I’ve been using Windows 10 for about 1.5 Weeks now, and I thought it would be time to write about the experience, explain a few workarounds, and post one tiny tool I made to make it more palatable.
So, what has gone wrong in Windows 10?
Booting & drivers
First of all, initially it wouldn’t even boot on my X99 system. It got stuck in an infinite loop on the initial boot screen. By looking through the boot log from my old WIndows 7 installation, I eventually figured out that the fault lies with the “Intel Management Engine” driver – a component I don’t need at all. Disabling it fixed that issue.
However, I still got a black screen on boot. Turns out that Windows 10 thought it was a good idea to show the initial login screen on my projector (turned off projector, I might add) rather than the monitor.
Talking about boot issues, the idea of removing the option to get to the advanced boot loader with a key press is really fucking annoying. Being really annoying to power users for no good reason seems to be a theme in Windows 10, as I’ve found.
The new start menu
In short: it sucks. I tried living with it for a few hours, but its refusal to reliably index manually created desktop application shortcuts in its search makes it completely unusable to me. Good thing I bought two StartIsBack licenses back then, and great on the author for having a perfectly up-to-date and fully compatible version out with the Windows 10 release.
Look, it’s a beautiful start menu with actually working indexing for desktop applications and lots of neat functionality!
Program incompatibilities
Let’s start with an amusing one: Skype would crash every time I logged out of Windows 10. The amusing part here is that Skype is now owned by MS, so’ you’d assume that they’d get compatibility right. After a lot of googling, it’s apparently an issue where the sound driver gets unloaded before skype does, and it crashes when trying to play the logout sound. Go figure. The fix is to disable that sound.
There are also various incompatibilities with DirectX pre-9 games and fullscreen mode, resulting in flickering. In most cases I’ve encountered, forcing borderless windowed mode seems to work around those.
What’s nice is that it seems GeDoSaTo is compatible with Windows 10 out of the box, and so is PtBi.
Strange stuff happening to CPU usage
This has been a sporadic issue that seems to have stopped completely now, but for a while I was getting completely nonsensical CPU usage reports in task manager.
Apparently, my CPU was giving its all at 124%.
In complete idle state, my CPU was apparently running at ~30%. At least according to the new “Processes” view in task manager. “Details” was showing 97%-99% idle, and Process Explorer, which I trust more than both of them, agreed.
The “Appification” of general tools & Photoviewer
In the process of converting general windows default utilities to “apps”, it seems that almost invariably functionality is lost — often important functionality. The new “Photos” app apparently can’t even show images at 100% zoom with a simple click, and mouse wheel zoom is completely broken. I find that unacceptable.
Luckily, Windows 10 still ships with the old Photo Viewer. Because it’s MS though, that Photo Viewer is not an executable but rather a dll which needs to be hosted and invoked somewhere, so it’s hard to associate with images in Windows 10. To work around this I’ve created PhotoviewerWow.exe. It merely invokes the existing .dll, and should work on Windows 10 64 bit installations. Just put it somewhere permanent and you can easily associate it directly with image files. (The name is a homage to the insane hoops MS jumps through to run Windows32 on Windows64, since I also had to jump through hoops to run a standard Windows feature on the new Windows)
Another thing about appification that might be even more worrying is that apparently you aren’t even trusted – as an administrator no less – to look at your own apps’ files (hidden away in “Program Files/WindowsApps”). That’s just ridiculous. And worrying.
Improvements?
Well, I guess the new built-in virtual desktop support is neat, and they chose exactly the keyboard shortcuts for it that I would have chosen intuitively (Win+Ctrl+D, Win+Ctrl+Left/Right). So good job on that. And I also like the improvements to the “move window left and right” workflow, where it now shows you a selection of the remaining windows to move to the other half of the screen after you used Win+Left/Right to move one window. It’s also not quite as fugly as Windows 8, and it makes it rather easy to mostly ignore the entire app crap after installing StartIsBack.
Windows 10 “release” is at best an alpha.
Microsoft quickly released Windows 10 so that people can quickly forget about Windows 8 massive failure.
Windows 7 is a good OS.
Windows 8 is useless.
Windows 10 is buggy.
Conclusion : wait for a year or so, Ms will probably have finished debugging it, and by the time, MS will also already announce Windows 11…
> “Intel Management Engine” driver – a component I don’t need at all
You only think you don’t need it. Intel is using MEI for every system task on their borads, for at least five years now.
> Windows 10 thought it was a good idea to show the initial login screen on my projector (turned off projector, I might add) rather than the monitor
Some projectors identify as monitors, it’s not always possible to discern them, and Windows after install is using the first enumerated display device (as it always did). I bet it was connected to VGA, which is typically takes the priority.
> Talking about boot issues, the idea of removing the option to get to the advanced boot loader with a key press is really fucking annoying.
This is a requirement for Fast Boot.
> its refusal to reliably index manually created desktop application shortcuts in its search
Looks like you didn’t finish the initial index rebuild after upgrade. Your later experience with the Start menu replacement is rather indicative of this.
> The amusing part here is that Skype is now owned by MS, so’ you’d assume that they’d get compatibility right.
It is an independent dev group that belongs to MS. Not the same thing as “working together with the Windows Release group”.
> To work around this I’ve created PhotoviewerWow.exe
Or, you know, use the Default Programs → Set Default Programs in Control Panel OR Default Apps in new Settings as it was intended.
> more worrying is that apparently you aren’t even trusted – as an administrator no less – to look at your own apps’ files
This is a byproduct of app sandboxing and vitualization. Windows can’t maintain guarantees if anything but the system has access to this place.
I’m sure you’re trying to help, but most of what you say is either wrong or outdated.
Regarding the IMEI, as far as I could discern it facilitates all kinds of remote management operations. I’m not managing my computer remotely. I’ve also now run it for 10 days without that component and to no ill effect — the only effect is that it actually boots. I’ll let you know if I ever miss it.
Also, you would lose your bet about the projector. It is connected via HDMI, and as such it should be easily possible for Windows to determine whether it is on or off.
Your supposition about an initial index rebuild for the start menu “after upgrade” is also off, given that (a) I’m working off a clean Windows 10 install here, and (b) it still doesn’t index manually added shortcuts – ones which work perfectly in StartIsBack, and have since the first second they were created –right now, and should really have had more than enough time to rebuild its index 50 times over.
About Photo Viewer, your advice would not work in the final build of Windows 10 out of the box, as Microsoft have decided that the “legacy” Photo Viewer can only be associated with tif files. There is apparently a workaround which involves some manual registry editing, but my way was quicker for me.
Peter, OP is a dick, but they are not wrong on all points. Your start menu indexing issue is actually worse than you can imagine — Microsoft added a maximum number of indices and somehow hasn’t figured out how to fix it yet.
And for Photos, that app blows, it’s consistently blurry. But you can just go into Settings (NEW Settings with metro UI, not Control Panel), to the Default Apps/Programs window, and there will be a section to set default apps for major categories — browser, video, photos, etc. I changed back to the old photo viewer this way myself and it worked perfectly fine. I’m surprised you didn’t find it.
Personally I got fed up with all the issues I was having and rolled back to Win 8.1. And then spent several days fixing the issues the rollback introduced.. :/
Sadly, changing the default to Photo Viewer that way doesn’t work in a clean (non-upgrade) install of the final version of Windows 10. The old Photo Viewer is not available in the list of available applications in that version.
Sorry to hear about your issues and the rollback, there’s little more frustrating on a PC than when you have OS troubles. I’m actually pretty happy with Win10 now after fixing and/or working around all the issues I listed (an not yet encountering more, knock on wood).
Wow, that is strange, but I believe you. I figured the lack of standalone program for Photo Viewer was new to Win10, but I just checked and it’s been like that since win7.
Besides the Start database issue, I don’t much mind the new design except that they removed a lot of features that made the start screen on win8 really powerful for those who bothered to use it.
By the way, these comment threads and reply boxes are so skinny, would you consider upgrading the blog/comments system? Maybe your wordpress theme is outdated or something.
Yeah, the comments suck. I really should update my theme, I’m just too lazy
While I don’t use the photo viewer on regular basis (fast stone viewer ftw), I was able to very easily add it as the default program through right click->open with->choose another app, and it would just show up there. That was in clean installed preview build and it carried over through upgrades, it would be kind of nuts if that didn’t work in release build anymore. It’s also not ideal since I’d have to associate every file type separately, but at least it worked if I end up needing it for some reason.
I also ended up installing ClassicShell almost immediately after I started using W10, I just really like a flat list of all my installed programs right there in an old style programs menu.
From what we reconstructed in the forum thread, Photo Viewer is
It’s the tird case where you need some workaround, either a registry hack or my .exe