Anyone freshly installed Win7 lately?

[IDEngineer]

I run Win7 on all of my personal machines, both desktop and portable. I prefer Win7 because it's stable, it doesn't phone home all the time, it doesn't upgrade autonomously, my toolset runs great on it, I know how to tune it for my needs, and its risk of being targeted by hackers is shrinking along with its percentage of installed base. Yes, someday I may be forced to "upgrade" to Win10+ or Linux or whatever, but not today. This is not meant to be "Yet Another Win10 Bashing Thread" so please don't try to "convince" me that I need to leave Win7 behind. That's another conversation for another day.

I've been thinking that it would be a good insurance policy to build a duplicate desktop and install Win7 on it as a backup in case something happens to my primary desktop. I can still get the motherboard and CPU, so there's little doubt I can replicate the hardware environment. But it's been a long time since I installed Win7 from the original DVD's. As I recall it was one of the versions that required "activation" via either an Internet connection or a manual phone call with a long string of digits.

My concern is that Microsoft may have turned off the Win7 "activation" system, meaning that in addition to ceasing ongoing bug fixes (which I understand) they may have literally orphaned fully-purchased copies of their product (which I would consider near-criminal). It's not like I'm trying to steal something here, I'm just building a backup system in case my primary box's SSD stops booting or something so I have somewhere to install my spinning drives and retain access to them.

The problem with Microsoft's "activation" system used to be that it attempted to register the hardware configuration of your machine. In particular they used the MAC address of your NIC if your machine had one (which was why I always disabled the Ethernet interface in BIOS before "activation"), but they also tried to tie in the CPU type and other characteristics such that if you replaced/upgraded "too much" a fresh "activation" was required. It wasn't sufficient to "activate" one time, major changes required a fresh "phone home" session. If they stop providing that, a whole lot of existing Win7 machines will become both orphaned and literally unrepairable.

Has anyone tried a fresh install of Win7 lately? Have you exercised this phone-home "activation" system recently? Does it still work? I don't want to invest in an admittedly older CPU+motherboard only to find out that the sole reason for their purchase has become impossible.

Thanks!

Has anyone

[andy3055]

I did the internet method of activation a couple of months back and it worked.

Anyway, why not clone the drive itself? Unless your MB and the NIC dies, it is a simpler method. I have used Samsung drives and they always came with a cloning software CD and I never had to re-activate the new drive. As long as the new drive is equal or larger (in relation to the OS partition on the existing drive, it works. Just in case you have done this, my apologies.

[IDEngineer]

True, cloning is exactly how I intend to start. I want to take the existing SSD and clone it straight to another one that is plug compatible (SATA6) even if the capacities aren't the same. However, I expect that since it will be a physically different CPU and a different physical SSD that Win7 will demand to "reactivate", so it's basically the same end game.

Also, I don't want to use my primary system to do the cloning. I learned long ago, from painful experience, not to mess with a reference device when creating a second one! One wrong step and you can end up exactly where you were trying to avoid - ZERO working devices/systems.

There is a bit of a chicken-egg problem here, in that I need an operational system to run the cloning software. That may drive me to do a fresh basic install of Win7 just to run the clone software.

I used to clone drives using a DOS-based program and just boot the machine from a bootable CD/DVD. That was utterly painless and foolproof, and very fast since it didn't require setting up a complex OS. But that was back in the days of IDE interfaces and AFAIK there aren't any DOS compatible SATA6 drivers, so I'm probably condemned to a Windows based cloning operation today.

[alpher]

Last year I installed a XP ! and it activated !

[Zero999]

There is a bit of a chicken-egg problem here, in that I need an operational system to run the cloning software. That may drive me to do a fresh basic install of Win7 just to run the clone software.

My advice is don't bother with that. Run Clonezilla from a live Linux distribution.

EDIT:
Just use Clonezilla Live, a live Linux distribution, specially configured to run Clonezilla.
https://clonezilla.org/clonezilla-live.php

[Mechatrommer]

its not that. we cloned and backup our drive everytime. can be run/restored anytime as long as its running on the same machine. once you try it on entirely new system, different motherboard and cpu, the install can fail miserably in BSOD limbo. you maybe lucky but most of the time i failed during my WinXP time. i suspect newer Windows will experience the same thing. you will need install fresh from zero on a new system. and with later licensing scheme starting Win Vista? you'll need new key as well. i left WinXP naturally a month a go for Win7. more and more newer programs cant be run on it anymore and i upgraded to 64 bits to enable 8GB RAM, i used to 3GB but how fun is that when i bought used 8GB DDR2 for just $20. now i got activated Win7 for about a month, yes activation server still work i guess, even got update (security) reminder and hence i installed all the bugfixes before i make another backup point using my fav AOMEI Backupper (free version). if you have vision to use Win7 for another decade i suggest you buy latest hardware, new or used that can possibly survive that period, make a fresh install, activate it, install bugfixes you can at current time and make a restore point that you are going to use as install point from thereon. i hope my 12yrs old machine with current new Win7 64 bits can survive that long. ymmv.

[chris_leyson]

Yes but on a Win 10 machine with no Win 7 drivers for the wifi chipset or ethernet. Think I'm going to have to rethink this and find some older hardware 

[Alex Eisenhut]

I run Win7 on all of my personal machines, both desktop and portable. I prefer Win7 because it's stable, it doesn't phone home all the time, it doesn't upgrade autonomously,

Hmmm. Maybe you installed GWX Control Panel and disabled the Task Scheduler service and forgot about it, because Win 7 definitely upgrades itself. There was a big fuss about it a few years ago.

[Bud]

It gives options, at least it used to. Just notify, notify and download but wait for confirmation to install, download and install automatically, That sort of things. They turned to automatic Win10 download and update at some point, so care needs to be exersized nof to apply those last updates. Perhaps the exact updates numbers can be found on Inet so you can avoid them.
I have not updated since FTDI scandal, and am still well and alive.

[IDEngineer]

The problem with buying the latest hardware (CPU + motherboard) and trying to run Win7 on it is the lack of Win7 drivers for the latest chipsets on the motherboard. Sure, I'd love to build a Ryzen based system today and run Win7 on it but finding drivers for all the on-board peripheral chips may be impossible. And if the HAL layer can't deal with the main chipset you may not even be able to boot.

Since my reason is insurance, not performance increase, I'm going to get the same proven motherboard and same proven CPU.

EDIT: This is how I selected my latest laptop, too. I went to the various laptop vendor websites and went backward in time until I found the latest models from each that offered Win7 driver downloads. Then I selected from those. Ended up with the ThinkPad X260 which has turned out to be pretty much the ultimate Road Engineer machine.

[SilverSolder]

One option for continuing with Win 7 on newer hardware is to use something like VirtualBox - you can then use Linux or Win 10 just as a "boot manager" and hardware interface, while your Win 7 machines stay snug and safe in their virtual machines (which use very basic virtual hardware that Win 7 has no problems with - this solution will probably work forever, pretty much).

[IDEngineer]

The goal is to NOT install anything beyond Win7 on the machines at all. I'm not simply trying to replicate the "Win7 experience", I want Win7 to be the one and only OS on the box. Period.

[grumpydoc]

The problem with buying the latest hardware [...] is the lack of Win7 drivers for the latest chipsets on the motherboard.

This has been a problem on Intel since 6th gen chips removed the EHCI interface in favour of the xHCI interface so Windows would suddenly not be able to find USB install media. IIRC I did manage to get W7 installed on Skylake but it involved going through several hoops the details of which I now forget (but the memory of the pain lingers on). It only got worse with subsequent generations.

On a related note - if you want W10 but without the spyware you could try "Windows Ameliorated" https://ameliorated.info/ - though I think the conclusion of one reviewer was that, while it worked, it sucked in day-to-day use.

One option for continuing with Win 7 on newer hardware is to use something like VirtualBox - you can then use Linux or Win 10 just as a "boot manager" and hardware interface, while your Win 7 machines stay snug and safe in their virtual machines (which use very basic virtual hardware that Win 7 has no problems with - this solution will probably work forever, pretty much).

You beat me to this suggestion - yes that works but requires some degree of technical ability and not everyone wants to spend time setting that sort of thing up plus, of course, you have to install the host OS - and if that is W10 you have still got the same problems that cause most people to dislike Windows.

[IDEngineer]

This has been a problem on Intel since 6th gen chips removed the EHCI interface in favour of the xHCI interface so Windows would suddenly not be able to find USB install media. IIRC I did manage to get W7 installed on Skylake but it involved going through several hoops the details of which I now forget (but the memory of the pain lingers on). It only got worse with subsequent generations.

If I were more conspiratorally minded, I'd think this sounds like the very definition of collusion.

[Monkeh]

This has been a problem on Intel since 6th gen chips removed the EHCI interface in favour of the xHCI interface so Windows would suddenly not be able to find USB install media. IIRC I did manage to get W7 installed on Skylake but it involved going through several hoops the details of which I now forget (but the memory of the pain lingers on). It only got worse with subsequent generations.

If I were more conspiratorally minded, I'd think this sounds like the very definition of collusion.

There's no secrecy about it at all. Intel video drivers for Skylake and later are built for and work on 7, but the inf is not filled out. Being signed, using them is a huge pain. It's very intentional.

[SilverSolder]

The goal is to NOT install anything beyond Win7 on the machines at all. I'm not simply trying to replicate the "Win7 experience", I want Win7 to be the one and only OS on the box. Period.

That's exactly what I do...   but I run Virtual Box on Win 7,  and have essentially several copies of Windows 7 running in parallel on the machine, for different purposes.  I can also test other operating systems, applications, or whatever, at will.   I can copy a virtual machine to another hardware device (e.g. a laptop) and use all the applications that I only need to install once.

Bottom line, even the hardest core Win 7 fans like us can find many uses for Virtual Box!

[SilverSolder]

[...]
You beat me to this suggestion [use VirtualBox] - yes that works but requires some degree of technical ability and not everyone wants to spend time setting that sort of thing up plus, of course, you have to install the host OS - and if that is W10 you have still got the same problems that cause most people to dislike Windows.

If Windows 10 is only ever used to start VirtualBox, and allow VirtualBox to access the hardware, it is hard for it to track anything you do inside them?

I use Windows 10 at work, and it is certainly adequate to start VirtualBox, if little else! 

[james_s]

I did a fresh install of Win7 on my daily driver about 6 months ago when I replaced the hard drive with a SSD and figured it was a good time to start fresh. It activated without any issues.

I was forced to use Win10 for about 2 years at a former job and hated every moment of it. Maybe it has improved since then but it left such a bad taste in my mouth that I'm not interested in taking another look. I have never encountered such a user-hostile OS before in my life. It felt like it was actively fighting against me on a constant basis.

[grumpydoc]

If Windows 10 is only ever used to start VirtualBox, and allow VirtualBox to access the hardware, it is hard for it to track anything you do inside them?

Well, W7 also phones home, albeit to a lesser extent but, yes, you will probably wind up sending less overall to the mothership. You keep the disadvantage that M$ will push updates at your container when you might not want them and your W7 instances aren't getting security updates.

If you are truly paranoid I'd give Windows Ameliorated a test drive - or run Linux which is what I do.

[BravoV]

Don't want Windows to call home ? Only two ways, fully air gaped and off lined all the time  , or just stop using it.

The idea of elite hacking that hacks Windows down to make it fully silent that doesn't call home is just ... stupid  , ... EXCEPT ... you have the full Windows source code.

Time to move on to Linux, even its painful at start, and yes, long time Windows user here, currently dual boot at dual boot drives W10 and Linux Mint, and currently W10 is now <50% booted, its been few months now.

[Mechatrommer]

Time to move on to Linux, even its painful at start, and yes, long time Windows user here..

can you suggest how can i run Photoshop, Altium, AutoCAD, Inventor, Ms VB6/VC++ etc and make my printers running Epson L360, L1800, Surelab D700. ColorVision Spyder PRO2 Monitor/Printer Calibrator?. without VM BS.

Yes but on a Win 10 machine with no Win 7 drivers for the wifi chipset or ethernet. Think I'm going to have to rethink this and find some older hardware 

today is internet age.. maybe you can buy an acer workstation from 5 years ago (to get reasonable price for a "serious workstation") 7th or 8th Gen Intel w Win10 installed. and then if you really need install Win7 in it maybe you can follow this cute guy?...

https://www.softpedia.com/get/Others/Signatures-Updates/ASUS-EZ-Installer.shtml#download

[Circlotron]

I installed Windows 7 in VirtualBox with permanently no network connection to hopefully keep viruses away. Activated it by ringing MS and getting an activation code. No network connection is as good as no activation connection to MS. Should work repeatedly for the same installation media I expect.

[BravoV]

Time to move on to Linux, even its painful at start, and yes, long time Windows user here..

can you suggest how can i run Photoshop, Altium, AutoCAD, Inventor, Ms VB6/VC++ etc and make my printers running Epson L360, L1800, Surelab D700. ColorVision Spyder PRO2 Monitor/Printer Calibrator?. without VM BS.

Your Google broken ? 

Just don't understand the allergy of VM  , go try more serious and more polished one like VMWare, yes, I do have Workstation Pro Linux host, and it works just fine on my W10, W7x64 , oh .. includes NT 4.0  VMs.

Your problem is not unique, pretty sure you're smart enough to find a "compromise", and no, we have not live in paradise yet that everything will be perfect.

[Wilksey]

I am running Windows 7 x64, don't see the need to "upgrade", the newest incarnation of Windows 10 borked printing and scanning for me.  All new machines come with 10 preinstalled and I was apprehensive about trashing 10 and installing 7 as I didn't know what the driver support would be like.
So I have 1 machine running 10 (came with it) and the rest are 7 or 8.1 (Again, preinstalled, it's not that bad with tweaks).  Once you run a few scripts to turn off the Windows 10 telemetry it is ok, they also lock you into newer OSes by limiting what you ca install on older ones (Direct X 12 springs to mind).
The trouble with VBox is the 3D support, for example KiCAD / Altium, RDP has the same issue, so unless you can use a hypervisor that passes through the GPU then VBox is little use for that kind of work, I have a VMWare setup which, although my version does not do GPU passthrough is fine for installing a number of operating systems for most things (Jenkins build for ex).

I guess it ultimately depends what you need to do as to what solution is best for you, I have a collection of activation patchers for most of the "obsolete" operating systems so when the activation servers do go down I can still use them, as I think even if you wanted to install 10 on top of 7 you need 7 to be activated first before 10 can go on as an activated version, although saying that, I don't think 10 does much other than stop you from changing the wallpaper and puts the message in the bottom right hand side of the screen and there are ways around that.

[Circlotron]

^^ I tried out 10 unactivated for a short time and I couldn’t set screen res to 1920x1080, only some lower res ones with wrong aspect ratio.

[Halcyon]

My concern is that Microsoft may have turned off the Win7 "activation" system, meaning that in addition to ceasing ongoing bug fixes (which I understand) they may have literally orphaned fully-purchased copies of their product (which I would consider near-criminal). It's not like I'm trying to steal something here, I'm just building a backup system in case my primary box's SSD stops booting or something so I have somewhere to install my spinning drives and retain access to them.

I last activated Windows 7 maybe 4-6 months ago (albeit via phone) and it still works. I built a VM in Proxmox and just created a backup of it, so I can roll back to a fresh install at any time using only "generic" drivers without needing to re-activate.

[grumpydoc]

I don't think there's any problem with Win 7 activation - heck I think you can still activate XP, though I haven't tried either recently. Having been corralled into W10 because I needed Windows on new hardware I've more or less made my peace with it.

[SilverSolder]

I installed Windows 7 in VirtualBox with permanently no network connection to hopefully keep viruses away. Activated it by ringing MS and getting an activation code. No network connection is as good as no activation connection to MS. Should work repeatedly for the same installation media I expect.

It is similar to an air gap.

[SilverSolder]

[...] can you suggest how can i run Photoshop, Altium, AutoCAD, Inventor, Ms VB6/VC++ etc and make my printers running Epson L360, L1800, Surelab D700. ColorVision Spyder PRO2 Monitor/Printer Calibrator?. without VM BS.
[...]

A time machine, to take you back 10 years?   I understand a DeLorean is a good starting point for building one! 

[Doctorandus_P]

Quite astounding to read to what lengths people go in attempts to hang on to obsolete software for just a little bit longer.

The last drop for me was when someone gave me an old computer and it woke up with blue tiles of death and I could not find a "start" menu button. I saw that screen once, then took some time to get used to Linux and that has been working quite nice for ... quite some years.

[SilverSolder]

Quite astounding to read to what lengths people go in attempts to hang on to obsolete software for just a little bit longer.

The last drop for me was when someone gave me an old computer and it woke up with blue tiles of death and I could not find a "start" menu button. I saw that screen once, then took some time to get used to Linux and that has been working quite nice for ... quite some years.

There was a time when people eagerly updated their software, as it kept getting better with each revision.  Nowadays, the software is updated mostly to justify the price of the cloud subscription!

Many people own cars that are > 10 years, and/or more than 100K miles old (which is their design life)....  why not software?

[Bud]

Quite astounding to read to what lengths people go in attempts to hang on to obsolete software that works fine for just a little bit longer.

There, fixed it for you.

[james_s]

There was a time when people eagerly updated their software, as it kept getting better with each revision.  Nowadays, the software is updated mostly to justify the price of the cloud subscription!

Many people own cars that are > 10 years, and/or more than 100K miles old (which is their design life)....  why not software?

I remember being excited to try out the latest version of some software, I looked forward to seeing what new capabilities it had and how it had improved and become more polished. Then at some point I started to notice that I was increasingly often feeling disappointed or even burned and rolled back to the previous version in disgust. Things largely stopped improving and just started changing in arbitrary ways and more recently even regressing as features are removed and/or simplified to reduce maintenance effort.

The same thing happened to cars, they were getting better and nicer year after year until sometime in the late 90s to early 2000's where they just started getting bloated, heavy, boring frighteningly complex, and more similar to one another.

Lots of other household products have not been dramatically updated but they get just a little bit thinner, a little bit lighter, a little bit flimsier, a little bit poorer fit & finish year after year as pennies are shaved off the production cost.

I think virtually any product has a development curve that follows a similar process of incremental refinement until it reaches a stage of maturity and then the company shifts from creating solutions to problems to creating solutions in search of problems and just generally tinkering. There is a type of person who likes everything to be "fresh" and enjoys change for the sake of change. Then there are people like me who loathe change and are deeply resentful of change that is just for the sake of change and not to solve any actual problem. Most software updates in this era just feel like someone waltzing into my house uninvited and rearranging the furniture to their liking, usually when I'm right in the middle of something. I hate it!

[IDEngineer]

For me it's not emotional, just purely business.

I have a hardware/software development environment that works the way I want it to. Setting up a new machine - or shaping an existing one that gets a new OS - is a huge undertaking that takes quite a while and then has lingering little details that nag at me for days afterward. It is horribly inefficient for me to go through the churn of a new tool, much less a new OS, when there is no additional deliverable at the end.

Here's how I approach such things: "What problem am I trying to fix?" In the case of Win7, the answer is "None". I am intimately familiar with where Win7 has hidden all the controls that affect what I do, and I have it tuned the way I need. Sure, I could invest a bunch of time (and likely money) to switch to something else, but when I'm done... what problem have I solved? What additional value have I received that improves my workflow? Until I have a real problem that interferes with my work, such an effort is a waste of time, a waste of money, and worst of all an opportunity cost because of the productive things I'm NOT doing while I'm wasting time on the "upgrade".

Specifically with respect to Win10, I'm against changing because of my earlier statement "I am intimately familiar with where Microsoft has hidden all the controls that affect what I do, and I have it tuned the way I need." I have several friends whose businesses run on software hosted on Win10 machines, and about once a month I get a call from one of them telling me that their business software or accounting package or whatever won't run that morning because Win10 "did an upgrade" overnight or over a weekend. The reason is always that the "update" has silently set one or more things to what THEY deem preferable/safer/whatever and this has disabled their applications. These guys lose 4-8 hours calling the application software vendor and working through their setup process just to get back to where they were the previous day. That represents a theft of valuable time and an opportunity cost that they neither wanted nor approved.

I cannot afford to let that happen to me. Is it possible to defeat the auto-update feature in Win10? I've heard conflicting answers but the bottom line is it shouldn't be a game of cat-and-mouse with your OS vendor to get and keep your machine configured the way YOU want it. If they have what they believe is a "better idea", propose it, accept my answer, and don't change it behind my back (and also don't keep nagging me about it!). I cannot afford the risk of downtime to unravel whatever well-intentioned "we know better than you" change(s) were inflicted upon the machines at the heart of my workflow.

What I need is an OS that lets me configure it the way I need, and stays there unless I - alone - decide to change it. The latest version of Windows that behaves that way is Win7. So there I stay, along with my workstation and my laptops, until I have a problem that Win7 cannot solve but Win10 or Linux can.

[Mechatrommer]

Quite astounding to read to what lengths people go in attempts to hang on to obsolete software for just a little bit longer.

There was a time when people eagerly updated their software, as it kept getting better with each revision.  Nowadays, the software is updated mostly to justify the price of the cloud subscription!
Many people own cars that are > 10 years, and/or more than 100K miles old (which is their design life)....  why not software?

I remember being excited to try out the latest version of some software, I looked forward to seeing what new capabilities it had and how it had improved and become more polished. Then at some point I started to notice that I was increasingly often feeling disappointed or even burned and rolled back to the previous version in disgust. Things largely stopped improving and just started changing in arbitrary ways and more recently even regressing as features are removed and/or simplified to reduce maintenance effort.

ditto. i have few Win10 machines that i maintain around here. i still choose obsolete/perfectly working/stable older WinXP/Win7 for some reasons. similar to some large corporations/governments who dont want to get into a hassle.

The last drop for me was when someone gave me an old computer and it woke up with blue tiles of death and I could not find a "start" menu button. I saw that screen once, then took some time to get used to Linux and that has been working quite nice for ... quite some years.

other than the Win SWs and drivers have to go trough an "emulator" to run in Linux, there are countless of Linux flavors, the last time i read is a binary/exe compile in one Linux version will not run correctly in another flavor kernel version. i imagine if i learn a Qt for Linux or any other Linux IDE with tooth and nail just to later figure out i have to make X number of compilations in X number of machines/boots in X number of Linux versions, this is quite disturbing. or am i still 10 years behind? errmm, Wine stands for "Is Not Emulator", but it took effort to make it compatible with any Win SWs, do i have to wait for someone to upgrade Wine for me to be able to run a new and latest Photoshop? or any other flashy brand new Win SW? VM took RAM and CPU usage unecessarily, i only wish they can run natively after a fresh install just like when its running in Windows without any emulator/not an emulator/VM BS. and afaik, Linux will be improved/updated based on the old Linux structure, i never heard of "the New Linux entirely written from Scratch" architecture, like WinXP vs Win7, or Win7 vs Win10... so afaik Linux is like in Windows world of polishing Win95/WinXP so it can run and support the latest tech of 2020. am i 10 years behind? enlighten me, i wish someone will and can someday.

[BravoV]

... or am i still 10 years behind?

... Wine ...

More like 20 years or even more. 

Cmiiw, I remembered you're the dude that keep claiming AMD CPU is hot and has incompatibilities in OS/software ?   

Wake up, that claim probably valid if we're in early/pre Intel Core era.

Also regarding your bad taste in VM and emulation at Windows guest, get a feel on VMware Workstation Pro, not VMPlayer, and drop those Wine thingy as VMWare is much-much-much more polished and reliable. Its like you're looking for frequency domain measurement with a scope, instead of using spectrum analyzer, I guess you will get this analogy.

And also equip you self with powerful many2 cores CPU, as its handy in VM, and for current era, AMD Ryzen beats Intel out of the water for same money. Also with big RAM as its now quite cheap compared to years ago, and of course fast NVME.

Geez .. you don't know what you've been missing for years. 

[Mechatrommer]

Cmiiw, I remembered you're the dude that keep claiming AMD CPU is hot and has incompatibilities in OS/software ?   

i dont remember saying AMD CPU is hot, but yes, during that time when AMD and Cyrix was popping out, they were uncompatible, so i never took a glance ever since until today and became an Intel fanboy. that was like 20 years ago. similar when i had a peep at Linux. i did install Linux few years ago due to recommendation in here, but meh.. too much learning curve i guess, and i think it looked similar from 20 years ago.

Geez .. you don't know what you've been missing for years. 

we cant be in many places at the same time can we? i only can make production and learn something new fast in Windows, i cant think of anything that i can do in Linux, and no professional grade person can show an example anyway, except some gamers reviewers in youtube. if you can show some production grade workflow in Linux i maybe interest, esp the area i mentioned earlier, not some web server IT business things.

I thought of VMWare, and paid $250 on it, until it was proven useless

i thought its free as in free coffee

Does it hurt to throw away $12k total investment on Altium and subscriptions? Absolutely yes.

think again when you have access to grey (black) market of Windowez you are missing the party!

[olkipukki]

Is it possible to defeat the auto-update feature in Win10?

It's depends what do you mean by that...



P.S.
Of course, you cannot use Win10 Home edition 

[BravoV]

As long the machine is connected, any claim that one can defeat Windows 10 from calling mothership is a snake oil.

[Karel]

other than the Win SWs and drivers have to go trough an "emulator" to run in Linux, there are countless of Linux flavors, the last time i read is a binary/exe compile in one Linux version will not run correctly in another flavor kernel version. i imagine if i learn a Qt for Linux or any other Linux IDE with tooth and nail just to later figure out i have to make X number of compilations in X number of machines/boots in X number of Linux versions, this is quite disturbing. or am i still 10 years behind?

Despite there are countless of Linux flavours, there are only a handful of them really used on desktops.
So, worst case, you compile a binary for (Open)SuSE,  Redhat/Fedora and Debian/Ubuntu/Mint.
That's just three versions that covers 95 pct of the desktops.

Another possibility is to link most libs (Qt!) statically into the binary. That way you need to compile just once and it will run
on all Linux desktops (with the same architecture ofcourse e.g. x86).
A good example of a Qt program that has all libs statically linked in and runs everywhere is the Cadsoft Eagle version V7.
There are just two Linux versions, 32 and 64 bit and they don't require you to install Qt because everything it needs is inside the binary.
(Apart from glibc.)

[Mechatrommer]

Another possibility is to link most libs (Qt!) statically into the binary.

thanks for your informative post. static linking is one option, also can be done in Windows. but we learnt the idea if dynamic linking is possible, that can be better. some of its benefit mentioned here... https://opensource.com/article/20/6/linux-libraries maybe not so much of an issue for most people, but i for one rely heavily on dll (*.so?) as most of my apps are relying on Windows or my own homemade dlls. there are more things to catch up in Linux to understand it, is there anything that will not involve command line? such as automated registering a *.so from installer package and put it in Linux environment? from User space

[SilverSolder]

[...] I found out having to pay for software is a very good incentive for me to home brew [...]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used. 

I realize there are open source alternatives for those, but I don't want to spend time installing a new bios in my head to save a relatively small amount!

[Mechatrommer]

[...] I found out having to pay for software is a very good incentive for me to home brew [...]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used. 

before i got Altium, i tried to make my own in VB, i called it Chromeera Designer, supposedly to be much better than KiCAD or Diptrace and somewhat in competition to Altium, took me about a year just to design 10% or less the GUI and its data structure. but then, Altium came to my desktop, i thought thank God, i thought otherwise i'll spend 10 years and grow old just on Chromeera and nothing else. it was few years ago, thinking how i fooled myself, Chromeera project will never see the light again. i will concentrate making PCBs.

I realize there are open source crippled alternatives for those

there fix that for you.. deleted text i was about to name a few, but to avoid hurting some members here, let me not give some examples...

[Zero999]

[...] I found out having to pay for software is a very good incentive for me to home brew [...]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used. 

I realize there are open source alternatives for those, but I don't want to spend time installing a new bios in my head to save a relatively small amount!

I say the same thing about using the newer versions of MS Office. When OpenOffice.org started to become a decent alternative to MS Office, its user interface was similar enough to make the learning curve shallow. Then MS started messing around with the user interface and all of a sudden, OpenOffice.org started to feel more familular and easier to use, so I moved further towards it. Now I have to used MS Office at work and I use it for basic things, but I have to Google the more advanced stuff. Often I won't bother. If it's not UK restricted, secret, or confidential, I email it home to my home computer and I do the real work using LibreOffice.

[...] I found out having to pay for software is a very good incentive for me to home brew [...]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used. 

before i got Altium, i tried to make my own in VB, i called it Chromeera Designer, supposedly to be much better than KiCAD or Diptrace and somewhat in competition to Altium, took me about a year just to design 10% or less the GUI and its data structure. but then, Altium came to my desktop, i thought thank God, i thought otherwise i'll spend 10 years and grow old just on Chromeera and nothing else. it was few years ago, thinking how i fooled myself, Chromeera project will never see the light again. i will concentrate making PCBs.

Perhaps you should release it, just for fun.

I realize there are open source crippled alternatives for those

there fix that for you.. deleted text i was about to name a few, but to avoid hurting some members here, let me not give some examples...

The same could be said about lots of proprietary software: even the full version is often crippled.

[Mechatrommer]

[...] I found out having to pay for software is a very good incentive for me to home brew [...]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used. 

before i got Altium, i tried to make my own in VB, i called it Chromeera Designer, supposedly to be much better than KiCAD or Diptrace and somewhat in competition to Altium, took me about a year just to design 10% or less the GUI and its data structure. but then, Altium came to my desktop, i thought thank God, i thought otherwise i'll spend 10 years and grow old just on Chromeera and nothing else. it was few years ago, thinking how i fooled myself, Chromeera project will never see the light again. i will concentrate making PCBs.

Perhaps you should release it, just for fun.

well i'm glad you asked. maybe you want to test your faith on me or really just for fun?.. anyway, i wonder how fast i can make an install package in Linux? see attached, unpack and install. i havent check compatibility anywhere, just hit the "deploy package button" and zip it, just tell me if any file is lacking. just dont expect anything out of it, just to get a clue on GUI, if you click a button and nothing happen, then you know the code is not there. i struggled mostly on "Component" and "Footprint" GUI, split windows and all, which i have to do from scratch since old VB6 doesnt have that new Win7/10 tab and split looking. iirc it took me 7 months on this leaving electronics learning behind. cheers.

[SilverSolder]

Same here, but it would obviously be a waste of time to re-invent Microsoft Office or Photoshop or other "big" applications that are widely used.

I only reinvent wheels for small, short but tricky codes, such as simulation engines -- very small code if optimization is not a thing, but very hard to come up with without fully understand the math and physics, and they sell at a stupidly high price.

I don't do much photoshopping, so at this moment GIMP works for me fine. As for office applications, LO works pretty flawlessly, at least on Linux. On Windows and Mac that's a different story so I also have a copy of MS Office installed on my Windows partition.

We already stand on the shoulders of giants in everything we do...  so I don't mind standing on the shoulders of some good programmers as well! 

[Mechatrommer]

so I don't mind standing on the shoulders of some good programmers as well! 

some applications are really hard to come by, such as good 3D emsolver. the price is simply... farking unbelievable. i've been thinking to make one when i become a "guru" in electronics and RF (hint: almost certainly i'll never reach to that point) there are also area thats very niche and too specialized that we alone have the need for it and nobody else, especially relating to physics/math/scientific/case study, so making one small specialized application is inevitable. we dont usually have time to learn all the features of FEM/FDTD/MATLAB and wont need much of them so its not worth it. there are also applications that are simply.. too delusive/non-existence. like what i currently building here, curve fitting vna calibration kit measured data into model based data vice versa. those specialized tools can be build in a matter of days.

[Mechatrommer]

we dont usually have time to learn all the features of FEM/FDTD/MATLAB and wont need much of them so its not worth it.

That's what I thought before, until I realized it is not that hard at all.
EM engineering, just like other engineering fields, is full of approximations and trade offs.

agreed. thats the problem i guess when we think we can program... i think by doing it myself, along the way i will also learn the details of math and engineering behind it, instead of just using it. try to do it ourselves from scratch can be actually more difficult and time consuming rather than just learning the manual of ready made program. like what i currently do, not just i got to learn s parameter calculation, i also got to search and learn non linear curve fitting and meet some fancy name like Levenberg-Marquardt or Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno Algorithm.. not sure whats wrong with me, i tend to choose the hard way rather than the easy way and keep saying the easy way as hard.

[SilverSolder]

so I don't mind standing on the shoulders of some good programmers as well! 

some applications are really hard to come by, such as good 3D emsolver. the price is simply... farking unbelievable. i've been thinking to make one when i become a "guru" in electronics and RF (hint: almost certainly i'll never reach to that point) there are also area thats very niche and too specialized that we alone have the need for it and nobody else, especially relating to physics/math/scientific/case study, so making one small specialized application is inevitable. we dont usually have time to learn all the features of FEM/FDTD/MATLAB and wont need much of them so its not worth it. there are also applications that are simply.. too delusive/non-existence. like what i currently building here, curve fitting vna calibration kit measured data into model based data vice versa. those specialized tools can be build in a matter of days.

Something like Octave doesn't seem too hard to learn, I have messed around with it a little bit.  -  I don't have enough use cases for it to really bother getting stuck in deep with it, but it seems extremely powerful!

[Mechatrommer]

Something like Octave doesn't seem too hard to learn, I have messed around with it a little bit.  -  I don't have enough use cases for it to really bother getting stuck in deep with it, but it seems extremely powerful!

no doubt those libraries are powerful at what they do. i've downloaded a few like fdtd/fem/emsolver script based libraries and read the intro on the surface, just try to get the general idea of them. most of them are like learning a new programming language, or try to understand a programming language library collection. if i need a script based solution i probably one day look into those. i need something thats heavily coupled with GUI and interactivity, so i prefer with what i already know (VB) imho its powerful enough for me more than anything else (in term of RAD/GUI development) nothing can beat it so far,even the Qt that i slowly learn. the problem is they dont have "algorithm", if the algorithm is small and manageable, i'll develop myself, if not, i will just simply resort to octave/fem/solver libraries. better if i can have source code of those libraries so i can probably dig and implement them in GUI'ed VB/Qt. attached is quick snapshot how i obtained more accurate model of my Kirkby Cal Kit, 1st picture showing the impedance plot using provided model data by Dr Kirkby, and 2nd picture is i manually hand tuned the model data to get better values. this little tool is developed after studying briefly Mario Hellmich's Octave script that does this automatically using some fancy converging non-linear curve fitting function in octave and afterward having learnt that non linear curve fit may not achieve optimum "global minima". well i guess nobody today really appreciate of what this old thing can really do. my next step in RAD GUI development is decided to be Qt (instead of brand new Ms VB#) mainly because its in good ol C/C++ but i havent finish learning it for years, as we getting old, we are bombarded with many more responsibilities, hence i maybe just die in peace with VB6 CD on my chest. fwiw ymmv.