(OT) "Windows 7 enters its final year of free support"

On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."

Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

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In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."
Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...its-final-year
-of-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

Why? Images are so much better.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

The early worm gets the bird.

On 1/15/2019 10:55 PM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."
Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...its-final-year
-of-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

Why? Images are so much better.


As many copies as possible, on as many storage media as possible! BACKUP
BACKUP BACKUP!


--
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/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty!
/( _ )\ May the Force and farces be with you!
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¤£Â*ɶU! ¤£¶BÄF! ¤£½ä¿ú! ¤£´©¥æ! ¤£¥´¥æ! ¤£¥´§T! ¤£¦Û±þ! ¤£¨D¯«!
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On 2019-01-15, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
Why? Images are so much better.

Probably best to have both on hand.

I notice that while 3 years of paid support is to be offered, there
doesn't seem to be pricing listed anywhere. All I've been able to find so
far is to contact Microsoft Sales, and that whatever the price is it
will go up as time passes during the 3 year period.

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"Roger Blake" wrote

| I notice that while 3 years of paid support is to be offered, there
| doesn't seem to be pricing listed anywhere. All I've been able to find so
| far is to contact Microsoft Sales, and that whatever the price is it
| will go up as time passes during the 3 year period.
|

With XP that was only for corporate customers. And it
was wildly expensive. On the other hand XP patches for kiosk
Windows are still released, as far as I know, and still installable
with a Registry setting. Personally I'm happy with Win7 SP1,
for the most part, but for people who are not, maybe the kiosk
hack will also work with Win7. (If there are any Win7 kiosk
installs. Maybe the ATMs are all still XP?

Roger Blake wrote:

I notice that while 3 years of paid support is to be offered, there
doesn't seem to be pricing listed anywhere.

ESU is only available for volume licencing customers running Win7 Pro or
Win7 Enterprise

On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:55:23 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."
Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...its-final-year
-of-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

Why? Images are so much better.

I'd much rather have ISO files of the installation media and image files
of the completed installation(s).

In alt.comp.os.windows-10 Char Jackson wrote:
On Tue, 15 Jan 2019 14:55:23 +0000, "J. P. Gilliver (John)"
wrote:

In message , Mr. Man-wai
Chang writes:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."
Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...its-final-year
-of-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

Why? Images are so much better.

I'd much rather have ISO files of the installation media and image files
of the completed installation(s).

Yep. Also, image files won't work on different hardwares. At least
installers can reinstall from scratch to other supported hardwares. So,
make backups of drive, datas (most important!), AND the installer files.
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"Ant" wrote

| Yep. Also, image files won't work on different hardwares.


They should, assuming the activation is not a problem.
I haven't tried it with Win7, but with XP I've found that
as long as IDE drivers are removed it's fine. I assumed 7
is probably easier, but maybe I shouldn't assume that.

Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the cut-off."

Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...-free-support/


Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

How do you make an ISO copy if it came on the computer? No disk was
included.

--
G Ross

Wolf K wrote:
On 2019-01-15 17:08, G Ross wrote:
Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 1/15/2019 3:48 PM, John Corliss wrote:
"Up to three years of paid support will be available after the
cut-off."

Full article is he

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019...-free-support/



Everyone, keep a copy of the Win 7 ISO you are using!

How do you make an ISO copy if it came on the computer? No disk was
included.


Download one while you still can:

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/soft...nload/windows7


That's only for "Retail" windows.

An OEM key won't pass the test, on the key entry page.

However, this tool will bypass the key requirement. If you
needed a "Windows 7 Home Premium" for your Dell, you could get
it this way. And as long as you have the license key from the
COA sticker, do a reinstall with your new disc. No key need
be entered, to get an ISO download using this too.

https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/techno...-download-tool

The Digital River era (where there were URLs pointing to direct
downloads), that stopped some time ago.

Paul

On 15/01/2019 21:34, Mayayana wrote:
"Ant" wrote

| Yep. Also, image files won't work on different hardwares.

They should,

They might ...

assuming the activation is not a problem.
I haven't tried it with Win7, but with XP I've found that
as long as IDE drivers are removed it's fine. I assumed 7
is probably easier, but maybe I shouldn't assume that.

.... as in so much to do with Windows, it depends ... there now follows a
lecture in how various recent versions of Windows boots. I'm more
familiar with 2000/XP but, although details are different, everything
I've seen of Vista+ seems pretty similar in general behaviour.

First, a PC boots by loading the Master Boot Record (MBR) - with a
traditional disk layout usually the first sector of 512 bytes - off
the first hard disk in the boot order held in the BIOS, and runs the
boot code it contains. This will normally read the partition table at
the end of that MBR (but see below) and load the Partition Boot Record
(PBR) - again normally the first sector - of the first active
partition in the table. The code in that boot sector then loads the
operating system (OS) contained in that partition in OS-specific way.

From there Windows loads in two stages, the PBR loads a boot stage
which then loads Windows proper. This was true of 2000/XP and is still
true at least of 7, and I'm pretty sure suspect subsequent releases,
because they all seem to have a Boot folder off root of the boot drive.
For Windows to boot, you have to have the correct boot drivers for the
hardware, and obviously these are installed at installation time.

In 2000/XP, if these were fairly bog-standard, you could copy a build
from one PC to another and there was a reasonable chance it would work,
but if you imaged a build onto new hardware requiring different boot
drivers, booting would stall with a famous 0x0000007b BSOD which means
that the boot hardware it was expecting could not be found. The cure
for a newly-imaged disk that had been copied rather than SysPrep'ed was
to load it as an extra disk into a running version of Windows, which
allowed you to load registry hives from the newly-imaged version
temporarily into the registry of the running version and so correct the
drivers, etc. It could be done sure enough, but it was terrible and
error-prone hassle. However, if you had SysPrep available, then with
some versions you could use its options to clear the PnP device tree and
install new boot drivers, for which you needed some sort of installation
media for the drivers. I have a page on my site which explains this method:

http://www.macfh.co.uk/JavaJive/Wind...eBuilding.html

Cross-imaged W7 also bombs, but with a screen prompting you to insert
the W7 installation media to try a boot repair, which is much simpler
and IME usually works, but of course, pertinently to the current
discussion, the installation media is required. If it doesn't work,
then there is also a SysPrep method which involves loading an imaged
disk temporarily into a running version of Windows and copying drivers
into it.

Frankly, though, Windows booting always was and still is a pig's dinner
and a pain ...

For one thing, if you didn't have Windows installed on the first hard
disk, you got the problem that MS boot sectors ignored the partition
table on the disk from which they were loaded, and always loaded and
read the partition table from the first hard disk in the system, thus
failing to find a version of Windows on a second hard disk. You could
get around the problem, but only by having Windows contaminate, perhaps
corrupt would be a better description, the first active partition on the
first hard disk by placing its boot files there, and therefore it had to
be a partition type that Windows understood. Or else use GRUB.

Next the boot files did and still do make the same mistake, and instead
of looking for a Windows system in the same partition as themselves,
they need to be told where to find it. So, as I discovered yesterday as
it happens, if I transfer the CD-ROM/HardDrive adaptor containing the
Windows XP partition disk from the CD-bay of my laptop to that of its
docking station, and try to boot XP, I get the f*king BSOD mentioned above!

Unfortunately more recent versions of Windows also behave in this
dope-head manner. So, for example, there was quite a long thread here a
year or two back begun by someone who ran a boot stage repair as
described above, but without realising that the repair will always
install the /Boot directory off the root of the first active partition
on the first hard disk, which in his case happened to be D:, and he was
wondering how to move it back to the C: drive where Windows was
installed - the answer was to set C: to be the active partition,
reboot, and then rerun the repair, which reinstalled /Boot on C:,
leaving him free to delete the version on D:, but,
f'cryin'outf*kingloud, wouldn't any normal human being of a programmer
have given the user the option to set the active partition to the
Windows partition before reinstalling the boot files?!

Etc, etc, I'm fed up to the back teeth with such Windows idiocacies.
Just now I'm trying to downgrade a W7 build from Ultimate to Home
Premium without wasting the two months of installation, configuration,
customisation, and testing that it took to make the original Ultimate
build. If Windows was truly modular and Object-Orientated, it would be
a simple thing to do, but Windows is such a steaming monolithic pile of
sphagettified **** that it's almost impossible to do this.

In message , Java Jive
writes:
[]
Just now I'm trying to downgrade a W7 build from Ultimate to Home

Why? (Just curious; not saying you shouldn't!)

Premium without wasting the two months of installation, configuration,
customisation, and testing that it took to make the original Ultimate
build. If Windows was truly modular and Object-Orientated, it would be
a simple thing to do, but Windows is such a steaming monolithic pile of
sphagettified **** that it's almost impossible to do this.

(-:
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nothing, and I've never really understood that.
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Mayayana wrote:
"Ant" wrote

| Yep. Also, image files won't work on different hardwares.


They should, assuming the activation is not a problem.
I haven't tried it with Win7, but with XP I've found that
as long as IDE drivers are removed it's fine. I assumed 7
is probably easier, but maybe I shouldn't assume that.

My experience is, the response to activation issues
is quite variable. And could result in the OS simply
locking up.

*******

Win2K uses to support multiple hardware profiles,
and if you requested to start a new profile, the
profile "started empty".

On WinXP, a second profile would start life as a
"duplicate" of the first profile. That means, if
you had a dock that your laptop plugged into, the
second profile would have all the usual drivers, plus
the NIC driver for the dock. WinXP didn't have the
convenient feature of making an "empty" ENUM, because
that would promote the idea of moving the OS between
machines. Having these ENUM capabilities says nothing
about bypassing activation, and activation is an
ever-present threat.

I have deleted ENUM on Windows 10 and then rebooted,
and the OS quite nicely survives the loss of drivers
and reinstalls them. So if your USB stuff happens to
have problems (a USB stick doesn't work when it's
plugged into just one particular USB port), you could
in principle delete the entire ENUM and start over.
In my test, the OS survived that.

And if you want to move an OS to another machine, I find
it best if the disk driver type happens to match. For
example, if the old motherboard has an ICH5, there's a
good chance the motherboard with the ICH6 will work,
because of the similarities of the two. Whereas if you
moved an OS to a motherboard with a VIA chipset (where
the driver solutions are quite different), it might not
work so well, and refuse to boot.

If you do a "bounce" move, sometimes that will work.

1) Plug in a Promise Ultra133 PCI card.
2) Install the driver.
3) Move the drive over to that card.
Boot it at least once that way, to verify it works.

4) Move both the disk drive *and* the Ultra133 card
to the new PC. This guarantees the disk port driver
is definitely in the OS, and it doesn't matter about
any other details. Cable the disk drive to the Ultra133
as before.
5) Once the OS comes up, install any other drivers the
new hardware needs.
6) Move the OS drive over to the motherboard port. Boot
and test.
7) Shut down and remove the Ultra133 card.
You only need the services of the Ultra133 card, long
enough to complete the move.

At step (4), you might be threatened with a 72 hour
activation requirement. You will need to solve the
activation issue, of moving the OS, within the 72 hour
period. So while it takes 10 minutes to get to step (7),
you can only use the OS for another 71 hours. Unless you're
running a "Retail" windows that allows moves, or unless
you haven't moved your "system builder OEM" for at least
a year or two, in which case the activation server might
allow the move.

And no, I don't do enough of these to care one
way or another. I've only moved WinXP the one time,
to a new motherboard, so that's all the experience I
have with this. The "ENUM test" on Windows 10, was just
to see whether the same capability was still there
(the ability to reset all hardware detections, not
a means to beat activation as such).

Paul

"Java Jive" wrote

| In 2000/XP, if these were fairly bog-standard, you could copy a build
| from one PC to another and there was a reasonable chance it would work,
| but if you imaged a build onto new hardware requiring different boot
| drivers, booting would stall with a famous 0x0000007b BSOD which means
| that the boot hardware it was expecting could not be found.

I don't know what you mean by boot hardware. In my
experience only IDE drivers have been a problem. The
rest is mainly standard and Windows will use defaults until
drivers can be installed for motherboard, audio, graphics,
etc.

| Next the boot files did and still do make the same mistake, and instead
| of looking for a Windows system in the same partition as themselves,
| they need to be told where to find it. So, as I discovered yesterday as
| it happens, if I transfer the CD-ROM/HardDrive adaptor containing the
| Windows XP partition disk from the CD-bay of my laptop to that of its
| docking station, and try to boot XP, I get the f*king BSOD mentioned
above!
|

You need to edit boot.ini, as you probably figured out.
I've had good luck with imaging but there are things to know,
and it helps to have good software. I've used BootIt for years,
which images, edits boot config, partitions, multiboots, etc.

There are other options with more handholding, for
more money, like Acronis. I think part of the difficulty for
many people is that they haven't figured out the details,
get confused, then end up thinking that disk imaging means
having a RAID-style backup. So when things go bad they
have no real backup.

But I agree that MS have done their best to thwart things.
They keep changing boot config. They did that monstrous mess
with Vista/7 where there can be a separate, small boot partition
if you don't know enough to remove it. Lots of little gotchas.
I assume Win8/10 is similar to Vista/7, and that 6/8/10 are
all basically variations on Windows 6, with or without Metro
tacked on. But I haven't done much with 8 and nothing with 10.