If you haven’t swapped your HDD for SSD, do it now.
-
Gee, if all what you write were correct and true :-) I wonder: How can you see that wordpad, which you might use once every 2 years, is prefetched? I wonder: How will the computer be slowed down when overwriting pages and page table entries referring to some other application (such as wordpad) as compared to overwriting zeored entries? I wonder: Which hardware from the 1970's affects the Windows design? And in which ways? It can well be argued that the Windows 3.x software memory management was very strongly influenced by the 386 hardware MMS, and at lest on the design level could have been put onto the 386 more or less directly. But at that time, MS was striving to make Windows available on all sorts of processors, so they abandoned essential parts of the 386 MMS in favor of a single, flat memory model that was generally available on all relevant CPUs. What is true is that MS has taken backwards compatibility to extremes (in my opinion): Read Raymond Chen's selections of blogposts from The New Old Thing[^] - quite a few of the (sometimes rather funny) stories he tells have to do with backwards comptatibilty. In contrast to people writing open software in their spare time, MS has to support their existing customer base. As a programmer, I wished that 32 bit Windows would have a thoroughy cleaned-up API (from the 16 bit version), since it couldn't be 100% compatible anyway. We didn't get that - but we got thousands of Windows applications ported from 16 to 32 bits in a few months, because MS decided to bring the API changes to a minimum, to simplify porting. From a marketing point of view (and even more the wiew of independent software vendors making Windows apps, rather than MS itself), I can fully defend that decision. What goes on under the hood is a completely different matter.
Member 7989122 wrote:
wonder: How can you see that wordpad, which you might use once every 2 years, is prefetched?
well, look in \windows\prefetch, and there it is. I even see sidebar - which I never used and in fact disabled years ago. I'm really glad ms has my best intentions in mind loading those important apps.
Member 7989122 wrote:
wonder: How will the computer be slowed down when overwriting pages and page table entries referring to some other application (such as wordpad) as compared to overwriting zeored entries?
Umm, it's slowed down because it's loading that say wordpad from the disk into memory, and when I exit visual studio, it loads it back again and hence, superfetch is useless. even if you have spinners it really should be disabled. If you have SSD it's almost important to disable it. (and despite some claims it does not auto disable if it sees SSD - that's just another myth.)
Member 7989122 wrote:
I wonder: Which hardware from the 1970's .... , so they abandoned essential parts of the 386 MMS in favor of a single, flat memory model that was generally available on all relevant CPUs.
glad you agree with me: "a single, flat memory model ... all relevant CPU's" which includes the 186, 286, 386..., and are they not from the 70's? so yes, it's [your words] using a single model that supports all architectures thus including 70's and thus not able to make use of optimizations of later CPU's. yes, sure, it's for backwards compatibility, and yes for backward compat, but really what's the point? there's features of w7 and beyond the 80286 will not handle, so why leave an outdated major core function that by design of other parts of the system is actually irrelevant?? (and how can ms claim w10 is an entirely new OS when it's core is that old?). anyway just glad we and agree and your input to further detail it for others.
Message Signature (Click to edit ->)
-
Member 7989122 wrote:
wonder: How can you see that wordpad, which you might use once every 2 years, is prefetched?
well, look in \windows\prefetch, and there it is. I even see sidebar - which I never used and in fact disabled years ago. I'm really glad ms has my best intentions in mind loading those important apps.
Member 7989122 wrote:
wonder: How will the computer be slowed down when overwriting pages and page table entries referring to some other application (such as wordpad) as compared to overwriting zeored entries?
Umm, it's slowed down because it's loading that say wordpad from the disk into memory, and when I exit visual studio, it loads it back again and hence, superfetch is useless. even if you have spinners it really should be disabled. If you have SSD it's almost important to disable it. (and despite some claims it does not auto disable if it sees SSD - that's just another myth.)
Member 7989122 wrote:
I wonder: Which hardware from the 1970's .... , so they abandoned essential parts of the 386 MMS in favor of a single, flat memory model that was generally available on all relevant CPUs.
glad you agree with me: "a single, flat memory model ... all relevant CPU's" which includes the 186, 286, 386..., and are they not from the 70's? so yes, it's [your words] using a single model that supports all architectures thus including 70's and thus not able to make use of optimizations of later CPU's. yes, sure, it's for backwards compatibility, and yes for backward compat, but really what's the point? there's features of w7 and beyond the 80286 will not handle, so why leave an outdated major core function that by design of other parts of the system is actually irrelevant?? (and how can ms claim w10 is an entirely new OS when it's core is that old?). anyway just glad we and agree and your input to further detail it for others.
Message Signature (Click to edit ->)
Quote:
"a single, flat memory model ... all relevant CPU's" which includes the 186, 286, 386..., and are they not from the 70's?
If you had been bitching about the segmented memory of the '86 (all the way back to the 8086), I could have agreed with you. But that particular MMS mechanism that was gradually made more and more complex, from the 8086 and upwards to the 386, is what is particular to that family - and that was abondoned by MS. Well, there is no real way to turn off the segmentation, so what they do is to define a single 4 GB (in 32 bit mode) hardware code segment, a single 4 GB hardware stack segment and a single 4 GB harware code segment and put them on top of each other, and then build a software mechanism for doing a very similar segmentation. (Btw: 286 and 386 are designs of the 1980s, not the 1970s, and there never was any 186 Windows.) If you are talking about flat memory models: "thus not able to make use of optimizations of later CPU's" - I wonder what you are referring to here - which mechanisms that is. And I wonder how other OSes make use of these mechanisms in ways that Windows doesn't. I know of several single-architecture OSes that make use of mechanisms particular to that specific architecture, but that is much more in the area of interrupt and exception handling than in memory management. Flat, unsegmented memory certainly did not arrive in the 1970s - it more or less stems from the days of ENIAC. In that sense you could say that all OSes have their roots in hardware from the 1940s. If that is too far back for you: Another widespread OS is based on a 1965 vintage 12-bit architecture: It may well be argued that this architecture is the root of its very strong single-isolated-segment paradigm: Splitting up 4096 words into a collection of separate but cooperating segments would be rather impractical. The segments simply had to operate alone, and processes couldn't access more than its own segment, because there wasn't room in memory for two segments at a time. Today, there are workarounds, that definitely have the appearance of Workarounds, for this: The main paradigm is still that a a process has a single segment, as a single isolated box, communicating through flat files only - even for such a basic concept as synchronization. Now I checked windows\prefetch at this machine, and you are right: There is a file named Wordpad.exe-...pf there. But first: It hasn't even been read, for about three mont
-
When I swapped to an M.2 SSD, I installed W10 over the course of a commercial break. 3 minutes from cold boot to interactive use on a new install; SATA-based can't even come close to that.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
Linux is even faster. I have a full ubuntu install on a laptop with a nVME drive, and from power-on to login prompt, it boots in about 30 seconds (even faster if the USB drive is plugged in, because grub insists on looking for it for at least 10 seconds before it times out and continues the boot process. On another machine, I'm running a minimal Lubuntu (also on a nVME) - less than 10 seconds on that one.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
This all works wonderful as long as you don't get into the UEFI vs. legacy boot wars. I'm not even sure one can blame this on Microsoft, but following it's tradition, Microsoft's support web site is full of useless gibberish from support people. I really think it's an early Microsoft AI engine posting solutions.... In any event, if you clone your spinner to an SSD, the SSD might not boot, actually displaying an assortment of exception conditions.
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
-
When I swapped to an M.2 SSD, I installed W10 over the course of a commercial break. 3 minutes from cold boot to interactive use on a new install; SATA-based can't even come close to that.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
-
Completely unexpected on my part, had to go off on a research project - wtf is UEFI (or whatever). All sorts of contradictory answers, and of course, Microsoft folks chime in with "you'll just need to re-install Windows". Uh not happening....
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
-
I agree. I have an m.2, 4x pcie SSD and it benchmarks three times faster than a SATA SSD on the same computer.
Scary how dang fast the pcie drives are...
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
-
Linux is even faster. I have a full ubuntu install on a laptop with a nVME drive, and from power-on to login prompt, it boots in about 30 seconds (even faster if the USB drive is plugged in, because grub insists on looking for it for at least 10 seconds before it times out and continues the boot process. On another machine, I'm running a minimal Lubuntu (also on a nVME) - less than 10 seconds on that one.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013You misunderstand. I _installed_ windows in that time frame.
"Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity." - Hanlon's Razor
-
Completely unexpected on my part, had to go off on a research project - wtf is UEFI (or whatever). All sorts of contradictory answers, and of course, Microsoft folks chime in with "you'll just need to re-install Windows". Uh not happening....
Charlie Gilley <italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape... "Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783 “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
This might help. UEFI can boot from either MBR or GPT partitions but BIOS can only do MBR (I think). UEFI and partition types
-
Quote:
"a single, flat memory model ... all relevant CPU's" which includes the 186, 286, 386..., and are they not from the 70's?
If you had been bitching about the segmented memory of the '86 (all the way back to the 8086), I could have agreed with you. But that particular MMS mechanism that was gradually made more and more complex, from the 8086 and upwards to the 386, is what is particular to that family - and that was abondoned by MS. Well, there is no real way to turn off the segmentation, so what they do is to define a single 4 GB (in 32 bit mode) hardware code segment, a single 4 GB hardware stack segment and a single 4 GB harware code segment and put them on top of each other, and then build a software mechanism for doing a very similar segmentation. (Btw: 286 and 386 are designs of the 1980s, not the 1970s, and there never was any 186 Windows.) If you are talking about flat memory models: "thus not able to make use of optimizations of later CPU's" - I wonder what you are referring to here - which mechanisms that is. And I wonder how other OSes make use of these mechanisms in ways that Windows doesn't. I know of several single-architecture OSes that make use of mechanisms particular to that specific architecture, but that is much more in the area of interrupt and exception handling than in memory management. Flat, unsegmented memory certainly did not arrive in the 1970s - it more or less stems from the days of ENIAC. In that sense you could say that all OSes have their roots in hardware from the 1940s. If that is too far back for you: Another widespread OS is based on a 1965 vintage 12-bit architecture: It may well be argued that this architecture is the root of its very strong single-isolated-segment paradigm: Splitting up 4096 words into a collection of separate but cooperating segments would be rather impractical. The segments simply had to operate alone, and processes couldn't access more than its own segment, because there wasn't room in memory for two segments at a time. Today, there are workarounds, that definitely have the appearance of Workarounds, for this: The main paradigm is still that a a process has a single segment, as a single isolated box, communicating through flat files only - even for such a basic concept as synchronization. Now I checked windows\prefetch at this machine, and you are right: There is a file named Wordpad.exe-...pf there. But first: It hasn't even been read, for about three mont
too much to read whatever on the memory management, MS still supports ancient [in fact incompatable] processor architectures, far from optimal. It's that simple! ... oh yes superfetch does slow you down, I start VS, it loads it into mem, exit VS, it loads some useless crap into mem, I start VS again, AGAIN it has to load it from disk AGAIN. I'm not griping about the loading of the useless crap, it's the forced RE-LOAD of the stuff I do want (i.e. when I go back into VS). Standard caching practice is to leave whatever was there last (i.e. in this case VS) until space is required, not burn it and load up some other crap just for the sake of it. Now do you get it? Even if it's pico seconds there is NO way doing what ms does could NOT BE SLOWER. Again it's that simple.
Member 7989122 wrote:
I strongly suspect that there are aspects of the superfetch mechanism that you have not fully grasped. Either not at all, or misunderstood.
odd you should say that as it was you who asked me how I could find out what superfetch was caching, the answer [that I gave you] was pretty simple was it not, seemed you were the one unaware of this. if you had bothered to learn at least a little about the technical details [not just the the ms bullshit] you wouldn't have had to ask me such a silly question. Sorry, but you've attempted to insult me twice now, and it's twice I've proven you wrong. Ask me to learn more??? It's you clearly demonstrating the lack of knowledge and understanding. Ever written microcode? Ever written an operating system from scratch? You're welcome to come back and discuss further when you've caught up to me, until then no point continuing further; goodbye.
Message Signature (Click to edit ->)
-
too much to read whatever on the memory management, MS still supports ancient [in fact incompatable] processor architectures, far from optimal. It's that simple! ... oh yes superfetch does slow you down, I start VS, it loads it into mem, exit VS, it loads some useless crap into mem, I start VS again, AGAIN it has to load it from disk AGAIN. I'm not griping about the loading of the useless crap, it's the forced RE-LOAD of the stuff I do want (i.e. when I go back into VS). Standard caching practice is to leave whatever was there last (i.e. in this case VS) until space is required, not burn it and load up some other crap just for the sake of it. Now do you get it? Even if it's pico seconds there is NO way doing what ms does could NOT BE SLOWER. Again it's that simple.
Member 7989122 wrote:
I strongly suspect that there are aspects of the superfetch mechanism that you have not fully grasped. Either not at all, or misunderstood.
odd you should say that as it was you who asked me how I could find out what superfetch was caching, the answer [that I gave you] was pretty simple was it not, seemed you were the one unaware of this. if you had bothered to learn at least a little about the technical details [not just the the ms bullshit] you wouldn't have had to ask me such a silly question. Sorry, but you've attempted to insult me twice now, and it's twice I've proven you wrong. Ask me to learn more??? It's you clearly demonstrating the lack of knowledge and understanding. Ever written microcode? Ever written an operating system from scratch? You're welcome to come back and discuss further when you've caught up to me, until then no point continuing further; goodbye.
Message Signature (Click to edit ->)
Sorry, pal, you are not getting through! Even from the start: That "too much to read" is a clear announcement: "I choose to ignore those facts that I choose to ignore". Fair enough, but that does affect your credibility, if you like it or not. I observe that you do not want to go in details about your alleged limitations caused by the old Intel processors memory model, nor the claimed extensions not exploited by Windows. You imply: well I really have noting more to be said about that - forget it! You have brought no more "proof" of superfetch loading of irrelevant applications into memory, except you have seen some similarly named metadata disk file in some disk directory. Great "proof, isn't it? No, I do not "get it", that "useless crap" is loaded. Firt: I don't se it happen. Second: Sometimes there are resons for things being done. I am responsible for a toolchain management system where I thousands of times (well, at least several hundreds of times) have had to explain to its users why it is necessary to re-read the information from the file system, again and again: Something might have changed. Without exception they leave my boot with an "OK, so that's why! ..." Sure, well behaved applications announce changes, but we have a load of applications that do not, so there you have it! There are two levels of complaint: The first one is "I do not want my PC to do this - it slows it down" The second level is: "Look here: Now I have disabled function X, and my PC complets its tasks i X.yy second. Let's try again with function X enables: it completes in Z.yy seconds. It is repeatable: We can run it five fimes with X enabled, five times with X disabled, and is consistently a.xx seconds faster with X disabled." My problem with such claims is that some obstacle always makes it impossible to compare the two alternatives, "changing the build plans to the other alernative is too much work, we know that it is how we say it is!". That is not neceessarily at the outset, but when the "obvious" differences do not show up, the explanations why they are still there, to full extent, even if the comparative test didn't reveal them because it was not properly done ... Right!! There is no indication whatsoever for WordPad loading 4.5 MB into my RAM of my machine. Your "proof" to the contrary is a disk file which on my machine is half a percent of that size and hasn't been read for three months. What proof! Actually, I have been microcoing a 2901 procssor. And