On 2/2/2024 8:39 AM, Newyana2 wrote:
Just some tidbits here that might be of interest to some. I haven't
used Windows 10 much, but decided to make a new computer
recently, as the Win7 box I use mainly for streaming Netflix is now
15 years old... and that gave me an excuse to make a new one. :)
Some findings that I didn't know:
* As long as you keep a computer unplugged from the Internet during
install, there's no requirement to get a Microsoft account.
(I also installed Linux on a dual boot, using BootIt, expecting
the worst with Win10, but Win10 may actually be usable.)
* The licenses sold online for about $20 are legit, apparently
bought wholesale from OEMs and resold. But don't try to
activate a system if you've been customizing it. Activate it
before you remove the crap.
* Simplewall seems to be a perfect firewall. I've got it allowing
Firefox, TBird and Acrylic DNS proxy through. It's warned me about
numerous other things trying to get through. A test with
NetworkTrafficView from Nirsoft seems to confirm that nothing
but the 3 allowed is getting through, aside from some local
chatter to the router.
* On my Win10 laptop that I bought awhile back I wanted to
replace the login background picture. It was grayed out. After
much unsuccessful screwing around in the Registry, I removed the
restrictions from the ProgramData subfolders where those images are
kept. It turned out that I wasn't restricted. I only had 1 image! Though
I see a red message in some settings windows saying that my
organization controls some of the settings. ??
* The most interesting find: I wanted to change the display resolution
on my Asus Win10 laptop. Things are too small. But Windows showed no
display applet at all. Just basic settings in "personalization", with the pixel specs grayed out at 1920x1080. Weird. I went to Asus. They
had no driver, but did have an Intel display app... But it was actually
some kind of Metro cr-app at the Windows Store. It would require getting
an account!
After some research, figuring out exactly what CPU I had and so on,
I found a driver at intel.com that looked like it should work. Sure enough, it worked fine and I was able to switch the display to 1600x900. They
also have a silly skin-on-the-desktop app for adjusting brightness,
contrast, etc. Maybe that's the Metro app. I don't know. I've never
actually seen a Metro app before.
So I bought an Asus laptop with no way to adjust display, with a
device manager that said it was a generic Microsoft display. And it
turns out that both Asus and Intel are cooperating with Microsoft,
screwing their own customers, in order to coerce people in various
small ways to sign up for a Microsoft account.
Maddening sleaze. Yet it was a pleasant surprise that all these
problems had workarounds. I'm almost tempted to switch out my
main box for Win10. Though there are probably 200 other small issues
to be dealt with, like removing restrictions on files, adding Run as
Admin to VBS right-click, tricking Visual Studio 6 into installing...
Those are just a few issues I know about starting out.
If anyone has done extensive research on stopping all MS calling
home then I'd be interested to hear. Have I succeeded with
Simplewall?
Right-click the desktop gives "Display Settings" in the context menu.
It's possible even Linux does this.
The OS starts off with Microsoft Basic Display Adapter,
which is really a VESA frame buffer driver lacking hardware acceleration.
After a couple reboots, Windows is populating drivers, and it
should populate the proper video driver. The NVidia driver is
slow to show up, because it's a 500MB download for a "jumbo driver",
instead of a slim 20MB thing per card.
Changing the display resolution to non-native, requires *something*
to handle the differences. On a separate LCD display, a circuit inside
the display converts 1440x900 to the native 1920x1080 the display
might have. This can cause jagged text. On a laptop, the panel
is likely declared as being non-multisync, so the OS uses a different
method to handle requests. On a laptop, the BIOS reports "something"
to the OS, and if you fit the wrong replacement panel, hilarity results.
You can leave the Display settings at Native, and use control-scroll
to set the desktop "Scale" factor. No, control-0 does not return the desktop
to nominal scale. You have to use your eagle eye when using the
scroll wheel, to put it back where you left it. Control-0 was something
Adobe invented long ago. Occasionally, you might be using control-scroll
within GIMP, and the input "leaks out" and your desktop is at the wrong scale.
In Settings : System : Display, you will find
Scale and layout
100% (Recommended) <=== fiddle this one to make "screen big enough"
Display Resolution
1920 x 1080 (Recommended) <=== leave res at native for best result
It's really too complicated for me, to tell you which
controls scale which items. Some graphical elements are
proportional to control-scroll times ScaleAndLayout.
Metro Apps scale by ScaleAndLayout.
Windows 10 Notepad, control-minus and control-plus scale the text,
although you might change a preference setting to get bigger text. Control-scroll isn't working for me there. Windows 11 Notepad,
plus, minus, and scroll-wheel all work, with the control key,
to scale Notepad text. One of those is non-Metro, one is Metro.
Windows has three ways of rendering fonts on screen. ClearType, some-GrayScale-thing, and ordinary bitmap scaling. And it can
mix all three elements in one screenshot. When you change a scale
setting, I expect all three will be affected, with some
looking more ghastly than others.
Welcome, to the developers armpit.
Just imagine what Windows 12 will be like.
*******
As far as network behavior goes, use your imagination :-)
If your job depends on scraping customer info, then how
will you design things ?
Network tracing can be done with Wireshark.
Network tracing can be done with ETW (Procmon parses that ETW type now).
When I looked at a trace one day, all the packets in Procmon were
"going to Akamai" and someone did not want me to know where they
were going. You use Akamai CDN to obfuscate your footprint. Since I
was not web surfing at the time (browser not running), you can kinda
guess who is doing that. It's malware of course. The worst kind of malware :-)
Paul
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