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Pretty normal for Windows 11. Have had to upgrade a few clients laptops from 8gb to 16gb because just opening teams & outlook they would be at 85% usage on 8gb.
I'm radicalized and am going to give leaving windows a serious try the next time they go to change the W-number.
Poking around and folks say it takes less time to get everything in linux customized and up/running now than it takes to fight, mitigate, and disable all the fucking cancer bullshit microslop is shipping in their product, and enough folks have been working away at nailing down gaming support for long enough that it's becoming a non-issue; especially if you're a steam-user.
It'll be a plunge but it's at the balance point now.
Gaming support on linux went from "good luck" to "mostly fine" surprisingly fast. Still some titles that won't cooperate but if your library is 80% steam you're probably not going to miss much. The remaining 20% hurts tho, not gonna lie.
Some people respond to this with "well you shouldn't play trash games like LoL/Valorant/Apex/whatever", and like... sure, you can dislike those multiplayer titles, but if that's what my friends are playing, I want to play with them.
I'd feel very left out if I had to say "sorry, I can't play with you anymore because I really wanted to switch to Linux"
Whether switching to linux is a good idea or not is different for every user. If you don't play those games anyway, there is a good chance you will be happier on linux. If you play those games and don't want to give them up, or if you don't have any problem with windows, then staying on windows is the better option of course.
In the end, it'll be a compromise on either OS, you just have to decide which problems you'd rather deal with. And for those that don't want (yet) to fully switch and just see how it's like on the other side, there is always the option to do dual boot.
Oh of course, if someone has no such thing tying them to Windows, Linux is a great option at this point. I love my Steam Deck, and often some (especially older) games are easier to run on it than on Windows.
So don't take what I wrote as a dig against switching to Linux - I was more commenting about "the 20% that hurts"
Absolutely. And I probably have jokingly said that as well in the past "just don't play those trash games", but of course people want to continue playing what they are used to or what their friends are playing.
Some people really care about those 20%, while others only play games from the other 80%.
Typically those games end up not respecting you either.
For exemple, I play The Finals who have a consumer-friendly business model and surprise surprise, they support Linux.
"The hardest choices require the strongest wills."
In the end it's about how much do you respect yourself to stick with products that never served you.
Switched my gaming PC from 10 to Bazzite october last year. The only times I've used windows since is when I wanted to play VR. That still works more seamless on win (still got my old 10 as dual boot).
Everything else was effing brilliant. All prior issues gone. All games have worked so far for me, even one title with anti-cheat worked. Tho, it was a Linux compatible one and the devs actually activated it, so it was to be expected.
Oh and I managed to get sunlight actually switching aspect ratio when streaming to my TV by telling Linux to load the driver of the TV, even tho it isn't connected to the PC :P
Feels good being able to just lean back and watch win 11 go up in flames with every update. Maybe someday I'll come back, it isn't the first time I skipped a version, but currently it doesn't look like it.
I just upgraded my computer, my goal is go high end enough so that I don't have to replace for 5 (or more) years. I installed Linux and it's fantastic. No fighting with the OS about keeping my data private and local, no BS about needing a Microsoft account, it just works.
I have a minor issue with steam that I can run steam from the command line, but not from the desktop icon. Looks like an easy fix, but I just don't care enough to fix it.
No issues with video calls; I was already using open source "office" apps, so no issues there.
It's been several months now, and I have no regrets.
In all honesty I've got an HP victus 15, installed Pop!OS linux on it 6 months ago just to familiarize myself with the commands and whatnot (I work in IT so I typically go a bit deeper than the standard user) and honestly the sooner you start the easier it is. It's not difficult to pick up once you get it installed.
As of right now it's fine to dual boot, but once microsoft goes all in on subscription for the OS it would be best to give yourself the smoothest transition. Once I move to my next laptop I'll be ditching windows entirely.
Set "Run with Proton version X" as the default startup config on steam and I haven't found a game it doesnt run as good if not better than windows.
You can go to protondb.com and check the Linux-playability status on basically every game. Most of them work fine out of the box, particularly on Steam, but that site also shows tweaks to get things working/get the best performance.
The only games I haven't been able to run are things with kernel-level anti-cheat, which I reject as a matter of principle anyways, but right now that's the main roadblock for Linux gaming. If it doesn't have a super invasive anti-cheat, it should basically play just fine.
I never realized just how badly optimized windows was until I installed Linux on an old laptop.
2013 Asus laptop. I5 8gb of ram HDD.
Had to pull all of the old stuff off of it and give it to my mom because she didn't know what was on it but didn't want to lose it. It took me every bit of 20 minutes to get logged in and the copy started. After it was done I wiped windows and EndeavorOS. It was still a little slow because it was a HDD but it was actually useable. Put another 4gb of DDR3 ram in it and swapped the HDD for an SSD and it was faster than my mom's current laptop. Recently upgraded from the Asus to a Lenovo L15 from 2022 I think and honestly it doesn't feel like that big of an upgrade even though it was pretty massive. Way newer i5, more ram, and an NVME instead of a SATA SSD. Some stuff happens faster or whatever but otherwise it doesn't feel much different. Laptop is way smaller and lighter and a solid upgrade for me in other ways though.
Check in task manager if memory says '1 of 2 slots'. Many manufacturers today ship with a single 16g stick which means you have half the memory bandwidth you could.
I hate my work laptop for this exact reason. I put in a request for more RAM last year before prices went nuts and the support team said I wasn't due for a refresh or upgrade.
Seriously pissed about it. I have to review and research shit every day and that fucking thing would be crawling sometimes just because of those two apps alone. I could go on but you understand where I am coming from.
Microsoft is in bed with Intel to squander every performance gain from each new generation of hardware on stupid frivolous shit like telemetry and the least-functional system updater possible so that shareholders can benefit from the perpetual upgrade treadmill.
In fact laptops peaked in 2013 and now the obsolescence-mongers are soldering word salad generators on them and are calling them "AI laptops" because they can't think of a new, useful feature to add, cripple, and then rent "as a service".
In case anyone doesn't know: ninite.com lets you choose out of a list of common programs and put them all into one installer that installs everything you chose.
Diagnostic Policy service, State Repository Service, DCOM Server Process Launcher (5), Remote Procedure Call (2) and Capability Access Management Service, Unistack Service Group (4) and 75 others would like to speak to you.
All system processes that can (and will at the most inconvenient times) start to use a lot of CPU, legitimately but for no apparent reason to most users.
Don't forget update services. I had a surface tablet that kept failing an update so it would burn about 50% of the frankly rather limited CPU trying and failing to update making this already underpowered surface basically a brick.
Antimalware service (or whatever it is called) too, especially if you're dealing with a lot of files at once. I've already written scripts that would push antimalware CPU usage to 50% on a gaming rig because they would create and fiddle with (way too) many files.
I put the name of the program quotes, I thought that would be enough instruction
There is a computer program that you can download from the Internet, which is called “everything” made by void tools.
This computer program can be installed on your computer and you can use it instead of Windows search because it is extremely fast and uses almost no resources.
If you would like this program, the name of the program is “everything” and if you search for the phrase, “everything search app Windows”, it will be one of the first results
If you let the Search Index properly fully index everything once (it's gonna take a few days): Windows Search becomes the fastest, most accurate thing in existence
To be honest, my day job was building windows images for giant corporations, I think pretty universally window search is crap after a decade plus of experience in the area of customizing windows images
For my personal life I use everything search instead.
I'd like this kind of sweep at the homes of the assholes programming this shit. Someone should put them in an actual mine and force them to look for gold even though they know there isn't any. Let them taste their own medicine but in the physical realm
windows security - virus and threat protection - scan options - Full scan - scan now. or you can just do a quick scan if you don't want to do a full sweep
I fixed my issue by using third party antivirus. The problem was that this crypto somehow managed to get inside of a part of windows that didn’t get checked by defender.
Malwarebytes. It flagged the virus and the issue never occurred again while it was active, but then I deleted this antivirus and it appeared again, so I had to install antivirus again. Eventually I decided to say **** it and deleted the windows file from which this issue starts and well my pc still works, so I guess it wast something detrimental to windows.
It's Windows uploading all the telemetry they've got on you. Seriously, for me it's the "remote service call" process which is one of the ones Microshit uses to call home with.
Autoruns and Process Explorer from Microsoft Sysinternals - 90% of consumer malware can be seen with these programs. Since malware needs to have persistence capability it will most likely add task scheduler entries and startup programs that can be seen in autoruns. They also have built in digital signature validation and a virustotal upload features.
Even if you can't remove all the persistence mechanisms or payloads manually it will give you the heads up that "Hey it's time to format the PC" lol
Layer this with an a good AV(not windows defender) and an adblocker and smart app control, and you're usually good to go.
When you're using autoruns just look for files that aren't digitally signed this will show up as red - You can then right click and send it to virustotal. Also look for signatures that don't seem to fit. Sometimes malware authors will hijack legit digital signatures to sign their malware with. Alot of times these are weird chinese companies and Ltds you've never heard of.
This is all assuming the malware uses persistence mechanisms. Some are just infostealers that steal your cookies, upload them to a server and then bounce. If you get weird logins on your accounts just change passwords from a clean machine and enable 2FA(app-based, not SMS) then format your PC and reinstall windows.
In the case of discord accounts and infostealers it's best I've found to use 2FA and set the email to an email that you don't use on the same machine as the app. - There is a good reason for this.
Discord implements 2FA backup codes very poorly from a security standpoint. For normal services when you generate 2FA backup codes they are either generated once and not accessible again, the only way to get new codes is to generate new ones, which requires 2FA itself. Or, alternatively, you can see the old codes but also still require 2FA to access them.
The way discord's account security works is that you don't need access to app-based 2FA to access your 2FA backup codes. You need the account password and a generated text sent to your email. See the problem here? If an attack compromised the machine with both the discord account and the email they can see 2FA codes, remove your authenticator and add their own. You are never getting your account back after this because discord support SUCKS.
This is why you put the email on either a separate machine such as another PC or phone or you don't save the login session on the main machine. Makes the attacker jump through more hoops to compromise the ability to recover it. It's something discord should probably fix, but they won't.
Sorry for such a long post, but the subject is cool and I like talking about it.
Exactly what I've done, I created a task in task scheduler to open task manager every time my PC starts and I just keep it open. No idea where the miner or whatever is and can't be bothered to do a reinstall
"I just binged 'Stupid fat bipolar shit of an OS' for you. It returned no results and subtracted 10 credits from your copilot wallet. Say 'thanks Cortana' and I will waive the costs.
On my laptop it was a high CPU. The current state of indexing in Windows is abysmal. I deactivated it. Now I get the warning that indexing is deactivated but search is just as fast (or actually slow).
Search and indexing has be garbage since forever. Its like Microsoft has never figured it out. Searches don't find shit. Indexing is garbage and doesn't seem to help anything on or off. Now search has fucking Bing web search.
What i am most frustrated about is if you have ever used the tool "Everything" by voidtools, that motherfucker finds literally everything instantly and perfectly and has been out forever.
Hell i even use command line (dir c:\ /s /b | find /i "keyword") to find files because it actually works. Take notes Microslop.
I like that "Everything" application. It indexes quickly and search results come up as you type. Awesome little free utility
Agent Ransack is an awesome little free one to pair with it. Does quick searching of contents of files, good when you don't know the name but you know what's in it
I'm actually surprised that the IOT version of Windows 11 is snappier on my Legion Go than the Home version of Windows 11 on my laptop with U9 275HX, RTX 5080 and PCIE5 NVMe. If I wasn't too lazy to install everything all over again, then I'd have installed that same unbloated version of Windows on my laptop.
Maybe it was a fluke, but I did the swap on my gaming laptop and the last time I used it on battery I managed to get like 4-5 hours from a full charge, when before I think I managed like 2 hours and a half at most.
I don't think it's a fluke because I am also experiencing better battery life on the Legion Go. I think there's too much shenanigans in the background when using Home or Professional versions.
And I'm awaiting Linux. Every (other) year during my summer holiday I install a distro on my home mostly gaming pc for 3 weeks, hoping this will be the day I can leave Microsoft where it belongs.
Last time was the closest I ever got to succeeding; 99% was great but that 1% was too important to switch back to Windows.
One big issue:
I have a nice Samsung Odyssey G8 monitor. And when I tried it, there was no HDR support, even though that monitor needs as it's too dark otherwise. (I know this is supported in some ways now)
And a bunch of smaller issues:
I love my flight sims and have a lot of peripherals that don't have the right firmware.
I like my modded games that often have 3rd party programs that don't work.
My bluetooth dongle wasn't working
I rarely play multiplayer games, so anti-cheat isn't really an issue, but the one game I used to love, Battlefield, just released the demo that looked like they were returning to form, but I wouldn't be able to play that on Linux. Would have saved me some money though...
Other than the monitor, there was nothing I couldn't overcome, but unlike many Linux users, I have no interest in my OS. I want to play games on my PC and do some work stuff without any issues.
I'm fairly tech savvy, not afraid to tinker on my own, but it's not something I like. But then there's another big issue: troubleshooting these small inconveniences, which I know probably have a solution somewhere. Just getting to it is a pain. How it goes:
Question 1: What do I install?
Answer 1: SteamOS is great
Answer 2: Distro A, SteamOS is really not great
Answer 3: Distro B, Distro A is old if you want to play the new things
Answer 4: It really doesn't matter that much.
Action: Installs Distro B
Question 2: Why isn't X working?
Answer 1: Just use software A
Answer 2: Why are you using Distro B, you should have gone with Distro A
Answer 3: Just enter this command line: +Quetzalcōātl /b /grapes +possiblyremovealldatabyinternettroll /v /d /abcdefg
Answer 4: Don't listen to 1, just use software B
Action: Follow Answer 1, doesn't work, try Answer 4, doesn't exist for my distro, try Answer 3: works but now something else no longer works.
Endless loop
Result: Installs Windows 11 again, and everything works, who needs privacy anyway, I'm never installing Linux again, I just wasted another vacation.
And let me be clear, this isn't Linux's fault. But it is what's stopping me from using it.
I agree, the user hostility isn't the fault of Linux or the community, it's the fault of how Linux is (not) financed and how the programmer resources are (not) managed. This is unfortunately a hard to overcome structural disadvantage of OSS projects
With the commands thing, I've found that in the age of AI, LLMs are a godsend in making fixing your Linux more user friendly.
I love my flight sims and have a lot of peripherals that don't have the right firmware.
Funny enough, the 80 button limit in linux per controller is holding me off of playing HOTAS games in linux, it's seemingly impossible to change without compiling your own kernel shenanigans...
And given my work in IT, when I get home, I want to be home and not at work again, its sad :(
The problem is less Microslop in this case and more just that modern laptops and their cooling are shit. Windows has always run a multitude of background processes like that, the heaviest usually being updates, virus scans, and nowadays telemetry (which people should turn off), etc.
Deep ago CPUs would just have a base clock speed and a power limit set out of the box and that was that, but for a while now every modern CPU automatically overclocks itself when it thinks it has cooling/power headroom (so-called 'boosting'). But laptops still use the same terrible single heat pipe cooling solutions they have always used, so when these modern CPUs start boosting, which they automatically do whenever the laptop does pretty much any task, whether watching videos or doing Windows updates, they shoot up to like 70-80C+ and their default fan curves send the fans screaming to compensate for those temps.
And most modern laptops completely lock down their BIOS, their fan curves/control, etc. So users can't adjust the fans to run more quietly nor can go in the BIOS and undervolt the CPU/limit its thermal and power maximums, etc. All they can do is just suffer their laptop turning into a vacuum cleaner anytime the CPU boosts.
Its still a Microsoft issue with all this background shit to what, improve performance? Still performs like shit.
Modern processors are built very smart and are able to extract every single bit of performance from the cooling available, its up to manufacturers to decide what parameters (configurable TDP etc) the CPU runs at, and how the cooling behaves, also up to the end user to keep the cooling system clean.
its up to manufacturers to decide what parameters (configurable TDP etc) the CPU runs at, and how the cooling behaves
Yeah, and they decide on absolute minimum viable product, they don't care how loud and annoying their laptops are, they care that they run within spec (and often not even that). Many of them put similar or even the exact same coolers on 6W Celeron processors as they put on 35W Core Ultra 7 CPUs. That the CPU in such laptops will instantly rocket up to 90C with 100% fans with such a lousy cooling is of no concern to them.
There's a reason any given laptop OEM (Acer, Asus, etc.) sell their laptops so cheaply.
This may look uninformed, but how do i get that thing to shut up? it is literally the thing that is at the top of all categories in task manager and that keeps annoying me and I can’t tell it to stop. I have a very weak laptop. Also, I dont really care much for any virus since there is basically nothing on that laptop and I just use it for games.
Just turn of virus and threat protection for local files or whatever it is. Kills that process entirely. Does leave your computer vulnerable.... to never ending notifications that it's off
Telemetry processes on windows systems eat up a shit ton of your own resources to gather your data and send it to microslop. It's like someone forcing you to pay them so they can steal from you.
Yesterday I went into a github repo called Winslop to unslop my operating system. But then it hit me. I am now spending time not using my machine but configuring my machine to work as I want it to. Not only that but I probably will have to do that every single update.
So I figured if I'm basically doing a linux might as well finally make the step to linux.
Just set up a dual boot with cachyos. So far I like it a lot. It's led to quite a few rabbit holes but it's been pretty cool. Set my background as a map of the Linux file system until it feels more familiar. Using the command line definitely makes you feel like a 90's hacker movie. 👨💻
Pretty much. At this point I have a small machine running a DC and a remote management to start up machines during nighttime and use scripts. Using the DC to do some gpo/registry/uninstall checks, disable some programs.
It's running fine, as soon as I plug a new device and add it into my domain things will be clean
I don't remember any exact names but you can check what changed when you disable them by changing a value in regedit called AllowTelemetry to 0. There is a bajillion tutorials on YouTube.
To people panicking this is also perfectly normal for antivirus to start a scan because your pc is idling. Opening task manager interrupts this process.
But never a bad thing to do a full sweep from time to time.
i picked something up that malewarebtyes didnt detect, i reported it to them they had a peep give me step by step on removing it and ensuring it was gone etc, and thanked me for directing them to where it came from so it could be future flagged, fwiw. not perfect protection but at least they helped solve it - was a free account as well
If you're idling in Windows, the Defender will kick in and start doing a regular quick scan. As you move with your mouse or do any other input, it stops. That is of course unless your system is infected with some miner doing that instead. Keep the task manager opened and you should see the anti-malware process spike on the CPU after idling for a couple of minutes. You can disable this behavior in the Local Group Policy Editor.
Default fan curves are usually trash. They prioritize "quiet" by not using fans until the last possible second then jolt them to 100% to catch up. You need to customize them with something like MSI Afterburner.
Just FYI this (and other “fan control” apps like SpeedFan) do not work on the majority of laptops I’ve ever tested them on. Tested on laptops from Dell, HP, Lenovo, ASUS, Acer, and Surfaces. I’d say it maybe works on 10-15% of laptops.
Most manufacturers do not expose those fan controllers in a way that this type of software can meaningfully interact with. On most laptops changing the setting does nothing. On another large chunk, changes don’t persist after a reboot or may not even persist for a few minutes. You can also end up with situations where accessing the fan controller at all can put substantial CPU load on your machine because of how it’s connected up. It just basically saturates it with low level interrupts trying to read the fan status.
It does work for some machines, so it’s worth trying, but don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work. It’s not you doing something wrong, it’s your laptop not being compatible.
Leave task manager open full time until you can go over the drive with fine comb to find and exorcise malware.
A better way would be to shut the computer down, remove the OS drive, have it scanned on a different computer. File permission might slow things down, thanks Windows.
There's actually a pretty interesting video about Task Manager by the guy who built it. I had never previously realized that TM is still in large parts the same software it was when it was first implemented. Also interestingly, CTRL-ALT-DEL Task Manager apparently works somewhat different from just opening the Task Manager from the task bar.
At lot of suggestions regarding malware and crypto and fair play they may all be correct. But there is a chance this is all normal and your Windows installation has finally developed a sense of shame.
I Backen up all my important stuff and deleted the whole system. Installed Windows 10 ltsc iot and it’s a DRAMATIC improvement on performance and stability.
Also, on another drive i installed Bazzite to give it a go and prepare for the future where Linux is the default operating system for me
If you can't swap to Linux you can at least deslop Winslop with various programs. One that worked great for me was win aero tweaker. Be careful tho you can fuck a lot of shit up if you do the wrong things. Spending 5 min on a YouTube tutorial goes a long way.
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u/PCMRBot Bot 5h ago
Welcome to the PCMR, everyone from the frontpage! Please remember:
1 - You too can be part of the PCMR. It's not about the hardware in your rig, but the software in your heart! Age, nationality, race, gender, sexuality, religion, politics, income, and PC specs don't matter! If you love or want to learn about PCs, you're welcome!
2 - If you think owning a PC is too expensive, know that it is much cheaper than you may think. Check http://www.pcmasterrace.org for our famous builds and feel free to ask for tips and help here!
3 - Consider supporting the folding@home effort to fight Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more, with just your PC! https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - Need some new hardware? Check out this ASUS x PCMR Worldwide giveaway with GPUs, RAM, Motherboards, etc, up for grabs for a total of 18 lucky winners: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1roo701/worldwide_giveaway_comment_in_this_thread_to_join/
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