Windows 10 - OK so far...

[TonyG]

So, have taken the decision to upgrade my campervan EP121 PC to Windows 10 - mostly for the nicer handling of touch (8.1 had this but couldn't get on with the interface).

Housebot on windows 10? - OK to date. Had some errors initially, but this was down to user permissions, and was a quick fix.

Anyone else with feedback to share?

Cheers,

Tony G

[ScottBot]

Tony,

Thanks for the update. I haven't got my hands on a copy of 10 yet, but it's good to know that the initial tests look good. Just let me know if you find anything that looks like a problem.

[boyakaa]

The New version 3.3.1 works much better with Windows 10. Using standard user (not admin).

[markd]

OK, I am making the jump too- mostly for power savings. I got one of those tiny 6 watt PCs. Working great, except that my scripts aren't running.
I get
Unable to load script file [path]. Error = [The request is not supported]
Unable to open script file [path].

Is there something that needs to happen to run scripts in 10?

[ScottBot]

They run fine on my Windows 10, so it is possible.

Since you aren't seeing an error about not being able to load the script engine (you would see that before the errors you are seeing), I assume that the VB/Active script components are available and loaded.

My first guess would be something regarding permissions. Try copying the script file out into your Documents or \Users\[User]\Documents directory and see if that helps.

[markd]

Yep, that did the trick! I am not running as admin or anything.

[Richard Naninck]

Just installed W10 and gave it a try. Currently back @ W7.
My findings so far:

- No USB UIRT driver for W10 (Not a HB issue, but a bummer if I have to give up the UIRT)
- No VoiceControl. Language was set to Dutch. Have to try US to make sure. However maybe some of you can tell me if W10 Voice Control will work (Cortana?) like the W7 VC did? I am a heavy VC user in my home theater so I would not want to miss out on that until at least Ivee or Echo is available in my country.
- Could not associate .bat to cmd.exe. Not sure why but the workaround for the HouseBot keep alive batch file could be written in PowerShell.
- Some issues with touchscreen comports not recognised but I can probably fix that.
- Also had issues with 2 nVidia video cards where the second one would give a Code 43 error but that has been resolved.

So the top 2 would keep me from porting to W10 at the moment. Will try te resolv those issues later and report back.

[TonyG]

Good to see other peoples experiences.

For myself, I've decided to go back to a clean build using W7.

Windows 10 is OK as a "general PC", but fell short on small issues such as even less control of certain "look and feel" aspects and customisation. But the main issues for myself were:

1) Large amounts of downloaded updates and "chatty" - not good on a 4G dongle data tariff.
2) Quickly got very slow. Much slower reboots / hibernations
3) Corrupt files on unexpected power outages (PC on leisure battery via P2140 supply) - Housebot database, Kodi profiles, and several other files would regularly corrupt. Disk cache switched off. Much less resilient in this key aspect than W7

The showstopper was Housebot responsiveness when on a network. Touch screen got very laggy after 3 months, and Kodi track information would get up to a track behind by the end of a typical album. As soon as PC removed from network - everything with Housebot was nice and responsive. Tried: 4G on Router, 4G direct on PC, Wifi connections. All with the same results. Also tried loopback, DHCP IP and fixed IP. This may have been a fault on the PC which a fresh W10 would fix?

Now back on W7 and just OS and apps on main SSD. All other files such as music and maps on removable media. Will use Macrium Reflect image and restore (<30GB) to treat the car PC as an "appliance" and less of an ongoing, evolving "personal computer".

I use Windows 10 in the house and it's OK. Most other devices for the family are now Macbooks, and seem fresh after months and now years in use.

[Richard Naninck]

Just gave up on W10.

I resolved the issues with voice control. It took me a good while to change my settings from Dutch to English but finally I got my voice control back.

I got .bat to work however it should run as administrator and a shortcut to a .bat file in de programs/startup menu cannot be run as admin. Therefore HouseBot cannot write to Meedio libraries. This can probably be resolved by moving all the data to user files, but it would require lots of script changes, registry changes and would make my simple backup structure a pain.

I am not able to get the permission so that Meedio can update its own library dates. I need those file dates to check if importers remain active.

Resolved the touchscreen an USB UIRT driver problems. All was working fine.

I really dislike the startmenu. It is over engineerd for what I need on my server. I want a simple W7 structure. However I didnn't put much time in it yet so there may be solutions to get that cleaned up.

The real killer was the Windows Auto Updater. I disabled it in the device manager because my nVidia vcard drivers were overrun by newer drivers found by Windows 10. I stack 2 vcards in my system with multiple heads and it works with nVidia but one of the vcards gets a code 43 after windows touches it. So after disabling the complete auto update feature using the group policy editer, nVidia could also not touch the drivers anymore and the vcards fall back to unknown devices. There is simply too much automation going on here which a carefully tweaked system cannot handle.

Furthermore I don't like the crappy graphics. Somehow W7 looks a loot better in all aspects.

This has costs me a little over 10 hours in total and I that's more than enough for 2016

[Richard Naninck]

And I tried some more

Resolved the permissions by downloading a tool auc-tweak. I found out the the Meedio service had the UAC option selected while looking at it in the taskmanager. If UAC was turned off, Meedio was able to write to its own dbases again.

Resolved the auto update problem. Many people were complaining about this and MS released a tool to prevent auto updates. It is called "wushowhide.diagcab" and it finds the conflicts and presents the option to not install the Windows Updates for it.

Open issues now are with multiple displays where HouseBot sets the refresh rate of the selected movie and while doing that, Meedio switches from the secondary head to the primary head. W7 does not do this. Furthermore I cannot get resolution and refresh info from WMI about HDMI video heads.

So again back to W7. This is going to need many more hours of tweaking, reading and testing. Guess my HouseBot setup is a bit too custom Since I have two SSD's, I can swap OS almost on the fly

[Steve Horn]

Richard, interesting about USBUIRT. .That would be a deal breaker for me too. And even though you resolved it (I haven't looked into the driver availability), reading all your other issues, most of which would not affect my setup, there does not seem to be a good up side to making the change. And I was tempted until I read this thread. I'll stay on W7 until it no longer supported. At least everything (well, most everything) works now.

[Richard Naninck]

UIRT was resolved indeed using a downloaded driver which somehow was newer or just fresh?
The main problem remains how W10 handles dual screen with HDMI. This seems to be a W7 problem as well for many but in my case all works fine on W7. I guess if you want extra touch capability on a ingle head system than W10 would be fine. In all other cases I would stick to W7 which I decided to do after extensive testing.

[Steve Horn]

Based on the USBUIRT resolution, I don't think I'd have a problem with W10 (famous last words). I just don't see an up side for a server-only application. No fancy GUI needed, maybe not even faster boot up, which W10 seems to provide... on my other boxes anyway. Maybe some other HB-on-W10 users could provide some; I may be missing something...

[markd]

My upside was that it came pre-installed.
I use my box headless, so graphics drivers and such aren't an issue- and I was upgrading from win 2k....

I should probably see what I left the settings at for updates, but they can't be too bad as I haven't noticed the machine going down and need to be restarted.

[Steve Horn]

That's ok, I still have 3 tablets (old tablets... Very old tablets) running Win2k being used as SWREMOTEs.