Posted on 03/16/2017 5:59:49 PM PDT by dayglored
to save you days of searching- you might run into the problem i did- when i would click on the ‘show desktop icon on taskbar- sometimes all the windows would go transparent- It was driving me nuts- by accident, i discovered that clicking the icon again would restore opacity- There wasn’t any info online about this-
Fro some reason it was ‘getting stuck’ on the transparent deal-
Windows 10 is great. Love it. Best OS I’ve ever used. And I’ve used and administered VMS, SunOS, AIX, and several flavors of Linux.
[[I have read that Win 10 has had the slowest adoption rate of any MSFT OS. Interesting chart from]]
No doubt due to the damned ‘phone home’ crap in the OS- typical home users won’t care, or even know about it- but them ore experienced users stayed away from 10 for that very reason- andm ore are likely to not get it now that all the spying crap by the government and google and such has been revealed-
I actually think that the best Microsoft Windows was fully updated Vista 64. I used it for YEARS and updated hardware on the same system (which I keep clean!) for years, up to today’s modern hardware, and it ran perfectly and never crashed under various heavy multitasking loads.
However Microsoft started getting more and more sluggish on performing any updates, and finally with their looming “end of support” garbage, I decided to upgrade.
(I had known this was going to happen I would have done it sooner.) I had Vista 64 Ultimate, and if you want to upgrade “in place” they ONLY let you upgrade to Windows 7 Ultimate, makes no sense you could not move to Win 7 Pro since it is cheaper, but no, Win 7 Ultimate was all that they allowed.
Try to find Win 7 Ultimate. Not many options. Moreover, they stopped all vendors from selling Windows 7 at ALL. Bogus.
So I had to buy Win 7 Ultimate from Amazon, and I bought another from E-Bay thinking I might need it. They were both SEALED ORIGINAL FULL (not “OEM”) packages — I am convinced.
Tried to upgrade in place? NO. Fail, fail, fail. I had to remove many drivers, much hardware plugged in and installed, etc. It would always roll back to Vista. There is a whole subculture of humans Microsoft created called the “62 percenters” where installation would fail at 62% done after it took hours and hours to get to that point. I am sure some committed suicide. Anyway, THIS TOOK DAYS of work while I was on vacation. I had to re-clone from my original disk multiple times and start over.
Finally I got it to go all the way to the end of the “in place upgrade,” WOW, and it looked like it is going to work, system up and running, but I have to “activate Windows.”
I enter the “key” that came with the package, and it says, “Microsoft has deactivated this key” or something like that! I try the second package key and it says the same thing. Just wow.
I call Microsoft after poking around forever on their web site which is designed to make you not call them, including having to text back and forth with a robot of theirs, and after hours on the phone deciphering accents reading scripts, they told me that the numbers were deactivated, and they were “pirated” apparently. However, I KNOW that these were brand new packages that had never been opened. The had holograms, they were spotless, no finger prints, not the slightest bit of damage to them, and if the numbers HAD been stolen and used, why would they be deactivated? People do reinstall full versions after all. They flat refused to do anything.
Make another clone disk. Now what? Well, I had also gotten a Windows 8.1 Pro brand new OS from Amazon. It would not let be upgrade “in place,” bummer, have to re-install hundreds of programs and get all their settings fixed properly, bad.
However I did install it fresh, and it worked, passed activation also. However, as I started to re-install everything, I started thinking about the hell I had gone through for days, and how I still was not done, so I just downloaded a copy of Windows 10 Pro and upgraded to that instead, and I am on that now. What a mess, thank goodness for Classic Shell. It is so “dumbed down” from Vista 64. (I already knew, I have a Win 8.1 laptop that after I came back from a long vacation had been infected by Win 10 without my permission and could not be rolled back!)
But I thought I would build a hot brand new computer and use that Win 8.1 on that.
And now you post this article telling us that they intentionally will not let 8.1, a rather new OS, work on new hardware? BOGUS. Another class action suit waiting to happen?
And for me, $450 spent on 3 brand new sealed hologramed Microsoft Windows system packages, 2 brand new ones never opened or used that they decided could no longer be sold, if no one used them by now they muct have been sold by someone not authorized to sell them even though they were ORIGINAL. And one that will not work on new hardware because they want to manipulate us! What ever happened to the idea of open hardware being so much better than Apple?
I have Macs also, and I hate working on them because they are so dumbed down and Apple’s crazy “form over function” mentality just makes everything difficult. I get cramps just trying to use them compared to Windows and I have continuously had and used Macs since Spring 1984. Used to be great, now their fixation on misguided esthetics and non-power users has made them incredibly bothersome.
Linux and other Unix systems, used to use them, driver support terrible, most of the software I use with large and long amounts of data will not run on it or will run badly.
So 2 months from now when I finally get this system Win 10 Pro system really rebuilt as good as my favorite Vista 63 Ult system, maybe I will have spent all the hours it takes to better understand how to lock this down. But as of now it feels leaky and invasive and dumbed down and it just posses me off.
So here is what I want: A very very smart and aggressive firewall system that eliminates the virus known as Win 10 from “phoning home” and tracks what it tries to do. It will need to be cooperative in the OS and in a hardware firewall I think. Maybe in a special network card too. That is because I would still rather keep using Windows. Or maybe I can trick them into thinking I am in Europe where they are constrained by Europe’s (possibly) superior privacy laws?
And the first time a forced update breaks something, well, up-date this!
[[AND NO!!! Before the LInux fans chime in NO!!! It won’t work with WINE.]]
don’t know if it’ll work, but there’s a new wine 2.0 out- supposed to be better- I don’t know anything about it- so can’t recommend one way or other- supposed to have better support for graphics card utilization- It’s probably still crap though
Wish there was a way to get virtual box to utilize full graphics card power-
Thanks for posting this story. I was just starting to shop for kaby lake hardware to do an update rebuild of my main pc. I have win 8.1 set up nicely to work like win 7. I do not use 10, even with the hollow promise of dx12, mainly because of their bs win update bundle policy. Now, I’ll save my cash to update other stuff.
No problems.
People will just collect the hardware they need for backup. It gets cheaper every day.
Fuch microsoft. Fuch them until they are split in half.
The OS everyone seems to love to hate is yet again NOT the problem here. Intel made the decision to cease driver development for platforms older than Windows 10. Kaby Lake, and its predecessor Skylake, were designed around UEFI for more security. Due to the swiss cheese nature of the pre-Windows 10 kernel, Intel decided to do away with legacy support.
Microsoft’s been leading the charge to force adoption of newer platforms, because legacy hardware support is becoming an increasing problem for OS packaging. You all bitch about Microsoft’s “bloat,” and when they do something about it, everyone’s in a damn tizzy about “Microsoft can have my Windows XX when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!” Yet, if you go talk to folks like Swordmaker on the Mac side, how many of them are trying to work on an old G5 Mac platform?
If you want to run legacy hardware, go ahead over to Linux. Microsoft is trying to innovate and be one of the safest operating environments around, but everyone complains when they remove the unsafe components.
Thank goodness my briefly older HP desktop must be a step behind the “latest and greatest” CPUs, as Windows 7 Home Premium continues (last one yesterday) to receive and process the OS updates for it - automatically, hands off.
I’m way ahead of them. I turned off updates a long time ago when they starred auto downloading windows 10.
Wonderful!
I guess the first thing we have to do is identify which hardware qualifies as "not current."
For us non-geeks, that would mean motherboards, since we can't deal with analyzing individual components' "compatibility."
I see two things happening.
First the cost of "old" motherboards will skyrocket.
Second, the need for a source of cross reference will be crucial. Perhaps a comprehensive list of components that are considered "Current Generation" AMD & Intel Processors," to avoid like the plague.
This should make Intel and AMD really happy, I would think.
I look forward to the certain cat fight on this one!
Windows 7 rules!
How do you deal with critical security updates?
Stay off line? Doesn't that create a crippled PC??
Apple must be having celebration parties nationwide.
I, for one have abandoned my "never Apple" position. After 25 years!
Use a anti virus and anti malware program.
Did my Win7 updates this morning, and everything is fine.
“How do you deal with critical security updates?
Stay off line? Doesn’t that create a crippled PC??”
Every now and then I do crical security updates manually, if I think they are critical to me.
When this computer gives up the ghost I’m getting a used Apple!!!
Same here. My template plotter is XP only.
In fact I'm quoting the current price. Said box immune from the M$henanigans re: new chip no updatey.
Not a bad idea. Macs hold their value well, and the reason is they tend to keep working for a LONG time.
I have a number of Mac Minis and MacBooks dating up to 12 years ago (a 2005 PPC-based Mini). They're all still working well. The only old Windows hardware machine I have that still works well is a 2010 Fujitsu Lifebook (high-end laptop) that cost $2500 at the time; all the rest of the PC hardware has gone to parts.
When I need to run Windows on desktop hardware nowadays, I use BootCamp (dual-boot) on a MacMini. Otherwise I stick to VMs (virtual machines) to run Windows.
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