On Sat, 05 Jan 2019 20:36:09 -0800, pyotr filipivich
wrote:



It has been a long time, but I had to switch from XP to Win7 (I
knew I should have upgraded XP to 64 bit when that came out) a couple
years ago, and did not have the time to "play" with it to find out how
the GUI worked. I bashed together some shortcuts and the like on the
desktop (etc), and worked around MS.

I realized last month that I have more time now on my hands, at
least until spring, and maybe, now might not be a bad time to
"formally" switch over to Win 7. (I see some things on my wife's
computer that seem like they might work. OTOH ...)

So, any tutorial/books pointers, etc?

First, install Win 7 and do an image of the disc so you can
restore if you mess up. It will only take a few minutes. If you have
the space(Clonezilla compresses, so a virgin install makes a very
small image file), you can do subsequent images as you set up your
system, for example installing Classic Shell and a decent firewall.
It will save you the bother of having to do it all again if
something does not work as expected. Just restore the latest image.
Do NOT allow automatic updates. My maid's PC bluescreens on
boot after the last update, and I haven't had the time to look into it
so she's been without her PC for over a week. Remember, it's in M$'s
best interest for Win 7 to crash. They want you to update to 10.

I'd read up on firewalls. Check the ones that don't phone home
themselves or allow Windows to phone home. (I can't vouch for any of
them).
If in doubt, put an old Linux box between your PC and the net
and monitor network activity. It should be close to zero when you are
not actively using the internet.
Try to isolate and close down any datamining or profiling
activity before you put any personal data on the new machine.
When you do install programs, you will probably need to right
click on both installer and program and "run as administrator". That
gives the program access to everything on the PC, so make sure you
have double checked any installers before using them.
And run a decent uninstaller like Chemtable's Soft Organizer
so you can cleanly remove anything that misbehaves. You can get
giveaway copy he
https://www.comss.ru/page.php?id=5064
(if you update it you will have to register it. The file is
safe, check on Virustotal).
Or you can use Revo Uninstaller (there's also a giveaway
somewhere out there of the Pro version, but they offer a free one too)
HTH
[]'s
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