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Post by alpha128 on Dec 14, 2017 1:22:21 GMT
Yesterday was Microsoft's December Patch Tuesday. According to Woody Leonhard at Computerworld, it's been a real yawner, so far. Woody's current rating is MS-DEFCON 2: Patch reliability is unclear. Unless you have an immediate, pressing need to install a specific patch, don't do it. FWIW, I installed the Windows 7 roll-up on my work computer today without incident. But I'm not touching my home Windows 7 system until Woody gives the go ahead on www.askwoody.com/.
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Post by mslo79 on Dec 15, 2017 6:54:32 GMT
SIDE NOTE: Those who are still using Windows 7 or Windows 8 have til the end of this month to upgrade to Windows 10 as for Windows 7 users you only got til Jan 2020 before Microsoft no longer supports Windows 7. p.s. i recently got a hold of a used Laptop (which is the first Laptop i ever owned) for only $20 (although counting battery replacement i ordered on Ebay it's a bit over $40 invested in the Laptop in total) and i upgraded it to Windows 10 for free using that "Assistive Technologies" free update (technically i should not be able to access it by the rules but no ones checking and i am sure Microsoft knows people will abuse it ) which ends after this year is finished and then clean installed Windows 10 x64 Pro build 16299(Fall Creators Update) and all is good. Windows 10 runs well on a 9+ year old Laptop (i am assuming it's 9 years old because checking online the review was dated 2008 on the exact model laptop i got) which only has 3GB of RAM (now i finally have a decent backup machine to my main desktop computer) and a 250GB hard drive. everything was automatic to as i just clean installed and basically everything was auto-detected as i did not have to update any drivers etc pretty much. but i ran some tests just to make sure everything is stable like Memtest to ensure the memory is error free and then ran Prime95 to make sure the CPU was stable (since that taxes the CPU more than pretty much everything else someone would do) as temps topped out at 81c but the CPU is rated for up to 100c. also, i ran DBAN on the Laptop as soon as i got it to permanently delete any junk on the hard drive as who knows what someone had on that thing before i got it (and pretty much confirms the hard drive is good since there was no errors. even ran CrystalDiskInfo and all was good there with the SMART info etc. less than a years worth of hours on the hard drive but has many power cycles). also, to play it safe i took apart the Laptop (well partially as only as far as i needed to to get to the CPU fan area) and with a air compressor i got i blew out the fan area as there was very little dust in it surprisingly (i ran the Prime95 after cleaning it out). but while it was apart i noticed monitor was a bit loose as there is two screws on each side of the monitor that were loose and i tightened those and now the monitor opens and closes more smoothly because it's no longer loose. but after all was good and i deleted the system restore points and ran Disk Cleanup to free up as much space as i could and then defraged the hard drive i then booted up CloneZilla to image the hard drive (will save a bunch of time in the future if i need to wipe out the laptop and start clean) which works great and can even transfer images to another computer through a samba network share (like i setup a Samba share on my main Windows 10 PC) and then restore from there to. but apparently Laptops (at least older ones) must be picky on what USB devices it will boot from as my main computer boots from pretty much every USB device i got where as the Laptop does not like all of the USB stuff i have except a old 128MB thumb drive, which is useless nowadays, and my 64GB Sandisk (USB v3.0) thumb drive. but i got a multiboot setup on the 64GB thumb drive with newest version of Windows 10 bootable along with CloneZilla/DBAN etc. initially i used the DVD drive to get Windows etc on it but eventually figured out that the 64GB Sandisk boots. CloneZilla even can save to the Laptops SD card slot but this is clearly slower than using the 10MB/s speed (which is the routers limit) on my older router(s) i had for many years now. but now that i got that Laptop i can dump my ancient 500Mhz Celeron PC i had since 2000 as that's been pretty much useless for years now because once web browsers started requiring SSE2 CPU instructions at minimum to run my ancient computers from 2000 and 2001 (the one from 2001 has a Athlon 1.2Ghz CPU) no longer work basically. but funny thing is... Pentium 4 CPU's, which are basically the same age as the Athlon 1.2ghz CPU i got, do support SSE2 instructions. so they would still barely be somewhat useable. but the funny thing is back in those days the Athlon 1.2Ghz was faster than the Pentium 4's basically (like in terms of gaming etc) but now the Pentium 4's are better because those will still technically run the newest web browsers.
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Post by Matthew the Swordsman on Dec 18, 2017 14:14:26 GMT
I updated my Windows 10 computer today and the results were, uh, confusing....computer displayed a blank screen for ages. Weird.
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Post by mslo79 on Dec 21, 2017 22:56:12 GMT
I updated my Windows 10 computer today and the results were, uh, confusing....computer displayed a blank screen for ages. Weird. So I assume your good now? If you got some time... now that you upgraded to Win10 I would recommend a clean install as this way things will be optimal (like any junk that build up on your PC over the years etc will be completely gone). but i realize this can be time consuming depending on how much data you need to backup etc before you proceed with the clean install as a clean install completely deletes everything on the computers hard drive and then installs Windows 10 from scratch. basically you need to download the ISO file which you can get using this... www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10 ; click the 'download tool now'. then once you get the ISO you can use Rufus (i.e. rufus.akeo.ie/ ; free software) to make a bootable USB thumb drive from your ISO file you downloaded using that official Microsoft tool. I am assuming your computer can boot from USB thumb drive which odds are it can unless it's fairly ancient. if you prefer DVD disc for installation you can simply burn it to a DVD-R (or +R) disc using anything that can burn ISO files. I recommend ImgBurn (i.e. www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/imgburn.html ) and simply choose Mode > Write. then under 'Source' simply load the ISO file and burn it basically. but once your installing things... you will eventually get to a screen asking for a key etc. you simply skip that and Windows 10 will automatically activate once it's up and running. but before doing any of this stuff check to confirm it's activated... by typing 'activation' (without the ') in the search bar and you should see something show up that says 'Activation' (with system settings) type of thing and select that and on the screen that loads up it should say next to the word Activation.. "Windows is activated with a digital license'. if it says that (or similar) then you can proceed with a clean install if you want to. NOTE: you will need at least a 4GB USB thumb drive to put Windows 10 on it. maybe a 8GB. the Windows 10 x64 Pro 16299.15 ISO i got is "3.54 GB (3,809,476,608 bytes)" ; so it will fit onto a 4GB thumb drive but not much space is left at a little over 3.8GB in use. but if you have a 8GB you can guarantee you won't have storage space issues with that much. p.s. I linked to MajorGeeks instead of the official imgburn.com because the major geeks installer does not have any BS included with it (it's the installer from 2016) where as the one on the official site has changed this year and i think has optional crap included with it which you don't want. but the program itself is the exact same version. side note: if you got more than one hard drive (or another computer with a large enough hard drive) you could even use CloneZilla to image the drive to a image file on another hard drive/computer. this way if anything funny happens you can restore things to exactly the way they are now, like nothing ever happened. this would be a good insurance policy in case anything acts up. CloneZilla works well on my main PC and older Laptop but i could see how it might be a little confusing for the average person. like when i image my Laptop with CloneZilla i used the Samba share option (if you connect to a Windows 10 PC with that bootable CloneZilla program you can't use Samba v1 and need to select v2 or higher (it will ask you which you want to use when you get to that point) as Samba v1 is disabled in Windows 10 because i think Microsoft deemed it a security risk) so it can transfer through the network and store the image file on my main computer from the laptop. i even tested it with the SD card slot built into the laptop and that works to (even though is a bit slower). EDIT: i had to use a older version of CloneZilla (i.e. clonezilla-live-2.2.4-12-i486.iso (from Sep 16th 2014)) on my really old computer (from the year 2000(used to be my main PC briefly at one point back in 2000)) to get it to work and had to go to the CloneZilla forums to figure some stuff out but eventually got it working as while most of it was automated i had to use command prompt stuff to get a Samba v2.1 connection working to my main Windows 10 PC since by default that older version of CloneZilla only uses Samba v1 which Windows 10 won't work with and with some manual commands got it to use Samba v2.1. with the newest version of CloneZilla it allows you to choose through a easy to use interface which version of Samba you want to use but not the older versions. basically 3 out of the 4 PC's i got i can use at least one of the two newest builds and they work fine but not with that ancient PC i got with a 500Mhz Celeron CPU and only 192MB of RAM. the other pretty ancient one is 1.2Ghz Athlon CPU with 1GB of RAM and only the 'alternative stable' version works as the 'stable' version errors during the cloning process. but my main PC (desktop) and 2nd best PC (i.e. a Laptop from 2008) work fine with either the 'stable' or 'alternative stable' newest versions.
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Post by alpha128 on Dec 23, 2017 1:10:13 GMT
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