Well shit…that looks like it worked.
Bit annoying I had to go tot extent of opening up the PC and unplugging things to get the upgrade to work, but seems I am there now.
I assume it’s safe to delete the windows.old folder anytime I feel confident that the upgrade is stable?
stusser
3631
Yes, but you’ll need to use the built-in disk cleanup program to do it. I think windows deletes it automatically after 31 days.
That’s correct. MS figures a month is long enough to decide if you need to revert; after that, Win will automatically remove the old Windows installation.
Somehow in the last month, this has fixed itself. I accidentally hit sleep mode instead of shutdown the other day, and it actually worked properly. No idea what update fixed it. According to my update history there have been 5 Windows updates since the Fall Creator’s Update…guess one of them did the trick.
Well, it stands to reason media based 1709 upgrade went ahead and installed, or at least auto upgraded to a borked audio driver. Worked fine for eight hours, then the mic just stopped working mid RS6 game.
Turn off diver updates with OOSU10, uninstall device, reboot, reinstall legacy known good divers, reboot, VIA HD vDeck does not work in Anniversary update (go figure, it was fine before), hack moving some 64 bit exe’s as workaround, reboot, think I’m good.
Wonder what will happen next!
Righto, this VIA audio chipset might be a problem. Mic stopped working again tonight, fixed it again by uninstalling and re-installing. Windows had done an update, but I had disabled Windows Update driver updates via OOSU10, so it should not be that…theoretically. Grrrrrr.
I have a spare PCI-E slot, so may need a standalone card. Is anyone using a standalone card with Win 10 1709? What is it? The cheap ones available - Xonar DSX/DGX and Creative FX/RX are quite old cards, some of which have not had driver updates for a few years, which worries me in terms of just repeating the problem. Word on the street is the Xonar drivers are problematic with a 3rd party diver being more effective, even though it has some rather severe known issues with 1709. I can’t even get Asus official driver download page to freaking load properly in Chrome or Firefox to see how old the most recent drivers are!
Both Creative and Asus’ ‘newer’ cards are annoyingly expensive for a simple on-board replacement.
Damn you Win10, I was having such a good run.
stusser
3636
These things are complete commodities these days. Every USB set of headphones has a DAC integrated. You can easily get away with something cheap like this and never know the difference.
https://smile.amazon.com/Sabrent-External-Adapter-Windows-AU-MMSA/dp/B00IRVQ0F8/
If you really want to spend a bit more money, get a Modi 2. It won’t sound better unless you have expensive headphones, but it certainly looks better.
Note you will need a little L+R composite audio to 1/8th inch adapter also to plug into your amplified computer speakers. And if you want to run headphones off it, you will need a separate headphone amp, they sell one of those too. It has a vacuum tube on it so you know it’s worth the $150.
https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-2
They also sell the Fulla 2, for the unlikely name of “Fulla Schiit”, which integrates a DAC and amplifier for headphones, and also has a pre-amp output for powered computer speakers. It isn’t as popular as the Modi 2 + Magni solution as most audiophiles use headphones and the Modi/Magni supposedly sounds better (not that you would notice) and most computer people have amplified speakers. It has a pleasant knob on top that you can twiddle.
http://www.schiit.com/products/fulla-2
Actually, yeah, sounds like that will be orders of magnitude less pain.
$15 - alu-fucking-minium!
Gendal
3638
I may have to pick up that Fulla 2. My old Logitech Z680s headphone jack is mostly broken, and the light died, but it does power the speakers fine. So I was thinking about picking up an additional sound card and routing the headphones through that, since they make several with decent headphone amps. But that’s external, which is a plus and it looks great.
So instead of plugging in the headphones I would just switch audio outputs in the OS. Hrm. Sounds better honestly, I obviously plug/unplug enough to ruin a jack over time.
stusser
3639
You could just get the Fulla Schiit, plug the 1/8th inch variable output into your Z680s, and then plug your headphones into the headphone jack. Don’t use your motherboard’s sound at all, and only adjust volume with the knob on top of the Fulla Schiit. It will automatically mute the preamp output when you plug in your headphones.
Of you could plug the 1/8th inch fixed output into your Z680s, and then you’d use the volume knob on your speakers when audio goes through the speakers, and the knob on the Fulla with headphones. That would work too.
God, I love that name. Fulla Schiit.
This has confirmed a lot of my personal suspicions/experiences about Windows 8/10 being harder to use at a very basic level than Windows 7. Further, I played around in Object Desktop on a Windows 10 VM, but still haven’t found a skin I’m happy with. Luckily, I don’t have to use Windows 10 every day.
Windows 7 4lyfe until 2020.
rei
3641
is this for newbie users or expert users? i’m no less efficient in windows 10. microsoft has half-assed it by making some things exist only in legacy control panel and are absent in their tiletown metro equivalents. also too much white space and too thin of a typeface makes for poor usability as well.
This has nothing to do with the Start screen or control panel. It’s about the visual design of forms, buttons, text input, headers, window borders, etc. as well as white space and typeface as you mentioned.
Had some fun this morning with a non-functional PC. Black screen, rebooted, Windows wouldn’t start. Coincidence that this happened shortly after I started trying to use sleep mode again? I think not.
I got things working again with a system restore from the recovery menu, going back to the last automatic backup from a week ago. I was surprised at how smoothly that part went. Hopefully it stays good when the last week’s worth of updates are re-applied.
stusser
3644
I don’t think that was ever really in-doubt. That’s why iOS7 had such a huge backlash, lots of people simply couldn’t tell where the buttons were located. Both Apple and Microsoft have been backing away from flat designs ever since. Google never fell into the trap, their material design was a direct repudiation of flat design.
Daagar
3645
I’m not a fan of the flat/metro style interfaces. I don’t think I’m slower at using them, necessarily, but I find I very much use borders/chrome to spatially separate things out. The trend towards just having toolbars/menus jump direct to content drives me nuts. This was really bad when Win10 first came out, and the window borders were white just like everything else.
Metro mainly bothers me on PC. On a phone it’s not that bad. (Or, all phone GUIs are somewhat flat, so it’s hard to say one is better than another.)
stusser
3647
Today, sure. IOS11 has tons of depth and usage hints. It wasn’t like that back in iOS7.
Zylon
3648
Material design is a direct repudiation of skeuomorphism. It’s too similar to flat design to be any sort of repudiation of it.
