Windows 10, An Exercise in Frustration

I know how you feel. I've has so many issues with Windows 10 that I can't even post all of them here if I wanted to. I'm not exaggerating, I've had so many that it seriously would take several days to type all of them up on here. These issues are things that have never happened on Windows 7, XP, or my limited experience with Linux. The most recent issue I've been having is that explorer.exe takes about 5 seconds to open when it normally would load instantly. Happened after some Windows update. Running explorer directly from explorer loads up fine but using a shortcut from any location makes it take an unreasonably long time. I have a PCIe SSD which is nearly as fast as you can get with a disc drive and this is not acceptable.

I would go back to Windows 7, or install a dual boot set up were it not for the major issues i encountered when I last used it. Something, or somehow, the display driver's wake state got corrupted, to the point that the monitor going into sleep or standby would cause a complete lockup of the OS. I tried different HDMI cables and Displayport cables, I tried to reinstall the graphics drivers, nothing worked. Every time it would go into standby, I was forced to hard reboot the PC. I never did find the cause, and Google was no help as there were no definitive results to my issue. So yeah, Windows 7 loses marks because of that, it sucks I couldn't figure it out. I know my monitor isn't at fault because I tested it on another PC, and it went into standby fine.

@DarkFlare69 You can try toggling "Launch folder windows in a separate process" in folder options/file explorer options, see if that helps at all.

@the_randomizer Did you try different driver versions?
Windows 7 actually had a thing where it would BSoD if the GPU driver doesn't respond in time (or something like that), it became a huge problem on my laptop because it started BSoDing at boot after a driver update. Sometimes it just appeared to be frozen, but in the event viewer I could indeed see that there had been a BSoD. Googling the error code told me what the issue was, but not how to fix it. I tried many different driver versions and nothing helped, UNTIL I decided to try the old driver the OEM provided, which worked. Then I took the chance at updating the driver again and it was fine, but I still had intermittent BSoDs at boot, though not frequent enough to be a concern. But in Windows 10 I've never had this problem (still using the same driver I had issues with before) so it seems like that's been fixed.
This is on a laptop with Intel+AMD switchable graphics by the way.

@Captain_N it's possible to disable the updates entirely (or at least in 1709 it's still possible; 1803 is shit), but it might void your license if left unupdated for too long. You'll need to disable wuauserv (Windows Update (And Upgrade SERVice)) and BITS (Background Intelligent Transfer Service) from services.msc, then get a tool like paexec or psexec, then run "psexec -s mmc.exe taskschd.msc", and disable some entries which are related to WindowsUpdate, UpdateOrchestrator, SIH, and some other stuff which I forgot because I irreversibly deleted these entries from the system.

I have also noticed that Lose10 has some problems compared to other Windows versions. For example, opening a new tab in Firefox will softlock the entire system for like a second or so. I have no idea why, but it's very annoying, especially if a music is playing. The same for notifications, but it only stutters for a few miliseconds, and does not always affect the music, but it's still noticable.

On a related note to this thread, I'd suggest against downgrading if you have a very new hardware. The 8th-gen Intel drivers only exist for Lose10, so you'll lose the ability to control the screen brightness, change resolution, and if you have a dedicated GPU then it'll fail to VSync and will result in insane screen tearing. Also, the touchpad will most likely not work outside of Lose10 because it seems to be a trend in 2018 to hook up everything to an I2C line, because an internal USB or RS232 (PS/2) connection is way too much for some reason.

As for Linux, it's a gambling what hardware will work and what will not. Luckily for me there is microcode blob available for 8th gen Intel to allow adjusting the screen brightness, but the I2C drivers for Linux are still in hold to be released as a kernel update into the public (unless you compile it yourself, in which case you should be already having it). Ethernet doesn't work at all for me, and even wifi has problems.

As for macOS, I don't get what you mean by sandbox. Sure, I had to disable SIP in order to be able to use unsigned drivers, but I never had any issue with macOS other than the Terminal resize bug in 10.13, and I had to reboot twice if I was previously in Windows 7 otherwise macOS will be so slow that you won't even be able to reboot normally. Damn I miss that overheating piece of shit, it was nice triplebooting macOS, Windows 7, and Linux

@The Real Jdbye That's just it, there were absolutely no BSODs displayed, nothing in the Event Viewer, just plain old system lockups with the computer not being able to be woken up. I ran SMART tests on all my drives, I ran SFC /scannow, not a damn thing. Windows 7 was corrupt and I never could find out what went wrong, very little will convince me to go back.

Yes, I already said I tried different drivers, nothing worked, it's not worth it.