Windows 10 Fall Update

I upgraded two Cubase 8.1 computers to Windows 10 RTM about three weeks ago when Steinberg said it’s software is compatible with Windows 10.

Because the install is < 31 days old (for recovery of previous Windows version) yesterday’s Fall Update Version 1511 OS build 10586.3 does not show in the system updates. Rather than wait a week I used the media creation tool and made the USB Windows 10 install/update device/tool.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10


USB: "setup : Updated using “check for updates” and then it asks (figures out) if you want to keep all applications and documents. Yes. Installed faster than the “download update” especially with two computers.

Issues:
iLok: Software update required and the I had to rescan in Cubase for the Lexicon Reverbs to reappear via Plugin Manager.

eLicense stops to tell me about an expired NeoSoul demo soft license. I own the product and it has a its own non-soft license. I guess I’ll ask Steinberg to get rid of it…again.

I had a similar ‘expired soft e-licencer’ message after this Win 10 update. I opened e-licencer as administrator and that sorted it out for me.

Steve

The best solution is - use the media creation tool and reinstall OS from scratch. At first I let Windows get updated via Windows update; but e-licenser gave some error, I guess like plectrumboy mentioned. In disk management it was obvious M$ upgrade process had some bright ideas, so no wonder e-licenser cried…anyway, I used M$ media creation tool and reinstalled OS from scratch. All went OK. No errors. Of course, I always use my tool of choice to format SSD prior reinstalling OS, etc. I know it’s a pain in the neck, installing all your programs, plugins, etc… but, personally, I avoid “upgrade OS” route; update 1511 is a big one, so it’s best to be setup from zero. At least, in my experience.

This is what I have done and completely problem free, only one thing to remember is that once you do a clean install it is then not possible to roll back or clean install to windows 7- 8.1 You lose your previous windows licence straight away with a win10 clean install.

Thanx for pointing this out, I missed the part where WillBthr mentioned it was upgrade from 8.1 to 10;
In my case it was Windows 10 already, but the System behaved the same way as if it was having an UPGRADE, not just the small UPDATE. Anyway, just to confirm - e-licenser is error free after reinstalling OS.
Best Regards

This is what I have done and completely problem free, only one thing to remember is that once you do a clean install it is then not possible to roll back or clean install to windows 7- 8.1 You lose your previous windows licence straight away with a win10 clean install.

Unless something changed recently, this is not true.
I have clean installed W7 after clean install of W10 several times since July.
The original W7 key was accepted without problems.

No way I am doing a “clean” install because the update works fine and due to the complexity of the two DAWs I use I don’t care to recreate what is already created and functions correctly. Fall update makes my snappy systems even snappier.

Updated 3 computers without any problems, well one of them I could not log in to afterwards but a boot took care of that. That computer has no keyboard or screen attached, so it might be my VNC that was acting up. So far so good.

I completely agree with the principle of installing from new, but I also have had a very good experience with Windows 10 updates on both my laptop and desktop machines. Maybe things are getting better in this regard from Microsoft.

Steve.

_Edit 2015/11/19: Please read what Pete from Microsoft wrote here. Compression Store is NOT a th2 feature but was in Windows 10 from the beginning:

The fall update 1511 brings a new feature named “Compression Store”. This may conflict with Cubase/Nuendo, as not used memory pages get compressed in memory which needs CPU power. Especially on x86 systems with big Cubase projects, this could hit the performance of your system. This even happens if Cubase marks its mem pages as “non paged”; the compression is always active.

On an x86 v1511 system, open a big project (> 1.1 GB). Check mem consumption of Cubase.exe in task manager. Leave the PC alone for a few hours. Again check: The process needs significantly less memory now (on v1511). Decompression will need CPU power, so it’s likely this behaviour could lead to clicks, dropouts etc. Up to now, I didn’t find a way to turn this off.

If you use x64 and have plenty of RAM free, this shouldn’t hurt. On x86 systems, for now it may be a good idea to wait a few weeks before updating to 1511.

OTOH, this will make Windows 10 the ideal OS for old and/or low cost PC with <= 2 GB RAM. So I can understand why MS implemented this. Bad luck: They seem top have forgotten the “off” switch, though.

Does that mean that if there is sufficient RAM free, the OS won’t attempt compression? Otherwise, surely decompression will take CPU cycles just the same.

But is that even possible as long as there’s internet connectivity? I ended up with 1511 being applied (~90 minutes downtime) even though I thought I was getting only a regular update … it was the same process as the W10 upgrade all over again.

Yes and yes, you may delay functional updates in the Windows Update Settings.

Thanks Steve. I didn’t know that right click opened e-license as admin. The soft license that is expired is still there but the error message is gone. Thanks again.

Hi misohoza, I am surprised you original w7 product key worked in this case, did you manage to activate your w7 as well ? I was unable to use my wn7 key after a clean install as I would have expected.

I have just updated the win10 fall update, I wonder what new Cubase/DAW problems this will bring. Just when we got win10 working officially with Cubase a major update happens :frowning:

Yes it worked, but I had to activate by phone and it was within a month since upgrading. Not sure if it would still work now.

Then I installed W10 on a separate partition just for testing.
Both of them activated.

Here’s a good summary from a well-known source:
Here’s What’s New in the Windows 10 Fall Update
In a nutshell, not a lot. One interesting thing however is “now, you can simply use your existing Windows 7, Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 product key to activate Windows 10”. The trick is to make sure you’ve created an ISO or bootable DVD using the Media Creation Tool since the update was released so that you have the latest version of the installation media. That should allow you to do a clean installation onto a spare partition while retaining your Windows 7 – at least, that’s what it sounds like to me, I haven’t tried it.

Timo, the compressed store was not introduced in TH2 (fall/November update), this was part of the Windows 10 RTM release in July. Steinberg themselves haven’t contacted me or Bala with any issues here, so I’m working under the assumption that there are no related issues discovered at this point. Note that after RTM, Steinberg did quite a bit of testing before releasing info saying Cubase is compatible with Windows 10 (which was great for all users, because Steinberg did find some things we had to fix). I would have expected issues like this to come up if there were any.

The memory drop you see here is not due to compression. That’s normal memory management trimming. All versions of Windows do that. From one of the principal engineers who worked on this:


The behavior they see where memory usage of their app drops after a few hours is not due to memory compression. This is the memory manager trimming rarely used pages from working sets, and it’s standard behavior on all versions of Windows. What changes with memory compression is that after the pages are trimmed and before they get written to the pagefile, they go through an intermediate step where they are compressed and kept in the working set of the System process. The effect of this is that more pages can be kept in RAM than before, reducing pagefile IO and improving responsiveness, and reducing the bad impact on the lifetime of a typical SSD.

This video has a more detailed description of how memory compression works:
Memory Compression in Windows 10 RTM | Microsoft Learn

So basically it impacts memory that is paged to disk. They get compressed when about to be written to disk, when possible, and does this as a low-pri thread. Instead of a page being written to the page file (SSD IO is a common source of DPC latency spikes), it gets written to the in-memory compressed memory store in the system process. You can see this by going into Task Manager, clicking the details tab, and looking at the “System and compressed memory” process.

If you have a lot of memory, you’re not going to see much or any compression, just like you wouldn’t see as much paging to disk. This helps prevent hard faults, which are expensive to have happen – generally more expensive than compression.

Did you have actual drops or other measured impact? If you’re seeing glitching, it would be good to capture a glitch trace and get it to me at pete dot brown at microsoft dot com. This is how to take a glitch trace:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/matthew_van_eerde/archive/2015/08/11/taking-audio-glitch-traces-on-windows-10-desktop-edition.aspx

When you hear a glitch during capture, please mark it with Ctrl+Win+X so we can find it in case the automated analysis doesn’t catch it.

Also, just to clarify: are you a Steinberg employee? Folks elsewhere are quoting your post as “from Steinberg”, but I didn’t see anything in your sig or profile, and like I said, I would expect Steinberg to contact us directly like they have in the past.

And again, just to clarify, this is a feature that has been out since July. But if there is glitching being newly discovered, we want to get on that.

Pete
Microsoft

Hi Pete,

I am NOT a Steinberg guy. There is a Timo at SB, but Timo is a quite common name here in Germany and other European countries, so that’s nothing special.

You should really talk to your colleagues at MS:

And the best German computer magazine at heise.de interpreted it like me, as it was new in th2:
Windows 10: Version 1511 ist da | heise online

Regards
Timo

Thanks for clarifying. You were being quoted as “Steinberg” and I was confused, because Steinberg is great at working with us on any discovered issues.

That August blog post came out shortly after RTM. I believe Gabe wanted to highlight a feature most people didn’t know about, but which wasn’t new. It’s been a while, but I believe he’s just clarifying the feature because people have wondered why the System process appears to be using so much memory. That’s why it starts with “In Windows 10…” instead of “In Insider Preview 10525”. Note that the section a few paragraphs above it also talks about the Insider Hub being kept in the release version of Windows 10.

I do agree it’s ambiguous, though. I don’t think anyone thought it would become a point of contention as to what was released when, but I’ll pass the feedback on to Gabe.

As to the German article: well, news sites often get as much incorrect as they do correct. I’m still being misquoted based on info I provided at Summer NAMM and a demo that I got into one of the keynotes at Build a couple years back. It doesn’t help that the blog post was written in a way that could be easily confusing.

But I have verified with the actual developers that this is an RTM feature, not a TH2 feature. As always, we tweak algorithms over time, but the feature itself was in RTM.

In any case, it’s always good to ask. I hate to see people make upgrade decisions based on bad information. It costs us all time. Additionally, it sounds like you aren’t actually experiencing glitching as a result. If that changes, please be sure to capture a glitch trace (mentioned above) and get it to us so we can look at it.

Pete

Honestly, that’ll get old pretty quickly as we do these updates. It’s certainly possible to do, but does add a lot of wear to your SSD, and take a good chunk of time.

Also, you may find that the various copy protection tools break at the smallest change. They’ve been my bane here for some time. I really do wish they were unnecessary. When it gets reported to us, we reach out to the copy protection folks. One example was a fix we put into the Insider builds because the builds were confusing everyone’s iLok. We reached out to them, figured out what was happening, and put in a patch. Ultimately it was that the copy protection software was doing some pretty unsupported things, but we patched anyway.

Pete