Support for Windows 7 to end January 2020 - update to Windows 10, goy!

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Jump said:
Why will it "stop working"?
If this stuff isn't sitting on the internet then who cares.
The orginization I work for still has a NT machine doing nothing but running access control and hvac for a few buildings. The IT dept discovered those IDE hard drive emulators that use SDcards so there is nothing hardware related to stop it now.
We have another application that was ported from Solaris to Redhat only because maintaining sparc hardware in the numbers we needed wasn't feasible. Stuff we have running under windows server 2003 and 2012r2 has been put in VM's on modern hardware. Last I looked our phone system loggers (CallFocus) all run on XPsp2.
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It uses ethernet cables to communicate. I mean it will still work, but without the licensing and programs we won't be able to get any data off of it. The old programs themselves are incompatible with Windows 10. We've had issues already where IT "helpfully" updated a computer and made an entire test setup useless until the person tracked down a Windows 7 computer. I don't think it has usb ports for us to save data to like the Yokogawa meters we have.

And this is the "new" stuff. The old stuff we still have stuffed in the back of the equipment room used daisy chained GPIB connectors And programs that, again, only work on ancient computers that run on Windows ME NT and are banned from being connected to any sort of internet (There are like three that all have printed signs on them saying things like DO NOT UPDATE, DO NOT CONNECT TO INTERNET, DO NOT ALLOW IT TO TAKE) Using ethernet cables and our in house intranet made things so much easier, as we could save stuff to different drives. And given how neurotic my company is about usb drives (they tried for a while to ban them completely and the entire engineering department told them to get fucked) it's a nightmare to get those for use.

It's pretty much the equivalent of updating your computer and having the old version of Adobe photoshop you bought years ago no longer work at all, and you having to buy the now yearly Adobe subscription. But for an entire department, and I doubt corporate is going to sign off on getting all the new stuff.

It's gonna get interesting.
 
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neverendingmidi said:
It uses ethernet cables to communicate. I mean it will still work, but without the licensing and programs we won't be able to get any data off of it. The old programs themselves are incompatible with Windows 10. We've had issues already where IT "helpfully" updated a computer and made an entire test setup useless until the person tracked down a Windows 7 computer. I don't think it has usb ports for us to save data to like the Yokogawa meters we have.

And this is the "new" stuff. The old stuff we still have stuffed in the back of the equipment room used daisy chained GPIB connectors And programs that, again, only work on ancient computers that run on Windows ME NT and are banned from being connected to any sort of internet (There are like three that all have printed signs on them saying things like DO NOT UPDATE, DO NOT CONNECT TO INTERNET, DO NOT ALLOW IT TO TAKE) Using ethernet cables and our in house intranet made things so much easier, as we could save stuff to different drives. And given how neurotic my company is about usb drives (they tried for a while to ban them completely and the entire engineering department told them to get fucked) it's a nightmare to get those for use.

It's pretty much the equivalent of updating your computer and having the old version of Adobe photoshop you bought years ago no longer work at all, and you having to buy the now yearly Adobe subscription. But for an entire department, and I doubt corporate is going to sign off on getting all the new stuff.

It's gonna get interesting.
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Well, at least the computers are dedicated to the equipment, makes it a bit easier. Thinking about it further, depending on just what the problems are with the software running on Windows 10, it's possible that Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit might allow a specific work around to be added for the software. A lot of the stuff that works in recent versions of Windows only works because the 'compatibility toolkit' fixes that you can create with this were already created by Microsoft and baked into the OS.

Alternatively if it's going over regular IP networks, you might even be able to run the software under Wine on Linux with some IT-approved distro- at least that would allow keeping up to date with a currently supported operating system.

OTOH, if Win 7 is the only option, IT could probably make life a little easier by setting up a better way to do file exchange- put the machines connected to the instruments on a seperate network with no access to the internet or the main internal network, and set up a FTP server- perhaps locked down to only allow uploads of whatever file types the instrument software will generate- that the instrument-connected machines can use to upload files onto some drop location on the internal file shares.
 
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I'm of mixed feelings on this. My old laptop, which dates back to when Win 7 was brand new, is on its last legs and I'll probably change to a newer laptop within the next two years as I only really use my old college workhorse for writing and internet surfing - everything that actually needs processing power was moved to my hybridized gaming/programming tower rig.

But that said, Win 7 simply is perfect and while the aforementioned tower rig runs Win 10, Win 7 only did what I needed it to do. Way too much of 10 is simply bloatware for my purposes like Cortana, which I haven't bothered with in the slightest.
 
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Depending on the kind of laptop model you can just swap laptop harddrives to get W7 on a newer laptop. I tried swapping harddrives with a Sony Vaio laptop that had W8, but it wouldn't accept the harddrive and boot it. I've even done this with RAM with no observable problems. (Using better RAM sticks from broken laptops on older laptops.) The only problem I see that could come from swapping hardrives would be a potential harddrive failure if the harddrive was too old.
 
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Optimus Prime said:
I'm of mixed feelings on this. My old laptop, which dates back to when Win 7 was brand new, is on its last legs and I'll probably change to a newer laptop within the next two years as I only really use my old college workhorse for writing and internet surfing - everything that actually needs processing power was moved to my hybridized gaming/programming tower rig.

But that said, Win 7 simply is perfect and while the aforementioned tower rig runs Win 10, Win 7 only did what I needed it to do. Way too much of 10 is simply bloatware for my purposes like Cortana, which I haven't bothered with in the slightest.
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I use Win 10 lite which disables Cortana and edge and has a Win 7 look. Start is Back is the company that gives it that Win & look. Team OS/ White Death is the people that created Win 10 lite. Start is back is trial based and it was worth $3.00 to get a license for it.

Been using Win 10 lite since 2017 and have it upgraded to the 1903 update. I had no issues with spyware but now these days nothing is safe anymore. So of course do a full scan before installing.

Have Win 7 working on my Ryzen 1800X with no issues as well. I also believe Win 7 will be around in the 3rd world for years to come.

Just like what XP is still doing currently in certain parts of the world.
 
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A fully functional Plasma desktop with a Windows 7 theme. Microsoft will stop providing updates for Windows 7 on January 14 2020. There won't be any more patches that correct bugs or even dangerous vulnerabilities. This will leave Windows 7 users exposed to all sorts of bad stuff. But that is...
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Leibowitz said:
Using Windows 10 LTSC takes care of a lot of the crap packaged with retail Windows. Then you can run ShutUp10 or something like that to stop most of the remaining telemetry. This is as close to a Windows 7 experience as I have gotten.
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Any advice on how I can get my hands on this?

I bought a cheap laptop at target and I had to fucking sign into a msn account to get the app store to switch it out of "S" mode.

I will happily give a company money to have software as a product.

been starting on the linux journey but there are few programs i gotta keep around like QB etc.
 
northstar747 said:
Any advice on how I can get my hands on this?

I bought a cheap laptop at target and I had to fucking sign into a msn account to get the app store to switch it out of "S" mode.

I will happily give a company money to have software as a product.

been starting on the linux journey but there are few programs i gotta keep around like QB etc.
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Bruh, you can just use DosBox to run Qbasic in Linux.
 
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ExceptionallyExceptional said:
Microsoft: Windows 7 support is ending. You should totally update to Windows 10!
Windows 10: Has security error so bad that the fucking National Security Agency is concerned with it.


I think this confirms that God is a comedy writer.
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And the real kicker? Windows 7 doesn't have that exploit.
:story:
 
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neverendingmidi said:
It uses ethernet cables to communicate. I mean it will still work, but without the licensing and programs we won't be able to get any data off of it. The old programs themselves are incompatible with Windows 10. We've had issues already where IT "helpfully" updated a computer and made an entire test setup useless until the person tracked down a Windows 7 computer. I don't think it has usb ports for us to save data to like the Yokogawa meters we have.

And this is the "new" stuff. The old stuff we still have stuffed in the back of the equipment room used daisy chained GPIB connectors And programs that, again, only work on ancient computers that run on Windows ME NT and are banned from being connected to any sort of internet (There are like three that all have printed signs on them saying things like DO NOT UPDATE, DO NOT CONNECT TO INTERNET, DO NOT ALLOW IT TO TAKE) Using ethernet cables and our in house intranet made things so much easier, as we could save stuff to different drives. And given how neurotic my company is about usb drives (they tried for a while to ban them completely and the entire engineering department told them to get fucked) it's a nightmare to get those for use.

It's pretty much the equivalent of updating your computer and having the old version of Adobe photoshop you bought years ago no longer work at all, and you having to buy the now yearly Adobe subscription. But for an entire department, and I doubt corporate is going to sign off on getting all the new stuff.

It's gonna get interesting.
Click to expand...
What ended up happening?
TheRedChair said:
Been using Win 10 lite since 2017 and have it upgraded to the 1903 update. I had no issues with spyware but now these days nothing is safe anymore. So of course do a full scan before installing.
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Still on Win 10 Lite or what? Did it end up veritably spying on you?
 
serious n00b said:
What ended up happening?

Still on Win 10 Lite or what? Did it end up veritably spying on you?
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We did get some licenses for computers, but like I said, they're tied to specific computers so we have to be careful in which we use where. And then track down computers and remove the license in order to use it elsewhere if necessary. Cost a small fortune, but corporate is actually willing to spend money now. We had been operating under very tight budgets.
 
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