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How did software development become so hard (Windows)???

amirm

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I have been going through hell and back with my everyday laptop in the last few weeks.

First, it started to cook all the time with CPU maxed out. I would bring out task manager and the process going crazy was "Microsoft Content." If you google everyone says it is related to Microsoft downloading an update or something. Yet checking Windows update showed nothing.

Then the search indexer started to go at it at the same time. Now I had two cores running like mad, laptop heating up, and so slow it was hard to get anything done.

Tried everything under the sun. Nothing would fix it. Temporarily halted search indexer but then could not search folders. :( Worse yet, could not search for anything in my Outlook inbox. Are you kidding me? Of course it would not say so in Outlook. At least I had control of the machine back and it wasn't burning a hole on my legs due to running so hot.

Analyzing background processes I noticed adobe tasks running a bit here and there. Tried to stopping them but they would start right back up. I swear there were at least a dozen apps between my Creative Suite and Adobe Reader constantly attacking this poor PC trying to light themselves back up. I finally put the hammer down and stopped all the services and killed every setting I could find related to Adobe software. Bam! The problem with "Microsoft Content" got solved! This must have been a surrogate service that Adobe was using to download its crap. And crap it is with tons of stupid services trying to sync content I don't have. Syncing with who knows what cloud services.

Why or why the background process list doesn't have a sane description of what it is? Google for them and you just land on a top of clickbait pages trying to scam you with some random program download and whatnot. Why hasn't Microsoft documented its own bloody background apps? Why can't I click in process manager on any app and get a decent description of what the process is for, and what it is currently doing?

Back to Adobe, why not ask me if I want all these stupid services?

I am thinking all is well but then realize almost all the time when I wake up my laptop, it performs a cold boot. At first I thought it was Windows update installing things requiring a fresh reboot. But then this thing became a daily occurrence. I go in event manager and what do you know? Stupid machine has been crashing every day but with no notifications whatsoever! Are you kidding me? Of course there is no indication as to why.

I go in the dump directory and I see a crash dump for every day of the month (I close the lid at night forcing it to sleep causing it to crash). I run the Windows kernel debugger. It tells me that some device driver is not going into lower power state in the allotted time. What device driver? It won't tell me. Are you serious? Stupid OS knows which device it is but won't leave any breadcrumbs in the crash to find this?

And why on earth would you cause a system crash because a device won't go to sleep? And if you did crash, why not tell me so I know what is going on.

So how do I find the darn device. I uninstall every driver that I am not using. Nothing makes it work.

Finally, I go to the device driver and look at the network interfaces. Notice that the wireless driver from Intel does not have the check that says the system can put it to sleep. Check that box and it fixes the problem. Incredible! They give you a simple check box that causes a direct crash like this?

What an intertwined pile of junk Windows has become. I mean really. Who would have known all the things I went through to fix these obscure problems? I suspect 99% of the people would have to reinstall windows and go through the hell that is to get all your apps and settings back to where they were.

The "good news" is that after stopping and deleting everything I possibly could, this machine is now running so cool and fast!

Thought to vent a bit here and dispel any notion that I have any love for much of the software from my ex employer. :)
 

Beershaun

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Yup. Sometimes it's best to just wipe and reinstall Windows from scratch about every 2years. Especially when there is a major Windows feature update. I have found I have always had major issues just like you describe after major windows updates (like 8.1 to 10 or a major midcycle release). I backup my files, wipe the hard drive. Do a fresh install of the OS with the latest revision, then a fresh install of all my apps from the latest revision. A password manager like Lastpass is your best friend in these cases since you can store all the license keys and passwords in one app and securely access them with your master password and auto fill everything again. No need to write down all the keys and passwords or risk using the same password. Good luck!
 

Promit

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If I were going to start making a list of all of the Windows bullshit that gets on my nerves as a user, and as a full-time dev, I wouldn't have any time left to do any work. W7 wasn't perfect but at least the OS stayed the everloving !@#$ out of your way for the most part. Now we have W11 coming and they've moved the taskbar and start menu around yet again, but have they fixed any of the kernel perf regressions? Have they done anything about Explorer's massive perf issues? I can grind a Threadripper/128GB/NVMe SSD system to a halt by *checks notes* copying some files. Do I still have to poke at a largely unhelpful command line tool to diagnose sleep issues like this is a 2005 Linux box?

I used to be a staunch defender of Windows even through the Vista era. Now? It's unbelievable that the response to other OSes becoming serious competitors (or displacing Windows entirely) is to get much worse for no apparent reason, but not address ANY user pain points.

And lord help you if you wind up on the Microsoft answers forums. Packed with moderators who couldn't administer a high school computer lab successfully, much less run any real IT. But that doesn't stop them from posting copy-paste garbage steps and then closing threads as solved.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

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And lord help you if you wind up on the Microsoft answers forums.
Man, those are the worst. I landed on a ton of them with the same stupid instructions: "run SFC, do windows update, reboot." I can't believe with straight face they keep posting the same nonsense.
 

Urvile

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My prefered Environment is Linux, second MacOS. I've heard that Windows has got better. What language are you trying to develop in?
 

radix

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I don't know that it's specifically software development that has become hard. Really, it's become easier in many ways. But it's that systems have become so complex that almost no one knows how they work together.

In a way, I think mobile device OSes have the right idea in forcing every app to be aware of its lifecycle.
 

StevenEleven

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I have been going through hell and back with my everyday laptop in the last few weeks.

First, it started to cook all the time with CPU maxed out. I would bring out task manager and the process going crazy was "Microsoft Content." If you google everyone says it is related to Microsoft downloading an update or something. Yet checking Windows update showed nothing.

Then the search indexer started to go at it at the same time. Now I had two cores running like mad, laptop heating up, and so slow it was hard to get anything done.

Tried everything under the sun. Nothing would fix it. Temporarily halted search indexer but then could not search folders. :( Worse yet, could not search for anything in my Outlook inbox. Are you kidding me? Of course it would not say so in Outlook. At least I had control of the machine back and it wasn't burning a hole on my legs due to running so hot.

Analyzing background processes I noticed adobe tasks running a bit here and there. Tried to stopping them but they would start right back up. I swear there were at least a dozen apps between my Creative Suite and Adobe Reader constantly attacking this poor PC trying to light themselves back up. I finally put the hammer down and stopped all the services and killed every setting I could find related to Adobe software. Bam! The problem with "Microsoft Content" got solved! This must have been a surrogate service that Adobe was using to download its crap. And crap it is with tons of stupid services trying to sync content I don't have. Syncing with who knows what cloud services.

Why or why the background process list doesn't have a sane description of what it is? Google for them and you just land on a top of clickbait pages trying to scam you with some random program download and whatnot. Why hasn't Microsoft documented its own bloody background apps? Why can't I click in process manager on any app and get a decent description of what the process is for, and what it is currently doing?

Back to Adobe, why not ask me if I want all these stupid services?

I am thinking all is well but then realize almost all the time when I wake up my laptop, it performs a cold boot. At first I thought it was Windows update installing things requiring a fresh reboot. But then this thing became a daily occurrence. I go in event manager and what do you know? Stupid machine has been crashing every day but with no notifications whatsoever! Are you kidding me? Of course there is no indication as to why.

I go in the dump directory and I see a crash dump for every day of the month (I close the lid at night forcing it to sleep causing it to crash). I run the Windows kernel debugger. It tells me that some device driver is not going into lower power state in the allotted time. What device driver? It won't tell me. Are you serious? Stupid OS knows which device it is but won't leave any breadcrumbs in the crash to find this?

And why on earth would you cause a system crash because a device won't go to sleep? And if you did crash, why not tell me so I know what is going on.

So how do I find the darn device. I uninstall every driver that I am not using. Nothing makes it work.

Finally, I go to the device driver and look at the network interfaces. Notice that the wireless driver from Intel does not have the check that says the system can put it to sleep. Check that box and it fixes the problem. Incredible! They give you a simple check box that causes a direct crash like this?

What an intertwined pile of junk Windows has become. I mean really. Who would have known all the things I went through to fix these obscure problems? I suspect 99% of the people would have to reinstall windows and go through the hell that is to get all your apps and settings back to where they were.

The "good news" is that after stopping and deleting everything I possibly could, this machine is now running so cool and fast!

Thought to vent a bit here and dispel any notion that I have any love for much of the software from my ex employer. :)

I bought my son a computer for college and it kept coming up with BSODs. It took us three or four weeks to get it running flawlessly. The final fix, which I found on the net from people with some similar problems, was to reinstall windows and change the settings in the bios for the SSD and SATA drives and the drivers in the OS from RAID to AHCI.

It was a great set of hardware for the price and I learned a ton troubleshooting, but there is no way I will think it is acceptable for such an arcane setting to need changing to prevent BSODs, without some type of automation or troubleshooting or suggestion to make the change from the bios or the OS.
 
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Koloth

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I get all your saying, but imho Windows has never been this stable. No comparison really to the pre-Vista days of constant bluescreens.

I've never had a system run this long without formating and reinstalling windows. I believe my desktop Win10 system, which is used *heavily*, is well into it's fifth year now. I've been planning to do a fresh reinstall, but mostly for OCD reasons and because my drives have been filling up with random crap, not because of any serious issues.
 

JSmith

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First, it started to cook all the time with CPU maxed out.
I have this happen on occasion... it appears to be telemetry and windoze update processes.
What an intertwined pile of junk Windows has become. I mean really.
Agree and quite sick of every time the version updates it requires more resources.

I lock off all unnecessary windoze functions via software firewall and delay updates until I want to install them, not when MS wants it done as often the timing is inconvenient.

I think I preferred Win 3.1. ;)



JSmith
 

Walter

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Microsoft tried! Theyhad the right idea with Windows NT. No software got direct hardware access. Period. Then gamers complained and they relaxed the restrictions with NT 4.0, and that was that. Plus, Adobe has always been one of the worst offenders. I happily used Macs for awhile and was actually a licensed beta tester for OS X in 2000, but just don't like it. Linux on the desktop finally got good enough for me about 10 tears ago, and I'm much happier. Since I stopped doing .Net and all my development work is in Linux, also, it works out well. I have Windows installed on a separate drive and ironically, the only time I ever boot into it these days is when I have to use an Adobe CS application.
 

Koloth

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Imho the most blame should go to shit developers of bloated intrusive software "suites" - Adobe, Autodesk, etc.
Why do I need 2-3 startmenu folders full of different exes half of which inject themselves into autostart/the background.
I waa so hopeful when Win8 was announced that MS would put its foot down and force everyone to ship software through the store without being able to do any of the above - and saving users from having to deal with a different installer / updater / launcher for every piece of software on their device. Alas, they did not.

Best thing I ever did for my PC was to kick out every piece of Adobe software.
 

fcracer

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Thought to vent a bit here and dispel any notion that I have any love for much of the software from my ex employer. :)

I practically owe my career to inspiration from Bill Gates and Microsoft so I’m a big fan, but I switched to Apple in 2007 and never looked back. I tried a Surface Tablet a few years ago for photo editing; it’s a brilliant device hamstrung by poorly implemented software.
 

bloodshoteyed

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Man, those are the worst. I landed on a ton of them with the same stupid instructions: "run SFC, do windows update, reboot." I can't believe with straight face they keep posting the same nonsense.

be glad you never had to search HP's forums (it's THE place to develop either suicidal or homicidal tendencies...)


regarding nasty SW in general, i always hated auto installers, that's why i stopped using HW from Razer i.e. (got proven right a few weeks back when it came out that the mentioned installer granted itself admin rights when popping up, which it did on every fresh connect on USB)
 

JohnYang1997

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I personally have been using Windows with little to no trouble for some reason. Yeah some times something like that happens. I usually just turn off all the startup service that I don't need from some Chinese windows optimizer(from Tencent). Adobe is indeed one of the worst since the old days(by now).

I tried to use Linux and installed hundreds of releases since 2014. But sadly it just doesn't work. But just last weekend after I watch some linux related video on YouTube I reminded myself about it's sad CentOS dead. Then I have some hope on Oracle linux again. I may try again in the future. But for now windows is so trouble free for me I don't really understand how it can be so drastically different for other people.

I don't like Apple in general but I have an iPad pro for notes it's very easy to use.
 

0bs3rv3r

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Linux on the desktop finally got good enough for me about 10 tears ago, and I'm much happier. Since I stopped doing .Net and all my development work is in Linux, also, it works out well. I have Windows installed on a separate drive and ironically, the only time I ever boot into it these days is when I have to use an Adobe CS application.

A tip. Put Windows in a virtual machine (use virtualbox). I spin up a Windows VM when and if I need it. If I am doing work in both Linux and Windows, there's a very neat seamless mode - everything on the one desktop.
 

xaviescacs

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This is like home and pro audio. What OS is used in the pro segment? Right, this is the system that really works.

Does AP publish the some kind of API for its device upon which the community could build a Linux based client?
 

tomtoo

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I started computing on a ohio scientific superboard 2. Learned Basic and 6502 assembler. Later i learned C on a Amiga. I made my MCSE on NT4.0. I learned VB,SQL,HTML,Java script, all that minor shiit xml,xslt than C# worked for a big pharma company in MS datawarehousing environment means SQL server, Analisys Server,IIs was my natural habitat. Its not importend just that nobody could say iam a MS hater, or have no knowledge about OS or computing.

But my impression is, win10 is a arrogant os.
If i would start again, i would start with linux.
Far from perfect, but at least not half as arrogant than win10. I not like to dig into deepest corners of registry just to have controll over updatebehavior. I enjoy to be the Boss of my computer, not the way arround.
 

0bs3rv3r

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Yup. Sometimes it's best to just wipe and reinstall Windows from scratch about every 2years. Especially when there is a major Windows feature update. I have found I have always had major issues just like you describe after major windows updates (like 8.1 to 10 or a major midcycle release). I backup my files, wipe the hard drive. Do a fresh install of the OS with the latest revision, then a fresh install of all my apps from the latest revision. A password manager like Lastpass is your best friend in these cases since you can store all the license keys and passwords in one app and securely access them with your master password and auto fill everything again. No need to write down all the keys and passwords or risk using the same password. Good luck!


It's sad, but it is the only way to "fix" Windows sometimes. Maybe a real guru might be able to determine the cause of some of these problems, but most people do not have access to anyone familiar enough with Windows (I agree about the quality of the help from the Windows forums - not worth a proverbial pinch).
 

0bs3rv3r

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I started computing on a ohio scientific superboard 2.

Me too. Didn't think anyone else would remmber them. It contained Microsoft Basic complete with their first major bug to annoy me - their broken garbage collection memory routines. Yes, early as it was, it had the ability to crash just like their latest Windows.
 
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