Updating Windows 7 machines to Windows 10

Rule number one: Don't fix it if it ain't broke. Rule number two: Keep your options open.

I cloned all my hard drives. Did the free win10 upgrade...nineteen of them at last count. Put the old win7 drives back in. If you want to experiment, overwrite the Win10 update with a fresh install so you know where you're starting.

I stick a win10 drive back in when I'm bored and install stuff. It has gone way better than I expected. I was most concerned about external hardware compatibility, but that too has gone well. VB6 still compiles and runs. National GPIB drivers still talk to instrumentation. Even very old stuff that talks to serial ports and parallel ports seems to work. Most of the software tools I wrote started on windows 98 and still work on windows 10. There are a few rough edges, but I expect they'll get sanded sooner or later as they finish the OS. I had a lot of display driver issues early on, mostly because windows update insisted on replacing a working driver with their own default, low resolution driver, but they seem to be better now.

The deal breaker for me is the updates. I need to reboot the system to change some non plug and play hardware. Two hours later, the damn system is still installing updates. By the time it finishes, I've already made lunch, gotten pissed off about it and forgotten what I started out to do. If your time is money, I'd not recommend windows 10...yet.

Sooner or later, you won't have an option. Something you NEED won't work on windows 7. When that time comes, you'll be glad you have the windows 10 digital entitlement and some experience with your software when it wasn't time critical.

No. That's RETARDED ADAGE NUMBER 1.

Another totally retarded adage, especially if one embraces the first.

So, you didn't even bother to read what he wrote about installed apps, eh? You're an idiot.

When are you going to uninstall the stupid 'stuff' between your ears?

No shit, Dip Tracy.

Likely as simple as you ever were.

Wow. Waxing metaphorical. You really are an idiot.

Total bullshit.

Waaahh! Couldn't possibly have spent the time watching one of thos movies you only watch once, right?

Ahh... even with only 'stuff' between your ears, you still can't connect two neurons together the same way twice in the same day.

You're a real expert, mike... NOT!

Your logic is wrought full of the same 'stuff' that is between your ears. IOW, totally retarded ineptitude!

What I suggest you do is buy a sacrificial Win10 machine that is small highly portable and with a touch screen to try out Win10 first. I quite like the ASUS T100 (no not made of intelligent molten metal). It has a detachable keyboard so you can use it as a tablet and is compact.

If everything works for you now and is stable leave well alone. Win7 will have to be supported for (at least) another 4 years.

Like XP it has such a wide installation base that they will have to!

Mickeysoft marketing are using FUD and aggressive nagware to try and force Win10 on a largely unwilling customer base to adopt Win10. The latest utterances by their snake in the grass chief marketing man have been subject to ridicule in the technical press:

Basically the claim that 10 year old Win7 software with such a huge installed base is unreliable is risible and they will have to support it until 2020. Newer software always tends to have more bugs - especially when it has been rushed out. Win8.x is dead in the water.

The object is to scare business users into upgrading now and/or offer only two options "upgrade now" or "upgrade tonight" on their nagware buttons. You may consider this bad practice - I certainly do!

Win10 looks serviceable to me but I would not contemplate upgrading the OS on a working platform with important software on it without taking a complete image backup first and being prepared to lose everything.

The main worry these days is cryptolocker style ransomware getting in and locking down your machine(s). A series of backups that are on write only media is about the only protection from that. A UK council is stuck with a million pound ransom for their data after a breach:

Basically always assume unexpected binary attachments are hostile!

Put in simplest terms: If it ain't broke don't fix it.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

On a sunny day (Wed, 3 Feb 2016 23:46:56 +0000) it happened Syd Rumpo wrote in :

Pity. I still have one of the first Asus eeePCs, it came with Linux. It works with 3G Huawei modem and flies. All solid state, no harddisk. But.. the old version of Netscape on some sites gets me 'your browser is no longer supported'. Need to install a new browser some day? Even compiled a new kernel on it and it can run as a server. Will be museum piece one day, already worth more than I bought it for (showroom model).

Even ran Eagle on it:

Very useful:

On a sunny day (Thu, 04 Feb 2016 08:53:45 GMT) it happened Jan Panteltje wrote in :

BTW that is booted from a USB stick running grml Linux. The 'boot from USB stick' seems to be the solution to everything, I run Navigatrix that way too

So the OS (Linux) and all the needed apps on a stick. Who cares what the hardware came with?

Microsoft cannot hold a gun to your head to force you to buy or install stuff whenever they please, They tried hard to f*ck up BIOS to do that, luckily that can be bypassed.

Mircosoft is on its return, now claims to make money with the 'cloud', while every 10 year old or older knows that is the most unsafe place to put your data, and while GB FLASH cards / sticks are ever cheaper. Microsoft is dead.

If it happens to fail that sadly seems to be the case :(

You probably could uninstall if the installation had succeeded but if things go wrong then your options are limited to deciding how much of your hair to tear out and praying that your backup image is sound.

Unwise to upgrade the OS in situ without a watertight image of the disk being upgraded and also unwise if you have any unusual software.

Then just ignore the nagware and/or disable it by unpicking the dodgy updates and also the pre-emptive Win10 downloader.

Win7 is fine no matter what the FUD marketing liars may say.

A lot of very expensive big scientific instruments are still running on XP since none of the makers could be bothered rewriting the drivers. Such kit is very heavily firewalled from the outside world and corporate network because it is horribly exposed to vulnerabilities.

Good move. I bought my machine just before Win7 was slated to no longer be offered and ignored the free upgrade to Win8. Having used Win8 I am glad that I did - it was never any good from the outset.

Win10 appears to be OK but I would never contemplate upgrading an OS in place on a machine containing data and software that I was fond of. Win7 works plenty well enough and is robust. Win10 is still in flux.

I'd want two verified and validated backups on different media before I would even contemplate letting the Mickeysoft installer loose on my box.

I am about to do exactly this Win7-10 upgrade on a sacrificial machine so will post how I get on. Actually to test some other free MS software that MS has cunningly altered so that it will only install on Win10.

If they block using original license codes to reinstall Win7 in the UK there will be prosecutions against them under the computer misuse act.

It feels a lot like blackmail to me.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

;(

Has anyone ever told you that you seem like what might be termed a "high-conflict" person?

Might as well put Win 2k on that for a big improvement in stability.

On a sunny day (Thu, 4 Feb 2016 09:53:30 -0500) it happened "Tom Del Rosso" wrote in :

mm, the only reason win98 is on it is for my Canon flat bed scanner, and I dropped that one, and my Canon camera is just as good to archive documents. But the Linux part has a working version of LTspice with an old version of wine that does not crash X windows, so I sometimes boot it just for that. And since I put an other graphics card in it win98 only runs in low resolution... so it is useless anyways.

Very good box actually, a real Tyan mobo with even an ISA slot! But, I just did the 100 days uptime on this box: panteltje12: ~ # uptime 16:13:40 up 107 days, 9:02, 10 users, load average: 0.09, 0.80, 1.67

panteltje12: ~ # uname -a Linux panteltje12 2.6.37.6-smp #1 SMP Sat Aug 3 19:23:48 CEST 2013 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 145 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

This one has been on 24/7 since Aug 2013...

Who needs MSwindows and for WHAT???? The last power down was when the mains failed, happens once or twice a year here.

And, how does that make you feel?

Mikek

If you don't respond to DecadentLoser you will spare us the annoyance of seeing his crap. ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142     Skype: skypeanalog  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

I second that.

A month ago I tried a little tablet that only came with Windows 10. Horrid! Sent it back. They first balked but had to take it back because a driver didn't work that was clearly promised to work in the ads.

Long story short, I will not touch Windows 10 as long as I can avoid it.

--
Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Personally, I am not going to change from Windows 7 until it's absolutely required- probably ~2020 or so.

I don't think anything will melt down, but I think it will be really, really annoying and I can't imagine any benefit that would make it worthwhile. I don't want touch screens, and I don't want to learn a new interface. Keeping track of Win7, Mac, iOS and Linux (with still some occasional XP) is enough.

If you're concerned about privacy, it looks like the telemetry stuff in Win7 is still separable, but in later versions of Windows it's so integrated that privacy is seriously compromised, and possibly that reflects on security holes.

--sp

--
Best regards,  
Spehro Pefhany 
Amazon link for AoE 3rd Edition:            http://tinyurl.com/ntrpwu8

Following up my own post is bad form but here are the results. I was fortunately doing other things while it chundered away.

"This will take a few minutes" is somewhat of an understatement.

1pm Started download 2pm Build media onto USB (in case it is any good) 3.30pm Ready to install - took default option to load updates now 4.30pm Updates failed & it locked up completely so I aborted 6.00pm Updater finished tidying up (it very nearly got force closed)

Now trying it without any updates in the hope that this time it might actually get a bit further this time. crosses fingers

"This will take a few minutes" - please wait ....

That was 20 minutes ago. No other signs of life. Ho hum :(

I am hoping it will run overnight now. Confirms my suspicion that the Win10 in place upgrade procedure isn't particularly reliable.

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

On a sunny day (Thu, 4 Feb 2016 18:20:20 +0000) it happened Martin Brown wrote in :

If I had a car like that I'd bring it to the scrap yard. Just imagine how microsoft is responsible for so many man hours lost fiddling with their crap, they should be court court marshalled and the money divided among their victims. For crimes against humanity.

And it is bad for the environment too. Billy The Gates, he dunnit.

I wonder if there's any way to firewall any attempts by Micro$oft to perform updates?? ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson                                 |    mens     | 
| Analog Innovations                               |     et      | 
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    | 
| San Tan Valley, AZ 85142     Skype: skypeanalog  |             | 
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  | 
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     | 
              
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Uninstall the nagware ones and then hide their update(s). You have to set download an let me choose which updates to install and control it. A few hacks in the registry with a flint axe and you are done although it might be safer to download a tool that does it for you.

Info is online but be careful which sites you visit some are hostile:

--
Regards, 
Martin Brown

The purpose of the upgrade is to get the digital entitlement so you can do a fresh install. I do as little as possible to get "windows is activated" on the system properties screen, then trash it and start fresh.

I had one system that refused to update because It didn't like my display card. Removed the card and updated with the onboard video. Put the display card back in and windows 10 found the proper driver and worked fine...go figger. Had another that wouldn't update because it lost network access in the process. It decided that the lan it had been using was no longer acceptable. Plugged in a USB wireless lan, installed the driver. Windows went wherever windows goes and found the driver for the lan it had disabled and worked fine. Go figger again.

Windows is extremely complex. I'd not trust an upgrade. Reinstall from scratch so you have a known baseline.

That's been discussed at length. It has been asserted that windows does not honor the hosts file. In order to block it in the firewall, you have to know exactly what to block. And they can change it at will...or have alternates if one fails to get thru the firewall. Since they own the system, they can circumvent a software firewall. It's a lot like congress making laws. They hide the stuff you don't want in stuff you do want.

There are applications that attempt to track microsoft evasion of blocks.

Eventually, the resistance will subside. People will bend over and accept whatever MS shoves up their... In the grand scheme of things, a few thousand outraged usenet denizens are inconsequential. You will be assimilated.