I Am In Need of Computer Advice

bayoubill
I can't make my mind up about Windows 10. The bottom line is : How will or does it affect on Sonar? Will everything function the same? I need verdicts! Whom made the plunge and how is it working? PLEASE PLEASE HELP! For the love of all that is holy! I Am stupido and that can't be fixed! I must have guidance. 

you can restore if its not your cup of tea\\\just do it

Hi,
 
Frankie says ... you must have dope ... wait ... gueeeetarrrr!
 
I have not had any issues with it ... but I was prepared and made sure the computer was ready for it.
 
Here's my checklist: (2 more machines to do!)
 
1. No files of yours whatsoever saved in the machine! Pull them to CD or another machine! Safer that way.
 
2. Uninstall/clean as much as possible. If you only have Windows and the Firewall program, you are likely at its safest point. make a list of programs and such, if you have to go download the VST's again, for example! I do not know, if there are, or not, any issues with Sonar or any musical software, but I presume that they should be just fine. But, re-installing might be safer, right after the Firewall, for example. Others here can tell you better than I on that.
 
3. You do not have to uninstall any programs -- GENERALLY -- however, some of them have to be re-installed anyway. For ex: on one of my machines, I only had World of Warcraft, anyway. Big deal!
 
4. Drivers -- Video. Have it ready on the Hard Drive and make sure these are on a separate folder, and so on. My NVidia GTX 970 did not install properly on W10 as Windows did not bother to look for the proper drivers and set things up right and I came back up from it all in 640x480. On the other machine with the GTX 760 (can't even remember now!) had no issues.
 
4A. Drivers -- Motherboard and other peripherals. Some older motherboards MIGHT require new drivers. Make sure you check BEFORE even considering updating the Windows on it. However, this might take all the fun out of it, since some MB folks are well known to be jerks and not offer updated drivers, despite knowing there is an issue with it.
 
5. Network -- I did not lose any network connectivity to my other machines, and did not have to redo anything. However, W10, STILL has the same stupid issues that it can't find one machine, and you have to go to the other machine and click on network and look at this one, and then things come up fine! That is, by far the worst networking setup and design I ever saw!
 
6. Privacy settings ... on the install it asks you and I did "Custom", and turned everything off and figure I can turn anything on I want when I want or need it. This, is a biggie on the net right now, so I thought I would mention it.
 
7. Browser. Clean all the history, forms, temp, passwords, everything! Both on Chrome and IE, and so forth.
 
AFTER it all the install, I added whatever I needed. All my files are not in any of the network computers, btw ... they are all on Enclosures, duplicated. I use 3 enclosures, I try not to save anything on the computer whatsoever.
 
8. Failure. Each of my computers is setup, so that if the update/install fails, it won't hurt anything that I do, except waste another hour. Thus, the less you have, the less you have to redo on any machine. At the same time, I do not have to worry about redoing my whole computer, because the whole thing screwed up. To me, this is important, because the re-image this and that and this and that, is an endless bunch of geek'ery for me, that I do not care to engage in, and does not make my computer skills any better or worse. In fact, if one of my old roomies was an issue, he had a love/hate relationship with ______________ because he redid that thing 2 or 3 times a week, and had to have his 1,000 partitions and so on! Nowadays, Hard Drives are so cheap that having partitions is down right silly and not even faster, than the alternatives. The external solutions these days are safer and more reliable, in general. This last part, is my OPINION, and some netadmins might disagree with me, and I have no bone or issue with that at all.
 
This has been my experience , and I do have the disks for W8 if I need them to redo a machine, when, I hope that I can do this directly to W10 ... which is still an issue for me, and it probably means I have to purchase one disk with W10, so I can simplify the setup any time thereafter. Hard drives do crank down once in a while!

Pedro - Why do you suggest clearing the browser?

I downloaded and chose custom install. Somehow about 12 other programs installed in the background without me knowing. I've been fighting www search com and other hijack #@)($
 I restored win 7 and am trying to get rid of all the other programs. I also got a call from someone telling me I had called to help fix win 10. I thought for a sec and can't tell you what I said. What a scam

You are the only person I've seen post that Win 10 installed malware or extra programs. You must have gotten the files from some hack site. The fact that you got a phone call is also very telling. Microsoft just wouldn't do that. Some how you got redirected into scam land.

I have gotten things back to normal, finally.
 
SCAM 

bayoubill
I ran malware bytes and it picked up a count of 335. 7 of them trojans

Malwarebytes is an excellent product. 75% of the time it picks up stuff other virus/malware scanners can't. If people have never ran it before I urge them to do so, the free version doesn't even stay resident in memory unless you do a manual scan, so it won't screw with your DAW setup (although I bought it in the end and do have it running all the time).

I downloaded and activated malware bytes  premium and found a particularly nasty malware named relevantknowledge that was all over the place, it snuk  in with some seemingly benign page, I think it was some  free classic sheet music pages ,
anyway scan scan scan ..
Bill I feel your pain , BUT once you get it all cleaned up and find a driver you will luvre win 10
a few things I am going to miss
 
my Liquid Mix no longer works with Win10 no matter what tricks I tried.
 
my Powercore Element card doesnt fit my tower,plus its obsolete anyway(but had some damn good plugs) the voice modeling was neat plus the premium plugs I purchased.
 
MOTU Symphonic Instrument VST wont register but i did download the 64 bit versions of their instrument bank and can open it in UVI

bayoubill
Thank you Doktor! I'm very turned off about upgrading now. I spoke to a tech here in town and he said win 7 will be good thru 2020 so I can keep what I have.
 

 
Unfortunately (much to my personal chagrin) apparently Cakewalk will stop testing Sonar on Win7 "soon".
 
This was a post from a Baker and I tried to get an elaboration on what "soon" meant but did not get a reply.
 
Of course that's not to say (as they pointed out) that future versions of Sonar won't work on Win7. They just won't be testing new releases on it "soon".
 
Just so you are informed...
 
Also, I agree with the others something horrific and totally not normal must have happened with your Win10 install. Something other than MS weirdness is most definitely in play here.
 
The phone call thing is also creepy as mufuggin' hell and why I tend to be ultra paranoid about personal info on the tubes. I won't even type my phone number in an email or general document on my internet computers.
 
The sneaky spying prigholes still can probably get it if they really wanted to. Love the new technology. Hate the new zero privacy creepshow that seems to come along with it.
 
Good luck, dood.

I like W-10 so far but I'm not secure enough to put it on my DAW. I thought I had a problem on the lappy but a reboot and W-10 fixed itself. It really seems to be a jam up OS. Just study up on the security options, there are tips all over the tech sites.
I'll likely update my DAW sometime in the spring... it's nothing I can't wait to do, W-8.1 is working just fine. I figure everything should be up to speed by then. I updated the Line6 driver last week and the UX-2 works good with W-10, the Octa-Capture, I haven't tried but I think it was Fireberd who said his Octa and Studio-Capture were both working on W-10.
 
You cannot stop technology, like someone said, "you roll with it, or it will roll over you".
 
I don't intend to be an old guy driving a 30 year old Buick with a 50 year old hair style... same with technology and other things. I think deciding you're going to like something before you get it helps a lot. Like when I went from lined bifocals to progressives... I was told that a lot of people had trouble adjusting and brought them back. I decided that I was going to like them, I got them and never looked back. Never had a minute's trouble adjusting. It's like that with the new Windows UI, you can still get the old desktop, IE is still there (I tried EDGE but it rearranged my favorites and I don't think it is as secure). Metro never bothered me in W-8, I just click and get the desktop if I want it or use the tiles if I want to. I think all the drivers will soon work and from what I hear W-10 isn't nearly as picky about drivers as previous Windows OS'.. and you have a 30 day window to roll back to 7, but don't look back... just do it, when you get ready.
I DO like it better than W-7, it's about the same as W-8 to me as far as use... but I don't use 8 for general surfing.
 
Sooner or later you'll need to jump... you know that right? Safest... wait till after Christmas but make up your mind to like it and GO! That's my advice.
 
J

Just finished doing the auto update from Windows 8.1 here as well. We also downloaded the ISO file so we can do a clean install at a later date if desired.
 
Once it was done with the update, we unplugged the Internet cable. When we rebooted, Windows turned on the built-in WiFi. This was surprising as we had disabled this a long time ago as it interfered with Sonar. We went into the Device Manager and disabled it and during the next reboot it stayed off.
 
As far as the look of Win 10, it seems to be going backwards. Everything is very flat. Only the shadows of the windows give them any type of 3D appearance. The task bar at the bottom is also rather small, especially compared to the task bar in W7 or W8/8.1.
 
Another interesting item we noticed is that the 'Music App' only plays if visible. If I start a song playing and then minimize the app, the song fades out and it stops playing. The best I can do reduce the size of the app, but I can't make it too small. Weird behaviour.
 
I know a lot of folks have said they noticed it is quicker, but I am not seeing this. It is taking significantly longer to boot up and shut down. It seems like some of the programs take a bit longer to load up as well.This may be due to this being an update and not a clean install.
 
I have also noticed sometimes the screen flashes as I move windows around. Beginning to think this may be a driver issue and will be looking into that. Haven't had any issues with Sonar X3e yet,but haven't played with it to any great extent.
 
We will play with this for a while. Security in W10 is my main concern, and since I have no control over the updates (it is the Home edition) and we are still finding out about stuff MS is doing without consent, for me the best option was simply unplug it from the net. I am now doing all my Internet stuff through Linux Mint on the laptop. We are going to try this for a while. If it seems to work, we will do a clean install on the desktop with Windows 10.
 
That's my first impressions anyway.

bayoubill
Pedro - Why do you suggest clearing the browser?

Wasted space in the Hard Drive.
 
Save your links, on a Notepad file, or equivalent, if you need to, but in general, I do not like the browser saving everything as it does, so it can show me, again, another advertising for Musician's Friend, or equivalent.
 
My thought always was, the less there is in it, the better off you are.

slartabartfast
Where the hell did you get your Win 10 installation files from? The automatic download via MS Update should certainly be clean, unless some malware genius has found a way to counterfeit that download. The only other source is Microsoft, and it seems pretty doubtful that their servers have been hacked. Unless the system you upgraded was already infected, it is difficult to see where the malware came from. Some details might help others avoid this problem.

 
And Microsoft will only do this to registered versions of Windows? All 4 W8 machines had Windows purchased on my machines.

MandolinPicker
... 
Once it was done with the update, we unplugged the Internet cable. When we rebooted, Windows turned on the built-in WiFi. This was surprising as we had disabled this a long time ago as it interfered with Sonar. We went into the Device Manager and disabled it and during the next reboot it stayed off.
... 
 

I had the Wi-Fi disabled on the router ... and Windows had no chance!

Dok I found out there is no upgrade driver for the Edirol FA-66 in Windows 10 yet.
 
Do you mean a clean install of Windows 7? I have the disc for Windows 7.
 So ;
1.Clean install of Windows 7
2. then Firewall (I'm not sure what this means. I have malware bytes and Microsoft Security Essenials
3.Windows Updates? 
 
P.S. I have Cakewalk Projects and Music etc. on a S drive on my PC.