Everyone knows OS and software, browsers, etc all use way more RAM than they used to, and arguably more than they rightfully should. Bloatware, etc.
I saw something recently that alleged MS puts a lot of shit into PCs that say they are doing one thing but are really doing another.
It would be wild if they are basically using the PCs of the world to do something like crunch numbers, mine bitcoin, etc. Oh, hey, this guy has 12 gigs of ram and is only "using" 4, that's 8 for us to sap.
If you have even an ounce of knowledge of how your PC works, it would be extremely easy to spot this.
For the record, I trust Microsoft exactly 0%. Windows 10 will likely be the last Microsoft OS I'm ever forced to use, and only because Visual Studio is still the best IDE out there.
That said, even process monitor will let you know if your computer is doing something other than idling. Your fans will let you know if your computer is doing something other than idling. If your computer is doing heavy number crunching or bitcoin mining, you will know it because it will sound like a leaf blower and performance will be shit.
So yes, they're absolutely spying on you; probably every damn keystroke. But no, they almost certainly aren't using your PC as a Beowulf cluster node.
I don't know. I have two miniPCs of the exact same specs, one runs linux, one runs Windows 11 (for multiplayer games with cucked anticheat only). the Windows machine is constantly spending its fan up and going into fighter jet mode when I'm doing nothing on it. the Linux machine only does that when I try to load the flatpack store.
This is correct, open up Windows task manager, add the CPU time column and sort by CPU time, look at the processes on the top, most of them are background crap, and that is just the stuff that doesn't end the process after days.
NGEN and CompatTelRunner totally spin up the fans (NGEN especially if you are a .net developer). CompatTelRunner is literally Microsoft running a benchmark on your CPU before and after every Windows Update. NGEN is just a poorly optimized thing that searches for every single .NET executable on your computer and runs an optimized AOT compile on it, go into task scheduler and disable that crap.
The XZ Utils backdoor was a lot more subtle than this, and it was still exposed in about a month. I do have my suspicions that the Recall feature is spyware - I don't trust Microsoft to process screenshots of everything you do into a compact digest and not to exfiltrate that digest - but that's a process that makes no secret of what it's doing that is 90% of the way to being up to no good.
Debian Sid is clearly marked 'unstable'
Was patched about 2 years ago
I have a laptop I never use because it manages to run at 100% ram and CPU when I'm doing nothing. Windows 10. I've tried uninstalling stuff and ran a half dozen malware detection programs that found nothing. All I can assume is that it's the OS hogging up my resources, but no clue what it's for. Even the task manager doesn't make sense, because it will just say that the usage is some random program, like a single open browser window, on it's home screen.
And yeah, it sounds like a leaf blower at all times. I never considered Microsoft was using my resources for anything external, but I had never really thought about it either. Is there something else you thing it would be?
You could have caught a virus that mines crypto. I doubt microsoft is mining bitcoin - their market cap is higher than all the world’s bitcoin. They have too much to lose if they get caught
RAM usage isn't (generally) anything to worry about. 100% CPU on the other hand is a problem.
It's difficult to really go into all of the surgery that you'd need to track down what malware or misbehaving program/driver might be causing it, so my suggestion would be to reinstall Windows. If you're getting 100% CPU usage when doing nothing, you've got a problem.
Okay cool. Thanks for the info man. I think I'll be dusting it off this weekend, and give a reinstall a shot.
Did you buy it new or used?
New
sounds like a potato that shouldn't be running w10
It was a decent gaming rig that came with w10 from the start
Reinstall Windows. It tends to clog up over time. A friend of mine had serious performance issues in games because she never once reinstalled it in 7 years. Once she did the problems were gone. Also best to install it without all the bloatware crap via an autounattend file.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDEZDD_gEbo
Or better just go for Linux. CachyOS or Bazzite are pretty good. I personally use CachyOS. Runs 10x faster than Windows, haven't encountered a game yet I can't play and I have less shit to deal with than with Windows.
If that was the case then there wouldn't be botnets.
Yes, there are botnets, mostly on the PCs of people who are clueless about how anything works.
If Microsoft tried anything like that out-of-the-box, at least one or two of their hundreds of millions of users might notice it and say something.
Except, if everyone idles "hot" because everyone uses Windows 10 then everyone will think their hot idling is actually cold idling.
The only way to really test it is compare Windows idling to Linux idling and if your PC components are slightly more utilized under Windows than Linux, it is possible that difference is due to MS doing something for their benefit with your hardware.