[Person of Color]

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you’re referring to as Windows, is in fact, NSA/Windows, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, NSA plus Windows. Windows is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another expensive component of a fully functioning Spy system made useful by the NSA core-spyware, reverse shell utilities and vital keylogging components comprising a full botnet as defined by Gen. J. Clapper.

Many computer users run a modified version of the botnet system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of spyware which is widely used today is often called “Windows”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the NSA system, developed by the NSA. There really is a Windows, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use.

Windows is the cover: the program in the system that hides the spying resources from the other programs that you run. The cover is an essential part of a botnet, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete botnet. Windows is normally used in combination with the NSA spyware: the whole system is basically botnet with Windows added, or NSA/Windows. All the so-called “Windows” versions are really versions of NSA/Windows.

[Person of Color]

Mark., on 09 August 2015 - 02:46 PM, said:

You know what they say. Ignorance is bliss. I tweaked settings and did a few registry tweaks and got Vista looking and working like I wanted. The only REAL issue I have with Vista is MS ( maybe in cahoots with Creative ) decided to remove the ability to record whatever is running through your sound card in an effort to curb pirating music from websites. Microphone and line in inputs recorded fine. 3rd party software is needed to fill the gap and they weren't perfect with their buffering and hiccups. Since I haven't been a cutting edge gamer for many years keeping up with the Jones's next door is not something I worry about. Besides, with my ancient hardware I doubt I will see the huge advantage to Win10 and possibly not even have drivers for it. I just don't feel like making the effort without guaranteed results.

Right click on the blank space in your "Recording" tab and select "Show disabled devices."

[Radar]

Then be a fgt and switch to Mac.

[Mark]

Person of Color, on 10 August 2015 - 05:59 PM, said:

Right click on the blank space in your "Recording" tab and select "Show disabled devices."

Yeah, I went through that solution long ago. Nothing else showed. That's why I thought it might be a conscious decision by Creative to not offer it in their Vista drivers. More recently I found a thread that linked to a driver tweaked by some guy who programmed to fix this issue. But for some reason when installing it said my hardware was not supported even though it was on the list of supported devices.

[Person of Color]

The Andrew something or other drivers? AndrewK I think? What card do you have? I used those on an Audigy2 with no problems a few months ago. What card do you have?

[Paul B]

Sgt. Rarity, on 09 August 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

I used to have a Vista comp for I think 3 years. I don't really think it was that bad. I just think it was Windows' first jump to its current interface, so it was the cool thing to hate. Then 7 came out and looked exactly the same, which alerted people that Microsoft isn't budging so then they decided to all like 7. To this day 7 is the cool thing to like. Just trends and buzzwords IMO.

I disagree with this statement. Vista had many application compatibility issues and it wasn't as stable, it was a slower performer, the driver support sucked, the updated search feature was horrible, the OS always wanted to index, hence the disk IO performance was terrible, UAC wasn’t well implemented, and there were so many other annoyances with Vista that never seemed to surface in Windows 7. Microsoft Vista’s navigation while similar to windows 7 was not the same and Windows 7 was easier to navigate. From a server standpoint server 2008 is the Vista server and 2008 R2 is the Windows 7 parent server and there were serious issues with Microsoft's RDS licensing policies for Server 2008 (Vista Server) that were just retarded and further addressed with Windows 7 Server (2008 R2). Vista was both a fail for corporations and home users. You were paying for an upgrade when in fact, the upgrade did not really improve on anything but left you with a bunch of shortcomings and that is why people did not like it.

Microsoft knew this and they rushed to put an EOL on Vista just to encourage people to move to windows 7. What would have been nice is rather than tell the customer "tough" they should have extended a free upgrade to anyone who purchased Vista to upgrade to Windows 7. Or, at least perform an in place upgrade to Windows 7 from Vista and just drop the name Vista all together. Had Microsoft went from XP to Windows 7 skipping Vista altogether I am thinking Microsoft would have had a lot stronger & loyal customer relationships. Instead, Microsoft burnt many bridges with the release of Vista and their software assurance model and they have been hurting ever since. The release of Vista was near the time they started to downward spiral forcing people to look else where for IT solutions. This also happens to coincide with Bill Gates stepping down from the company and the rise of Apple mobile products.

Windows 8 was also another Vista disaster, Microsoft knew this and thankfully provided that free upgrade to windows 10. Windows 10 is definitely an improvement in all areas over Windows 8. And by the way that key logging service everyone is so worried about in Windows 10 if you have been doing your windows updates in Windows 7 and greater you can expect to find this type of service also running on Windows 7 & 8. It is not just a "10 thing" as this was pushed out through the Microsoft windows update service for previous versions of windows called "Diag Tracking Service" as an optional Windows update.

It has always been Microsoft's terms & licensing agreement that you are using their operating system, you do not own it just because you spent $200.00 on it; you are paying for the right to use it. If Microsoft builds in a monitoring service that you do not like then stop using it and find a solution that does not monitor how you use your computer.

[Tea Monster]

I had a Vista machine for half an hour.

[Mark]

Person of Color, on 13 August 2015 - 07:01 PM, said:

The Andrew something or other drivers? AndrewK I think? What card do you have? I used those on an Audigy2 with no problems a few months ago. What card do you have?

That sounds familiar. Device manager shows its a Creative SB Audigy. No other specifics.

TM. I've had one for 5-6 years. Most of my complaints were tweaked or hacked out. I wasn't thrilled with it out of the box either. It just took a little work. Same with XP. Same with Chrome. I'm assuming same with Win10.

[Robman]

And yet, I get 2 downvotes for lovingly telling Mark to stop using Vista

So with Windows 7, where do I look to see if this keylogger is running? Task manager/ services?
If so, what is the logger named because I don't see a "Diag Tracking Service" running.

Thanks Paul.

[Paul B]

Robman, on 14 August 2015 - 11:38 AM, said:

And yet, I get 2 downvotes for lovingly telling Mark to stop using Vista

So with Windows 7, where do I look to see if this keylogger is running? Task manager/ services?
If so, what is the logger named because I don't see a "Diag Tracking Service" running.

Thanks Paul.

The easiest way to see if that service is installed is to go to Start Menu --> Run (Windows Key + R) and type "services.msc". Scroll down the list of services until you see Diag Tracking Service. If you don't see it, then it's not installed. Here is the referenced Microsoft link. https://support.micr...n-us/kb/3022345

[Person of Color]

Mark., on 14 August 2015 - 10:38 AM, said:

That sounds familiar. Device manager shows its a Creative SB Audigy. No other specifics.

TM. I've had one for 5-6 years. Most of my complaints were tweaked or hacked out. I wasn't thrilled with it out of the box either. It just took a little work. Same with XP. Same with Chrome. I'm assuming same with Win10.

An Audigy 1? Man, that is old.

[Tea Monster]

I'm amazed he got drivers for his EISA graphics card under Vista.

[Radar]

Tea Monster, on 14 August 2015 - 10:31 AM, said:

I had a Vista machine for half an hour.

That means you hopped on the bandwagon.

[Tea Monster]

I did hop on the bandwagon, but once I noticed that it had square wheels and the instruments were all made of tin, I bailed out fast.

[Radar]

.
I was talking about the "Vista sucks" bandwagon. You are still on it. You can't judge a whole entire operating system in just 30 minutes.

[Tea Monster]

Yes you can.

Vista has noticably higher memory requirements than XP. It was slower and more sluggish. If it's noticably slower on boot, on a brand new system, it's time to pop that old CD back into the drive again.

[TerminX]

People claiming Vista sucked wasn't a bandwagon, it was truth. A ton of things were mishandled in regards to Vista. It was slow, it was unpolished, and it was released before hardware manufacturers had created proper drivers. Everything about Vista was a clusterfuck, even the recommended/minimum system requirements were wrong--I remember helping a friend with a brand new Vista laptop back in the day, and even out of the box on hardware that met the specs Microsoft set, the thing was dog shit. I tried to set the guy up with Firefox but the OS was so bloated and slow that it actually threw up the "this program is not responding" dialog before Firefox even got a chance to create its own window.

Even getting past those huge technical issues, the UI itself was poorly laid out and rushed. One of the big problems in that area is what I jokingly refer to as "Vista Dialog Syndrome", wherein they took dialog boxes from XP that were laid out with tabs (e.g the oldschool display properties dialog) and broke them into half a dozen separate dialogs that all still had a tab layout but were programmed with only one tab each.

This is "Vista Dialog Syndrome" in a nutshell:







Just... no.

[MrBlackCat]

Mblackwell, on 09 August 2015 - 07:41 AM, said:

Holy fuck I didn't check this thread for a day and... holy fuck.

So about that Windows 10 guys. Apparently you can turn some stuff off, sometimes. So by default we always have to opt out of having all of our shit stolen. Yay!

MusicallyInspired, on 09 August 2015 - 01:49 PM, said:

Wow. You know a thread has gone too far when Viper is asking to get back on topic.

LOL! THAT was funny! (and quite true)

First time in this thread... Robman is like the new, but less inventive, BlackHarted. No matter the thread, he can't change subjects for more than about two posts. Even if there is a life threatening conspiracy, which there probably is, I didn't come here to read about that... Geeze.

Anyway... is 10 being offered as this "upgrade" thing for any particular reason? I saw this pop up in a LOT of menu bars on computers I have worked with. I disabled it at the request of all clients. I still run XP and back for me personally. Most of my clients run 98 to XP. (Machine Controllers for example) I have Vista and 7 notebooks, but not for daily use. I haven't seen a need/reason to go beyond 7 though. Any specific advantage I would gain from going to 10? I was just going to get a Chromebook for my daily stuff as I must keep older systems for my work anyway.

MrBlackCat

[Radar]

Tea Monster, on 15 August 2015 - 12:46 PM, said:

Yes you can.

Vista has noticably higher memory requirements than XP. It was slower and more sluggish. If it's noticably slower on boot, on a brand new system, it's time to pop that old CD back into the drive again.

??? Every OS after XP had noticeably higher memory requirements too. New operating systems get steeper requirements; you know this. Yes, when Windows XP came out you could run it on a computer with 64 MB of ram and a 300 MHz single core. Basic OS functions would still run stellar even though it was low-tier hardware. Those days are gone. Even 7, 8, and 10 run terribly with minimum hardware requirements, just like Vista. The problems of Vista stem from the fact that it was the first of its type. The interface in every Microsoft OS after are just polished versions of what started with Vista.


Really, I don't actually want to defend Vista. Believe me, I had problems with it too, but it wasn't the self-imploding OS that everybody makes it out to be. Just a ton of bandwagoning from people spending no more than 30 minutes with it. It's real easy to hate something when you're pressured to hate it, and since humans naturally follow the path of least resistance, it didn't take much to get the ball rolling. I don't think it was a technology failure as much as it was just a marketing failure. Let me repost this, since I think it got buried at the end of the last page.

EMPATHY_IS_AN_ELEMENT, on 09 August 2015 - 06:13 PM, said:

I used to have a Vista comp for I think 3 years. I don't really think it was that bad. I just think it was Windows' first jump to its current interface, so it was the cool thing to hate. Then 7 came out and looked exactly the same, which alerted people that Microsoft isn't budging so then they decided to all like 7. To this day 7 is the cool thing to like. Just trends and buzzwords IMO.

I think Microsoft realized that the proper way to prevent another hate-fad like Vista is to come out with new operating systems more often, so that people have time to get used to newer stuff, rather then waiting 6 years like with Vista after XP and dropping it all on the consumers with one giant package. That's why I think 7, 8, and 10 were given quicker development cycles.

[Mark]

I think those examples of TX's were very minor. I set those once years ago and haven't messed with them since. Maybe a few extra mouse clicks over XP. Big Woop. It was that way for a number of the other settings when I first got this system with Vista installed. Tweaked, forget about it, use the computer. An extra 30 or 40 seconds to boot, no biggie. A little extra ram used, thats why theres lots of it on board. I know I grumbled like you guys about the changes from XP but they did not constitute a deal breaker by any means. I've never been an overclocker or a fanatic about HD speed a few ms faster or run system benchmarks. I'm 98 percent happy with Vista if I had to put a number to it. If I was displeased and racked with problems I would have upgraded to 7 long ago.

[MusicallyInspired]

Mark., on 15 August 2015 - 03:10 PM, said:

I think those examples of TX's were very minor. I set those once years ago and haven't messed with them since. Maybe a few extra mouse clicks over XP. Big Woop. It was that way for a number of the other settings when I first got this system with Vista installed. Tweaked, forget about it, use the computer. An extra 30 or 40 seconds to boot, no biggie. A little extra ram used, thats why theres lots of it on board. I know I grumbled like you guys about the changes from XP but they did not constitute a deal breaker by any means. I've never been an overclocker or a fanatic about HD speed a few ms faster or run system benchmarks. I'm 98 percent happy with Vista if I had to put a number to it. If I was displeased and racked with problems I would have upgraded to 7 long ago.

If you upgraded to 7 you'd probably find your system working better. You're just desensitized.

[Forge]

Nothing wrong with vista in an overall aspect. Lots of minor annoyances, but those can be found with several OS's; from Mac to some flavors of Linux.

I just don't like it because it feels too stiff and restricted. With XP you could open the hood and have the engine parts spread all over your yard if you wish. Vista is more like a car with the hood welded shut. Win 7 was a half-way point between the two: the hood was locked, but it could be picked a bit easier than having to find a cutting torch in order to get into the nuts & bolts of things.

As for windows 10. Installed and seems to run fine on the wife's Lenovo laptop - as long as it's plugged in. As soon as it's booted on battery the system goes into a perpetual reboot loop with a Thread_Stuck_In_Device_Driver bsod. Updated the video card driver, but that didn't work. Most "fixes" I've come across involve updating every driver for every piece of hardware and updating the bios - then cross your fingers. Nothing official that I've noticed has been released addressing the issue.

[Radar]

MusicallyInspired, on 15 August 2015 - 06:51 PM, said:

If you upgraded to 7 you'd probably find your system working better. You're just desensitized.

The computer failed due to some hardware issues I didn't feel like fixing. I was just done with it. It was a Windows XP computer that I upgraded immediately after Vista came out. I know 7 is obviously better. I installed 7 on another XP machine that I used for a few years and I got similar results. It's why I mentioned bandwagoning. Really, the experience wasn't that different.


And just for the record, I don't think I should get downvotes just because I disagree with you. The posts themselves were substantial and I put a lot of thought into them, regardless of their controversy.

[MusicallyInspired]

I don't downvote because you're a horrible human being (though you ARE a brony ), nor do I downvote because you disagree with me. I downvote because *I* disagree. That's what I thought the voting system was for. Actually, upon reflection I figure it's there to use however anyone wants to use it. Their your votes. (And after all, votes matter!)

Also, I wasn't talking to you.

[Radar]

Yeah, I just realized you weren't quoting me.

[Duke of Hazzard]

The best Vista was the Windows XP with the VistaMizer package.

Not like M$ didn't blow anything before either. Windows ME was a disaster, so was 2000. XP was a risk since they had to get it right, and luckily they did.

[Tea Monster]

EMPATHY_IS_AN_ELEPHANT, on 15 August 2015 - 01:25 PM, said:

New operating systems get steeper requirements; you know this.

EMPATHY_IS_AN_ELEPHANT, on 15 August 2015 - 01:25 PM, said:

I don't think it was a technology failure as much as it was just a marketing failure. Let me repost this, since I think it got buried at the end of the last page.

I'm not trying to get at you or be contrary, but that is just wrong. The core of Windows 8 was rewritten to be much faster and less memory hungry.

I've been using Windows since 3.11 and I am aware of different versions and how they respond and how they are used. Windows Vista, apart from other problems, was a memory whore. If you had a machine with 2GB of RAM, it would fly under XP, it would respond adequately under 7 and even better under 8. It would be barely useable under Vista.

There is a pressure, especially amongst techs, to dis the new version of Windows. Vista has earned its foul reputation though.

[Mark]

Since it was so long ago I don't remember even a rough figure of how much ram I recovered after the tweaking of Vista. Turning off useless features and services did make a big difference as far as closing the gap with XP on idle computer memory usage. IIRC I had maybe 65-70 services running by default. It was down to 45 or so when I was done.

[Radar]

Tea Monster, on 16 August 2015 - 06:44 AM, said:

I'm not trying to get at you or be contrary, but that is just wrong. The core of Windows 8 was rewritten to be much faster and less memory hungry.

I've been using Windows since 3.11 and I am aware of different versions and how they respond and how they are used. Windows Vista, apart from other problems, was a memory whore. If you had a machine with 2GB of RAM, it would fly under XP, it would respond adequately under 7 and even better under 8. It would be barely useable under Vista.

There is a pressure, especially amongst techs, to dis the new version of Windows. Vista has earned its foul reputation though.

With all due respect, do you have experience running Windows 8 on a computer with only 2 GB or ram? One of my computers is a Windows 8 with 4 GB of ram and an i5 and it's driving me nuts.

Tea Monster, on 16 August 2015 - 06:44 AM, said:

The core of Windows 8 was rewritten to be much faster and less memory hungry.

Source? I thought Windows was closed source. How can you know this?

[Striker]

I've had experience running 8.1 on a netbook with 1gb of RAM. Ran pretty well. Better than 7 did, at least. I had to revert due to lack of driver support however.