or install updates later and restart manually 'SLOW RING'.

This means if you have a GT120 in your system alongside a new Maxwell card, Windows 10 will force install a driver for the older card that is incompatible with the new card. Your nice expensive new card will be disabled. You cannot prevent this even if you disable the old card in Device Manager.

So you can't have both cards in your system. To be balanced this is Nvidia's fault for creating an incompatibility in their driver set.

Apple Keyboard Numeric Keypad doesn't fully work in Calculator.

Photos app. You can't use it unless you sign in with an account.

Netflix, some Chrome Extensions or any app that searches for OS version may not work. There is a dedicated Netflix app in the Windows Store though.

Now the good stuff.

It's smoother faster interface than Windows 8.1.

The Edge Browser that I am posting this from is really good but is lacking in some essential options. I can't change the default search to Google yet.

Boot Camp support already exists with the 8.1 drivers. They are completely compatible.

Native USB 3.1 support from Microsoft if you have a card.

Solitaire is back. Your mom won't be calling you much.

A really good weather app.

Quiet. I hear the cMP fan less than before.

The Taskbar. Loving it. Dare I say it is better than the Dock.

App Switcher. Wow. It's just so fast and smooth.

Split View. Silky and easy to activate on a low GT120.

This is the first time Microsoft has created a genuine replacement to OSX. They have taken the best from the last 20 years and removed much of the terrible stuff. This automatic driver updates is my big gripe with it as I now have to remove the GT120 from the system to make my GTX980 work.

I have not played around with W10 yet, but I would not even mention MacOS X and replacing it.

Let's see how it goes for Microsoft. If it is better than 6, 7. and 8 then that is good news for a lot of folks.

We all know why there is no Windows 9.

Let's see how it plays out.....

 

[AidenShaw]

- WinClone recommends you run CHKDSK before you clone Windows. Only do this if you can leave your computer alone for two days! CHKDSK is an old DOS app that isn't suitable for today's hundreds of gigabytes drives. Once you start CHKDSK it is not advisable to quit the process as it could damage files. Be warned.

DOS apps don't run on current Windows systems.

CHKDSK is a 64-bit Win32 app.

CHKDSK does an exhaustive walk of the filesystem, checking each directory and file for consistency. On today's multi-terabyte drives, there might be hundreds of thousands of directories and many millions of files - it can take a long time to process.
_____

Your advice is sound, but implying that it's due to CHKDSK being an old 16-bit DOS app is not.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

DOS apps don't run on current Windows systems.

CHKDSK is a 64-bit Win32 app.

CHKDSK does an exhaustive walk of the filesystem, checking each directory and file for consistency. On today's multi-terabyte drives, there might be hundreds of thousands of directories and many millions of files - it can take a long time to process.
_____

Your advice is sound, but implying that it's due to CHKDSK being an old 16-bit DOS app is not.

It runs before booting up without a GUI. In this version there isn't even a string of verbose text, just one line indicating progress. The version I used to use in the 90s was a Windows app with a GUI. What I said was CHKDSK is no longer suitable for today's large volume of data. A modern OS should be checking for errors on the fly and fixing them immediately in the background.

 

[IowaLynn]

Don't most of us put our system on an SSD? so right off the bat it is going to be small and not TBs which data drives are going to hold non-system related files and not suffer or in need of chkdsk in my experience.

SoftRAID does check in the background for even weak sectors and is always monitoring closely for errors.

Paragon HDM 15 during a disk copy or clone (unlike WinClone) is doing all the file integrity checks.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

Don't most of us put our system on an SSD? so right off the bat it is going to be small and not TBs which data drives are going to hold non-system related files and not suffer or in need of chkdsk in my experience.

SoftRAID does check in the background for even weak sectors and is always monitoring closely for errors.

Paragon HDM 15 during a disk copy or clone (unlike WinClone) is doing all the file integrity checks.

Paragon looks good.

WinClone appears to be a bit buggy in El Capitan so it really needs an update. In fact, all disc format and recovery related apps such as Disk Utility are still buggy in the Public Beta.

Unfortunately I accidentally removed the partition of my Yosemite drive when I was in Windows Disk Management so I can't go back to 10.10. El Capitan won't let me start the Yosemite installer from the app folder or from the bootable USB installer I made.

I would also advice against using third party virus protection on Windows. As awful as the back up utilities for that system. Why o why do Windows developers insist in making their apps as spammy and intrusive as possible? I had to uninstall Avast just to make Windows Update download the newest security patch.

 

[AidenShaw]

It runs before booting up without a GUI. In this version there isn't even a string of verbose text, just one line indicating progress. The version I used to use in the 90s was a Windows app with a GUI. What I said was CHKDSK is no longer suitable for today's large volume of data. A modern OS should be checking for errors on the fly and fixing them immediately in the background.

The "before booting" mode is called "native mode". The system hasn't loaded the Win32 subsystem yet, so only the native NT* APIs are available, filesystems aren't fully mounted (and are easily dismounted), and there's no GUI.

There's also a Win32 version of chkdsk that can be run from an elevated terminal. It will dismount the disk, attempt to repair it, then remount it. (If it can't be dismounted, you'll be given the option of scheduling a native mode chkdsk for the next boot.) I don't recall any GUI version of chkdsk from Microsoft, but there are several GUI wrappers around the command line version around.

Chkdsk is seldom needed with NTFS due to the transaction logfile - a typical power loss or unexpected reboot will replay the log, and won't invoke chkdsk.

And no modern filesystem is immune to needing a full, exhaustive check. There are times when something might change the filesystem outside of the OS. For example, if I need to move or resize partitions on a Windows disk - I'll boot a liveDVD of Linux and use gparted to shuffle and resize the NTFS filesystems. Gparted will set the "native chkdsk required" flag in the filesystems so that when I reboot into Windows I'll have assurance that the Linux tools didn't mess up.

 

[Renzatic]

16. Netflix. Doesn't work in Safari even with the required Silverlight plugin. Works fine in Edge, but you have to enable JavaScript first as it is disabled by default. To enable JS you have to go to Internet Option...in IE.

D'wuh? I didn't have to jump through any hoops to get Netflix running in Edge. In fact, I haven't had to fire up IE even once since I've been testing Win10.

 

[Renzatic]

Chkdsk is seldom needed with NTFS due to the transaction logfile - a typical power loss or unexpected reboot will replay the log, and won't invoke chkdsk.

Funny story. I've actually had to use Chkdsk exactly once in all the time I've been using Windows. A friend of mine had two external backup drives go south on him at the exact same time, and he blamed me for it because I had a thumbdrive in the slot just the day before that he freaked out about.

He was going on and on about how many thousands of dollars it'd cost to recover his data at a clean room, and how he expected me to pay for part of it, because it was my fault, and blah blah blah.

I told him it was probably some random partition guff up or boot sector, because the computer could still see the drives and the partitions, but couldn't read anything on it. I told him to run chkdsk /f <drive letter>, and 30 seconds later it was fixed. Don't know what cause them both to flake out, especially since it happened to both drives at about the same time, and he still blames me for it, because my thumbdrive is the ONLY thing that could've caused it according to him, but...it worked.

 

[AidenShaw]

Funny story. I've actually had to use Chkdsk exactly once in all the time I've been using Windows. A friend of mine had two external backup drives go south on him at the exact same time, and he blamed me for it because I had a thumbdrive in the slot just the day before that he freaked out about...

This would be more or less expected if your friend had changed the default for those drives to "enable write-back cache" to make them faster.

Yes, it makes them faster, but can cause havoc if writes are in progress when there's an unexpected power loss, disconnect or crash. The transaction log assumes write-through cache semantics, write-back cache breaks those assumptions.

Mid-tier and higher RAID controllers usually have (sometimes optional) batteries or hyper-capacitors to preserve dirty cache in the event of a crash or power failure. They have write-back performance with write-through semantics.

One of the most clever implementations is in the Seagate SSHD hybrid drives. They default to write-back (not even sure if it can be changed) caching. In the event of a power loss, they turn the spindle motor into a generator, and use the power stored in the angular momentum of the spinning platters to power the electronics to move the dirty cache data into the flash cache on the drive. On power up - the saved dirty blocks are written to the drive. Again, write-back performance with write-through semantics.

 

[Renzatic]

This would be more or less expected if your friend had changed the default for those drives to "enable write-back cache" to make them faster.

Yes, it makes them faster, but can cause havoc if writes are in progress when there's an unexpected power loss, disconnect or crash. The transaction log assumes write-through cache semantics, write-back cache breaks those assumptions.

I have absolutely no idea what caused it. According to him, he merely plugged them in, and suddenly found out they no longer worked. I've never seen anything quite like it before, and the only thing I could say for a fact was that me plugging in a thumbdrive the day before wouldn't cause that to happen.

Of course he kept going on and on about all thumbdrives having hidden partitions that install drivers and malware, and that was probably what messed everything up. I countered it by saying that it was a custom tailored Linux boot drive the day before, I knew exactly how it was partitioned, and I reformatted it from FAT to NTFS to give him the files he wanted not even two hours before I came over there.

He's one of those know-it-all people who doesn't quite know as much as he thinks he does. It irks the hell out of me that he still blames me for it, here three months later.

 

[SoyCapitanSoyCapitan]

I mentioned early in this thread that forced driver updates in Windows 10 cause a driver clash between the GT120 and newer Nvidia cards. This also occurred to users of Nvidia SLI and multi monitor set ups who found out that a recent Windows update clashed with an update from GeForce Experience. They found one of their cards and monitors disabled.

It looks like Microsoft has known about issues like this for some time and had a tool ready early this month that allows users to choose their updates. Let's hope it becomes part of the official build.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-releases-tool-to-hide-or-block-unwanted-windows-10-updates/