# Win7 Gasping, Little Hope...but Wait



## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

the impact of not getting updates is really overblown. m$ is just trying to get everyone on 10 to collect data and have control. 

I would hold on to it for now - just use an up to date browser and anti-virus/malware.

only change when you must - software you need doesn't work any more.

It's an inferior os, lots of people hate it.


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## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

I guess I'm an exception, I think windows 10 is much better than windows 7 was (and I was hanging onto win7 for dear life after the disaster of win8)

I think if you have "newer" components (memory, gpus, cpus, etc.) then it's probably worth the upgrade, windows 10 [from win7 pro 64bit) fixed a lot of driver conflicts and bologna for me.


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## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

A matter of personal preference i guess.

Under the hood it may be good but the gui, data collection/spying, no control over updates for home version and two control panels make it undesirable to me. 

I installed win 10 as a virtual machine just in case some new software doesn't work. To make the gui usable open shell had to be installed.

https://open-shell.github.io/Open-Shell-Menu/


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## Mystriss (Dec 26, 2018)

Ah yeah gotta get the pro version so you can turn off (most) of the bloatware.


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## diyorpay (Sep 21, 2010)

On Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast, 2 reminders I used to know:

1-Once a particular computer is upgraded to Win10, the original license is forever linked to Win10 even if user reverts back to a previous version. That entitles user to future upgrades back to Win10. To me, that means MS takes a good machine data grab and holds on to it.

2-If user did an such an upgrade to Win10, and was 'recorded by MS', that user could do a new clean Win10 install by either wiping drive, replacing drive or selecting 'Install a clean version on a new (different) machine' from options on Win10 iso file and there will be no license challenge because MS recognizes the machine and the license linked to Win10 in a previous instance.

If MS gets its way, at some point Win10 will just be called 'Windows'.


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## user_12345a (Nov 23, 2014)

after using the license key to get windows 10, can the key be used again with windows 7 when reverting back?


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## diyorpay (Sep 21, 2010)

Say starting out, you have a Win7 license. That license gets related to/linked to the right for a Win10 license. More like a Win7/Win10 license after upgrade. The actual license number is the original Win7 one. Then MS gave you x days to perform a rollback to a previous version from Win10 if you didn't like it. Not sure if still allowing that. The present day tolerated free upgrade with license to Win10 may be a 1 way street. You may give up your Win7 license.

That's why it's better to do an upgrade from 7 or 8 to 10. The upgrade includes more than a Win10 operating system. It includes the rollback instructions for reverting back to before Win10. It is my feeling that the rollback includes information about what took place. It is also my feeling that MS made it very difficult for new clean installs of Win7 in recent years even though they continued to support it. Another way to make users give up and move to Win10.

A clean install of Win 10 over the upgraded Win10 is possible because the license will be on the machine.

I have not done this yet. Please do further research. I may stick with Win7 because it's so good, simpler, further along in its life cycle and nearer to perfect than not. And MS would not mess it up with new ideas that benefit only them.

I may clone another drive with current Win 7 system and update that to Win 10, then revert back to Win7 immediately thereafter. Then swap back in the original drive with non upgraded Win7 and compare the 2.


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## diyorpay (Sep 21, 2010)

Update to my experiment: 1/12/20
Imaged my HDD Win7. Cloned it to another HDD (HDD2). Had to use software to get HDD2 clone to boot (because clone was made on same computer).
Both HDD1 and HDD2 were then identical and would boot.

Upgraded HDD2 (for free) to Win10 using an iso file MS let's you use. A few features but not programs were dropped as not compatible. Hard to tell if speed was affected but Win10 was not that bad if you are used to it. Imaged that HDD2 just in case. Noticeable was the Windows_old directory that let's you revert back to a previous version within x days. Used to be 30, now it's 10 days. Reverted back in 3 days. Went well as far as completing reversion to Win7 but the reverted back version will not boot. Theory is that some Win7 drivers were replaced by Win10 drivers. Tried getting new Lenovo drivers for Win7 but wasted too much time. Glad that original HDD1 is just as before the attempt to upgrade.

May upgrade again to Win10 but we'll see.

So last maintenance upgrade for Win7 is next Tuesday 1/14. Warned to be ready for MS scare tactics, even screens that look like blue screen of death!

But I did the workaround that was around:
Prerequisits:
run KB4474419
run KB4490628
run Latest Service Stack Update: KB4531786 2019-12
run Latest Security Monthly Rollup: KB4530734 2019-12
Get/install BypassESU (google it)
KB4528069 confirms it took if this ‘update’ installs (doesn’t fail)

If KB4528069 says you pass, your Win7 computer can continue to accept new 'KB' updates but you will have to find them manually. MS Update will not provide them. I may try this.


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## Colbyt (Jan 27, 2014)

diyorpay said:


> Edit: Read more carefully. A clean install is possible if one has the older system license key.





That was not true 8 months ago when I did the wife's computer. I had to wipe the drive and clone it to get it to work.


It may very well be true for a machine with the COA stored in the BIOS.


I just did mine the upgrade way on 12/21 and all went fine.


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## Colbyt (Jan 27, 2014)

Mystriss said:


> I guess I'm an exception, I think windows 10 is much better than windows 7 was (and I was hanging onto win7 for dear life after the disaster of win8)





I can't see much difference except the hot corner to show the desktop. That I really hate.


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## carmusic (Oct 11, 2011)

win10 is slower than win7 if you have a regular hdd, but with ssd they are almost the same. By the way i still have winxp on a old laptop and it has never stopped working and no virus or malware...


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## surferdude2 (Nov 21, 2019)

My take on the operating systems is that they all keep stepping up the requirement from the hardware and at the same time making older software unusable. Do you think they have ulterior motives. Nah... they wouldn't do that, would they? Not a chance.

In the old days, back when Windows 8 walked the earth, you could use some simple program like Goback to almost instantly let you return to anywhere within the last 20 days to bail you out from any dumb moved you made, like using some miracle Registry cleaner or whatnot. Now the OS is so busy that it if you try to use something akin to Goback, it's only possible to store the last few minutes of changes. That's a bit too dynamic IMHO.

And my other squawk is about that infamous C:\Windows\winsxs directory that currently occupies 26 gigs of my drive as it contains 26,036 directories and files. Jeez Louise, is that the best they can come up with. No wonder it takes such humongous amounts of activity, it has to maintain and check all that garbage. That's more space than all the computer drives that I've ever had lumped together while fooling with these one-eyed monsters all the way back before DOS when we used punch card readers.

I think they took the wrong fork in the road when they tried to keep up with the Androids and iOS as a strategy for keeping the smart phones and tablets from pushing them aside. It isn't working MS... your market is slipping away.

This beast I now have will likely be my last computer. A decent tablet will do all that I now require. YMMV

ps, *carmusic* I also have an old XP out in my man cave in the garage. Still works just fine.. several web sites balk at it though and I'm a little less than impressed with what I once thought was pretty good speed.:smile: I run a batch file to store some things from this beast out to it occasionally.


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## stick\shift (Mar 23, 2015)

> Now it's becoming known that a loophole that still allows free updates to Win 10 will not be patched by MS.


I used the free upgrade to go from 7 to 10 this fall and I'm getting updates as expected. As to whether your machine will run 10, MS did a decent job making it pretty light so that anything which will run Vista, 7, or 8 should run 10 just fine.


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## HandyAndyInNC (Jun 4, 2018)

You have to ask yourself. What do I use a computer for? 99% of the people do not know how to use anything in the OS, or OS related. Most use it for viewing webpages and websites. There are some that create documents and create lists of things. Some use it to design with. None of which is OS related. You can install those same applications on any Windows computer, and use them, no matter the OS. I still have a laptop that is now 20 years old, and still running Windows Server 2000 as the OS. I also use SQL Server on the same laptop. You would not imagine the number of companies that still use SQL 7 and SQL 2000. It is amazing the amount of work I still get called for to admin one of those versions. Yes, the OS and that version of SQL are no longer supported by Microsoft. But they are not needed for support. There is nothing to go wrong.


As far as speed, it are not the fastest computer on the planet. But I don't need high speed. I need horsepower to perform the queries. It has a total of 4 Gigs of memory. Still able to do anything that is asked of it. The day that laptop was delivered, I started it, let it boot, and then swiped the drive. I did not want all the pre-installed junk that Sony put on it. So, I started out lean and clean. I also did not want the OS that shipped with it. So I installed what I wanted and needed.



Who cares of the OS is no longer supported. Why would you need their support anyway. Anything that happens that you cannot easily fix yourself. Swipe the drive and re-install the OS. I have that particular laptop's drive partitioned into 6 logical drives. The OS being the smallest of only 2GB. I can rebuilt it and reinstall every application on that box in about a full day. The slowest things about the install are the Patch updates for SQL Server, Office and Visual Studio. Rebuilding the computer is part of the general maintenance of a computer and a drive. Mostly for the OS and the Disk(s).


That computer is yours. Install the OS and any applications that you want/need. You do not have to use what comes with it. The applications that come with it are usually low quality anyway. The best OS are the ones that are free for download. Try FreeBSD, Linux, Syllable, ReactOS, and hundreds of others. Not only is the OS free, but so are all the applications that run under that particular OS. And none of them both you about the last support date is whenever the heck...... Who cares. The OS is not going to stop working on that day. Who cares if they ever create another OS patch. If they would have thought the process thru, tested properly and used engineers, developers and testers from any where other than 3rd world countries, they would not need to have patches. The OS I used in the 70's, we never had patches. And I was still able to access anything on the Internet at that time. Oh, you thought that Internet was fairly new, something like 30 or 35 years old. You are wrong. The very first use of an internet network was in the early 1930's between multiple computers at multiple locations.


Stop whimpering about the OS that you chose to purchase and obviously are ready to spend more money on another one from the same company. And choose something else.


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## surferdude2 (Nov 21, 2019)

It's collusion I tell you!! Collusion!! It's the MS/Business complex!!! :biggrin2: MS gives business free OS's to businesses in exchange for them using IE for their chosen browser base. That way when your browser will no longer work to contact your bank or your favorite gaming site, you'll have to throw down some coins for a new OS since you can't update the old OS to the new browser they came up with. Of course you'll also need a new computer since there aren't any drivers for your old hardware. Rats!

In that same vein, some of the web sites I use require a cell phone to receive a security code or else be rejected from logging in. I always leave mine in the car and have to run out and get the code and try to get back before the 5 minute window of opportunity expires. Land line won't be acceptable but a couple of them told me I could call them and wait the normal 15 or more minutes to speak to an actual human being, albeit one from another continent, I might manage to get connected if I answer all the right questions. That's just a fine way to access something that is supposed to be a convenience feature or an enticement to do business with the. Rats! I put that right up there with the sites that lock me out because my caps lock as inadvertently on and my password was rejected more than twice. Double rats!


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## rusty baker (Feb 13, 2009)

I have been told that some banks still use XP. In fact a friend told me that he hacked around and convinced MS that his XP was a bank's and he still gets security updates. (don't know if it is true)


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## surferdude2 (Nov 21, 2019)

Performed my usual manually inflicted check to see if I needed any of the updates they offered. Didn't look like it so I was all ready to get back to goofing off when the pop-up below appeared. What a coincidence, I picked the final day! I though I had them blocked! :smile:

Now I'll have to find something else to blow 30 minutes or more at the first part of the months. :sad:


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## SPS-1 (Oct 21, 2008)

Yeah, I woke up to the same screen.

Just as well. Any bugs that Microsoft has not fixed my now, probably don't need fixing.

Maybe if Microsoft programmers are bored, now that they are not working on Win7, they can see if they can fix Internet Explorer. Maybe I would start using it again.


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## carmusic (Oct 11, 2011)

check here to remove the nag screen
https://www.howtogeek.com/408556/how-to-avoid-windows-7s-end-of-support-nags/


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## huesmann (Aug 18, 2011)

I have done some cursory searching, but haven't been able to find anything that tells me whether or not support is ending for existing updates. That is, if I do a brand new Win7 install on a computer, will Windows Update still work to run any updates produced before 1/15/2020? Or will it not do any updates at all?


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## carmusic (Oct 11, 2011)

yes you can install all the updates that were made before


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