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#1
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Why is the Windows Experience Index re-computed every week?
I was sitting at my computer reading some web articles when suddenly the
desktop theme changed from Aero to Basic. I hadn't done anything. I only have one batch file that disables the Desktop Composition Service (for Stream games that incorrectly bitch too late that they've run out of GUI resources). I wasn't running that batch file. The anomaly happened exactly at 1 AM and corrected itself in about a minute. I found in Event Viewer two events: - A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (Windows System Assessment Tool). - The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because composition was disabled by a running application. The Windows System Assessment Tool is found under Control Panel - Performance Information and Tools. This is where run it to get Microsoft's "Windows Experience Index (WEI)" performance score for your computer (mine is 7.2). I didn't run this tool, so what did? I noticed the fans changed speed because there was a lot going on at the time, like a lot of disk activity and a video flicker when the screen went black for a couple seconds. When the desktop theme switched, I recognized the effect because I've done this in a batch file to keep a game from issuing bogus bitching. There are a lot of scheduled events in Task Scheduler, far more than I've defined. Those are there by default or added when you install programs, plus some programs use Task Scheduler instead of running their own scheduler process. Alas, Task Scheduler does not let you filter its scheduled events by selecting a time range for when the scheduled events are planned to run. During the time WinSAT was running, I could've use Display Running Tasks in Task Scheduler but I didn't discover the cause of the desktop theme switch until the Aero theme had been restored. I tried searching C:\Windows\System32\Tasks for the "winsat.exe" string using FileLocator Lite using "*" for all filenames and "winsat" for the string to look inside the files. It found: C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Mainte nance\WinSAT I went back into Task Scheduler and navigated down to: Task Scheduler (local) \__ Task Scheduler Library \__ Microsoft \__ Windows \__ Maintenance and sure enough there was a WinSAT scheduled event that runs at 1 AM every Sunday. What the ****! Why does Microsoft want to know out computer's SAT score? I don't know that it was actually transmitted out of my PC but why run it if not to report the value that required running the intensive test? It's some telemetry tracking by Microsoft but I don't see the point of collecting such a crappy score. While I can see the scheduled event and see its trigger (1 AM every Sunday), I cannot look under the Actions tab to see the command that it runs. Instead it shows as "Custom Handler" and the Edit button won't let me peek inside. It is scheduled to run 10 minutes after the computer goes idle. I was spending some time reading an article, so that became the idle time for this scheduled event to run. I happened to be there to see it run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window...ssessment_Tool That mentions running WinSAT at 1 AM every Sunday but not what the hell it needs to run at all. Why re-compute this score every week? If it is not uploaded for telemetry purposes, why waste the CPU/GPU cycles to run it? I have, for now, disabled this scheduled event in Task Manager (although deleting its trigger event would've also worked). I just don't understand why the WEI score gets re-computed every week. Many users don't even know about this tool. Those that do only run it after a major change, like they put in a new and faster CPU, more or faster memory, a new video card, or migrated the OS (cloned it) or moved the HDD/SDD to a different mobo. |
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#2
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Why is the Windows Experience Index re-computed every week?
VanguardLH wrote:
I was sitting at my computer reading some web articles when suddenly the desktop theme changed from Aero to Basic. I hadn't done anything. I only have one batch file that disables the Desktop Composition Service (for Stream games that incorrectly bitch too late that they've run out of GUI resources). I wasn't running that batch file. The anomaly happened exactly at 1 AM and corrected itself in about a minute. I found in Event Viewer two events: - A request to disable the Desktop Window Manager was made by process (Windows System Assessment Tool). - The Desktop Window Manager was unable to start because composition was disabled by a running application. The Windows System Assessment Tool is found under Control Panel - Performance Information and Tools. This is where run it to get Microsoft's "Windows Experience Index (WEI)" performance score for your computer (mine is 7.2). I didn't run this tool, so what did? I noticed the fans changed speed because there was a lot going on at the time, like a lot of disk activity and a video flicker when the screen went black for a couple seconds. When the desktop theme switched, I recognized the effect because I've done this in a batch file to keep a game from issuing bogus bitching. There are a lot of scheduled events in Task Scheduler, far more than I've defined. Those are there by default or added when you install programs, plus some programs use Task Scheduler instead of running their own scheduler process. Alas, Task Scheduler does not let you filter its scheduled events by selecting a time range for when the scheduled events are planned to run. During the time WinSAT was running, I could've use Display Running Tasks in Task Scheduler but I didn't discover the cause of the desktop theme switch until the Aero theme had been restored. I tried searching C:\Windows\System32\Tasks for the "winsat.exe" string using FileLocator Lite using "*" for all filenames and "winsat" for the string to look inside the files. It found: C:\Windows\System32\Tasks\Microsoft\Windows\Mainte nance\WinSAT I went back into Task Scheduler and navigated down to: Task Scheduler (local) \__ Task Scheduler Library \__ Microsoft \__ Windows \__ Maintenance and sure enough there was a WinSAT scheduled event that runs at 1 AM every Sunday. What the ****! Why does Microsoft want to know out computer's SAT score? I don't know that it was actually transmitted out of my PC but why run it if not to report the value that required running the intensive test? It's some telemetry tracking by Microsoft but I don't see the point of collecting such a crappy score. While I can see the scheduled event and see its trigger (1 AM every Sunday), I cannot look under the Actions tab to see the command that it runs. Instead it shows as "Custom Handler" and the Edit button won't let me peek inside. It is scheduled to run 10 minutes after the computer goes idle. I was spending some time reading an article, so that became the idle time for this scheduled event to run. I happened to be there to see it run. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window...ssessment_Tool That mentions running WinSAT at 1 AM every Sunday but not what the hell it needs to run at all. Why re-compute this score every week? If it is not uploaded for telemetry purposes, why waste the CPU/GPU cycles to run it? I have, for now, disabled this scheduled event in Task Manager (although deleting its trigger event would've also worked). I just don't understand why the WEI score gets re-computed every week. Many users don't even know about this tool. Those that do only run it after a major change, like they put in a new and faster CPU, more or faster memory, a new video card, or migrated the OS (cloned it) or moved the HDD/SDD to a different mobo. The Wikipedia article says that, on Windows 8, the scheduled task runs, but it checks hardware inventory first. If the inventory is the same as last week, it doesn't re-compute the scores. The article doesn't state whether Win7 does the same thing. That section of the article has no cites either, so no idea where the information to write that section came from. It could be, that similar to how DMI/ESCD used to operate, if the computer cannot properly store the results of an operation, it causes the operation to be repeated at the next available opportunity. This is how you can wear out the Flash on a BIOS, if the DMI/ESCD doesn't parse the CPU type properly (CPU=unknown), so that DMI runs every time and tries to update it with "unknown". Which just wears out the BIOS flash where that information is supposed to be stored. I would look to see if the test is updating any files that record such things. Different societies have a different level of interest in WinSAT. Some are quite enthusiastic, and will waste good money getting high scores, just for bragging right. I haven't heard any such discussions in a newsgroup about this, for quite some time. In Windows 10, the theory was, that the Optimize (defragmenter) was using WinSAT information to tell SSDs apart from regular rotating hard drives. Again, I can find no authoritative comments to back up this idea. The differences in the SMART tables, between storage families, is just as effective an indication what family a device belongs to. And speaking of that, I noticed in 1809, the old bug is back, where the Optimize panel is confusing slow HDDs as SSDs and vice versa. It offered to defragment my SSD last week, and also changes the label to indicate it was "a HDD". It wasn't defragmenting because of COW, it offered to defrag because it thought the thing was a HDD. Unhooking WinSAT in Task Scheduler as you have, sounds like the best medicine. Paul |
#3
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Why is the Windows Experience Index re-computed every week?
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 01:38:10 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
I went back into Task Scheduler and navigated down to: Task Scheduler (local) \__ Task Scheduler Library \__ Microsoft \__ Windows \__ Maintenance and sure enough there was a WinSAT scheduled event that runs at 1 AM every Sunday. What the ****! Why does Microsoft want to know out computer's SAT score? Thanks for posting this. I thought I had useless Windows tasks turned off, but every so often when I log on (or return from hibernation), the hard drive will be accessed continuously and the computer unresponsive for several minutes. I wonder if this was responsible -- it was set to run weekly, like yours. But that's just the tip of the iceberg! There are a zillion other tasks in the "Microsoft Windows" branch, some with reasonable explanations and others completely obscure. Several do relate to collecting information and sending it to Microsoft. One confusing and annoying thing is that a task can show as ready in the task list, you open the special Properties window to edit it, ad the "Enable" box is not checked, so it's actually disabled. Not a very helpful user interface. -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://BrownMath.com/ http://OakRoadSystems.com/ Shikata ga nai... |
#4
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Why is the Windows Experience Index re-computed every week?
Stan Brown wrote:
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 01:38:10 -0600, VanguardLH wrote: I went back into Task Scheduler and navigated down to: Task Scheduler (local) \__ Task Scheduler Library \__ Microsoft \__ Windows \__ Maintenance and sure enough there was a WinSAT scheduled event that runs at 1 AM every Sunday. What the ****! Why does Microsoft want to know out computer's SAT score? Thanks for posting this. I thought I had useless Windows tasks turned off, but every so often when I log on (or return from hibernation), the hard drive will be accessed continuously and the computer unresponsive for several minutes. I wonder if this was responsible -- it was set to run weekly, like yours. But that's just the tip of the iceberg! There are a zillion other tasks in the "Microsoft Windows" branch, some with reasonable explanations and others completely obscure. Several do relate to collecting information and sending it to Microsoft. One confusing and annoying thing is that a task can show as ready in the task list, you open the special Properties window to edit it, ad the "Enable" box is not checked, so it's actually disabled. Not a very helpful user interface. I'll have to review the Windows events in Task Scheduler. There are lots of them that are unwanted. For example, I opted out of the Customer Experience telemetry crap, and yet there is a scheduled event whose comment is: Aggregates and uploads Application Telemetry information if opted-in to the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. So it collects the telemetry data and I have to assume that it does not get sent because I opted out - but why bother to run the scheduled event to collect the telemetry data at all if it isn't going to be sent? I thought autochk had to do with running chkdsk on Windows startup if the dirty bit was set on a drive, but in Task Scheduler there is an AutoChk event that says it is another part of the Customer Experience crap. A lot of these events list "Custom Handler" for the trigger or action or both, so I haven't a clue when they run or what they run. Geez, now I get to waste time researching each of these to see what I should disable, like all the Customer Experience telemetry turds. Some of the categories (folders) are empty, so why create them? DUH! The problem is having to monitor all of these that I change. Microsoft could re-enable them or delete and recreate them in an "update". |
#5
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Why is the Windows Experience Index re-computed every week?
On Sun, 16 Dec 2018 10:09:56 -0600, VanguardLH wrote:
I'll have to review the Windows events in Task Scheduler. There are lots of them that are unwanted. For example, I opted out of the Customer Experience telemetry crap, and yet there is a scheduled event whose comment is: Aggregates and uploads Application Telemetry information if opted-in to the Microsoft Customer Experience Improvement Program. So it collects the telemetry data and I have to assume that it does not get sent because I opted out - but why bother to run the scheduled event to collect the telemetry data at all if it isn't going to be sent? Yes, that's one of the items I noticed too. Like you, I had opted out of the CEIP. I guess Microsoft keeps running the task in case we change our minds, or more likely in case they push a Windows 7 update that sends that information even if you opt out. And before someone makes remarks about tinfoil hats -- A recent How- To Geek points out that Windows 10 does exactly that. https://www.howtogeek.com/fyi/window...ivity-history- to-microsoft-even-if-you-tell-it-not-to/ -- Stan Brown, Oak Road Systems, Tompkins County, New York, USA http://BrownMath.com/ http://OakRoadSystems.com/ Shikata ga nai... |
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