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Win XP to Win 10?



 
 
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  #31  
Old January 10th 19, 08:34 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Ken Blake[_5_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,221
Default laptops

On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:01:41 -0500, Big Al wrote:

On 1/10/19 11:23 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
I know that a lot of people are like J. P. Gilliver, and use a laptop
in place of a desktop at home. But I can never understand why.


I dropped the desktop for a laptop when laptops became more powerful,
quite a few years ago. I have beside me a 4GB, and 2 2GB 2.5" USB power
HDs. That's enough storage for anything I need.



It would be enough storage for me too. But the amount of storage or
memory or CPU speed aren't the only differences between laptops and
desktops to me. There's also monitor size, keyboard, touchpad vs
mouse, etc. Those are the important things to me.

But we're all different, and have different needs, different likes and
dislikes. I won't try to talk you into changing your mind.



I'm also in my 70's and have back issues,



I'm 81 and also have back problems. But fortunately I don't have them
when sitting. I only get pain if I walk more than 15-20 minutes.


don't play power games.



I don't play an games on the computer, except for Chess and solitaire,
both only very occasionally.


Sitting at the desktop was not enjoyable anymore. Damn 'golden years'
my foot!


It's better than the alternative.


Needing a quick lookup on Google was inconvenient on the
desktop while my laptop just stands up beside my chair in sleep mode and
is ready in seconds.



I'm not sure why you find that more convenient on a laptop. I can do
it on my desktop very quickly and easily, probably just as quickly and
easily as you can on your laptop.
Ads
  #32  
Old January 10th 19, 09:58 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
David B.[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 286
Default Ping: PAUL (was - Win XP to Win 10??

On 10/01/2019 09:12, David B. wrote:
On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote:
[....]
I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some
specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns.Â* :-)

As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for that.
I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the
time. And
just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one
with Windows 7), which I rarely use..

If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like
I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the
latter
two.

I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing
their
desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited
work use,
I mean).


What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and
detachable keyboard.

After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months
ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a
computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it like
a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been in touch
regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of charge! ;-)

If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask for
a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands!

You might enjoy watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8

=

Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-(

I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update
of my Windows 10 laptop)

Now I'm getting:

error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem

Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution?



Any thoughts, Paul?

--
David B.
  #33  
Old January 10th 19, 11:12 PM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:

I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one
with Windows 7), which I rarely use..

So the Win7 one would be your "trial candidate" for Windows 10.

If it's Win7 SP1 x64 Home Premium, try installing Windows 10 x64 Home
over it.
If it's Win7 SP1 x86 Professional, try installing Windows 10 x86 Pro over
it.
For a "free" upgrade, the "class" of the install has to match.

It's still possible for a CPU on a Win7 box, to not
be sufficient for Windows 10, but that's the most
likely limiting factor.

Both Win7 and Win10 work with 1GB of RAM. The "kernel portion"
of the OS (i.e. squeeze out all the fat) is about 350MB or so.
Using 1GB of RAM leaves room to work.

In terms of "comfort"

1) Single core computer "works", but many common activities
might seem slow. Firefox with five processes running, railed
while it loads Yahoo News, is going to be slightly worse
than it is on Windows 7. This is because Windows 10 has little
maintenance things it will be doing in the background.

2) Graphics drivers for Windows 10 are limited by the
hardware companies. An FX5200 for example, would be running
the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. My HD6450 PCIe video card
got one driver of merit and support has stopped. The card
runs at native resolution. When the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter
runs the show, you get 1024x768 (even on a 16:9 display).

3) A "best config" would be a quad core processor, to give some
bandwidth for the background stuff, and leave a bit for you.

You have the materials to test, but it'll be your Win7 laptop
as a (possible) candidate with no guarantees. The screen will likely
run at 1024x768.

*******

On a laptop, when it gets super-thin, there's no cooling fan.
The CPU/GPU heat is dumped into the base.

The processor then has two limits. It has a "power limiter" that
throttles if the electrical demands of the processor are too high.
It also has the usual "thermal throttles". It will allow "bursts",
so on a single threaded task (with no OS background activity),
it might seem fast. But as soon as there is background activity, it's
going to disable turbo. There is at least one enthusiast class
processor, where the turbo is set up for two cores, which allows
some amount of annoying Windows 10 activity, while you "bench"
on the other core.

With the thermal limiter, you could start a movie transcode, and
be doing 60FPS processing for the first 15 seconds, and then
the frames per second processed gradually drop to a lower number.
The cooler you keep the base, the more the speed can rise again.

If the laptop is thicker and has tradition "air cooling", you might
have more headroom. Air cooling also allows cheaper competitor
CPU choices which happen to not be as efficient. Air cooling
should allow a cheaper "performant" laptop to be built.

Thin devices used eMMC Flash storage. A device with 32GB of disk
space, stores things in a single flash chip. If the flash chip
fails, nobody is going to offer you a repair strategy (chip
must be un-soldered to replace). A wiser purchase is a machine
with at least one bay for a 2.5" drive. Which can take a SATA SSD.
And be replaced if there is an issue.

HTH,
Paul


Thanks. I will keep this in mind as an idea, but I'm a bit hesitant to bite
the bullet and mess with the Win 7 laptop (plus downloading a 3.5 GB file is
another issue over here). But at least as you've said, it is an option.

And you brought up something there that never occured to me, and that is,
that while it seems fine and dandy to have that SSD internal drive, if it
fails, you're screwed, since it's soldered in place (at least for the thin
laptops, from what you said). I wonder if there are any laptops that have
their SSD socketed, and if so, how would one ever know before purchasing?

And then of course, the concerns over the reliability and the failure mode
of an SSD vs a normal HDD. Sometimes for that reason alone I think it might
be safer to stick with the regular HDD laptops, but then have to put up with
the much slower boot and program load times. But perhaps I'm being too
conservative here, because the SSD stuff sure is attractive, otherwise.


I have an SSD in my "Win7 laptop converted to Win10" and it's fine.
It's in a 2.5" bay.

One thing that's interesting, is if you unplug the network cable,
Win10 uses less electricity than Win7. But as soon as you plug
in the cable, things like Windows-Update-Checking and AV-Definitions-loading,
help double the power consumption, and push it past the Win7 value.

And the single core processor in the laptop is rather limiting.
There's supposed to be a dual core and a quad core that fit
the same socket, but I've hesitated to consider those. Back when
I got the laptop, I think a used dual was around $50, but
those have all disappeared.

With regard to the eMMC, one thing I don't know is how the
wear leveling works on the Flash, and whether it's as good
as a regular SSD, or more similar to a USB flash stick. You
can never tell with these things, what you're getting inside
them. So in addition to "it's TLC", you also have the
unknown of how good the treatment of the TLC is.

Paul
  #34  
Old January 11th 19, 12:16 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Big Al[_5_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,588
Default laptops

On 1/10/19 2:34 PM, Ken Blake wrote:
On Thu, 10 Jan 2019 13:01:41 -0500, Big Al wrote:

On 1/10/19 11:23 AM, Ken Blake wrote:
I know that a lot of people are like J. P. Gilliver, and use a laptop
in place of a desktop at home. But I can never understand why.


I dropped the desktop for a laptop when laptops became more powerful,
quite a few years ago. I have beside me a 4GB, and 2 2GB 2.5" USB power
HDs. That's enough storage for anything I need.



It would be enough storage for me too. But the amount of storage or
memory or CPU speed aren't the only differences between laptops and
desktops to me. There's also monitor size, keyboard, touchpad vs
mouse, etc. Those are the important things to me.

But we're all different, and have different needs, different likes and
dislikes. I won't try to talk you into changing your mind.



I'm also in my 70's and have back issues,



I'm 81 and also have back problems. But fortunately I don't have them
when sitting. I only get pain if I walk more than 15-20 minutes.


don't play power games.



I don't play an games on the computer, except for Chess and solitaire,
both only very occasionally.


Sitting at the desktop was not enjoyable anymore. Damn 'golden years'
my foot!


It's better than the alternative.


Needing a quick lookup on Google was inconvenient on the
desktop while my laptop just stands up beside my chair in sleep mode and
is ready in seconds.



I'm not sure why you find that more convenient on a laptop. I can do
it on my desktop very quickly and easily, probably just as quickly and
easily as you can on your laptop.

At the time I dropped the desktop it was down a level in the rec room.
Inconvenient. Now it would be 20 ft away, but oh well, times do change.

I do have to admit, I do remember the 21" tv screen. And now even
bigger.
  #35  
Old January 11th 19, 12:16 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win XP to Win 10?

David B. wrote:
On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote:
[....]
I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some
specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns. :-)

As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for that.
I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the
time. And
just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one
with Windows 7), which I rarely use..

If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like
I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the
latter
two.

I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing
their
desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited
work use,
I mean).


What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and
detachable keyboard.

After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months
ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a
computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it like
a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been in touch
regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of charge! ;-)

If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask for
a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands!

You might enjoy watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8

=

Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-(

I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update
of my Windows 10 laptop)

Now I'm getting:

error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem

Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution?


You've got the discussion thread to work with.

A classical repair involves the three line stanza before
this, plus this command. That's called "chroot from a LiveCD",
and is a way to fool the software processes that follow it,
into thinking they are running "native" on the hard drive OS.
So while the DVD-sourced OS is what boots the machine,
once you change the root of the file system from / to
/media/ubuntu, then you can issue commands as if you
were issuing them from a properly running Ubuntu HDD OS.

sudo chroot /media/ubuntu/

sudo grub-install /dev/sdx

But in that discussion thread, I don't see any signs that
anyone bothered to "survey" the disk setup and figure out
what's wrong with it. The poster in that thread seems to
still have trouble after a proposed fix, and that suggests
there's something we cannot see which is actively interfering
with things.

A typical situation would be, a user has more than one
hard drive, and has inadvertently installed some boot
materials (a GRUB stage), onto the wrong hard drive.
And then, by following these simplified instructions that
assume a single disk drive, the solution doesn't seem to work.

So first you have to take a look at the disk setup (in
the equivalent of Disk Management), and make sure you
know exactly what the nature of the problem is, before
just dumping a canonical solution on it.

The "Boot Repair" CD is fine, but what we don't know is
how many variations of repair are programmed into that tool.
I wasn't convinced it knew how to fix a GPT setup for example.
Especially one where perhaps the BIOS was partly responsible
for breakage.

So the first step is understanding the setup, then you run
off and try and find a matching solution. The askubuntu thread
you picked isn't bad, and suggests several common ways of
fixing it. But what of the original setup ? Kosher or what ?
I can't tell from here. And the thing is, characterization
from Ubuntu takes multiple tools. I can't just give you
gnome-disks or sudo fdisk or sudo gdisk or sudo gparted
and develop a complete picture that way.

I believe there is a tool which "visualizes" the various
boot stages of Linux, and can tell if something there matches
an expected pattern or is broken. Now, what keyword is going
to tell me the name of that program :-/ This is the part
I hate, remembering there's a capability but not
remembering the name :-/ It's possible Boot-Repair uses
that utility.

I only got the Boot-Repair CD about a month ago.

It seems the utility is called "Boot-Info".

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info

In this example, Debian has two partitions. sda1 is the slash.
sda2 is a declaration of an Extended, and sda5 is swap being
stored in the Extended area as a Logical. So that's an example
of a pretty simple setup, something that Boot-Repair should
not have a problem with.

https://i.postimg.cc/3wBFwHzd/bootinfo.gif

If you have more than one disk, the report should reference
sda and sdb if there were two disks.

The text file can be uploaded to pastebin but I don't
recommend doing that without cleaning the file first.
Maybe Boot-Repair supports Windows File Sharing, but
I didn't test. It's also possible you could store the
text file on a USB stick as an intermediary.

Paul
  #36  
Old January 11th 19, 12:49 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:
Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:

I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one
with Windows 7), which I rarely use..
So the Win7 one would be your "trial candidate" for Windows 10.

If it's Win7 SP1 x64 Home Premium, try installing Windows 10 x64 Home
over it.
If it's Win7 SP1 x86 Professional, try installing Windows 10 x86 Pro
over it.
For a "free" upgrade, the "class" of the install has to match.

It's still possible for a CPU on a Win7 box, to not
be sufficient for Windows 10, but that's the most
likely limiting factor.

Both Win7 and Win10 work with 1GB of RAM. The "kernel portion"
of the OS (i.e. squeeze out all the fat) is about 350MB or so.
Using 1GB of RAM leaves room to work.

In terms of "comfort"

1) Single core computer "works", but many common activities
might seem slow. Firefox with five processes running, railed
while it loads Yahoo News, is going to be slightly worse
than it is on Windows 7. This is because Windows 10 has little
maintenance things it will be doing in the background.

2) Graphics drivers for Windows 10 are limited by the
hardware companies. An FX5200 for example, would be running
the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter. My HD6450 PCIe video card
got one driver of merit and support has stopped. The card
runs at native resolution. When the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter
runs the show, you get 1024x768 (even on a 16:9 display).

3) A "best config" would be a quad core processor, to give some
bandwidth for the background stuff, and leave a bit for you.

You have the materials to test, but it'll be your Win7 laptop
as a (possible) candidate with no guarantees. The screen will likely
run at 1024x768.

*******

On a laptop, when it gets super-thin, there's no cooling fan.
The CPU/GPU heat is dumped into the base.

The processor then has two limits. It has a "power limiter" that
throttles if the electrical demands of the processor are too high.
It also has the usual "thermal throttles". It will allow "bursts",
so on a single threaded task (with no OS background activity),
it might seem fast. But as soon as there is background activity, it's
going to disable turbo. There is at least one enthusiast class
processor, where the turbo is set up for two cores, which allows
some amount of annoying Windows 10 activity, while you "bench"
on the other core.

With the thermal limiter, you could start a movie transcode, and
be doing 60FPS processing for the first 15 seconds, and then
the frames per second processed gradually drop to a lower number.
The cooler you keep the base, the more the speed can rise again.

If the laptop is thicker and has tradition "air cooling", you might
have more headroom. Air cooling also allows cheaper competitor
CPU choices which happen to not be as efficient. Air cooling
should allow a cheaper "performant" laptop to be built.

Thin devices used eMMC Flash storage. A device with 32GB of disk
space, stores things in a single flash chip. If the flash chip
fails, nobody is going to offer you a repair strategy (chip
must be un-soldered to replace). A wiser purchase is a machine
with at least one bay for a 2.5" drive. Which can take a SATA SSD.
And be replaced if there is an issue.

HTH,
Paul


Thanks. I will keep this in mind as an idea, but I'm a bit hesitant to
bite the bullet and mess with the Win 7 laptop (plus downloading a 3.5
GB file is another issue over here). But at least as you've said, it is
an option. And you brought up something there that never occured to me,
and that is,
that while it seems fine and dandy to have that SSD internal drive, if it
fails, you're screwed, since it's soldered in place (at least for the
thin laptops, from what you said). I wonder if there are any laptops
that have their SSD socketed, and if so, how would one ever know before
purchasing? And then of course, the concerns over the reliability and the
failure
mode of an SSD vs a normal HDD. Sometimes for that reason alone I think
it might be safer to stick with the regular HDD laptops, but then have
to put up with the much slower boot and program load times. But perhaps
I'm being too conservative here, because the SSD stuff sure is
attractive, otherwise.


I have an SSD in my "Win7 laptop converted to Win10" and it's fine.
It's in a 2.5" bay.

One thing that's interesting, is if you unplug the network cable,
Win10 uses less electricity than Win7. But as soon as you plug
in the cable, things like Windows-Update-Checking and
AV-Definitions-loading, help double the power consumption, and push it
past the Win7 value.
And the single core processor in the laptop is rather limiting.
There's supposed to be a dual core and a quad core that fit
the same socket, but I've hesitated to consider those. Back when
I got the laptop, I think a used dual was around $50, but
those have all disappeared.

With regard to the eMMC, one thing I don't know is how the
wear leveling works on the Flash, and whether it's as good
as a regular SSD, or more similar to a USB flash stick. You
can never tell with these things, what you're getting inside
them. So in addition to "it's TLC", you also have the
unknown of how good the treatment of the TLC is.

Paul


A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10?
Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)?

So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is
true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just
soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the only
time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and that the
thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or HDD). Does that
sound about right?


  #37  
Old January 11th 19, 12:57 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,881
Default laptops

Frank Slootweg wrote:

Ken Blake wrote:
[...]

Not to mention that it's very difficult to travel with a monitor,
keyboard, and mouse.


WIMP! In the late 60's, early 70's, I traveled with a - core-memory -
computer and a ASR-33 Teletype! :-)

HP 2114 Computer:
http://www.hpmuseum.net/display_item.php?hw=97

ASR-33:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletype_Model_33

The car (similar to this one):
https://www.classic-trader.com/uk/cars/listing/simca/1000/1000-special/1969/86746


And back then (when dinosaurs still roamed the planet, like your gear)
the airlines weren't charging by the bag and for carry-on luggage, the
seats were wider, they served meals, and a reservation was as good as a
booking where you weren't vulnerable to getting booted due to
overbooking. Back then, cars were made to survive crashes (but the
occupants were considered expendable). Now the occupants survive and
it's the car that doesn't.

Yeah, they don't make them like they used to ... thank God!
  #38  
Old January 11th 19, 01:35 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Bill in Co wrote:

A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10?
Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)?

So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is
true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just
soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the only
time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and that the
thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or HDD). Does that
sound about right?


The conversion isn't permanent. I have a Win7 drive and a
Win10 drive. The Win10 drive is sitting in it currently.

The drive bay concept "fits my lifestyle". You won't catch
me using a device with eMMC on it, as how would I swap stuff
and have fun ???

*******

You can get sockets for BGA chips, but sometimes those
solutions (used for lab prototypes) are taller than
an SSD would be, so nobody would do that.

If they wanted to, the industry could have come up with
a better solution. Soldering them down is just planned
obsolescence.

Paul
  #39  
Old January 11th 19, 01:40 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
David B.[_10_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 286
Default Win XP to Win 10?

On 10/01/2019 23:16, Paul wrote:
David B. wrote:
On 10/01/2019 03:16, Bill in Co wrote:
[....]
I just had some concerns, as echoed above, and was just looking for some
specific feedback regarding those questions or concerns.Â* :-)

As far as "upgrading" is concerned, I think my stuff is too old for
that.
I've got one desktop computer (Win XP), which I use almost all the
time. And
just as a backup, I have two old used eBay laptops (one with Win XP, one
with Windows 7), which I rarely use..

If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like
I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the
latter
two.

I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up
replacing their
desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited
work use,
I mean).


What you might like to consider, Bill, is a brand new iPad Pro and
detachable keyboard.

After many years of persuasion I got one for my sister about 14 months
ago (she's just passed her 82nd birthday!). She had NEVER used a
computer of any sort nor ever used a Smartphone. She's taken to it
like a duck to water! I'm an hours drive away from her but have been
in touch regularly to provide a kind of help-desk facility free of
charge! ;-)

If you have an Apple store near you, I encourage you to visit to ask
for a demonstration and hold the magic in your hands!

You might enjoy watching this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jzHHxlpOaw8

=

Things for me are not always straight-forward! :-(

I'm now faced with a problem set out here (following the recent update
of my Windows 10 laptop)

Now I'm getting:

error: unknown filesystem.
grub rescue

https://askubuntu.com/questions/1195...own-filesystem


Perhaps Paul can recommend HIS preferred solution?


You've got the discussion thread to work with.

A classical repair involves the three line stanza before
this, plus this command. That's called "chroot from a LiveCD",
and is a way to fool the software processes that follow it,
into thinking they are running "native" on the hard drive OS.
So while the DVD-sourced OS is what boots the machine,
once you change the root of the file system from / to
/media/ubuntu, then you can issue commands as if you
were issuing them from a properly running Ubuntu HDD OS.

Â*Â* sudo chroot /media/ubuntu/

Â*Â* sudo grub-install /dev/sdx

But in that discussion thread, I don't see any signs that
anyone bothered to "survey" the disk setup and figure out
what's wrong with it. The poster in that thread seems to
still have trouble after a proposed fix, and that suggests
there's something we cannot see which is actively interfering
with things.

A typical situation would be, a user has more than one
hard drive, and has inadvertently installed some boot
materials (a GRUB stage), onto the wrong hard drive.
And then, by following these simplified instructions that
assume a single disk drive, the solution doesn't seem to work.

So first you have to take a look at the disk setup (in
the equivalent of Disk Management), and make sure you
know exactly what the nature of the problem is, before
just dumping a canonical solution on it.

The "Boot Repair" CD is fine, but what we don't know is
how many variations of repair are programmed into that tool.
I wasn't convinced it knew how to fix a GPT setup for example.
Especially one where perhaps the BIOS was partly responsible
for breakage.

So the first step is understanding the setup, then you run
off and try and find a matching solution. The askubuntu thread
you picked isn't bad, and suggests several common ways of
fixing it. But what of the original setup ? Kosher or what ?
I can't tell from here. And the thing is, characterization
from Ubuntu takes multiple tools. I can't just give you
gnome-disks or sudo fdisk or sudo gdisk or sudo gparted
and develop a complete picture that way.

I believe there is a tool which "visualizes" the various
boot stages of Linux, and can tell if something there matches
an expected pattern or is broken. Now, what keyword is going
to tell me the name of that program :-/ This is the part
I hate, remembering there's a capability but not
remembering the name :-/ It's possible Boot-Repair uses
that utility.

I only got the Boot-Repair CD about a month ago.

It seems the utility is called "Boot-Info".

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Info

In this example, Debian has two partitions. sda1 is the slash.
sda2 is a declaration of an Extended, and sda5 is swap being
stored in the Extended area as a Logical. So that's an example
of a pretty simple setup, something that Boot-Repair should
not have a problem with.

https://i.postimg.cc/3wBFwHzd/bootinfo.gif

If you have more than one disk, the report should reference
sda and sdb if there were two disks.

The text file can be uploaded to pastebin but I don't
recommend doing that without cleaning the file first.
Maybe Boot-Repair supports Windows File Sharing, but
I didn't test. It's also possible you could store the
text file on a USB stick as an intermediary.

Â*Â* Paul


THANK YOU, Paul! :-)

I'm just off to bed. I'll follow-up your comments tomorrow.

--
David B.
  #40  
Old January 11th 19, 03:30 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:

A couple of questions. Why did you convert your Win 7 laptop to Win 10?
Did you actually need the updated capabilities or software (of Win 10)?

So it looks like your SSD is easily replaceable, and I wonder if that is
true for ANY of the new laptops out there, or if they are typically just
soldered in? Hmmm. Reading between the lines here, I'm assuming the
only time they are soldered in then is for the thin svelte laptops, and
that the thicker laptops actually have a drive bay for a 2.5 SSD (or
HDD). Does that sound about right?


The conversion isn't permanent. I have a Win7 drive and a
Win10 drive. The Win10 drive is sitting in it currently.


So I presume you did that just to see what Win 10 was like then, not that
you really needed it for anything. I wonder which one will get more use.
:-)

BTW, I have heard there are at least some fixes out there (programs) that
can block some, if not all, of the forced MS updates in Windows 10. Are you
familiar with such?

The drive bay concept "fits my lifestyle". You won't catch
me using a device with eMMC on it, as how would I swap stuff
and have fun ???

*******

You can get sockets for BGA chips, but sometimes those
solutions (used for lab prototypes) are taller than
an SSD would be, so nobody would do that.

If they wanted to, the industry could have come up with
a better solution. Soldering them down is just planned
obsolescence.

Paul


So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that has an
SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply soldered in?
If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might prevent me from
buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high stakes gamble,
that option is.


  #41  
Old January 11th 19, 03:47 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Bill in Co wrote:


So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that has an
SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply soldered in?
If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might prevent me from
buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high stakes gamble,
that option is.


The machines that are thick enough to have a fan, are thick
enough to have an SSD drive bay.

When the machines get really thin, there's no room for a
7mm SSD plus plastic covering on both sides.

The thinnest you can make a device, is two plastic surfaces
and a printed circuit board of some sort. And the eMMC storage
is just another chip soldered to the board. A BGA with a
relatively small ball count.

A PCH (Southbridge) could have a thousand balls, while
an eMMC flash drive might have 48 or 64, somewhere in that
ballpark. The eMMC drive isn't particularly demanding,
and it probably could have been put in a TSOP instead
of a BGA. Again, it's almost like the BGA was chosen
purely to make it harder to remove. (Yes, BGAs have
a smaller footprint, but repair-ability matters too.)

Due to the multi-layer nature of commodity flash now
(96L came out a few days ago), you can actually put
much more storage than 32GB in one "chip". The "chip"
is a stack of thinned wafers of "stuff", joined somehow
vertically. They could probably do more than 128GB
in a single chip now. But you'll continue to see stupid
designs with only 32GB being the "median" offering. 32GB,
once you consider the "overheads", doesn't give a lot of
room. The "OS people" could easily benefit from having
their "own drive" and a second chip should really be
there for users. A "hard partition" to prevent the OS
from doing stupid stuff. For example, a new feature
introduced a few days ago, mentions the OS is going to
"reserve" somehow, around 7GB of space, so it can
download a new version of Windows 10 and be guaranteed
of being able to store it. With that sort of notion,
it would be better if the hardware just gave them their
own chip to use.

In any case, I hope that gives you some "danger signs"
to look for in adverts.

Paul
  #42  
Old January 11th 19, 03:53 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default laptops (was: Win XP to Win 10?)

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Bill in Co
writes:
[]
If I ever went out and bought one of these nice new svelte laptops, like
I've seen on display at some stores here, I'd probably just scrap the
latter two.

I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing
their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited
work use, I mean).

I bought my first laptop (W9x era), intending to use it only when
travelling or in other situations where my tower machine couldn't be
taken. (I also didn't think I'd get on with a trackpad.) It became my
main machine - I was going to say rapidly, but it might have been
gradually. I have since used laptops for all my computing needs - my
desktop machines going initially weeks then months between being turned
on, and I think it might be over a year now. (And I have got very used
to a trackpad: I have a mouse, but rarely plug it in - of late, mainly
for when the trackpad [driver] misbehaves rather than needing the
differences.)

I'd say my main initial concerns re laptops fell into three areas:
limited keyboard, all-in-one-ness, and (in practice) no slots.

Limited keyboard - I was fortunate in that my first laptop still had the
sixpack; I _did_ find the second laptop irritating in having home and
end combined with something else and needing the Fn key. (Fortunately
this one has brought them back.) Also the lack of a numeric keypad (you
get one on _most_ 15" or more laptops anyway these days) meant I
couldn't use the Alt-numpad codes I'd memorised for things like the +/-
symbol, but in practice I've found a little utility called AllChars
actually easier (the sequences are easier to remember!).

All-in-one-ness - i. e. if one part fails, you have to junk the lot.
This hasn't been as much of a problem as I thought: things that have
failed - disc drive was easy to replace; a screen wasn't _too_ hard; and
a wireless card, I just used an external one. (That was on someone
else's machine that had lots of USB and she didn't use them anyway; had
it been me, I might have replaced the card - fiddly, but not difficult.)
The one case that _is_ irritating is where - I think - the internal
power supply (that takes the 19V or battery and gives the internal
supplies) has failed and thus rendered the laptop dead, whereas I think
most of it is actually alive.

No slots (I say in practice because, although in theory laptops can have
them, [a] many don't [b] the standards for laptop expansion slots change
with bewildering rapidity) - I think I was fortunate in that my
transition to laptops coincided with a large move of peripherals that
had previously used cards, to USB. This has continued, accompanied by
changes in desktop slot standards, from PCI (IDE was already dead) to
PCI-E and later, as well as graphic card slots. These changes in both
laptop and desktop slot standards have mostly _not_ been
backward-compatible, unlike USB. My transition has probably also, if I'm
honest, accompanied my changing outlook with ageing: I have less
_desire_ to use things that need plug-in cards (and aren't available via
USB).

Another advantage of laptops is that they have a poor man's UPS: brief
power outages don't crash them, even if the battery's in a poor state,
and can move from room to room without shutting down.

I can see that a proper desktop, with a big keyboard and monitor, still
holds its attraction for those with a settled lifestyle, _or_ who are
willing to switch between devices when they travel or visit. Also, for
those needing special machines - number-crunching, gaming, and so on.
For me, the ability to now take this my main computer wherever I go (not
relying on syncing services) means I can't see me ever going back to a
desktop as my main machine: in fact other than lethargy and nostalgia
I'm not sure why I keep my desktop. But - this is just me; YMMV, and I'm
certainly not saying anyone _should_ change. I just thought I'd answer
Bill-in-Co's question from my own experience.


Thanks, John. Good to hear all that, too.

Two of the three concerns you mentioned aren't of much significant concern
for me. But I do have to say I still feel more comfortable sitting down at
the computer desk with the desktop and its larger monitor and keyboard. I
don't travel much, so portability is not an issue for me. (And I also have
the (larger) monitor for the desktop further away from me than you can get
with a laptop, obviously).

The thing that got me interested in laptops here was just recently seeing
those nice, thin, svelte laptops on display in a local store here, and kind
of "drooling" at them. But drooling at something that looks cool is one
thing, and actually using the thing, day in and day out, is another. But as
you said, each of us has their own likes and dislikes and preferences, as is
evident by the length of this thread. I guess the biggest deciding factor
is portability for most people, and how important that capability is to you.


  #43  
Old January 11th 19, 04:19 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Bill in Co[_3_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 303
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Paul wrote:
Bill in Co wrote:


So let me get this straight: Any laptop out there (thin or not) that
has an SSD drive means the drive is not serviceable, and is simply
soldered in? If so, I feel that is really bad news. I think that might
prevent me
from buying one with an SSD, despite the fast boot. Kinda a high
stakes gamble, that option is.


The machines that are thick enough to have a fan, are thick
enough to have an SSD drive bay.

When the machines get really thin, there's no room for a
7mm SSD plus plastic covering on both sides.

The thinnest you can make a device, is two plastic surfaces
and a printed circuit board of some sort. And the eMMC storage
is just another chip soldered to the board. A BGA with a
relatively small ball count.

A PCH (Southbridge) could have a thousand balls, while
an eMMC flash drive might have 48 or 64, somewhere in that
ballpark. The eMMC drive isn't particularly demanding,
and it probably could have been put in a TSOP instead
of a BGA. Again, it's almost like the BGA was chosen
purely to make it harder to remove. (Yes, BGAs have
a smaller footprint, but repair-ability matters too.)

Due to the multi-layer nature of commodity flash now
(96L came out a few days ago), you can actually put
much more storage than 32GB in one "chip". The "chip"
is a stack of thinned wafers of "stuff", joined somehow
vertically. They could probably do more than 128GB
in a single chip now. But you'll continue to see stupid
designs with only 32GB being the "median" offering. 32GB,
once you consider the "overheads", doesn't give a lot of
room. The "OS people" could easily benefit from having
their "own drive" and a second chip should really be
there for users. A "hard partition" to prevent the OS
from doing stupid stuff. For example, a new feature
introduced a few days ago, mentions the OS is going to
"reserve" somehow, around 7GB of space, so it can
download a new version of Windows 10 and be guaranteed
of being able to store it. With that sort of notion,
it would be better if the hardware just gave them their
own chip to use.

In any case, I hope that gives you some "danger signs"
to look for in adverts.

Paul


Thanks. Definitely something to keep track of. I'm thinking those 32 GB
SSD laptops must not have a ton of room left over,too.

OK, I just looked this up, and one site says for system requirements 16 GB
for 32 bit, 20 GB for 64 bit. I didn't even know there was a 32 bit option
for Windows 10, but I guess that was for folks doing upgrades from an older
32 bit OS, as I can't see any other reason for it, except, perhaps, for
backwards compatibility with some older 32 bit programs. I almost forgot
about that one.

But wow, about 20 GB already used, leaving you only 12 GB for everything
else? Wow. That will be a "little bit" tight if you have any decent
collection of programs.


  #44  
Old January 11th 19, 04:36 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default Win XP to Win 10?

Bill in Co wrote:


Thanks. Definitely something to keep track of. I'm thinking those 32 GB
SSD laptops must not have a ton of room left over,too.

OK, I just looked this up, and one site says for system requirements 16 GB
for 32 bit, 20 GB for 64 bit. I didn't even know there was a 32 bit option
for Windows 10, but I guess that was for folks doing upgrades from an older
32 bit OS, as I can't see any other reason for it, except, perhaps, for
backwards compatibility with some older 32 bit programs. I almost forgot
about that one.

But wow, about 20 GB already used, leaving you only 12 GB for everything
else? Wow. That will be a "little bit" tight if you have any decent
collection of programs.


A 32 bit OS can run 16 bit programs.

That helps if you have a collection of ancient games.

A 64 bit OS helps if the machine happens to have
a lot of RAM. For example, if you had "the cheapest
machine possible", with only 1GB of RAM, then 64 bit
wouldn't be absolutely necessary for that.

But 64 bit is here to stay. You could find that 32 bit
drivers for graphics, new versions aren't being made any
more. Adobe uses only 64 bit for its software.

And some time this year or next, traditional BIOS may
disappear, so only UEFI boot is offered in new hardware.
That's the way Intel wants it for some reason. I don't
see a reason for Intel to care one way or another. I'm glad
the box I've got here supports UEFI+CSM (where CSM is the
compatibility module for legacy BIOS booting purposes)

Paul
  #45  
Old January 11th 19, 09:25 AM posted to microsoft.public.windowsxp.general,alt.windows7.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default laptops (was: Win XP to Win 10?)

In message , Bill in Co
writes:
J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Bill in Co
writes:

[]
I wonder if anybody gets so used to a laptop that it ends up replacing
their desktop for almost everything they need to do (for home or limited
work use, I mean).

[]
I'd say my main initial concerns re laptops fell into three areas:
limited keyboard, all-in-one-ness, and (in practice) no slots.

[]
Thanks, John. Good to hear all that, too.


You're welcome; it was interesting to ask myself the question(s).

Two of the three concerns you mentioned aren't of much significant concern
for me. But I do have to say I still feel more comfortable sitting down at
the computer desk with the desktop and its larger monitor and keyboard. I
don't travel much, so portability is not an issue for me. (And I also have
the (larger) monitor for the desktop further away from me than you can get
with a laptop, obviously).


Having it closer means it doesn't have to be so big, of course - so it's
only resolution that's different. I find the 1366 × 768 of this one more
than adequate for my needs now - and I think some modern laptops better
that. (I think even some _'phones_ do") But then, I never had huge
resolutions when I was using desktop machines. Not to say I probably
wouldn't use if available - to some extent; at work, I used a 17" 4:3 -
some colleagues had bigger (such as 16:9 or dual; I never really felt
the need.

The thing that got me interested in laptops here was just recently seeing
those nice, thin, svelte laptops on display in a local store here, and kind
of "drooling" at them. But drooling at something that looks cool is one
thing, and actually using the thing, day in and day out, is another. But as
you said, each of us has their own likes and dislikes and preferences, as is
evident by the length of this thread. I guess the biggest deciding factor
is portability for most people, and how important that capability is to you.


And, as also evident from this thread, the amount of portability
required varies considerably; some use them on battery quite a lot, some
like me hardly at all.

For me it's the switching machines I don't like. Like you, I don't
travel much - I haven't taken a holiday as most would see one for years;
my holiday is usually visiting friends. I do like to use a - my -
computer when staying with them though, so like to take this machine
with me.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Of course, this show - like every other cop show on earth - massively
overstates the prevalence of violent crime: last year, in the whole of the UK,
police fired their weapons just three times. And there were precisely zero
fatalities. - Vincent Graff in RT, 2014/11/8-14
 




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