10 doesn’t fix the desktop it fixes 8's reputation

I have seen various claims that Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, etc are not members of the NT family, that they are something completely new. This is false. Windows 10 is very much a member of the NT family and in fact the core concepts (and many of the details) of it's operation haven't changed all that much since NT (3.1) was released in 1993. This is needful. It would be very difficult to design something that was really new and yet maintain compatibility with the existing application base. A new OS that doesn't maintain this compatibility would be a very hard sell.

And NT wasn't really new either, being based on VMS, a popular mainframe OS of the 1980's. And it was based on systems that preceded it.

Windows 9x isn't a member of the NT family but shares much with it. The primary design goal of Windows 95 was to be able to run most 32 bit NT applications and still maintain full compatibility with the older 16 bit applications. NT supported only well behaved 16 bit applications and many were not.

Linux and the Mac OS are not based on NT but they have much in common.

Mystere said:

I would be very careful about that... Windows 8.x had a lot of problems with permissions when people took ownership of things, which eventually led to various problems down the road. Not always noticeable right away.

It's quite alright to do with a preview version, especially with vmware image backed up. It takes no time to boot up the backed up image...

Mystere said:

Explorer.exe is the basic shell, not just Windows File Explorer. It is also the start menu, and it has the integrated web search. So that's why it's connecting to other stuff. You can disable this.

I figured that much... Where do you disable the integrated web search in explorer? That I wasn't able to figure out...

Mystere said:

You really like to jump to crazy conclusions. Did you try to go to that address? If you do, it comes back as DuckDuckGo, the search engine that doesn't track you. Sounds like you installed some third party search tool. It's certainly not Microsoft.

I did not try any of the addresses, nor did I install third-party search tool. The "[System Process] 0", that made the connections to the two addresses, belongs to the NT kernel that has the PID of 0. The TCPview shows the name of the process, the Process ID, foreign address, etc. Maybe it connected to duckduckgo to search for something and didn't want to be tracked...

LMiller7 said:

And NT wasn't really new either, being based on VMS, a popular mainframe OS of the 1980's. And it was based on systems that preceded it.

Dave Cutler, who came form Digital to Microsoft, was instrumental in developing the first version of NT 3.0 His last involvement with the NT OS had been 2003 server SP1. While it is true that the current version of NT originated from the first version, there had been lot of changes. The version number of 3.x had grown to version 6.4 in W10, the first number is major while the second number is minor version changes. The version 6.x tree started with Vista and it is at 6.4 with W10. They are a far cry from vesion 4.x and 5.x...

LMiller7 said:

Linux and the Mac OS are not based on NT but they have much in common.

Yes, they are operating systems, but...

The Apple fans will disagree with you, the OSX is based on FreeBSD and not on Linux. And don't compare BSD to Linux for BSD fans. Their opinion of Linux is usually on the back of their t-shirt:

Cr00zng said:

I figured that much... Where do you disable the integrated web search in explorer? That I wasn't able to figure out...

I'm not referring to the Cortana search, but rather the primary one. When you first install, you call tell windows whether you want to use this search or not.. you can disable it again later in the Metro Control Panel.

Cr00zng said:

I did not try any of the addresses, nor did I install third-party search tool. The "[System Process] 0", that made the connections to the two addresses, belongs to the NT kernel that has the PID of 0. The TCPview shows the name of the process, the Process ID, foreign address, etc. Maybe it connected to duckduckgo to search for something and didn't want to be tracked...

I find it a bit too much of a coincidence that someone that is so paranoid about being tracked, did not go to a search site that's logged on his computer who's primary claim is not to track searches... Perhaps you're using a different tools that uses this search internally.

Mystere said:

I'm not referring to the Cortana search, but rather the primary one. When you first install, you call tell windows whether you want to use this search or not.. you can disable it again later in the Metro Control Panel.

If I am not mistaken, you're referring to is the Metro Search settings:



That does not stop the "explorer.exe" from connecting to the MS server. For that matter, it does not stop connecting to Bing either. Those settings just suppress the results from Bing.

The bing and some of the local searches results/tracking can be cleared, with some disclaimer; see the second image for details...

Mystere said:

I find it a bit too much of a coincidence that someone that is so paranoid about being tracked, did not go to a search site that's logged on his computer who's primary claim is not to track searches... Perhaps you're using a different tools that uses this search internally.

I know I am being tracked, it's not that. I just want to know who's's tracking and how. This is an updated OS and I have some reservation about its tracking features, based on the previous version. Some people don't care, but that's fine...

How do you figure that duckduckgo logged on to my computer? Especially in the case when the system process with PID 0 makes the connection to that site. Never mind that there's a hardware firewall between the system and the internet and then a software firewall on this system that blocks all inbound connection attempt from the internet. You lost me there...

And again, I did not install different tools for search purposes. This is a plain W10 install with Firefox, Sysinternal Tools, and WireShark. And yes, duckduckgo is the default search for IE11 and FF. I just fail to see why a kernel process would make a connection to the default search site.

Cr00zng said:

How do you figure that duckduckgo logged on to my computer? Especially in the case when the system process with PID 0 makes the connection to that site. Never mind that there's a hardware firewall between the system and the internet and then a software firewall on this system that blocks all inbound connection attempt from the internet. You lost me there...

And again, I did not install different tools for search purposes. This is a plain W10 install with Firefox, Sysinternal Tools, and WireShark. And yes, duckduckgo is the default search for IE11 and FF. I just fail to see why a kernel process would make a connection to the default search site.

You really can't admit when you're wrong, can you? You lambasted Microsoft for using Amazon for web services, which it turned out were services you yourself had configured your OS to use.

FYI, Windows has kernel model HTTP drivers.

Mystere said:

You really can't admit when you're wrong, can you? You lambasted Microsoft for using Amazon for web services, which it turned out were services you yourself had configured your OS to use.

FYI, Windows has kernel model HTTP drivers.

It's not a question of being right, or wrong. The question was how MS will track local and other searches in W10?

Yes, it could be that the kernel mode HTTP drivers, used by the system process in the captures, connections to duckduckgo is not related to the perceived tracking.

That's one of the connection that may not be part of the tracking, but Windows Explorer and Cortana are. Unless of course you'll tell me that I had configured the OS with these programs...

Blocking the two constant connection via the external firewall to MS servers by the"explorer.exe" resulted in a slower start up and to connect to one or two other MS server:



Subsequent start ups were at normal speed...

Since the current version is TR, MS may use these connections to collect error messages, performance data, etc., and will not be part of the RTM. I do hope that's the case, but but with other features in W10 that's unlikely in light of the previous Windows version. Certain searches in W8.x had been integrated with bing, even if on the surface one could disable it.

I have stated previously that MS is not the first one to integrate end user tracking in their software, there are others who had been doing that for years and years. As a business decision is probably the correct one from the financial perspective. Based on their market share, this could be very lucrative for MS.

I understand that most people like yourself do not care about being tracked, but I do. I will test the final version of W10 to see what call home features will remain. Thankfully, there are other options for OS, like previous versions of Windows, OSX, and if push comes to shove, there's Linux and FreeBSD. As the matter of fact, my OSX gets used more by now than Windows, so the transition shouldn't be that hard...

I didn't notice anything earth shattering in win-10 from 8.1
Wow they put a generic win flag as a start button wow that is tough and revolutionary :)
Start8 did that in seconds and did it better