I found this out the hard way. Now, I make a point of plugging in my peripherals to the same USB ports every time.
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Same experience here. I learnt the hard way before a gig when I used Cantabile two and completely screwed a setup up because my Focusrite interface did not like being in a USB 3 port.
Two lessons learnt that (very stressful) night:
- Label everything so you are consistent in plugging things in
- It’s no good having a backup 50 miles away at home!!!
For these two reasons I had to completely reprogramme my Cantabile 2 setup. I managed it with about 30 minutes to go!
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I had something similar happen when a Windows 10 update killed my Audiobox audio driver. From then on, I only activate my wifi on windows 10 when I choose to and observe the update. All other times, the wifi is off. No problems since. (I don’t use the laptop for any internet activities, only music).
I thought I was safe, because WIFI was always turned off at least a week before a gig…
… And then on my penultimate Welsh Floyd gig in 2017, we were setting up and sound checking and Windows 10 on my Cantabile machine decided to do a major update there and then on my laptop. I could do nothing. It took two hours, but fortunately I had a backup machine
You have been warned…
Since then I have replaced all copies of WIN10 home with WIN10 PRO, where you get to have control again, but I am also probably going to follow some of the advice on this forum and create a setup where I can kill all unnecessary processes when playing live, including the uprate service.
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To disable the updates, I tried uwt4 but windows found a workaround for that.
I now found out you can disable the update service or at least set to manual from the services app. It works, at least i get to choose now if the updates are downloaded and installed.
I disabled backups, indexing, defender also because those are huge CPU eaters.
Also i installed that app that tunes your processes for the best.
All seems to work ok,… for now. Windows always surprises me.
I love the guide from Brad, but i think we need a list of actions to prepare windows for live music.
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Which brings me to the optimisation again, I refreshed the list:
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Ahhh…
LOVE a Microsoft-bashing discussion! (I’m Microsoft certified up the wingwang…)
The company you hate to love; love to hate…
- USB can ‘move’ depending upon the drive and how windows chooses to install it. (Label everything’ is good advice.
- You can disable Windows update by configuring ALL network ports as ‘slow.’ (Just don’t let it join an ‘unkown’ WiFi network)
- If there’s ANY WAY for your computer to downgrade to Windows 8.1… It’s WAY more stable than 10 and gets the job DONE! if you’re shopping for a laptop, I HIGHLY recommend the Lenovo Y-70 that COMES with Win 8.1. It’s touchscreen, and comes standard with 16GB RAM over the top of an I7 (6th) processor… about $1,200, U.S… PLENTY of Horsepower, (I get about 5ms of delay using Focusrite 18i20 with three mics, stereo guitar, and keys, WITH effects, (EQ, Comp, Delay, Reverb), for vocals. Gotta optimize Windows like the man said though… Create a script that turns unneeded services (and startups) OFF! (I could go on…)
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The actual limit is 10 MIDI devices, and even of all drivers are installed correctly if it’s “slot” is 11 and above it will never work.
AFAIK, this “fault” is still in the Windows code, even at 10!!
There are some devices that re-load drivers (and consequently use a precious midi slot) each time you place it in a different USB port! As has been evidenced on this thread.
And don’t worry, Microsoft have been HAMMERED over the past decade over this, but it still has not changed,as i wrote afaik.
I do have to say, it (Windows MIDI problem) is much better. I haven’t had to clean out the device manager in a while. It seems like with 7, I had to clean it out once a week. Even with marked cables and USB ports.
Hi Richard
Just curious. What, specifically, do you clean out of device mgr?
Unplug all of your USB devices (esp. MIDI). Go to Device Manager. There is a setting “Show Hidden Devices”, I think on the View menu. Turn that on and look under “Sound, video, and game controllers”. Delete the greyed OUT instances of MIDI. When you get a dialog box, don’t choose to delete the driver. All of those greyed out instances are reservations Win has made for MIDI devices.
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Thanks very much. I remember doing that quite awhile back, but couldn’t remember how I did it. I was having the same problems. After I started using a hub, those problems stopped. I still put all my MIDI devices in the same ports anyway. Of course, I am still with Win 7. Thanks for the reminder. Never know when I might need it again.
Regards
Corky
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Downgrade to 8.1??? HORRORTUNE 
No, serious? I think windows will nag every hour to upgrade?
And also W10 is way more optimised for music, isn’t it?
Disable by turning network to slow? How about network connections you have then ? I need to do backups and stuff over wifi.
At that point USB OBLIVION is your friend (but do backup first!).
And as mentioned, you can get WIN10 pro licenses from Software Geeks for around £20. Well worth getting to get update control back
Had the same problems (updates, glitches, MIDI device not working) since spring 2017 when i replaced my Win7 laptop.
+1 for the MIDI device number tricks. I deleted some MIDI devices hidden in the Device Manager to solve the problem and carefully plug everything in the same place.
I’ve been using my computer for everyday life and stage for 10 years without problems until Windows 10, that have been a nightmare.
The biggest problem being having glitches far too often. Looking into Task Manager, many problems were coming from Cortana, Windows Update, and other unwanted stuff running in the background.
I finally used “Destroy Windows Spying” 6 weeks ago after a complete system backup, as this a pretty radical process. But my nerves feel better since. Getting an error message when you click the “Windows Update” button is a bliss…
Did anybody had problems with DWS ?
Hi
I’ve never heard of DWS before, so googled it, and one of the first things that comes back is this article
Not saying it is right, but probably worth a read …
W10 vs. W 8.1 - The opposite is true RE: Automatic Update. In fact, W10 updates weather you want it to or not - It’s actually FORCED! (The only way around it is to configure ALL POSSIBLE CONNECTIONS to be ‘SLOW’ - W10 will not update on a ‘SLOW’ connection. The problem with that is when you connect to another (WiFi) network.) You can edit a simple policy setting (as I have) to completely disable Automatic Update on W8.1 ( or previous) or simply turn updating off.
I will not allow W10 to run on my (or my client’s) computers!
- I’m MCSE, MCT, Azure Dude… 37 years of computer experience…
Or upgrade to WIN10 Pro (you can get OEM licenses for around £20) and get control of your updates back
Just reminder that if you happen to have Windows 7 Pro for some reason you can use it’s key to activate Windows 10 Pro:
Just because you TELL Windows that the connection is slow, doesn’t mean that it actually throttles the connection. You still get the same wire speed/bandwidth.