Windows 10 updates = Killed upload performance. Move to Windows 8.1?

[Nass86]

Hey guys,

I have a Windows 10 laptop solely owned for streaming DJ sets.

The Macs I have can also do it but new models are not as good as this old Windows Laptop because it has NVENC encoder and nothing else installed on it.

Windows 10 updates for a lot of users since Autumn 2020 have killed a perfectly good upload rate for streamers (I had 7900kb/s streaming upload on an 8mb connection, i'm now getting 700 to 1200kb/s if I am lucky - meanwhile non Windows 10 devices perform as you would hope).

Before the Windows 10 updates the laptop ran streams extremely well at 720p / 60fps with 3 webcams and an audio interface feeding into it at up to 7900 kb/s however I only run it at around 3500kb/s for my viewers.

There are no fixes for users to do themselves. I've spent weeks and weeks doing all the tweaks you hear about online and in here. Resource manager shows nothing hogging upload speeds, TCP optimiser doesn't work, I've turned everything off/on, disabled, defaulted, reinstalled drivers, enabled disabled different things in Device manager. Turned off Firewall, Windows Defender, game mode on/off. I think I've tried about 60 different things via forums and youtube.

Finally some other people are starting to say the same thing since the Autumn 2020 updates. People are only just starting to talk.

So basically, as it is not a setting but a hidden problem, Windows 10 has no hope when this problem happens for users until there is an update to fix it by Microsoft. There is no promise of this happening quickly (it only happens to some people but they all describe it the same way - every tweak suggested by Tech Support and internet communities fail).

Good news is that I don't care about the laptop itself for anything other than streaming. We can play around with this kit and make mistakes.

I don't want to pay for Windows 8.1 because Windows 10 failed me.

So my questions are:

1) Is there a reliable Windows 8.1 free trial installer I can just leave on "trial mode",
2) Do you know where I could get a safe copy from?
3) Are there disadvantages using OBS on Windows 8.1?

 

[koala]

If Windows 10 by itself suffers from performance issues, everybody would be affected, and all forums would explode with shitstorms. However, we see no shitstorms. Instead, we only see single people who have performance issues who tell this started happening after some update. I tend to believe the issue is with their specific setup and/or hardware and not a general issue with Windows 10.

It's unfortunate you weren't able to work out your issue, but believe me, it's not Windows 10. You get the best restart, if you first delete any driver software installation packages you might have archived in the past, so you don't accidentally install them later. Delete them, they are obsolete. Believe me.
Then you download and reinstall the most recent version of Windows 10 (2009 as of this writing) by formatting the system partition and leave every Windows setting at default afterwards. Don't import old settings, don't use "Tweaks", don't follow guides that tell you how to optimize Windows, don't use any optimization or cleaning software. Don't manually install any driver software you might have installed on your PC previously. Instead, let Windows itself detect and download any known driver software. Don't use any preinstalled software, don't use driver software from some CD or USB stick. Just use the system as it comes out of the installation.

The only thing you probably need to install manually is the graphics driver, and you should download the most current driver from the vendor (Nvidia or Amd) after Windows reinstall - don't install any older driver you might have saved previously. Graphics drivers are updated about once every month or every other month, so any driver you downloaded more than 2 months ago is obsolete.

Only if there are still unknown hardware devices after Windows Update finished updating your system with the latest Windows patches, you can go through the unknown devices and visit the web pages of the corresponding vendors and get the most current driver software. But do always download the most recent drivers before installation. Never use archived drivers from the past.

 

[Nass86]

Hello, thanks for taking the time to respond. I fear I was not clear somewhere in my original post. I've done all of this.

This is the point - if you have this problem only since 2909 / Autumn Windows 10 update, all of the things technical support / amateur helpful youtubers and forums point to and take time to kindly help fix, do not fix this problem.

If you read the link I gave in the text, you'll see it is becoming more common but not affecting everyone - and when it does, and the usual fixes are tried out including what you have suggested, there is not a solution as long as you are on this Windows update.

Whether using Windows to find the driver, or going to the manufacturer, after a clean install of Windows 10, it cripples the upload/download again even though nothing is using the network resource.

To quote my original post:

"Resource manager shows nothing hogging upload speeds, TCP optimiser doesn't work, I've turned everything off/on, disabled, defaulted, reinstalled drivers, enabled disabled different things in Device manager. Turned off Firewall, Windows Defender, game mode on/off. I think I've tried about 60 different things via forums and youtube"

I've contacted Intel, they can't fix it. I've contacted Microsoft, they can't fix it.

I'm honestly exhausted trying and the common thread in that forum is people are finally realising: the problem is inside the Windows update and users cannot fix the problem, only Microsoft can.

My personal feeling is that a common denominator might be something to do with a range of Intel Network Adaptors in certain laptops used between a range of years i.e. between 2012 and 2015 (I made those dates up) and my other feeling is that it could be present when microwave networks are involved in the chain that the user cannot see.

People in the forum are pointing at the the timing of packets/how the computer goes back and finds missing packets during transmission and it trips itself up trying to recover lost data. And if it is that, settings users change can't fix it.

It's all in that forum link on my first post.

I really don't care if this is on Windows 10 or Windows 8 - the laptop itself is great for streaming when Windows update isn't messing it up.

I believe in your technical skill, but I am 100% convinced by now that your logical suggestions that would work elsewhere will definitely not work for this. I'm in a minority but the minority is making itself known.

Therefore, my real questions are:

1) is there an issue by going back to Windows 8.1 if all I want to do is stream using OBS on that laptop?
2) Is there a free place to download Windows 8.1 and just run OBS on a trial version of Windows so I don't have to pay for it?

Help appreciated.

 

[Nass86]

Also I owe you an apology, my link was broken and took you to the wrong page.

Here is the forum I meant to link you to:

Slow wired upload speed vs Linux on same hardware - Microsoft Q&A

Intel® Ethernet Controller X550-AT2, 10G network interface on ASRock Rack ROMED8-2T with AMD EPYC 7232P processor. Windows 10 Pro for Workstations, 2004. Latest Windows updates and Intel drivers installed as of 09/09/2020. This machine is a…

docs.microsoft.com

 

[R1CH]

Try the following to get back to a clean state:
netsh int tcp reset netsh winsock reset

Try reducing MTU and disabling flow control on the NIC. Also turning on tcp timestamps might help (netsh int tcp set global timestamps = enabled)

 

[Nass86]

Hey thanks for the reply. Done all this stuff.
It’s a type of issue that cannot be undone by changing these settings.
The only answer is reversing windows update, going to Linux, or windows 8.1

No intel, windows or forum style tech support can rid me and a growing number of other users from this particular problem. We don’t have a name for it but when it is this issue, Windows Update caused the problem in autumn 2020 and users have nowhere to edit a setting to fix the issue.

is there any disadvantage in moving to windows 8.1 for a machine I only use for OBS?

 

[anonymous.gr]

I have the same problem. But mine started after version 1809. Every time I rolled back the problem was gone but immediately after update the problem was there and has not been fixed so far.

 

[Alex Atkin UK]

If this is a "random number of people" I must be the unluckiest person in the world as all four of my Windows 10 PCs started doing this recently.

All these PCs were fine before, except the latest one which I only recently built so has never worked and has this problem from a fresh install of Win10.

The most extreme example is that new PC which has 10Gbit to my NAS but is throttling to 7-8Gbit down, 800Mbit - 1.6Gbit up but on a Linux Live USB does 9.4Gbit. If I force the link rate down to a lower speed it still comes well below what it should be.

On WiFi it should be able to do ~700Mbit down, but it does 370Mbit. No matter what speed you link at, throughput is always significantly lower than it used to/should be.

Only thing I've found is turning off Interrupt Moderation on my network card increases the download speed to closer to what it should be (it increases to 8.9Gbit), but it doesn't help the upload speed at all.

Something has been seriously borked in the Windows network stack, its just baffling that more people are not reporting it.

 

[Nass86]

Hello, I fixed this last week by changing ISP.

I was using one that had a 5ghz Millimetre microwave link and was basically piggybacking some other ISP. I live in Cyprus, which is a remote island, but I think it was breaking out somewhere across Europe, like in Amsterdam.

I've switched to a fully Landline based provider and I'm now fine.

My description above may be coincidental, but I'm trying to give some context in case there are similarities. Try contacting your ISP or just changing them (take a PC to a neighbour on another ISP and see if you get the same issue - if this gets fixed, change to their ISP)

 

[Nass86]

When I tried to fix this, some people in here plus Microsoft plus Intel couldn’t fix it. And they were really helpful.

It ended up being the ISP for me. It worked well until around October. I swore blind it was a windows update because that coincided.

 

[mickythekiller]

I think you were in 100mbps instead 1000mbps