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Windows 10 Tweaking Guide


Guest DavidA

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On 8/10/2018 at 1:29 PM, Miro said:

About windows editions. You can probably use which edition you want. Windows professional editions usually comes with more bloatware and requires more effort when tweaking. Later versions contains more features and has a larger footprint. It's probably easier to obtain a specific version like 1709 for enterprise than pro.

At Dataton we are using Enterprise 1607 LTSB and Enterprise 1709 and will not spend much time to configure and tweak other editions. Also note you will need a volume licensing agreement if you are deploying a clone image to multiple devices.

Hi Miro

Can you exactly specify which version of Windows 10  is stable and working well with watchout 6.2.2 or 6.3 ?

you said 1607 for LTSB  but with all windows updates until now ? or is there some updates that shouldn't be installed from a certain date ?

Windows 10 LTSB last update is from : 11/13/2018 and the OS built version is 14393.2608 ( KB 4467691 )

For Enterprise :

you said 1709 for Enterprise but with all windows updates until now ? or is there some updates that shouldn't be installed from a certain date ?

Windows 10 Enterprise 1709  last update is from : 11/13/2018 and the OS built version is 16299.785 ( KB 4467686 )

the tweaking list published by dataton is for Enterprise i suppose.

 

is it ok with this version of LTSB ?

is it ok with this version of Enterprise ?

 

 

Thx

   

 

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Hi All and Dataton crew

As watchout people are more and more working with windows 10

Can somebody exactly specify which version of Windows 10  is stable and working well with watchout 6.2.2 or 6.3 ?

i quote Miro from an August post about windows 10 in "Windows 10 Tweaking guide" section of that forum

According to : https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/itpro/windows-10/release-information

you said 1607 for LTSB  but with all windows updates until now ?

or is there some updates that shouldn't be installed after an effective date or some to avoid ?

Windows 10 LTSB last update is from : 11/13/2018 and the OS built version is 14393.2608 ( KB 4467691 ).

For Enterprise :

you said 1709 for Enterprise but with all windows updates until now ?

or is there some updates that shouldn't be installed after an effective date or some to avoid ?

Windows 10 Enterprise 1709  last update is from : 11/13/2018 and the OS built version is 16299.785 ( KB 4467686 ).

the tweaking list published by dataton is for Enterprise i suppose.

 

is it ok with this version of LTSB ?

is it ok with this version of Enterprise ?

i'd like to give win 10 LTSB  or Enterprise a chance again ,a new attempt, the third one ! 

(for the moment i can't find something as reliable and responsive as win 7 x64 !!!)

because of new platforms like X299 motherboards with LGA 2066 that are spreading more and more

and skylake processors and motherboards features are only available with win 10.

 

Thx for help

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Hi Misterk,

We have built a couple of servers using 1607 Enterprise LTSB and the update KB4057142. We did some additional changes in the group policies and scheduling but basically if you follow the tweaking guide you should be fine.

I doubt that anyone in Sweden can tell you right now whether the updates from 11/13/2018 are working. Looking at the date, they are 24 hours old now. To make sure that an update works well under all circumstances you will need to build a master image first and then have a couple of people testing the system over a lengthy period of time. All recent WATCHOUT servers are using the master build based on version 1607 and it makes no sense for Dataton to have various operating software versions in the same sort of products. 

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9 hours ago, RBeddig said:

Hi Misterk,

We have built a couple of servers using 1607 Enterprise LTSB and the update KB4057142. We did some additional changes in the group policies and scheduling but basically if you follow the tweaking guide you should be fine.

I doubt that anyone in Sweden can tell you right now whether the updates from 11/13/2018 are working. Looking at the date, they are 24 hours old now. To make sure that an update works well under all circumstances you will need to build a master image first and then have a couple of people testing the system over a lengthy period of time. All recent WATCHOUT servers are using the master build based on version 1607 and it makes no sense for Dataton to have various operating software versions in the same sort of products.  

Thnx for answering, i will be in test mode during this month

i hope it will work

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Hi All, Wanted to confirm some of the steps on the guide:

 

Using Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 LTSB - Step 5:

"5. REMOVE WINDOWS COMPONENTS" - Confirming non of those can actually be removed from the LTSB, since it is not installed to begin with?

Joining The question below - Step 12 "12 REGISTRY SETTINGS" - many of those registry files does not exist on some setups, can you please elaborate if those need to be added, and if so, how would we add them?

On 6/24/2018 at 10:51 AM, Alex Ramos said:

I'm having a doubt on some of registry settings.

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\ThreadPriority = highest, HEX: F9 (DWORD)

Means create a new key in \DirectShow\ named "ThreadPriority" and then inside, a DWORD value named "highest" with value HEX: F9 ?

Like this?


[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\ThreadPriority]
    "Highest"=DWORD:F9

Its confusing when compared with:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile\SystemResponsiveness = HEX: 5

[HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Multimedia\SystemProfile]

"SystemResponsiveness" =DWORD: 5

Registry file notation should be used to make it clear.

Also what's the /O flag in defrag.exe ?

 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 11/18/2018 at 10:48 PM, orfischer said:

Hi All, Wanted to confirm some of the steps on the guide:

 

Using Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 LTSB - Step 5:

"5. REMOVE WINDOWS COMPONENTS" - Confirming non of those can actually be removed from the LTSB, since it is not installed to begin with?

Joining The question below - Step 12 "12 REGISTRY SETTINGS" - many of those registry files does not exist on some setups, can you please elaborate if those need to be added, and if so, how would we add them?

 

@DavidA Following up on this please

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Hi All,

 

To help everyone with getting the right windows update, you can download specific updates from Microsoft here:

http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/Home.aspx

When you are at the website, you need to type in the specific update manually:

For LTSB 1607 - KB4057142

For Enterprise 1709 - KB4090913

I hope this helps to clarify STEP3 in the tweaking guide

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On 11/18/2018 at 10:48 PM, orfischer said:

Hi All, Wanted to confirm some of the steps on the guide:

 

Using Windows 10 Enterprise 1607 LTSB - Step 5:

"5. REMOVE WINDOWS COMPONENTS" - Confirming non of those can actually be removed from the LTSB, since it is not installed to begin with?

Joining The question below - Step 12 "12 REGISTRY SETTINGS" - many of those registry files does not exist on some setups, can you please elaborate if those need to be added, and if so, how would we add them?

 

Regarding the registry settings in the guide:

If the registry files does not exist, you should add them, following the instructions in the guide. When for example this "=highest" is listed, it just means that the value we are inputing is the highest value possible. so fir this line:

"HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\ThreadPriority = highest, HEX: F9 (DWORD) "

 

Right click: new, DWORD, call the file "ThreadPriority". double click it, select HEX, and input F9. apply and save.

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thx for infos !

i'm still running tests with win 10 LTSB and it's very different from win 7

in comparison for the moment, when i start watchpoint.exe, it opens faster on win 7 than on win 10

about  a two seconds difference. that tells me that my tuning of win 10 is not good enough.

i keep on digging.

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All windows versions uses a different version of WDDM (Windows Display Driver Model). Windows 7 uses WDDM 1.1 and Windows LTSB uses WDDM 2.1. There are major differences on how fullscreen windows are created between the major versions of WDDM (1 & 2). It simply takes longer for Windows 10 to initiate and create fullscreen windows. We made some improvements for this in WATCHOUT 6.3 in order to speed up the process and create all fullscreen windows at once.

Display driver version has also a big impact and for AMD the only driver that works well with WDDM 2.1 & 2.2 is the 17q4.1 enterprise driver. Most tested drivers from AMD released in 2018 has various problems, where most of them result in poor HAP playback performance. Some AMD drivers from 2018 might also bluescreen at windows logon if they are forced to run at maximum clock speed using the registry.

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Hi All,

 

Here is our 2 cents about the list, after experimenting with building a solid 4x 4k computer with windows 10 1607 LTSB:

1. We went through the list item by item 4 times, and windows 10 always crushed right after going live for the first time to WO. It will go live once, and after a restart, windows will crush and not load up.

* apparently, our built hardware was too new for the recommended windows update (latest motherboard, M.2 drives, RAM, processor, and Graphics), so we believe that windows 10 didn’t know how to handle the hardware with installing the older suggested update from March 2018. 

We went ahead and installed the latest windows update, went through the list, and a SUPRISE - everything works so smoothly!

2. We installed the new WX8200 card which does not allow to use 2017 Q4 drivers. Windows will crush and not load up if you try to do step 12 part 1/3, and increase priority to the graphics card PCIE lane (as suggested in the guide) - we skipped this step, and all seem fine. 

For the test we run 2 different heavy 4x 4k shows with a single hap file at 10000 pixels wide, and another 2x 4k videos layered on top of it - all plays very smoothly. We even turned on live update and can edit and move content while everything is live.

Watchout is going into Christie Spyder X80 with EDID set to 3840 x 2160 @ 60hz. 

We hope this will save someone time and tons of stress.

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Misterk, Nvidia is usually less hassle and more consistent drivers. They follow standards more strictly which means that you need to manually override some display outputs to use full range instead of limited range over HDMI. Same setting needs to be set for video conversion to prevent live video to be in a limited range when converting YUV to RGB.

Ortfisher, even if you can source drivers via Windows updates, a better way is to obtain drivers from each manufacturer directly. I always extract the core drivers from their software package in order to get rid of all other softwares that comes bundled with it. The risk of getting everything from Microsoft is that you may receive generic drivers that doesn't perform as well as the dedicated drivers.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/14/2018 at 7:52 PM, Miro said:

Misterk, Nvidia is usually less hassle and more consistent drivers. They follow standards more strictly which means that you need to manually override some display outputs to use full range instead of limited range over HDMI. Same setting needs to be set for video conversion to prevent live video to be in a limited range when converting YUV to RGB.

Ortfisher, even if you can source drivers via Windows updates, a better way is to obtain drivers from each manufacturer directly. I always extract the core drivers from their software package in order to get rid of all other softwares that comes bundled with it. The risk of getting everything from Microsoft is that you may receive generic drivers that doesn't perform as well as the dedicated drivers.

Not the drivers from windows update, but an overall newer windows update.

We also follow the method of extracting the drivers (except for graphics card).

Without doing a recent update to Windows 10 LTSB, Watchout just crushes windows (and we have tried to do the list at least 7 times) The logical assumption for us is that our computer hardware is newer than the windows update suggested by the twicking guide, and therefore, it doesn’t operate optimally.

After doing the update, we were able to run Watchout smoothly and seamlessly pushing a very heavy 4x4k show.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...
  • 4 weeks later...

Hi, 
I am trying to ask this question here - my apologizes if it was addressed before, I could not find it so far..

We have installed and tweaked Win 10 Enterprise LTSC on a X99 machine with a single W9100 /32GB GPU and S400.

The problem is that Watchpoint won't start with more than 3x active 4K60 outputs per machine.

It will start with 3x, but will run into a gridlock looping start-up routine with 4x or more outputs.

Watchout v.6.3.1
AMD drivers are 17q4.1


Did anybody experience the same problem? 

Can anyone confirm that Watchout has been working smoothly on a W9100 with more than 3x 4K60 display outputs with any configuration?
This alone will help us fining the issue we are experiencing I guess..

Thanks!

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1 hour ago, gperl said:

... Can anyone confirm that Watchout has been working smoothly on a W9100 with more than 3x 4K60 display outputs ...

Well yes, Dataton WATCHMAX W9100 later production (the ones with Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB) provides six 4k60p outputs from an AMD FirePro W9100. Of course, that GPU is now discontinued and superseded by the AMD Radeon Pro WX9100.

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3 hours ago, jfk said:

Well yes, Dataton WATCHMAX W9100 later production (the ones with Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB) provides six 4k60p outputs from an AMD FirePro W9100. Of course, that GPU is now discontinued and superseded by the AMD Radeon Pro WX9100.

Thank you, jfk. 

Is Watchmax you are mentioning based on a X99 mainboard? 

I wonder how to track down what we are doing wrong after everything we tested..
We run those machines for more than a year now with 6x 1080p outputs wich has never been a problem, but 4+ 4k60 won't start with Wacthout regardless of AMD driver version or Win7/Win10 setup.. 


 

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Are you using Win10 LTSC 2019 or LTSB 2016? With LTSB 2016 you need to install at least the kb4057142 update to resolve some Microsoft multi-monitor bugs.

Most common problem is that the windows output timing is not the same as the one used in the show and that it simply take too long to apply all the changes when entering full screen. This triggers the timeout in WATCHOUT and the process starts over again. For example we have this issue in our lab where we run 6x 3840x2160 monitors that are 10-bits per color component. Before starting WATCHOUT the AMD settings must be changed from 10 bpc to 8 bpc for each monitor. Then it works just fine.

Also make sure to use WATCHOUT 6.3.1 where the timeout has been extended from 10 secs to 60 secs. It's also possible to use a -TimeOut parameter in order to extend the timeout even further. For example: "WATCHPOINT.EXE -TimeOut 120" will result in a two minute timeout.

Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 2.x is a lot slower to apply display changes than version 1.x used in Windows 7 & 8.  

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8 hours ago, Miro said:

Are you using Win10 LTSC 2019 or LTSB 2016? With LTSB 2016 you need to install at least the kb4057142 update to resolve some Microsoft multi-monitor bugs.

Most common problem is that the windows output timing is not the same as the one used in the show and that it simply take too long to apply all the changes when entering full screen. This triggers the timeout in WATCHOUT and the process starts over again. For example we have this issue in our lab where we run 6x 3840x2160 monitors that are 10-bits per color component. Before starting WATCHOUT the AMD settings must be changed from 10 bpc to 8 bpc for each monitor. Then it works just fine.

Also make sure to use WATCHOUT 6.3.1 where the timeout has been extended from 10 secs to 60 secs. It's also possible to use a -TimeOut parameter in order to extend the timeout even further. For example: "WATCHPOINT.EXE -TimeOut 120" will result in a two minute timeout.

Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) version 2.x is a lot slower to apply display changes than version 1.x used in Windows 7 & 8.  

Great info! Thank you

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8 hours ago, Miro said:

For example we have this issue in our lab where we run 6x 3840x2160 monitors that are 10-bits per color component. Before starting WATCHOUT the AMD settings must be changed from 10 bpc to 8 bpc for each monitor. Then it works just fine.

Thank you Miro, this helped indeed now! 
We figured out that the E2 EDID we were working with has 10 bit color/channel per default. 

 

8 hours ago, Miro said:

Are you using Win10 LTSC 2019 or LTSB 2016? With LTSB 2016 you need to install at least the kb4057142 update to resolve some Microsoft multi-monitor bugs.

We were having this problem with both LTSB 2016 with all the fixes installed - including this cumulative update - and lately with LTSC 2019. 
LTSC 2019 seems to have changed the EDID management behavior - EDID from physical outputs may now override the AMD driver settings even with "Force EDID" checked, which is disturbing. Other than that it seems to run stable and has way less unnecessary programs and services pre-installed.

 

8 hours ago, Miro said:

Also make sure to use WATCHOUT 6.3.1 where the timeout has been extended from 10 secs to 60 secs. It's also possible to use a -TimeOut parameter in order to extend the timeout even further. For example: "WATCHPOINT.EXE -TimeOut 120" will result in a two minute timeout.

Yes, we are using 6.3.1
To compare with AMD 17q4.1 we are also testing the current 19q1.1 version - it seems like all start-up routines speed-up significantly including S400 sync settings after reboot. 

Thank you again!

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 12/25/2018 at 7:10 PM, orfischer said:

Not the drivers from windows update, but an overall newer windows update.

We also follow the method of extracting the drivers (except for graphics card).

Without doing a recent update to Windows 10 LTSB, Watchout just crushes windows (and we have tried to do the list at least 7 times) The logical assumption for us is that our computer hardware is newer than the windows update suggested by the twicking guide, and therefore, it doesn’t operate optimally.

After doing the update, we were able to run Watchout smoothly and seamlessly pushing a very heavy 4x4k show.

 

On 12/13/2018 at 3:59 AM, orfischer said:

Hi All,

 

Here is our 2 cents about the list, after experimenting with building a solid 4x 4k computer with windows 10 1607 LTSB:

1. We went through the list item by item 4 times, and windows 10 always crushed right after going live for the first time to WO. It will go live once, and after a restart, windows will crush and not load up.

* apparently, our built hardware was too new for the recommended windows update (latest motherboard, M.2 drives, RAM, processor, and Graphics), so we believe that windows 10 didn’t know how to handle the hardware with installing the older suggested update from March 2018. 

We went ahead and installed the latest windows update, went through the list, and a SUPRISE - everything works so smoothly!

2. We installed the new WX8200 card which does not allow to use 2017 Q4 drivers. Windows will crush and not load up if you try to do step 12 part 1/3, and increase priority to the graphics card PCIE lane (as suggested in the guide) - we skipped this step, and all seem fine. 

For the test we run 2 different heavy 4x 4k shows with a single hap file at 10000 pixels wide, and another 2x 4k videos layered on top of it - all plays very smoothly. We even turned on live update and can edit and move content while everything is live.

Watchout is going into Christie Spyder X80 with EDID set to 3840 x 2160 @ 60hz. 

We hope this will save someone time and tons of stress.

Can you tell us which updates are those , because we had similar issues , we are using LTSB 1607

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On 2/27/2019 at 3:17 AM, Miro said:

... Also make sure to use WATCHOUT 6.3.1 where the timeout has been extended from 10 secs to 60 secs. It's also possible to use a -TimeOut parameter in order to extend the timeout even further. For example: "WATCHPOINT.EXE -TimeOut 120" will result in a two minute timeout. ...

Could you clarify please - is the -TimeOut command line parameter new to v6.3.1, or does it exist in earlier versions as well?

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The -TimeOut command was added in 6.3 so it's pretty new. A simple test to determine if you need to use a extended timeout is when WP.exe starts without issues but WATCHPOINT.exe doesn't.

WATCHPOINT.exe has a watchdog functionality and starts WP.exe and if WP.exe crashes or hangs (timeout), WATCHPOINT.exe will restart WP.exe. Therefore problems with infinite restarts are occurring if the window creation time is longer than the timeout.

Running WP.exe directly isn't really recommended unless you are using any third part watchdog/safeguard application.

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