For me, the biggest advantage of Windows 8 and 10 over previous versions is that both systems take much longer to deteriorate, specially Windows 10 which, like I said, has been running very smoothly on my PC.

Previous versions of Windows, like XP or 7, used to become cluttered and sluggish pretty fast. It used to be part of my routine to format my PCs once a year, specially XP.

So far, I haven't noticed any performance degradation on Windows 10. I've been using it for a while and it still feels fresh. It's the best Windows version so far, in my opinion.

Anyway, before someone says something, I'm not a fanboy. I couldn't care less about Windows or Microsoft. I just use what suits my needs.

I love Linux, but I use a lot of programs that aren't available for the platform, and can't be seriously replaced by alternatives.

I used work on Macs when I was working on advertising agencies. They work pretty well, but I don't really think they're worth their price tags. They surely look pretty and OSx is very polished, but I can buy an equivalent PC for half the price.

 

Last edited: May 16, 2016

@RMorgan It's hard to argue with Blackadder but, as long as you use system tools like CCleaner or WinUtilities and uninstall programs like Total Uninstall, you can keep the old cow fit and trim as if it was her glory days, staying single while still enjoying her milk.

 

You do have a valid point with the drivers I had an issue also and there is a bug in the telemetry settings.

However you can disable group telemetry through powershell or via the registry. In fact you can turn off telemetry altogether u just set the value

 

Widows 8 8.1 and 10 use more memory and cpu than 7. Thats why they seem faster and snappier. Which eqauls less cpu and memory for your daw and plugs.
Now that is a REAl no brainer for me!

 

Upgrading to Win 10 from Win 7 was a bust for moi.

The plugins didn't behave right, the gui was sluggish (Sonar & other guis) and I reimaged back to Win 7.

Then my system died. Decided on a new build: went with a great motherboard, a new(ish) i7 Core, 16Gb of ram, Windows 10 with a bit of tweaking (not much!) and reloaded everything from scratch (a painfully drawn out process) and I'm very pleased. No BSOD's anymore. (May have had 2 at the most while installing everything, but nothing since). No more hang-ups that require hard-boots that kill your electronic components. If you're gonna do it - do it from scratch and put the operating system on an SSD (as well as your programs/vst's etc.) and your data/audio on other drives (bring them over from your old system if they're still good!).

ps: never turn off your computer - your screens, fine - just not the system. Don't even 'sleep' it! Best thing you can do is keep the system stable in temperature and functionality. It'll last longer.

Ciau 4 Niau

 

For goodness sakes, NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER use CCleaner on your registry if you use cracked plugins. It will kill off stuff like nothing else. Back up your registry every time you use one of these supposed 'cleaners' ... heck, back up your entire hard-drive, boot-drive etc. Nothing mucks up a system like trying to fix it when it don't need fixin'.

 

Huh? Been using ccleaner and jv16 powertools reg cleaners for years. Never had a problem here. Hundreds of K'd plugs

 

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I can't see any good reason to upgrade but plenty not to.

Upgrading suits MS, obviously. It's their business, right?

OTOH, W10 is presumably more mature now. Upgrading at release was foolish imo, but now maybe it's fine. Me, I'm sticking with W7 until I see reason to change. A few minor benefits (and a pile of negatives) don't cut it.

 

Same experience here. I love CCleaner and I've never had a problem, though I always do a registry backup before a change in registry. You always should!

 

I thought it was just me who got a problem with Win 10, but there is a thread on the Reaper forum about it suddenly stops working.

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

Unless I missed something along the way, why in the world wouldn't you just swap your win7 drive with a fresh one and load win10 and all your shit up on the new one. If you don't like 10 it's only a quick drive swap and you're back in business in no time. I personally don't like all the upgrading then reverting back crap, never seems to work very good for me and left a lot of junk behind. Better safe than sorry!

 

What you say, Slider, is the best way to upgrade any OS, actually. I've been doing that for years like this. Buy a new hard disk, install the new thing on it, and keep the old hard disk with the old OS, too!

I too never had any problems whatsoever with CCleaner, and I've been using it since its release. But JV 16 Powertools can erase too much from the registry, and I wouldn't recommend it to everybody. So indeed, XP and 7 can still run great after many years of usage, if you don't install new programs constantly. That should be true for the newer versions of Windows, too, because the Registry is still being used eh? Every little thing you install makes at least some change in the registry, adds some key, or usually multiple keys to it. The bigger the registry - the slower the system because the registry resides in the RAM. Keep the registry lean and your Windows will run as on the day you installed it.

I install programs in the VirtualBox Windows 7 and transfer them manually to the main OS, so the registry and the OS stays cleaner. My "add/remove programs" contains only a handful of entries, even though I use a hefty amount of VSTs. But I have only a handful of programs installed since I don't use Windows for anything else. That fact makes it even faster, and my main OS is 6 years old now. As is the computer. I will buy a new computer this year, and I will install Windows 7 on it. This one will stay in active usage, though. As I said, It is needed because of hardware and programs that don't work with Windows 7 properly.

Torrao wrote: "In fact, I reinstalled Windows XP on my girlfriend's computer because it was MUCH faster in a dated machine. Just work with what you have and stop worrying abot updating to the next "thing"."

Believe me, when you install WinXPx64 on an i7 [email protected] with 16GB of RAM and an SSD it flies like an X-15! And it is obvious that all the newer systems are more sluggish, especially when it comes to running huge, demanding projects.

Cheers!

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

@SineWave You're pretty much spot on most of the time.
Except for this:

Quite the contrary unfortunately, as far as drivers are concerned.
Intel eXtensible USB 3.0 controller is available only for Win7+
nVidia Optimus requires at least Win7
No drivers for nVidia Quatro K2000+/K2000M+ for WinXP
Chipset support for WinXP ends on QM87
Intel HD4600 is the last IGPU to support WinXP. And the drivers are quite buggy too.
No support for DevHLT
Most ASIO drivers (CEntrance based) requires at least Win7x64
Missing TRIM support

As for software:
MS .NET framework 4.5 and 4.6 is not compatible with WinXP
VS2013 not compatible with WinXP
Adobe Photoshop past CS5 no longer compatible with WinXP
Kontakt 5.4.0+ not compatible with WinXP (compiled on VS2013)
DirectX support caps at 9.0c
Goldwave 6 not compatible with anything before Win7x64
...and the list goes on and on

XP is great OS, but since the devs quit support for it, the degradation is felt day by day.
As much as it's unfortunate, it's going to hit Win7.
Vista is already out, even though it's still supported by M$, devs have completely forgotten about it.

I'm using Win7 from early 2013 and for music production it's better than XP IMHO.
I had performance issues with Kontakt running in REAPER under XP x86 which vanished after switching to Win7. No need to fear whether this or that VST work with XP or not, and much better application support for 64bit. Even for daily use it's perfectly satisfactory and great.
There are some nasty quirks which took a while to get used to. Just like inferior Windows Search, single row view in Explorer, fixed system caching which ensures small percentange of your ram is ALWAYS eaten by the OS, ugly Aero (still prefer Luna) and general bloatness. Most of the problems can be fixed though.

Not to say XP is bad, quite the contrary. I'm still using it as gaming OS (together with 98SE) and as a compatibility solution. It's just sad a lot of programs no longer work with it.

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

Same with me... never an issue. Win 10 smooth as hell on my laptop. After stretching my laptop for 6 months now I am upgrading my studio computer this week. Checked it all, everything should be Win10 compatible.

 

Thanks Andrew for the nice and accurate list of what doesn't work with XP. For some things, that is unfortunate, but there is also a big list of things that run on XP only, too, as I mentioned in my first post on the first page here. Especially concerning musicians. If one has been a musician since the 90s, one should definitely keep an older computer with XP handy at all times, if one is still using older hardware, of course. I'm speaking of XPx64 here, but XPx86 is not that different, except for the RAM limitation. Thankfully you can buy a great ~2010 computer 2nd hand for peanuts these days! Just install a really good power supply in it and it will serve you well for many years to come!

Trim on SSDs doesn't have to be supported on the OS level these days. Only very old SSDs didn't have "trim" implemented on a hardware level. So XP works with SSDs smoothly, no worries.

Cheers!

 

Agreed, Garbage Collection of most modern SSDs is very efficient, so it's no problem to run even 98SE on SSD.

To cover Win10 topic, I would not upgrade.
There are tons of issues with it to justify the negligible advantages (DirectX 12) that it's just not worth the time and effort.

Also from the shady side, not sure how much truth is in it, but my friend who sell PCs told me that when upgrading to Win10 on older machines, sometimes Win10 intentionally cripples entire BIOS (if it's known to M$) and the PC/laptop is rendered useless, pretty much what Win98.CIH did in the old days.
So beware! It has happened on 4 laptops already.
And looks like he's not the only one:
http://forums.windowscentral.com/wi...-10-installs-2-happy-tablets-one-dead-pc.html
http://www.windows10forums.com/threads/windows-10-killed-my-computer.2449/

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

Couple of freeware utilities, uninstall the Windows Store, all the Metro apps and stuff you don't need, plus a decent firewall or edit your hosts file. Done! And you keep the far better performance.

Wow man. XPx64 is pretty much like Vista. Nobody used it. Nobody had the hardware to run it, nobody tests software in it. You're kinda gambling using this one. Also... to put XP on an SSD is like to slap a huge steak on your CPU. Yes, maybe a little part of it will fry. But ffs, why not do it the normal way instead of doing all that bullshit.

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

What's the "normal way" to do it then?
Based on your analogy, WinXP should be run exclusively from mechanical HDD, why?

 

Putting performance aside for one moment, it should be noted that Microsoft have lost the platform war against Google and Apple, and Windows 10 is actually a new business model (hence they are giving it away for free). This new business model entails the selling of all your personal data for vast profits.

So on a personal level, I will be happier going back to a cut-down optimized version of Win 7 running offline for my DAW, and using Linux for all of my online stuff.

I don't buy into all this "you are the product" nonsense. I've paid for Win 7 and it's mine, so they had better not try to update it with all their data stealing crapware!

 

Last edited: May 17, 2016

That's actually a point I havn't even mentioned but you are absolutely right @Zenarcist and it is what bugs me the most about Windows 10 : it's applely googlely philosophy (and all horrible things to come). Leave my datas alone, my private working environnement is my own, not a golden gousse for the 2.0 golden boys and girls.
And @jeffglobal your comment is very funny, but the video which I had never seen is indeed damn scary.