Anyone freshly installed Win7 lately?

[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.