KSP and Windows 10

[Apollo13]

I've been playing KSP on a Win 7 Home Edition System.  I play many other games as well, such as Skyrim, some FPSs, some old school (like Silent Hunter 4).

I'm about to push that button in the bottom right of my desktop that updates me to Win 10.

1)  How has KSP 1.1 (64-bit) run for you in Win 10?  Any issues?  Problems?

2)  Have you seen problems in your other games, including older ones?

3)  Any other horrors I should consider or expect? (yeah, that's a really broad question)

I have over 80 games in Steam.  I'm a  SCS senior beta tester for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, so they MUST work (I'm in those forums as well, obviously).

I've done a bunch of Googling and found some opinions and facts.  Now, I look directly to the KSP community for their collective experience.

thanks

Edited April 24, 2016 by Apollo13

[RocketSquid]

KSP works wonderfully for me in windows 10, as do most of the steam games I've actually tried to run. The only issues I've had are the well-known start menu bug, which went away when I restarted (but not just when I turned off and turned it back on. I actually had to click "restart"), and that sometimes, when I launch certain games, my desktop becomes disorganized. And of course, if you do have any problems with your games, you can just run them in compatibility mode.

[InsaneDruid]

101 Games on Steam and zero issues.

 

[N_Danger]

 No problems with win 10( much better experience than Vista or win 8.1) and steam. Just be aware that win 10 has a lot of tracking and info gathering as a default and the first thing I did was turn a lot of that crap off.

[Mahnarch]

I was in 1.0.5 when I upgraded a little over a month ago.

You can't really tell a difference, except a few color changes (header is white, instead of yellow, etc)

[severedsolo]

I run the Windows 10 Insider build, which is by definition, pre-release software, and it's stable enough to run as my main OS.

With the last stable build (November update, I forget the build number) I had zero problems with KSP.

On the subject of older games, REALLY old games with bad DRM/Copy protection in them (I'm looking at you SimCity 4) may not run, because Windows 10 won't let them out of the sandbox. It's a simple enough fix, you just download an exe that doesn't have the copy protection in it (not a bad idea anyway to stop you wearing out your disks).

Edited April 24, 2016 by severedsolo

[Pecan]

The only game I've had issues with is Skyrim - specifically the unofficial bug-fix mod.  KSP 1.0.5 (32-bit) and 1.1 (64-bit) are good so far.

On the other hand ... having come from Win 7 like you, I've got plenty of issues with Win 10 itself.
First - you will find the 'start menu' actively awful.  It's not as totally bad as Win 8/8.1 - how could it be! - but you'll almost certainly want to download and install the (free) Classic Shell or similar start-menu replacer.
Second - every single one of the Win 10 'apps' are completely useless on a desktop and several of them grab system resources whether you want them to or not.  Expect to spend an hour or two clearing them out - except the ones that MS insist on you having (Cortana, Xbox, etc.)
Third - Win 10 goes another step in locking-down the OS, making it even harder to stop MS controlling your computer, let alone actually being able to control it the way you want to.  It has convinced me to dual-boot Linux just so I can make sure I know what's on machine and what's on my machine is only what I want on it..

If you delete, replace or disable just about all the 'features' you'll be able to get an OS nearly as good as Win 7, with the advantage of virtual desktops.  Win 10 isn't inherently bad, it just goes out of its way to be.

[Freshmeat]

The only gamebraker I know of is the fact that Win 10 will not talk to the plugin that drives most custom built controllers (KSPSerialIO), and probably keep doing it So if you are looking into that kind of stuff, I would not upgrade (I'll stick to my Win7 enterprise, thank you very much)

[qromodynmc]

Ksp works wonderfully on my laptop, i got around 50 other games, they all work fine too.

Other than games, my pc runs faster, opens and closes faster, they are all good for me.

[DoctorDavinci]

3 hours ago, Apollo13 said:

I've been playing KSP on a Win 7 Home Edition System.  I play many other games as well, such as Skyrim, some FPSs, some old school (like Silent Hunter 4).

I'm about to push that button in the bottom right of my desktop that updates me to Win 10.

1)  How has KSP 1.1 (64-bit) run for you in Win 10?  Any issues?  Problems?

2)  Have you seen problems in your other games, including older ones?

3)  Any other horrorsI should consider or expect? (yeah, that's a really broad question)

I have over 80 games in Steam.  I'm a  SCS senior beta tester for Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator, so they MUST work (I'm in those forums as well, obviously).

I've done a bunch of Googling and found some opinions and facts.  Now, I look directly to the KSP community for their collective experience.

thanks

Well Silent Hunter 3 and 4 work quite nicely on my Win 10 machine as well as Skyrim so I wouldn't expect too many issues if you click that upgrade button.

As for the Win 10 crap-ware, you can get rid of most of it fairly easily although Cortana is a bit of a hassle to disable but it can be done ... There are many ways documented on the net to get rid of the crap-ware, google is your friend

Perhaps you may want to back up your Win 7 install before you upgrade as there is the possibility that you may get frustrated with 10 although I'm pretty sure you wont have any major issues

 

[superm18]

No problems on my end.

Pro tip...use God Mode...http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-3016049/enable-god-mode-windows.html

[dr_jt]

6 hours ago, N_Danger said:

 No problems with win 10( much better experience than Vista or win 8.1) and steam. Just be aware that win 10 has a lot of tracking and info gathering as a default and the first thing I did was turn a lot of that crap off.

 

Get SpybotAntiBeacon to shut it all off. I'm not affiliated with them at all. I just came across an article in a Windows tech letter I get that said it was a program that would turmn off everything including hidden call home things you didn't know about.

1 hour ago, superm18 said:

No problems on my end.

Pro tip...use God Mode...http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/faq/id-3016049/enable-god-mode-windows.html

 

This was also available in Win 7. It's kind of neat and I used it when I was a sys-admin for my last employer.

7 hours ago, RocketSquid said:

KSP works wonderfully for me in windows 10, as do most of the steam games I've actually tried to run. The only issues I've had are the well-known start menu bug, which went away when I restarted (but not just when I turned off and turned it back on. I actually had to click "restart"), and that sometimes, when I launch certain games, my desktop becomes disorganized. And of course, if you do have any problems with your games, you can just run them in compatibility mode.

 

Check out Fences from Stardock. It lets you organise your desktop really nicely. It's 10 buck USA and worth it. I have nothing to do with Stardock. I've just used Fences since it was freeware. Now it's 10 bucks and I was sad but got it anyway.

[TonyC]

I updated to windows 10 last week, and since then I didn't have a single issue with Windows 10, regarding KSP.

[RA3236]

Well, other than some problems with the start menu on W10, I'm good.

And by issues I mean I sometimes have to force shutdown.

[Gordon Fecyk]

There are at least four responses referring to a Start Menu problem. By any chance are you using NVidia Shadowplay and trying to record KSP games using it?

I'm finding leaving Shadowplay turned on makes the Windows 10 Start and Taskbar stop responding more than turning it off. It's at the point where I make sure I turn it off, then log off / log on to clear it from user space. If I leave it turned off, I have fewer problems with those. I'll turn it on only for recording.

As for restarting vs logging off, The Windows Explorer shell and Shadowplay run as the currently logged-on user. Even a single user PC uses a user account. I'd like to know if logging off and logging back on clears things up. Even on Win10 Home you can press CTRL-ALT-DEL and pick "Sign Out." That can force-close any applications stuck, including the Windows Explorer shell, and let you jump back in without restarting.

I've been doing this for twenty years and I'd like to think I know what I'm doing.

[Pecan]

4 hours ago, Gordon Fecyk said:

There are at least four responses referring to a Start Menu problem ...

Just in case you're including my response as one of the four I'd like to make it clear that I haven't encountered a Start Menu problem, just that the so-called Start Menu IS a problem, which is why I replaced it with something usable.

On the other hand - I'm using Shadowplay + KSP + Win 10 and haven't had any issues there either.

[Eveeloo]

On 4/24/2016 at 6:24 PM, Apollo13 said:

1)  How has KSP 1.1 (64-bit) run for you in Win 10?  Any issues?  Problems?

2)  Have you seen problems in your other games, including older ones?

3)  Any other horrors I should consider or expect? (yeah, that's a really broad question)

No, nothing really, and I play on laptop Windows 10. 

[TAImatem]

if you're low on RAM, you should consider win 10, it has a neat compression function, I managed to run heavily modded game (more than 6Gb RAM usage) with 6Gb of RAM without any major slowdowns

[RW-1]

Zero issues with 10 and KSP, and that includes the latest build, you guys are going to like the changes to action center, notifications, the start menu and more ...

[Randox]

I'm interested in how other people upgraded to Windows 10, specifically if they uninstalled all their programs or decided to keep everything.

For me, I've had no problems. All my games, including Silent Hunter 4 and Skyrim (heavily modded) work beautifully, or, at least exactly as well as they used to (SH4 still demands that I load it from an SSD to avoid as many looping sounds when loading games as possible). However, when I made the upgrade from Windows 7, I had the upgrade process remove all my old programs and drivers. For me, it was a necessity. My Windows 7 installation had end of life issues, and attempting to carry over old programs was causing BSOD issues, so I decided to cut my losses and upgrade without them.

If you decide to make that choice, which I feel is probably a good idea if you want to make absolutely certain that everything will work on the other end, you should know that Windows 10 will make a list of every program it uninstalled. It also doesn't actually delete very much, and things like your old Programs folders will be renamed so that you can still access all the old program files they contained, and reinstall them locally if you wish. It does seem to delete that stuff after a while though, not sure how it works, though I am now down a significant number of screenshots taken in steam (though I've been uploading all the good ones, so it's not a big loss for me). Windows 10 has also been very good about finding the correct drivers for everything, including vendor specific stuff.

There are privacy settings you will want to tackle to personal taste once you have Windows 10 up and running, and some things like the start menu will take a little getting used to, or you might decide to roll with the new style. The only things that are really getting on my nerves are the loss of the desktop widgets, and their insistence on calling all programs 'apps' now. I grew accustomed to having an easily visible readout of my GPU and Network states, and I've not found a suitable replacements yet, particularly for the network monitor. As for 'apps', I just don't like the name. It's a name for small, inconsequential programs, and having the term applied to my PC seems...demeaning.

Edited April 25, 2016 by Randox

[Gordon Fecyk]

15 minutes ago, Randox said:

I'm interested in how other people upgraded to Windows 10, specifically if they uninstalled all their programs or decided to keep everything.

Way back in 2012 I took advantage of the cheap Windows 8 Pro offer to upgrade from 7 Home Premium. Did an in-place upgrade then, then to 8.1 (no charge), then to 10 (also no charge). Things held together as I expected them to, though I had to upgrade my network adapter drivers to maintain VLAN support. For some reason Intel hasn't fixed VLAN support for their NICs for Windows 10 yet, which is strange considering they were right on top of that on 8.

Win10's installer uses stock drivers for your hardware when it has them, until it can get to Windows Update and put in updated drivers. The Build 1511 installer did the same thing as it was like an in-place upgrade too. It kept drivers for things it didn't, such as my AverMedia capture card, but the Win7 driver worked. It didn't uninstall anything on me except for Media Center, but it provided a DVD Player app to replace it, a $15.00 value, for no charge. Probably the codec licences expired or something. The old OS and Program Files folders are in WINDOWS.OLD and yes, you can browse it to find lost things.

Speaking of 'apps,' thank Apple for that. Even GNOME 3 tries to do that and folks hate it there, too. At least one can run Store apps in separate windows and not just full screen now.

I'm a bit gung-ho on updating these days, after Daylight Savings Time changes back in 2007 left Windows 2000 and attendant services unsupported. I wasn't going to let myself get caught out of date again.

--

[kaesden]

for me generally anything that runs on windows 7 game-wise(or anything really except drivers) works flawlessly on windows 10. I haven't had any issues with KSP or any of my other ~75 steam games that i've tried. Granted i do have some really old games that i haven't played in ages, but the ones in question likely wouldn't work on win7 either.

[Rainbowtrout]

KSP runs better for me on W10 than it did on 8.1. Same goes for most games that I own, but I don't have your two mentioned games so I can't input on that.

[N_Danger]

I did not uninstall right away but once I decided I was keeping 10, I deleted the saved folders and reinstalled fresh just what I needed or was gonna use, just to clean up the HD. For example I had 260 GIGs worth of steam games installed.  Most of which I was no longer playing.

[Apollo13]

Thank you folks for all the responses.  I feel a lot more confident now.  Will upgrade this week.  Gave Like/Forum-Rep points t all.