Will Windows 10 Finally Address OS Decay?

colinneagle (2544914) writes The real question on my mind is whether Windows 10 will finally address a problem that has plagued pretty much every Windows OS since at least 95: the decay of the system over time. As you add and remove apps, as Windows writes more and more temporary and junk files, over time, a system just slows down. I'm sure many of you have had the experience of taking a five-year-old PC, wiping it clean, putting the exact same OS on as it had before, and the PC is reborn, running several times faster than it did before the wipe. It's the same hardware, same OS, but yet it's so fast. This slow degeneration is caused by daily use, apps, device drive congestion (one of the tell-tale signs of a device driver problem is a PC that takes forever to shut down) and also hardware failure. If a disk develops bad sectors, it has to work around them. Even if you try aggressively to maintain your system, eventually it will slow, and very few people aggressively maintain their system. So I wonder if Microsoft has found a solution to this. Windows 8 was supposed to have some good features for maintaining the OS and preventing slowdown. I wouldn't know; like most people, I avoided Windows 8 like the plague. It would be the most welcomed feature of Windows 10 if I never had to do another backup, disk wipe, and reinstall.

Comments

The bigger Problem is their "updates"

[Opportunist]

Sadly the way updates work with MS they become the far bigger problem. You can easily see this by installing a "clean" system, examine its timing (please don't even think about using system internal benchmarks...), then patch it and notice just how much speed you suddenly miss.

That's a problem you probably won't solve quickly...

Re:The bigger Problem is their "updates"

[GigaplexNZ]

People don't tell you XP is old because of performance reasons. It's a security nightmare.

Re:The bigger Problem is their "updates"

[CptJeanLuc]

Sadly the way updates work with MS they become the far bigger problem. You can easily see this by installing a "clean" system, examine its timing (please don't even think about using system internal benchmarks...), then patch it and notice just how much speed you suddenly miss.

Compared to osx and linux distro updates, Windows (at least Win 7) is a true dinosaur. Imagine how many man-hours are wasted worldwide while waiting for Windows to update, with a reboot required pretty much every single time. Even if you don't consider the time spent applying a patch during shutdown, there is often the additional waiting during boot, and more often than not it seems Windows want an additional reboot during startup. Which sucks hard if you have default dual-boot into Linux, because you fire up the PC, choose Windows, go grab a coffee, and when you come back ... behold, there is the Linux login. Because Windows of course decided to do some additional rebooting.

Yes, osx some times goes offline for a while when applying a large system patch, but this happens only every few moons, whereas with Windows you know you are in for a system update ride if you haven't touched that particular install in a couple weeks.

Re: Here's the solution

[saloomy]

If the problem was really in the OS, then windows server which shares many of the same underpinnings as Windows desktop(s), would suffer the same fate. Since servers like domain controllers and exchange servers run for years without that issue, the problem seems to be from the crAPP that gets installed, as the parent explained, as well as the article. Bad headline to suggest the bad apps are M$'s problem

Application sandboxing

[whereiswaldo]

Like on a modern mobile device, sandbox your apps so they don't clutter the whole system and when they're erased, they're completely gone.

Re:Application sandboxing

[ayesnymous]

I like to use my work PC for software evaluation purposes. Then after I determine I like a piece of software, I'll install it on my personal computer.

Re: Application sandboxing

[AuMatar]

Android does sandbox apps. The default internal directory for each app can only be read/written by itself. Prior to version 4.2, the SD card was public and could be read/written by anyone. 4.2 and later, only parts of the SD cared are publicly readable and only parts are publicly writable.

In both cases before and after 4.2 uninstalling will remove the private directory. It will also remove any private directory on the SD card, so long as the app used the default location. Some apps don't, purposely, so their data will persist if reinstalled.

Re: Application sandboxing

[jareth-0205]

Android doesn't sandbox apps.

Er.... Yes it does. Absolutely it does, it's right there in the docs.

http://source.android.com/devi...

Each app gets a separate Linux user, so it's data is separate and inaccessible to other apps.

Re: Application sandboxing

[mlts]

Android doesn't jail() apps (where the application cannot see outside the space it sits in), but it does sandbox apps. Apps get their own UID, and by default, they cannot get into other apps spaces. /system is usually root owned and the whole volume is read-only, for example.

Recent versions of Android use SELinux, so if an app does get access it shouldn't have, it still is stuck in the role it was assigned. For example, some app getting root will still be constrained even with UID 0, so it couldn't remount /system read-write, for example.

Android 4.3 adds onto that by adding SELinux rules onto the external SD card, limiting its use. If you have root, you can use a utility like NextApp SD fix to change SELinux rules back to how they were previously, or SELinuxModeChanger to entirely disable SELinux on your device. Disclaimer: SELinux is a good thing overall, and killing it does weaken security.

iOS's security model is weakened by a jailbreak, while Android's is unaffected if the user has root (assuming the user didn't use the su app to give a rogue app root [1].)

Of course, Android's model has its issues... the all or nothing aspect [2] (where one can choose what stuff an app has access to in iOS), for example.

[1]: Newer apps have a special permission on install which shows the user that it might want root, and the su binary will warn or not allow access to any apps that don't declare that permission in their manifest.

[2]: Cyanogen's privacy features help, as well as XPrivacy. XPrivacy gives extremely fine grained control to what an app can use or cannot use. However, I'd not consider this part of Android proper, though it should be.

Antecdotes != Evidence

[Galaga88]

1. Is there any actual proof that OS decay is still a thing? I'm running Windows 8.1 that was upgraded from a Windows 7 install that was put on years ago, and I've seen zero performance issues.
2. Shouldn't the person asking this question have actually used Windows 8 before asking if Windows 10 will "finally" fix a problem that may or may not even exist?

Re:Antecdotes != Evidence

[PopeRatzo]

Likewise. I've got a Windows 7 gaming rig that has seen LOTS of installs and uninstalls, driver updates and Windows updates and have seen zero performance reduction.

Maybe this was a thing in Windows 95, but I'm not sure it's a thing now as long as you're not getting infected with malware.

Re:Antecdotes != Evidence

[Dutch Gun]

I used to have to do a clean install of Windows every few years to keep things performing well, but I don't recall doing that since the switch to NT-based systems (starting with 2000 for me personally). For users that keep installing malware/adware/spyware on their systems, it seems entirely likely that they'd have to do a clean re-install to get rid of all the cruft every once in a while. Some of that stuff is pretty hard to remove, and can really cause issues with system stability and performance.

When people talk about "OS decay", they're probably dealing with systems that have either a huge amount of software churn, a lot of crapware, or very often both. It's not so much about "learning how to use Windows 7" so much as not installing free, sketchy utilities that contain system-hogging spyware. Or perhaps it's better termed "learning not to abuse your operating system". People do the same sort of nonsense with their phones - install dozens of apps that all want do stay resident for whatever reason, and then they wonder where the battery life went. Same deal - if you give people the freedom to customize their device, some people will inevitably make bad choices.

I don't know if this applies to you parents or not, but I've certainly seen plenty of cringe-inducing systems for people to know just enough to be dangerous. My parent don't know enough to really do anything of consequence on their computer other than check e-mail, surf the net, and play solitaire, so their system (Windows XP) has stayed nice and tidy for the last seven or eight years (I think) they've had that machine.

Re:Antecdotes != Evidence

[Bert64]

It's not that unix is magical, but there are several very important differences that make unix systems far less susceptible to these problems than windows...

1, The biggest difference is probably the use of package management on unix vs arbitrary binary installers on windows... with a package manager, every install, update and uninstall is controlled by the same process which keeps track of what got installed and is able to cleanly remove it again, with windows an "installer" is just a binary program that you are trusting to write files all over the place but you have no real idea what its doing or if its working correctly. With the package manager its very easy to identify what package installed any given file etc. If you go outside of the package manager on unix and try to overwrite system packages by hand you can have serious problems too.

2, Transparency - Unix systems are much simpler and better understood, the boot process is usually just a series of scripts for instance, the filesystem is laid out in a mostly logical hierarchy and most configuration is stored in individual human readable text files, its much easier to understand exactly whats going on and much more difficult for poorly written programs to hide performance crippling cruft in unexpected places.

3, Lack of third party drivers - on most unix systems, drivers typically ship with the OS, get updated when the OS does and get tested together... Windows systems typically have a random collection of disparate drivers which sometimes don't play well together or with updates to other parts of the system. The other problems mentioned above also apply to drivers as well as userland.

Re: Here's the solution

[Jane Q. Public]

Not really. It's just bad design.

Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.

When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.

Of course not

[StripedCow]

You may find this interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...

Re: Here's the solution

[timeOday]

It is not just applications. If nothing else, Windows does burn disk space as if it were free. Every version of every update ever applied (and what else? registry backups?) hangs around "just in case," you're not supposed to delete it, ever.

Here is the kind of answer I do not want to hear: "The typical cost of hard drives is less than .15 Cents per Gigabyte. This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive. That's about the same cost as a large bag of potato chips. " (cite). Yeah, so? Maybe I'm on a laptop with a small SSD? Maybe it's a VM that I have a dozen copies of? Don't waste my resources and then try to talk me out of caring.

Re:Here's the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question:

Will Slashdot finally admit to being paid by Microsoft for positive press?

LOL. You expect MS to fix the problem ...

[UnknownSoldier]

... let alone understand it ? /sarcasm Naive ...

The continual bloat of _registry_ is the cause of the problem. That is not going away anytime soon.

Hmm, so why don't Unix machines have this problem ... gee, maybe because they don't use a single bloated binary config file.

Re:OS Decay is largekly a myth.

[metrix007]

Hi,

You're incorrect.

As I stated, the registry as an optimized database. A few extra records do not affect query time.

I will be happy to met money that my 3 year old install of Windows 7 will not have any speed decrease over a new install on the same hardware.

If the OS slows down, it is because there is something causing it that you can remove. It isn't due to "decay".

Decay is required...

[eyepeepackets]

for their business model to function...and they won't break it.

Re: Here's the solution

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Even with an SSD, if applications are leaving behind shit in the various places shit can run on startup, you might be losing CPU or memory to some task that doesn't need to be there.

You can have this problem on other OSes like OSX and Linux too, but Windows is the only OS where the SOP is to make a mess of things. Don't like an app on OSX or linux? Just delete them. most of the garbage goes with it.

Re: Here's the solution

[rudy_wayne]

Not really. It's just bad design.

Your server isn't getting games installed on it, which put all kinds of settings in the registry, then removed later when the game is old and tired, leaving behind cruft (including DRM bullsit) in the registry.

When a program is UNinstalled, all traces of it should be gone. Apple took a different approach, which arguably works far better. Even if stuff is left behind, it just takes up a bit of disk space, and doesn't affect the system at all.

Yes it is bad design. It is bad design by the people who create applications. The level of incompetence is staggering and this includes all the big name vendors.

Funny you should mention Apple. The Windows version of iTunes (the shittiest piece of software ever written) installs support files for 34 different languages. There is no option to only select the language you want at install time and the user is completely unaware that iTunes has just dropped approximately 4,400 un-needed files onto his hard drive.

But wait! It gets better! iTunes also creates a registry entry FOR EVERY SINGLE FUCKING FILE!! I am not making this up. ~4,400 files AND registry entries that can be deleted with absolutely no effect on the functioning of iTunes.

There is an easy workaround

[Dr. Spork]

When I install Windows, I work hard to set up everything exactly as I like on install day. Then I make a backup of the OS partition - which has only programs, no photos, videos, etc. - using Acronis TrueImage. Then I proceed as normal, and when something gets screwed up, I just restore from backup. This completely undoes any effects of winrot, and the system immediately feels like it was installed that day. What I usually do then is update my applications and settings, and immediately make a new backup. A full restore takes about 4 minutes, and a backup with max compression takes something like 12. I find this so convenient that I use no antivirus. When I start to suspect that I may have installed malware, I just restore from a backup, and four minutes later, my system is perfect. I've been doing this since Win2K days, and if this method weren't available to me, I wouldn't be using Windows.

Re: Here's the solution

[MightyMartian]

I remember in the transition between INI files and the registry (how I miss the days when applications had their own discrete text-based configuration files... oh wait, *nix still does!), and Microsoft sent out countless missives all but ordering developers to move to the registry. The registry was the approved place to store configurations, likely, I'm sure, because sticking all user settings in a single hive that could be passed around from workstation to workstation for roaming profiles.

Of course, the down side has always been that the registry just becomes cluttered with crap, particularly on a system that sees a lot of software installed, updated, reinstalled and uninstalled. Throw in there nearly two decades' worth of COM objects being incremented and decremented unsuccessfully, and a computer that's been running for five or six years, and fragmentation of the file system, and it can lead to just awful response times.

Re: Here's the solution

[sunderland56]

You should be able to install 1000 programs, uninstall them all, and your system should be identical to what it was before. Anything else is a failure.

The very existence of the registry is wrong. Operating systems like Unix, Linux, MacOS, Solaris, etc. don't have a registry, and don't have any significant "OS Decay".

Hu?

[WaffleMonster]

No idea what TFA is talking about.. Only "decay" I've noticed is caused by people getting suckered into installing malware.

Re: Here's the solution

[ericloewe]

Holy shit.

I mean, it's general knowledge that iTunes for Windows is most likely the worst piece of software ever written... But what you describe takes it to a whole new level of stupidity.

Hell, it almost makes it sound like they're trying to slow down Windows on purpose...

Re: Here's the solution

[Darinbob]

Microsoft went further than just having a bad registry, they essentially forced developers to use it if they wanted to get the approved sticker (ie, to say "works with Windows 95" or such).

Re: Here's the solution

[timeOday]

Although I still don't agree with you, upon further searching I see that Windows 8 (which I haven't used) did add a few more layers of goo that you can optionally spend time wrangling with to manage some of the winsxs bloat, and for that Microsoft perhaps deserves some credit. Perhaps.

Then again, winsxs is only one of several directories that often have people asking, "can I delete this?" See also C:\Windows\SoftwareDistribution, System Restore, and Windows.old, and c:\windows\installer. They are a mix of necessary and junk. From end to end, Windows is designed to keep everything, forever, just in case, instead of keeping track of things properly in the first place.

Re:It's the Windows Installer's fault

[Darinbob]

I'd like to see package dependencies too. Microsoft applications are every much as convoluted as Linux apps when it comes to the files they depend upon. DLLs, shared directories, etc. But when uninstalling the applications they don't always uninstall the shared stuff cleanly. Ie, an app wants vbrun300.dll or such, so you visit the relevant Microsoft site and get it, but then you uninstall the original application but the dll is left behind; and there is no uninstaller for these libraries, they don't appear in the control panel.

I used to have a utility that would monitor all system changes during installation so that it could clean up later when uninstalling. Almost every time there would be some junk left over even after a successful uninstall. There would even be junk left over if you installed and immediately uninstalled without ever using the application.

Re:LOL. You expect MS to fix the problem ...

[DocHoncho]

As for the registry, there's a great front end that fully resembles a file system view...

I've called regedit.exe a lot of things over the years, and great was never one of them.

Re: Here's the solution

[Blaskowicz]

Compile and install a program on linux with ./configure, make and make install? then you will likely be left with no means to uninstall it at all. And I have no idea why there are non-library files in /usr/lib.

Re: Here's the solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I just looked through my registry, and find no sign of these 4,400 entries you mention.

Not saying iTunes hasn't dumped a lot of gratuitous crap into my registry, because it has. But this "entry for every file" thing? Not... in evidence.

Re:Excuse Me?

[simplypeachy]

I heard you have to reverse the direction of the SATA cable to clean that crap out. Same goes for slow broadband - either reverse the Ethernet cable or turn the WiFi router upside down.

Re: Here's the solution

[mjwx]

This means that a WinSxS folder that is 6GB costs around .90 Cents, and uses slightly more than 1 Percent of the drive.

I think you just don't understand what WinSxS is, how it works, and what the problem is that it is designed to address, suggest you start reading a bit more.

The reason the old Sxs assemblies need to be kept, is that installed software may require the usage of an old assembly.

Just because an update has superceded a certain library version, does not mean that all applications that still rely on it should be broken.

When you've got a 19 GB Win SxS folder on a 40 GB HDD (which is plenty for a server and expensive on Tier 0 SSD's) it's a serious issue. 19 GB is not ridiculous, it's not even usual for a 2 yr old server that's been updated regularly. 19 GB across 250 virtual servers is a serious waste of space. Even 6 GB is a massive costs in infrastructure. Not every update needs to keep dozens of updates. Fortunately Microsoft has addressed this problem (as of April this year, so relatively quick in Microsoft time) so that the WinSxS folder can be cleaned up.

Re: Here's the solution

[tom229]

make uninstall Also compiling from source should rarely be necessary. Most modern distributions will include a ports like system that will allow you to compile source into a fake root, use the information gathered to build a package, and then install the package with your package manager. This ensures everything is cleaned up properly upon package removal. Of course even building a package for the software is probably unnecessary as it's very likely someone has already done it for you. Linux' package management is vastly superior to both Windows and osx (don't you just drag a folder into the garbage can? Give me a break). You just have to know what you're doing.

Re:unlikely

[mlts]

The ironic thing is that third party companies have been able to repackage Windows programs so only one file is needed to run it. Not an installer... just an executable that provides a virtual environment for the program, and redirects all file and Registry changes to a specific directory in the user's homedir. A couple examples: VMWare ThinApp or Evalaze.

Yes, it takes a bit to create a clean system (VMs are perfect for this with snapshots), pop a "before" run, install the software, then click that it is done. The result is a single file that takes every single change the installer did, and puts it in a sandbox/partition.

If third party companies can do this, why can't MS extend their virtual redirects (which are used with some legacy applications to redirect stuff that would be stored in Program Files to the user's homedir) to include everything the program does? Container functionality is a core part of some other operating systems (RedHat 7), so why not Windows? That way, uninstallation of a program is just tossing the file it is in.

Sandboxes are not new either. I use sandboxie to ensure that what is in my web browser stays in my web browser and doesn't get out. This isn't a 100% solution since an undocumented MS API call would allow a program to "leak" out, but it is usable.

The problem I have with this...

[roc97007]

...is that for Microsoft to create an OS that doesn't slow and become wonky over time removes one of the primary reasons to upgrade to a new version of Windows. Already Microsoft is dealing with Old Windows That Won't Go Away (XP, and now Win7). It is in their best interest for the OS to degrade over time. I can't imagine this obvious cash cow going away. And if so, what replaces it? MSFT tried floating OS as subscription before, and it didn't fly. Unlike the x-box, some phones and their competitor's platforms, Microsoft sells OS's and applications, not hardware. So an OS you can buy once and use forever (or for the life of the hardware) just isn't part of their business model.

So.... what, then?

This is a serious question. I'm a user of MSFT products. Until certain apps get ported to Linux, I'm likely to continue to be a user of MSFT products. But the OS to me has never been the app. It's a program loader and resource manager in which I run the apps that I actually use. I have no interest in new versions of the OS, as long as it'll still run my programs. I was one of the people who didn't leave XP until forced. And I won't leave Win7 until forced. I don't look forward to OS upgrades, I want to get work done. It seems to me that this frame of mind directly contradicts Microsoft's business model of endless costly upgrades. How are endless non-costly upgrades going to work for them? (It certainly works for me, but I don't really believe it yet.)

Re: Here's the solution

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Except there wasn't. Well, there was. A bit. Sometimes. Naturally, this half-baked approach actually made the problems worse.

Even today and with native Windows applications, many aren't very well behaved in following the "standards" here, because Microsoft did such a terrible job of promoting good practices.

Anything that isn't a native Windows application -- including almost every darling of the open source world, for a start -- probably ignores not only the application data directory but also the program files directories and insists on spewing its crap all over your filesystem and environment. Oh, and $DEITY help you if you need to do anything with Cygwin, and $CHORUS_OF_DEITIES help you if you have more than one ported application that requires Cygwin.

It is telling that you can't even schedule a backup of the "official" place to store documents without considerable effort, because Windows itself sets up so many links that most backup tools can't handle them.

And that's before you get idiots like the Chrome team at Google who think it's clever to install executable software in your data directory in order to deliberately circumvent Windows' normal security model, just so their auto-updater can do things it shouldn't without anything silly like troubling the user for permission. I'm always a little surprised that Microsoft hasn't, with considerable and legitimate justification, flagged Chrome's installer/updater software as malware and automatically removed it at some point.

On the bright side, if Microsoft can actually manage to produce an operating system with a sensible filesystem structure and application installation/update/uninstallation tools that actually enforce that structure, they might yet salvage the Windows brand and convince significant parts of their potential market to upgrade again.

Re:LOL. You expect MS to fix the problem ...

[Jeremi]

Registry bloat is not a problem, it's clueless users who cannot maintain their system.

In other words, it's a problem. A solution that requires all users to have technical knowledge isn't a solution, it's a fantasy.

Re: Here's the solution

[mjwx]

Meanwhile I've been running the same Windows 7 install since the tail end of 2009. That's with a fuckton of install, uninstall, and the occasional defrag and registry cleaning, especially on this tiny 120GB disk. Still runs exactly as it did back then.

Its entirely possible you're slowing down at the same pace as your machine.

Re:Really?

[Frobnicator]

As a counterpoint to this; I had a reasonable machine for work. Win7 Pro, then IT got hold of it and connected it to the new domain etc; now it is much slower. Booting, shutting down, launching programs...everything is slower then the day before.

Well known problem. Once attached to a domain, Windows attempts to do all kinds of stupid things. One of the most common problems is the open/save file dialog. The OS attempts to display it, then blocks until it contacts the domain servers to look up the user's actual name. Then there are similar delays that happen as it goes out and probes each drive, which is a problem if they are mapped network drives as the display waits until everything is built before the UI appears.

On a machine that is disconnected from the domain, perhaps a laptop away from the office, it gets even worse. Internally there is a 45 second delay on each of the network probes, and between Windows 2000 through Windows 7 they all fired sequentially. So if you had your own friendly name plus three mapped drives, that's three minutes of waiting for network connections to time out. It is somewhat faster under Windows 8, but in bad cases can still take ages.

For these specific issues they will not fix the root problems of the shell blocking until after data is loaded or probing the domain for security settings as it would break many shell plugins. It can be made partially better by disabling some of the features; they include disabling certain group policies on shell extensions, turning off certain domain security and SCAPI settings, and disabling drive mappings whenever possible. When disconnected, removing all VPN lookups and disabling proxy detections can also help. Even with those improvements, attaching a machine to a domain introduces an immediate performance penalty on everything shell-related.

Another similar set of problems is apps that try to probe the MRU file list when files are on the network. Many parts of the OS try to cache things based on prior use, and once you're wired in to the corporate network these probes (which stupidly are often blocking tasks) can take seconds to run while on the network, or minutes to run when they time out when off the corporate network.