Windows 7 awkward feel, missing WinXP, need advice

zzz2496 said:

pparks1 said:

zzz2496 said:

Woops, sorry... here's what you can try... open "Device Manager" or "Computer Management" with and without UAC (both will invoke UAC prompt). For applications that is behaving "properly", those won't slow down. I access this kind of subsystems all the time, so I benefit a lot from disabling UAC. Opening "Computer Management" never felt this fast.

Thanks for giving me something tangible that I could test.

Here was the test that I performed. On my laptop (Dell E6400 with Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 at 2.40Ghz with 4GB of RAM running Windows 32-bit Enterprise), I turned off the machine. I started my stop watch from the time that I hit the power button. I waited until exactly 2 minutes before I clicked on the Start Orb, then right clicked on My Computer and choose Manage. This gave the machine time to boot and get services started etc. I then ran the test 3 times with UAC on and 3 times with it off. Here are the results averaged.

Avg time with UAC enabled : 2:14.43
Avg time with UAC turned off: 2:13.85

So, there was a difference...albeit small.

Err.. I forgot to mention, the 64bit version... I use the 64bit. The 32bit version is somewhat faster, I don't know what MS did in the 64bit, but it's slower in 64 than 32. By the way, we should stop before OT warning...

zzz2496

im using Win 7 Ultimate X64, as i said no noticable difference, slow machine (compared to yours) admittedly i didnt use a stopwatch, but then honestly who sits there with a stopwatch in front of their pc constantly? i think it would point to the problem being with your PC and not UAC

severedsolo said:

i didnt use a stopwatch, but then honestly who sits there with a stopwatch in front of their pc constantly? i think it would point to the problem being with your PC and not UAC

HaHa....that's me. The one with the stopwatch. While I don't have it there constantly, whenever I try out tweaks or otherwise intended to improve performance I put them through a timing test to see if it's really all that different or not. You would be surprised how many people "feel" a difference but when under a stopwatch cannot "prove" that improvement that they are certain that is there.

This practice comes from a force of habit out of work experiences. I came from a software company that had developers and then everybody else. When people would whine and complain about new machines versus old machines and who should get what...I often just time tested everything and benchmarked it all to show what was and wasn't happening. It proved quite valuable to me. Pretty much whenever we got a new machine in, it came to me and I ran it through the test platform and made the baseline report for the machine.

severedsolo said:

zzz2496 said:

pparks1 said:

Thanks for giving me something tangible that I could test.

Here was the test that I performed. On my laptop (Dell E6400 with Intel Core 2 Duo P8600 at 2.40Ghz with 4GB of RAM running Windows 32-bit Enterprise), I turned off the machine. I started my stop watch from the time that I hit the power button. I waited until exactly 2 minutes before I clicked on the Start Orb, then right clicked on My Computer and choose Manage. This gave the machine time to boot and get services started etc. I then ran the test 3 times with UAC on and 3 times with it off. Here are the results averaged.

Avg time with UAC enabled : 2:14.43
Avg time with UAC turned off: 2:13.85

So, there was a difference...albeit small.

Err.. I forgot to mention, the 64bit version... I use the 64bit. The 32bit version is somewhat faster, I don't know what MS did in the 64bit, but it's slower in 64 than 32. By the way, we should stop before OT warning...

zzz2496

im using Win 7 Ultimate X64, as i said no noticable difference, slow machine (compared to yours) admittedly i didnt use a stopwatch, but then honestly who sits there with a stopwatch in front of their pc constantly? i think it would point to the problem being with your PC and not UAC

Well, we all use our machine differently. Mine is running almost like a server load, with around 90 processes started upon start up. This is not regular workload. Several of them are Apache web server, several database servers, and 2 virtual machines running on idle. When I work, around 140 processes registered in Task Manager, 30 - 40 windows open at any given time and connection from many hosts over several VPN connections querying my database servers... So I need every bit of performance I can get from this old machine... I prefer to give the performance to my server processes than to UAC

pparks1 said:

severedsolo said:

i didnt use a stopwatch, but then honestly who sits there with a stopwatch in front of their pc constantly? i think it would point to the problem being with your PC and not UAC

HaHa....that's me. The one with the stopwatch. While I don't have it there constantly, whenever I try out tweaks or otherwise intended to improve performance I put them through a timing test to see if it's really all that different or not. You would be surprised how many people "feel" a difference but when under a stopwatch cannot "prove" that improvement that they are certain that is there.

This practice comes from a force of habit out of work experiences. I came from a software company that had developers and then everybody else. When people would whine and complain about new machines versus old machines and who should get what...I often just time tested everything and benchmarked it all to show what was and wasn't happening. It proved quite valuable to me. Pretty much whenever we got a new machine in, it came to me and I ran it through the test platform and made the baseline report for the machine.

Have to agree on the stopwatch comment :)

Anyway, rather than relying on UAC (which then involves sandboxing, virtualization, and god knows what other checking in place), I prefer (and I recommend to all of my friends and clients) to use the "proper" way of using multi user OS, which is "Just use the darn limited user" advice. Since Vista and 7 is built with limited user in mind, both products are behaving accordingly, which is not the case with Windows XP (and Windows 2000 Pro). By using true Limited user and disable UAC, the system will then check ONLY by ACL, no more virtualization, no more cr*p, just plain old Windows, VERY fast and efficient.

Imagine if you want to start an application, with UAC it will initialize the Virtualization engine, preparing the Virtualized environment, doing the Mandatory Integrity Check, preparing the sandbox, all that - and then prepare for ASLR, DEP, etc... My god, that's a lot of overhead... By using Limited user, disable UAC, when you start an app, it will just start the app, no virtualization initialization, no token check, no cr*p. If the app accesses, say "Program Files\[app folder]" and that folder is in "read only" for the current user, then the app will simply throw an error of unable to write, or something... No other checks than ACL.

In short, simpler, faster, smiley face all day, every day :)

zzz2496

zzz2496 said:

I prefer (and I recommend to all of my friends and clients) to use the "proper" way of using multi user OS, which is "Just use the darn limited user" advice. Since Vista and 7 is built with limited user in mind, both products are behaving accordingly, which is not the case with Windows XP (and Windows 2000 Pro). By using true Limited user and disable UAC, the system will then check ONLY by ACL, no more virtualization, no more cr*p, just plain old Windows, VERY fast and efficient.

What are you suggesting here? I want to make sure that I fully understand the advice.

Are you saying to use an account that is simply in Users....or to use an account that is in the admins group and simply run with UAC disabled as this initial account is a limited user by default.

pparks1 said:

zzz2496 said:

I prefer (and I recommend to all of my friends and clients) to use the "proper" way of using multi user OS, which is "Just use the darn limited user" advice. Since Vista and 7 is built with limited user in mind, both products are behaving accordingly, which is not the case with Windows XP (and Windows 2000 Pro). By using true Limited user and disable UAC, the system will then check ONLY by ACL, no more virtualization, no more cr*p, just plain old Windows, VERY fast and efficient.

What are you suggesting here? I want to make sure that I fully understand the advice.

Are you saying to use an account that is simply in Users....or to use an account that is in the admins group and simply run with UAC disabled as this initial account is a limited user by default.

Ok, I'll clear things up...

You will need at least one "Administrator", this is according to "Control Panel -> User Accounts". Then you create one "Standard User" for day to day use. Disable UAC, restart the computer.

Note: This is for those who knows what they're doing. Regular user, stick to Microsoft way (UAC + all those overheads, slower but that's how MS created it), bad things happens when you do the right way... good things happen when you use Microsoft way.... Remember, though Windows Vista and 7 is closing the gap between a real multi user OS (*nix) and Windows, still... Windows still have it's bad legacy with it, it will "bark" at you from time to time. If you know your ways around Windows, feel free to try.

zzz2496