Windows 10

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Would there be any difference due to different versions of 7 like Pro or Home, 64 bit or 32 bit? I have 7 Pro 64, I found the last 2 on pro 64bit, and last 3 on Home premium 64 bit, I've yet to look at the laptop which also has pro 64.

Possibly ... I too run Win7 Pro, 64 bit.

. . . Maybe I am not demanding (well I have been married for 35 years)

Yeah, me too ... 41 years here.

teddy said:
or maybe I am not running any complicated software like you guys.

Ya mean my wife is not a computer program after all? :lol:
 
Last edited:

John Watt

Member
A little Windows update. Please wait until your computer restarts.
I did the free Windows ten, over two hours of uploading.
When I turned on the computer one night, it did almost two hours of three updates,
one being the new Windows 10.
According to computer store friends, everyone who got Windows 10 for free,
lost their sound during the update. That happened to me.

I just want to be a word processor who does photos.
So you know where I'm coming from.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I must be one of the few still with Vista it performs without a hitch.
I suppose it or my PC will pack up one day and I will have to take the plunge.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
I'm running Win 7 pro 64 bit on 2 PCs and a laptop, I've disabled Windoze updates, and also unplug the USB wireless dongle when I shut down.

I also see Microsloth are going to screw up Skype so that old versions (without the bells and whistles added over the last 3 years or so) won't work, I'm still using V6.22 which has done all I need with no ads or pop ups or trendy gimmicks. Any suggestions for a plain no frills IM (not farcebook or other trendy rubbish)
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
I too disabled my PC from any/all Win 10 auto updating. My wife was having trouble on her PC with Outlook and was trying to re-install it and almost got sucked into a Win 10 upgrade - luckily I screamed NO!!! just in time.

Have had friends do the Win 10 upgrade and nothing but problems afterwards with all their peripheral equipment like printers, scanners, external drives, all which will no longer work and/or are not forwards compatible with new software as Win 10 is not backwards compatible with old peripheral software. Huge mistake and forces people to buy new scanners/printers when the old ones were working just fine. My Brother HL-2040 has been with me since Win XP, and works just fine with Win 7 Pro.

Still satisfied with Win 7 ... it ain't broke yet so it doesn't need to be replaced. I don't see the need to have all the latest bells and whistles just for the fact to impress people that could otherwise care less.

Mike, I use 'farcebook' for messaging between family members. I have my account set up so that nobody, but nobody that I have not specifically invited can view my FB page ... it's totally locked up and secure in that manner ... only my immediate family and a select group of friends can "see" anything I write and/or communicate with me via that medium.

I also use texting on my mobile phone now since revising my plan which now includes unlimited texting for a lesser monthly price than I was paying before.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
As well as a little app called never10, I have actually disabled updates in Component services on Control Panel.

I've had 3 mobile phones given to me over the years, gave up on them after finding that if I didn't use them at least once in a few months then they needed reactivating or some similar action. The only time I caqn see any use for one would be if I had a car breakdown in some remote area on a long journey - chances are there would be no cell coverage anyway.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
. . . The only time I caqn see any use for one would be if I had a car breakdown in some remote area on a long journey - chances are there would be no cell coverage anyway.

We have areas like that around these parts ... depending on which company is providing the service; some are better for coverage than others.
 

Albert

New member
I have the ultimate Win 10 update garbage problem. I bought an ASUS laptop (P550LA) with 8 Gb RAM, i7 Quad Core and 1 Tb 5400 rpm hard drive. It was sold to me with Win 8.1 pro downgraded to Win 7 Pro, which was an option at the time. Worked just fine, and then M$ "upgraded" it to 8.1 again, and after that upped it to 10. I was not having any problems at this point. Then Windows did the annual big update to 1511 (the major before 1607 "Anniversary" Update). At that point, the troubles started. Update KB3185614 downloaded and attempted to install for 10 days straight. I went to the registry and disabled that particular update, just to get the computer to run. Thereafter I could get it to run on Mondays by backing out and rebuilding. This made it run for one day short of a week at a time. Not being the richest person on earth, and having a loyal wife of 51+ years who complained about my language on Mondays but didn't kill me or leave, I suffered through this nightmare.

Finally, one Monday morning I got the message: "No Operating System Found" and the computer was dead. The laptop was 2 years and 3 months old - with a 2 year warranty. I am a professional, working with a Database Management System, and this was the last straw. I notified my clients that the system was down for maintenance for a week, and went to the Apple Store. I bought a MacBook Air with 512 Gb SSD, i5. It arrived a week later, and I installed, as recommended by another developer who uses Mac with this particular Windows only DBMS, a virtual machine controller called Parallels. I also purchased, from Tiger Direct, an OEM version of Windows 7 Pro, and installed that as the VM operating system. I have now been working this way for something over 3 months and am a Mac convert. The upgrade from Apple to take my MacBook from El Capitan to Sierra took 30 minutes including the download. This is equivalent to the Win 10 Anniversary update. The Mac has its quirks, and I have to retrain fingers that have used Microsoft hot keys since 1982, but the quirks are minor inconveniences (Alt-PrtScr equivalent is a pain requiring a special 3 finger salute followed by outlining what I want copied for the operating manual) and I am getting used to it.

I gave the dead computer to my son, who is a Linux fan, and he took it home with him after a weekend visit, figuring, as I had, that the disk drive had failed. He phoned me the morning after his return and asked for the password for the hardware BIOS (duh by me). Three hours later I got the following message: "This thing is wicked fast", followed 1/2 hour later that he had it on the net, running Linux and was going to retire his Windows laptop and run Windows under a VM on Linux, and saying that he could have had it running in 30 minutes after turning it on, except he spent a while enabling the Wi-Fi because he forgot one step. His second comment: "I don't understand why Microsoft had a problem with this computer; it's current, but not cutting edge." There was nothing at all wrong with the laptop. Windows just couldn't use it. I have seen a number of searches on the net from ASUS users with similar problems. ASUS has been building mother boards for a very long time. It makes no sense at all that Microsoft could not make a compatible driver set.

Microsoft cost me C$2,500 out of my pocket. I have no faith in them and put out this story only to caution anyone who starts to have update problems, and can afford it, should move to Mac (I am not quite at my son's geek level) or Linux (if they are at his level) and run all their Windows programs using Win 7 Pro in a virtual machine.
 
Last edited:

Dorsetmike

Member
As Windoze seems to do its updates at shut down I actually unplug the connection, it seems even win7 is prone to crash after some updates hence my precautions
 

John Watt

Member
Albert really laid one on us here, and I actually got into it.

What's he's saying about compatibility reminds me of electric guitars in the sixties.
The two major manufacturers, Fender And Gibson, used "different" electrical systems,
saying they weren't compatible. That was being 500k or 250k for the guitars' volume and tone controls.
JBL and Altec Lansing had the same, uh, duality, going with their speakers.
And that was mainly about magnetism.
You could touch the end of something metal to your pickups,
and hear by the clicking sound how hand-wound pickups weren't the same,
until DiMarzio came out with machine wound, and "compatible" pickups.
Now, that's all there is.

Oh boy, I'm stopping before I keep going, and going, and going...

Albert! You didn't get a custom made left-handed keyboard, did you?
 
Last edited:

Albert

New member
No left handed - I'm ambidextrous (you really need to be if you play keyboards) - don't need one - but I do have an unusual computer keyboard - Canadian Multilingual Standard. I haven't logged it into my Mac yet, but it has ALL the accents and so forth for all European languages. The Mac does have a cute feature where if you hold the e you can pick eèéêëēėę and the same for the other letters that commonly have accents. Not as convenient as a keyboard that has them all for Français, Deutsch, etc. I just used the Mac trick for the ç in Français. It doesn't seem to have anything to input the upside down question mark for Spanish, though....
 

John Watt

Member
oh! I'm Canadian too, but I've never heard of a Canadian Multilingual Standard.
I still have my CP style book from when I was a part-time reporter.

The new Canadian dictionary is taking care of all those accents,
leaving them off most words, even Metis.
That helps conform English as a global language.
However, I will always spell Quebecois as Quebec-quoi?

A friend gave me a Rocky Mountain photo book, thin, but big.
He's thinking it will motivate me to paint a mountain scene.
But I'm still bike-hiking around the peninsula in January and February,
because it's warm, no winter coat, no snow or ice,
so I'm still painting the beaches, waters and skies of Lake Erie.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
. . . It doesn't seem to have anything to input the upside down question mark for Spanish, though....

I use the character maps for those things ... Alt+0191 reveals ¿ inverted question mark. Alt+0231 reveals the ç character.
 

Albert

New member
Krummhorn, that is a hassle and a half if you are typing a note to your Famille Français. I bought the keyboard from Dell. It uses up one of my two USB ports on the MacBook, so I tend to use it only when necessary. And I do have an ASCII code list. Like bread, it can be a PITA.
 

John Watt

Member
I can count Windows 10 backwards, Windows 10, windows10, indos10 ind10 in1 in1 in in in i i i i ii i i i i i i i i i
 
Top