The Technology Vent and Rant Thread

[Blossom]

I just had to disable Cortana. I was simply doing nothing but organizing files and all sudden my fans kicked to high, my CPU to 100%to 40% and was staying there and I peeked into task manager and under Cortana backgroundtaskhost was the cause. I thought I could ignore her and she'd behave but obviously not. Unfortunately disabling Cortana does not get rid of the processes but hopefully it will stop them from bringing my computer to a halt.

I really am starting to hate Windows 10. It's not as bad as ME was but it's close. My most stabled Windows was Vista. Never a crash. I never got to try Windows 7, 8 was okay but at little laggy at times but 8.1 fixed that. Windows 10 after the the first featured update has been one issue after another nothing major till 1709. I hate 1709 with a passion at this point.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

But not as many as Dennis, who has 40

In the Firefox 3 days, I had a profile that loaded 115 extensions.

That was mostly a "to see if I could" exercise, and the production profile was a lot leaner. But it worked and all extensions ran. Startup was rather longer, as they all had to be instantiated, and most were XUL and JavaScript combos, which took longer to spin up.

I have about 45 Web Extensions in Quantum, with about that many more installed but disabled, as I go through new additions one by one to see what they add/how they're used , and determine if they're keepers.

They don't add overhead to startup here. Quantum, run off an SSD, with profile on an SSD, comes up in about 3 seconds.

Ah-ah, that answers my unasked question - why are you running a version of Firefox targeted at large institutions on a personal laptop?

Because she wanted a version that wouldn't update and let her run her legacy setup. The difference in ESR is the version on which it is based, and the frequency with which major versions are released. There's nothing about it that says you can't run it on a personal machine, and many folks do what Blossom and I did, for the same reasons.

The difference here is that Firefox ESR was an interim solution intended to give me headroom while I waited for the Quantum dust to settle and Web Extensions to appear that did the same things the legacy stuff I ran did. I didn't expect to run it indefinitely. Enough Web Extension stuff that fills the needs the legacy extension stuff did appeared that I was able to switch to Quantum. The timing of making that switch was the reason to run ESR.
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Dennis

[Blossom]

I narrowed down what happened. It seems Cortana crashed. The event says StartTileData.dll is to blame.
This explains why my start menu icons went from small to large. So Cortana went nuts because Backgroundtaskhost crashed. What caused it I have no idea.... I just unpinned everything on the start menu Hopefully that keeps it from happening.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I hate 1709 with a passion at this point.

Strange. It must be the drivers somehow.

I've been running Windows 10-1709 on four different computers, ranging from a small Intel NUC (media center) to a large and quite powerful desktop (main box), on a laptop that's 10 years old (pensioned off/emergency system), and one that's 2 years old (backup for desktop).

I have to say that all of the systems are Intel/nVidia only, and all have Intel or Asus mainboards. None uses the drivers from the manufacturer if it can be avoided (and it can, for everything but manufacturer-specific hardware, such as keyboard buttons and ambient lighting sensors and such): they all use the latest Intel/nVidia drivers.

The only thing I hate with regard to Windows 10 are the MANY missing options for customizing the interface and fonts, the flatness/huge spaciousness, and that MS keeps jacking around with it all the time, especially the Start Menu, which changes in every version. Apart from that, technically speaking, it DOES run as reliable as Windows 7 did on all of those machines.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I narrowed down what happened. It seems Cortana crashed. The event says StartTileData.dll is to blame.
This explains why my start menu icons went from small to large. So Cortana went nuts because Backgroundtaskhost crashed. What caused it I have no idea.... I just unpinned everything on the start menu Hopefully that keeps it from happening.

Sent from my Nexus 7

It just happened again. This time I hit end task but backgroundtaskhost crashing with nothing on the start menu. I remember this happening to others with 1709 now where did I put that article..... I may need to reinstall the start menu using powershell if a cold reboot doesn't fix it.

Update: Okay I think I fixed it. One of the pins on the taskbar had gone wonky. I unpinned then repinned it.

Sent from my Nexus 7

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I'm partial to Firefox. It's going to be hard to.part ways when the time comes. Right now I just use five extensions but back in Firefox's Glory days I had it loaded down. It's always been solid for me till late last year.

It's been solid for me right along, and Quantum performs superbly. The big adjustment was migrating from legacy extensions to Web Extensions, but I knew I'd have to do that and set up Firefox ESR to allow me to continue working as usual till replacements for the functionality the legacy extensions provided appeared. At this point, enough have to let me switch.

Chrome has always been a backup browser. I never trusted it.

And you didn't trust it because?

I have current Chrome here for testing, and it behaves.

But if you don't want Google's official release, you can try Chromium instead. Chromium is the open source code base upon which Chrome is built, and you can run builds of Chromium instead. This is a place to get them: https://chromium.woolyss.com/download/en/#windows

Maybe someone new will come on the scene by the time Firefox make us update.

I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

Competitors I'm aware of include Opera, based on the same Blink engine Chrome uses, Vivaldi, a fork of Opera created because the developers were unhappy with Opera's direction, QupZilla, an open source browser based on Qt Web Engine (which looks like Chrome to sites you visit), and Brave, a new entry intended to be a secure and private browser. The latter is headed by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former Mozilla CTO, and also based on the Blink infrastructure. It is not ready for prime time.

What you really ought to do is discover why Quantum performs miserably on your machine. You have the hardware to support it. I'm betting on underlying issues with Win10, and what I might do in your place is a refresh:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/348679/ho...h-windows-tool

The process performs a clean re-installation of Win10, minus any cruft that has crept is. You can preserve your personal files, but programs will be deleted need to be reinstalled, and settings recreated.

You have the sort of problems that used to mean reformat the drive and reinstall Windows and apps from scratch. Fortunately, it's better these days.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I have about 45 Web Extensions in Quantum, with about that many more installed but disabled, as I go through new additions one by one to see what they add/how they're used , and determine if they're keepers.

They don't add overhead to startup here. Quantum, run off an SSD, with profile on an SSD, comes up in about 3 seconds.

And just to check, I made a copy of my production profile, ran Firefox using it, and enabled all of the disabled legacy extensions to see what would happen. I wound up with 90 extensions loaded and active.

Invocation speed stayed the same, and enabling the additional extensions appeared to add one megabyte to the size of the extension process.

In the context of the total amount on memory Firefox uses, that's barely even visible.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by John F

Looking further into it, I'm going to blame Logitech.

I recently installed a new programmable Logitech mouse. If I install the Logitech software to program the mouse, I get the slow startup problem. If I than install the Garmin software, the problem goes away. I'm going to uninstall the Logitech and Garmin software and live without the programmable part of the mouse.

Not to self, try a MS mouse next time.

I have a Logitech mouse. I ran the Logitech driver software for a while, but stopped using it. The only reason I ran it was to be able to program the scroll wheel to perform a double-click when pressed. I got accustomed to doing that on three-button mice before scroll wheels came about, and there are too many times when I want to do something that requires a double-click. Having the middle mouse button/scroll wheel programmed to do that is an immense convenience. I found an ancient freeware utility for NT systems called Mbutton from 1996 by a chap named Darryn Davis in Australia that got middle-buttons/scroll wheels to do that, and it takes all of 100K of memory in use. Works fine on every mouse I've used.

I'm not a gamer, so I've had no need to investigate the fancier gaming oriented mice Logitech makes.
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Dennis

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

It's been solid for me right along, and Quantum performs superbly. The big adjustment was migrating from legacy extensions to Web Extensions, but I knew I'd have to do that and set up Firefox ESR to allow me to continue working as usual till replacements for the functionality the legacy extensions provided appeared. At this point, enough have to let me switch.


And you didn't trust it because?

I have current Chrome here for testing, and it behaves.

But if you don't want Google's official release, you can try Chromium instead. Chromium is the open source code base upon which Chrome is built, and you can run builds of Chromium instead. This is a place to get them: https://chromium.woolyss.com/download/en/#windows


I wouldn't hold my breath waiting.

Competitors I'm aware of include Opera, based on the same Blink engine Chrome uses, Vivaldi, a fork of Opera created because the developers were unhappy with Opera's direction, QupZilla, an open source browser based on Qt Web Engine (which looks like Chrome to sites you visit), and Brave, a new entry intended to be a secure and private browser. The latter is headed by Brendan Eich, creator of JavaScript and former Mozilla CTO, and also based on the Blink infrastructure. It is not ready for prime time.

What you really ought to do is discover why Quantum performs miserably on your machine. You have the hardware to support it. I'm betting on underlying issues with Win10, and what I might do in your place is a refresh:
https://www.pcmag.com/news/348679/ho...h-windows-tool

The process performs a clean re-installation of Win10, minus any cruft that has crept is. You can preserve your personal files, but programs will be deleted need to be reinstalled, and settings recreated.

You have the sort of problems that used to mean reformat the drive and reinstall Windows and apps from scratch. Fortunately, it's better these days.
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Dennis

I already did a reset that you mentioned I have been rebuilding my system for the past four days. Everything was going good till today with the Cortana crash.

Now my search index has corrupted and now trying to rebuild. All I did was move a 18GB folder from my desktop to my desktop computer's external drive via LAN. I must have a bad file somewhere. I have no clue how to track it down but it's having to index half a million files again.

I think this is all related to Cortana but how to fix it I've yet to discover.

As for Chrome I've never trusted it due to the extensions, keeping passwords online and other syncing. Good thing because the Chrome store is not safe as recent news has been reporting.


Sent from my Nexus 7

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Why can't you use Google Maps in a car? Me and my GF do so all the time.

And I'm willing to bet you do it like road rally competitions before GPSs became common. There was a driver and a navigator, and the navigator wrangled maps and told the driver what turns and routes to take to stay on course and complete the rally, hopefully faster than the other contestants.

I assume your GF drives, and you access Google Maps via smartphone. That's fine if you have a driver and navigator. It's less fine if there's only a driver, and current car mount GPSs do real time status updates to track just where you are, and can give you audible directions about upcoming turns so you don't have to be looking at the GPS display.

Google Maps is splendid, but it's not a true GPS.
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Dennis

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Blossom

I already did a reset that you mentioned I have been rebuilding my system for the past four days. Everything was going good till today with the Cortana crash.

Now my search index has corrupted and now trying to rebuild. All I did was move a 18GB folder from my desktop to my desktop computer's external drive via LAN. I must have a bad file somewhere. I have no clue how to track it down but it's having to index half a million files again.

If you move it to an external drive, it will have to re-index. That should not be a surprise. It has to, because the location is part of the index entry for every file, and the location changed.

What all was in the 18GB folder? That's an awful lot to be in one folder, unless there were sub-folders beneath.

I think this is all related to Cortana but how to fix it I've yet to discover.

It may be, but I wouldn't rule out other causes.

As for Chrome I've never trusted it due to the extensions, keeping passwords online and other syncing.

Chrome extensions are pure JavaScript, and limited to what what Chrome allows JavaScript to do. That has been increasingly tightened up. JavaScript is supposed to execute in a sandbox and be unable to affect the underlying system, and Chrome tries hard to enforce that.

A major change in Firefox is that extensions there must be pure JavaScript too. Legacy extensions were mostly combinations of JavaScript and XUL, but XUL is deprecated and going away. Mozilla had security concerns about XUL because it executed in a privileged context. I'd take that more seriously if I had ever heard of a malicious extension using that for an exploit.

But now extension architecture is increasingly the same across Chrome, Edge, and Firefox. A feature of the new Web Extensions API Firefox extensions must now use is that it's possible to write extensions that can be installed in Chrome, Edge, or Firefox by changing a few lines of code when you build for a specific browser. Raymond Hill's uBlock Origin is an example, and available for all three browsers.

Syncing and passwords in the cloud are optional in all three browsers, default to off, and you don't have to turn them on.

Good thing because the Chrome store is not safe as recent news has been reporting.

Bitcoin miners?

I believe there have been reports of Firefox extensions doing that too. They're getting pulled from the respective Addon sites as reported. But meanwhile, I don't care. I know what it is before I install it.
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Dennis

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And I'm willing to bet you do it like road rally competitions before GPSs became common. There was a driver and a navigator, and the navigator wrangled maps and told the driver what turns and routes to take to stay on course and complete the rally, hopefully faster than the other contestants.

I assume your GF drives, and you access Google Maps via smartphone. That's fine if you have a driver and navigator. It's less fine if there's only a driver, and current car mount GPSs do real time status updates to track just where you are, and can give you audible directions about upcoming turns so you don't have to be looking at the GPS display.

Google Maps is splendid, but it's not a true GPS.
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Dennis

Have you used Google Maps recently, on a newer Android device?

It certainly does track where you are, going as far as rotating the arrow when you rotate (while walking), you can search and put in routes and locations by voice command, and when you approach a turn, it does tell you "turn right in 100 meters", "turn right now", and things like "take the third exit on the next roundabout", en when you're on it, it says "take the third exit" again.

[Toxaris]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And I'm willing to bet you do it like road rally competitions before GPSs became common. There was a driver and a navigator, and the navigator wrangled maps and told the driver what turns and routes to take to stay on course and complete the rally, hopefully faster than the other contestants.

I assume your GF drives, and you access Google Maps via smartphone. That's fine if you have a driver and navigator. It's less fine if there's only a driver, and current car mount GPSs do real time status updates to track just where you are, and can give you audible directions about upcoming turns so you don't have to be looking at the GPS display.

Google Maps is splendid, but it's not a true GPS.
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Dennis

I use Google Maps for navigation daily on my phone. It is in a cradle on my dashboard and it works splendid. Accurate maps and accurate traffic information, all in real time. It is so much better than TomTom or any build in navigation which always have old maps.
Add voice control to this as well, I never have to touch my phone. The mobile data usage is not that high either, as you can use offline maps if you want that gets updated every month via wifi.

I don't know why you don't call it a true GPS though. My phone has a GPS built-in and it shows where I am on Maps accurately.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Have you used Google Maps recently, on a newer Android device?

It certainly does track where you are, going as far as rotating the arrow when you rotate (while walking), you can search and put in routes and locations by voice command, and when you approach a turn, it does tell you "turn right in 100 meters", "turn right now", and things like "take the third exit on the next roundabout", en when you're on it, it says "take the third exit" again.

And IOS.

It also shows traffic, and I believe it will offer to reroute if there is traffic on route.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

If you move it to an external drive, it will have to re-index. That should not be a surprise. It has to, because the location is part of the index entry for every file, and the location changed.

What all was in the 18GB folder? That's an awful lot to be in one folder, unless there were sub-folders beneath.


It may be, but I wouldn't rule out other causes.



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Dennis

Yes there was subfolders. It was my previous public folder I backed up before reinstalling Windows. It wiped out the entire search index. Event viewer is showing three errors about it. I ran Troubleshooter and it found nothing. So no idea what corrupted the index. All I know according to Event Viewer is it happened at the time I was moving those files.

I may have to set indexing options like I have on my Vista Machine if it corrupts again. Only index the start menu. Vista search sucks so I use XYPlorer. I have it on this laptop too so if necessary I may have to do that because I have 360GB of Data.

Sent from my Nexus 7