Friday, 2021 Oct 8                    Windows 11 Review (Preliminary)

The computer (named Stirling) is new, home built, first booted in February, 2021. AMD Ryzen 9 5950X Processor, ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero Motherboard, Corsair Force MP600 500GB M.2, plus 7 rotating disks for a total of 24TB. It ran Windows 10 Professional, fully updated, now Windows 11 Professional. It met every requirement for the "upgrade" to Windows 11 and then some.

The Good News:

After backing up Windows 10, the Win 11 installation was done "in place" on Stirling using the Windows 11 Installation Assistant. It booted up just once, and was ready to go with Windows 11. Impressive:

• Even the placement of the icons on my double-monitor desktop is unchanged.  
• Every application (e.g. .exe) still works, including some that are 20 years old. 
• I have written thousands of lines of code in command-line script, and all of that still works. 
• Even the Windows 10 bugs are still there. If you use command-line script, you know what I mean. 
• So the good news is that Microsoft didn't break the really important stuff.

The Bad News:

• Toolbars can no longer be attached to the taskbar. This is huge, more about it below. 
• Some Windows utilities, such as the Task Manager, are no longer accessible through the taskbar. 
• Sound is changed - the maximum volume is much lower on my two HDMI monitors, too soft to hear. I'll work on that.
• Certain screens are flaky, e.g. right-click menus may disappear for no reason, and you have to right-click again.
• Menus are different, for no obvious reason. Not better, just different, especially the right-click menus. 
• Things that were accessible with one click now often require two or more clicks. Windows is harder to use.

So What?:

Except for the loss of toolbars, all of those "bad news" items are minor problems. There is a workaround for each of them, though I certainly made very good use of toolbars on the taskbar and will search high and low for the best functional equivalent. I WANT MY TOOLBARS! They saved a lot of mouse clicks and provided a kind of personal environment. Taking them away was a huge mistake. I hope there's a registry patch, or a simple executable that will do what the taskbar did in Win 10.

Bottom line: In my opinion Windows 11 is not at all better, just different, and not in a good way. There is probably a marketing reason why Microsoft created Windows 11. Perhaps it will help sell Windows and Windows-based computers to new buyers. It does help to enforce some security enhancements, so that's a good thing. Otherwise, for long-time loyal users like me, it's just a pain in the you know what.

My advice: 

Don't upgrade yet. I wish I hadn't. Maybe I'll roll it back.

2021 09 17                                           Forte and Windows 11 

Windows 11 sort of sneaked up on me. My fault of course, not paying attention, but Microsoft says October 5, 2021, less than three weeks from today. We'll see. 

Microsoft did have an application called the "PC Health Check App," which could run on a destination computer and determine whether that computer met their Windows 11 requirements, but the scuttlebutt is that it was thoroughly flawed (with source code unavailable of course) and it has been withdrawn. As of today, September 17, the page for it still says "COMING SOON."  It's been coming soon for a while now.

However, there is a page on Microsoft.com which does purport to set forth the requirements for Windows 11.  Happily, there are others besides Microsoft who have read these requirements and put them in an application. In particular, there is a Windows application called WhyNotWin11.exe on GitHub: This app is open source and peer reviewed (unlike any Microsoft apps), written by by Robert Maehl, downloaded 869,000 times so far. Might be a good thing to support. 

WhyNotWin11.exe puts all of Microsoft's Windows 11 stated requirements into a nice display. You see two of those displays here. One is for a twelve-year-old HP Dv7t laptop, which has been updated from Windows Vista all the way to Windows 10. That one shows a lot of Windows 11 deficiencies. The other is for the Forte computer, built just this summer, showing no deficiencies. 

Bill of Materials

Of course even the old laptop might be upgraded to meet the Windows 11 requirements, and perhaps some of the requirements might not really be necessary to get Windows 11 running. For example, that ancient laptop has neither a discrete TPM nor a firmware TPM, but it has BitLocker encryption working just fine and quite securely on its (one and only) disk drive anyway. Experience will tell us what will actually work with Windows 11. 

Forte did initially have a deficiency, according to WhyNotWin11: The Vision Tech Radeon 5450 Graphics Card did not meet the Win 11 DirectX or WDDM requirements. Therefore that card has been replaced by the ASUS NVIDIA GT710 “4H SL 2GD5" Graphics Card, which I know will qualify and which is probably better anyway. See the revised Bill of Materials.

By the way, Forte is for sale. You can see what it cost, and I do expect to receive some benefit from my work in building it, so make me an offer. Note, however, that I will not ship it, and will only deliver it in the Twin Cities Minnesota metropolitan area. It can come with Windows 10 or Windows 11, your choice. Either way, it's a really hot computer!

 2021 09 16                 Forte, ASUS BIOS Version 3801, and TPM             

                                                      BIOS Version 3801

This was installed in the motherboard on August 13, 2021, and as far as I can tell it behaves exactly the same on the Forte computer as did the Beta version 3703, which is  no longer downloadable. It feels now almost like a finished product. I also installed it on my main computer, Stirling 2021.

It still has the "Improved System Performance" bug described in an earlier post titled Forte Performance 002 and dated August 6, 2021, https://buildmyown.blogspot.com/2021/08/2021-08-06-performance-002-woohoo-asus.html, but that is not a problem for me. I just leave the "Improved System Performance" feature alone and use the Overclocking Presets instead. Specifically: BIOS > Extreme Tweaker > Overclocking Presets > (Load Generic OC Preset). The August 6 post mentioned above has more about that.

Again, here is the computer:

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, 7nm technology;
• G Skill Trident Z Neo F4-4000 Memory 32GB;
• ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. Motherboard, BIOS Version 3801;
• be quiet brand BK022 Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler;
• WD Black 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 Drive;
• WD Gold 10TB Enterprise Class rotating SATA disk drive;
• VisionTek Radeon 5450 Graphics card, BUT SEE NEXT POST.

                                                                 TPM

Some processors have a built-in firmware TPM (Trusted Platform Module), especially AMD processors I think. I did an experiment to see if my Ryzen 9 5950X processor has it: Remove the discrete TPM module from the motherboard, reboot with Advanced > Advanced\AMD fTPM configuration > Selects TPM Device > Enable Firmware TPM. The firmware is apparently in the processor, not the motherboard. After booting, run Manage BitLocker, then TPM Administration (lower left corner), then appears a window labeled TPM Management on Local Computer. 

There are options here, but if BitLocker is not to be used right away, you can just check to see that it's available. On mine, the Status window says "The TPM is ready for use."

In the window labeled "TPM Manufacturer Information" the following information is displayed, depending on which TPM is selected:

• Firmware TPM: Mfgr Name: AMD,  Mfgr Version: 3.58.0.5,  Specification Version: 2.0
• Discrete TPM: Mfgr Name: IFX,  Mfgr Version: 5.63.3353.0,  Specification Version 2.0

1. Note that you may see different information.
2. Note that the specification version must be 2.0 (or greater if greater exists). 
3. Note also that a TPM will be required for Windows 11, coming soon. It must be available.
4. Note that the Forte computer qualifies with two different TPMs.
5. Note that you are not required to use BitLocker or either TPM. BitLocker is simply available if you want the additional security.

I'm not certain that the discrete TPM module provides any advantage over the processor's TPM during use, but it's removable, so if the drives are BitLocker encrypted and the computer is to be shipped somewhere or left idle for a time, the TPM module could be removed from the mobo and secured elsewhere. This would render the data on the computer quite useless. 

If the processor contains the active TPM, then a naughty party needs only the password to the computer (depending on the BitLocker setup), but if the discrete module contains the TPM, then the naughty party needs both the module and the password. I suggest you try this before you depend on it. 

Set Erase fTPM to Disable

WARNING: The two ASUS motherboards that I have will try to CLEAR the TPM when anything major is done, like updating the BIOS, setting the BIOS to its defaults, or even choosing the Overclocking Presets described above. Therefore, if any drives are BitLocker encrypted, then every time that you boot into the BIOS, the last thing to do before exiting the BIOS is check Advanced > Advanced\AMD fTPM configuration > "Erase fTPM NV for factory reset" and make sure that it says "Disabled." In case I forget this I have always UN-BitLockered (Decrypted) all drives before making any BIOS changes, to avoid the damage that might be caused by leaving that selection in the Enabled state.

Please please ALWAYS keep a record of BitLocker keys in a secure place, no matter what. If you like to think of yourself as a professional, and you lose your BitLocker keys, there is a good argument that you are not yet a professional. More about this in the blog post dated 2021 06 16. https://buildmyown.blogspot.com/2021/06/2021-06-16-security-ok-so-far-new.html

2021 08 06                         Forte Performance 002

Woohoo! ASUS has solved my problem. Until a week ago I couldn't make my new, hot computer work hard enough to get its CPU temperature above 65 degrees C. 

Enter ASUS BIOS Version 3703 for the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero motherboard. Now we're getting somewhere. It's almost as if ASUS was reading my blog (which I'm pretty sure they're not!).

Again, here is the computer:

• AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with 16 cores and 32 threads, 7nm technology.

  

  Generic OC Parameters

  
  
• G Skill Trident Z Neo F4-4000 32GB Memory.
• ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. Motherboard, BIOS Version 3703.
• be quiet brand BK022 Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU cooler.
• WD Black 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 4 Drive.
• WD Gold 10TB Enterprise Class rotating SATA disk drive.
• VisionTek Radeon 5450 Graphics card.

Water-cooled OC Parameters

The ASUS BIOS now has two sets of preset overclocking (OC) parameters. I don't think that those were there before this BIOS version. I swear they weren't there! Since I've overwritten the previous BIOS version, I can't tell. However, they're not in the ASUS ROG Crosshair VIII Hero, BIOS Version 3601, which is very similar to the Dark Hero BIOS. 

They're accessed as follows: Extreme Tweaker > Overclocking Presets > (Load Generic OC Preset) or (Load Water-cooled OC Preset). Two choices. I tried them both, along with no presets at all. The detailed results are documented in a table below.

Bottom line:

Using these presets, the CPU can easily reach temperatures exceeding 85 C, and up to 90 C. With the CPU working that hard, the performance in the CineBench 10-minute test increases from about 24,974 at the default presets to about 28,395 with the generic OC presets, or 28,410 with the water-cooled presets.  In both cases, the overclocking improves the CineBench score by about 13.7%. That might be enough to make a difference in some applications, including gaming. 

Note that there is only a trivial difference between the results from the two different presets. Therefore the "generic" version is to be preferred because it is much simpler.

Results Table

Disclaimers:

1. This computer may not be telling the whole truth, however. While I believe that the humongous 3-fan Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU air cooler is equivalent to a decent water cooler, it may not be. I don't really know. Or I may not have made the best thermal connection from the CPU to the cooler, who knows. Further, version 3703 for the Dark Hero motherboard is intended to work with several different AMD CPUs, so these results are specific to the AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, not any other AMD CPU.
2. This BIOS version is a Beta version. Included in its description on the ASUS website is the following: "Please note that this is a beta BIOS version of the motherboard which is still undergoing final testing before its official release."

No matter. I don't really have a destination for the Forte computer yet, so for now it's set back to the default presets, which limit the maximum CPU temperature to about 65 C. 

BIOS Version 3703 Bug:

There is another issue with the BIOS Version 3703 on this motherboard with this CPU: In the EzMode screen, upper right corner, is EZ System Tuning. Theoretically this allows the selection of "Improved system performance," "Energy Savings," or "Normal." It doesn't work properly, though, because once you have selected "improved system performance," resulting in a CPU clock of 4000 MHz, you can't unselect it again. Furthermore, you can't select "Energy Savings" at all. Even if you get EZ System Tuning to show "Normal" again, the CPU clock remains at 4000 MHz, even after a reboot. It seems to be a software bug, and it existed in the previous BIOS version as well.