Humbug. The Windows “experts” who say that you should throw away your Win7 machine because it’s too old are just out of touch. Ain’t broke, don’t fix.
[See the full post at: Woody’s Windows Watch: Seven Semper Fi – How to ride Win7 into the sunset]
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Woody’s Windows Watch: Seven Semper Fi – How to ride Win7 into the sunset
- This topic has 39 replies, 18 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 1 month ago by
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AuthorViewing 13 reply threadsAuthor-
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It’s not a question of performance. At least, not hardware performance.
I want to find out what obstacles appear, and how to overcome them.
To me, Win10 is not the only alternative.
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I wasn’t thinking of hardware performance, but of online security.
There are widely differing opinions regarding the use of Windows 7 after “end of Microsoft support” (let’s call it EOMS, not EOS or EOL, because that’s what it is) in 2020. Some argue that it will become a dangerously flawed OS that nobody should contemplate using beyond 2020; others argue that simple precautionary measures will keep the OS going for years (see https://www.askwoody.com/forums/topic/dont-worry-about-win7-after-2020-firefox-just-quit-supporting-xp/). Where does the truth lie?
From my own experience, I used XP for 3 years beyond EOMS and didn’t have any problems. Was I lucky? Was this a result of good computing practices? Maybe the threat wasn’t as great as some would have had us believe? Maybe I had problems and was blissfully unaware of them? In all honesty, I don’t know the answer.
So I’d value some kind of controlled experiment to establish the real-world dangers of using Windows 7 beyond 2020.
I could continue to use Windows 7 for some years beyond 2020. I’ll keep my browser patched. Antivirus and malware scanner will be kept up to date and scans run regularly. I’ll use a standard user account for everyday tasks and the administrator account will only be used when necessary. This system will be fully backed up, so that it can be restored if problems do arise. Beyond that, I could dual-boot with a Linux distro, using that for online work while keeping Windows offline.
I agree that Windows 10 isn’t the only alternative (to Windows 7). My question is really about whether an alternative is necessary at all, at least in the short term.
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I’ll be watching your “ride” with interest. For me Windows 7 is the last version of Windows I’ll be running. I’ll use my android tablet to surf. It has a 10.1″ screen which is almost as large as the 11″ screen on the Acer netbooks we use. I have a case that doubles as a stand for portrait or landscape viewing and a full sized bluetooth keyboard.
Since I make monthly images of all the computers, I think my husband will be okay doing his browsing on his netbook after January 2020 until I find a Chromebook for him. If he mentions the computer seems to be acting weird, I’ll restore an image. I’ll pull his desktop computer off the network. He can use the programs on it, it just won’t be on the internet. He’s been through this before when I pulled his Windows 98, 2K and XP off and told him he can still use them just not to surf.
Perhaps sometime in 2020 you’ll consider having sections on ChromeOS and android for those of us who prefer those OSes over Windows and linux.
Got coffee?
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Perhaps sometime in 2020 you’ll consider having sections on ChromeOS and android for those of us who prefer those OSes over Windows and linux.
There are already with no doubt more to come once the ‘Whale is swallowed’ 🙂
https://www.askwoody.com/forums/forum/askwoody-support/other-platforms-for-windows-wonks/Windows - commercial by definition and now function... -
… and I hope to expand coverage there.
There’s a significant, important niche for former windows users who go elsewhere.
(Sent from my android phone. )
1 user thanked author for this post.
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I feel confident that MS’s original “drop dead date” for Windows-7 updates will be extended, and likely for several more months. Until MS has a long multiple-month track record of Windows-10 updates not trashing whole systems or disabling what used to be operational functions, why would anyone who values stability and reliability want to move to an OS that is less stable and less reliable? As for Windows-10’s much vaunted “security enhancements,” that remains debatable.
As a rhetorical question for MS: Why didn’t you follow good programming protocols by using a modular structure? Combining a lot of peripheral functions (gaming, touch-screens, cloud computing, synching, etc., etc.) to a business-oriented OS, made it needlessly complicated. What happened to the concept of options? If one doesn’t need gaming or touch-screen functionality, don’t install those modules. Now, when an update is applied to, say, the gaming code and it “breaks” that code, the entire OS code no longer works.
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It is not limited to just “us non-corporate,” users. It includes all those corporate users who do not need all the folderol (read needless complexity) included in Windows-10 to support, among other things–gaming, touch screens, synching to the cloud, etc., etc. This would probably include a large number of small- to medium-sized companies, and certainly any larger company without a dedicated in-house IT staff.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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We are planning to install 8.1 on all of our Win7 office computers. We have only three different types of office computers. One of each will be upgraded, and then the rest slowly will. As for me personally, I probably will use Win7 beyond EOL.
5 users thanked author for this post.
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That will only get you a few extra years, then you will be faced with the same problem. Things can change in a few years, but it’s not looking very promising right now as far as MS goes.
Being 20 something in the 70's was so much better than being 70 something in the insane 20's -
True, it gives one a few more years. Definitely, right now, things are not looking good for MS. Maybe, in the intervening years, MS will see the results of their poor business decisions and will learn from them. They have, clearly, “erred and strayed like lost sheep.” While branching out into other areas is often a good thing, one should never neglect one’s core product. Regrettably, Windows-10 shows the results of that neglect.
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While branching out into other areas is often a good thing, one should never neglect one’s core product.
That’s just it. Windows is no longer a core product at Microsoft. It doesn’t even have its own department anymore, if there was any doubt about this. Microsoft’s head is in the cloud these days, and from up there, all of the Windows users, and all of their problems, look like ants.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11)
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How to ride Win7 into the sunset
I agree with this. I will be using Windows 7 for many more years to come. To quote you,
“Ain’t broke, don’t fix.”
. Many have seen what a mess MS has made with trying to improve Windows 10 and making it 100% worse. I still use my Windows Xp machines since several programs do not work in Windows 7 or newer. I have them online many hours a day and no problems with hacking or viruses since my firewall and anti viruses are on. Many sites have to use agent switcher to trick them to see a new OS and site loads fine after that. One of Windows Xp recently finally bit the dust with either the motherboard or power supply going. Might have to see if it is power supply and replace it if get some free time.
3 users thanked author for this post.
İn full agreement with you Woody…
Love your writing style and expressive attitude.
Always an entertaining read !
Regards.
Windows 7,Home Premium 64 bit - Lenovo laptop
Group A - Intel (R)Core i7 Processors -ASUS Chromebook C213 12.5 inch
64GB memory .iphone 6,need to upgrade soon,bugger !
Reeder M7 Go 2019 Tablet !
Just upgrade your security and run unpatched, I’m doing this currently with 1709; turn it on and it always works. Ideas to explore:
Basic essentials: Macrium Reflect, Windows Firewall Control, UMatrix and ad blocker. Data not on system drive.
Concerned: Add Voodoo Shield, Sandboxie or a container for browser and email client. Comodo with Cruel Sister settings is worth trying.
Tin foil hat: Basic essentials and virtual machine with Linux for internet activities.
1 user thanked author for this post.
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Perhaps I am wrong about this, but my understanding is that accessing the Web from a Linux VM is done through the Windows communications layer, so it is not safer than using Windows.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV1 user thanked author for this post.
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Anonymous: True enough. But all that you mention is what one can and should do to browse safely when using Windows directly. So, browsing the Web with Linux on a VM running on a Windows PC is not safer than using Windows directly. Please, notice my use of the comparative inflection of the adjective “safe” here and in my previous entry.
Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).
MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV1 user thanked author for this post.
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There being several kinds of VMs…
Notably if you disable any paravirtualization features and accept the performance penalty, it does become somewhat safer.
Then it becomes somewhat safer still if you dedicate a NIC directly to the VM from the PCIe layer so it doesn’t go through the host networking stack at all.
Then there’s the extension that AMD was advertising a while ago, where you have memory encryption with different keys, and…
1 user thanked author for this post.
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To me, the biggest security advantage of a VM is the ease with which one can roll back to a known good state. I use VirtualBox, so that’s my point of reference, but the principles within apply to other VM software too.
When I am done using the VM, I move the mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen, which brings up the VirtualBox toolbar overlay. I click the X on the right side to close, and a menu appears. Three options are shown with a radio button: Save the machine state, Send the shutdown signal, and Power off the machine. There’s also a checkbox “Restore current snapshot ‘name'”, where ‘name’ is the name of the snapshot you started when you began the VirtualBox session.
If you select “Power off the machine” and check the “Restore current snapshot” button, the VM will shut down immediately, so you can continue to use the host OS. The next time you start your VM, it will by default start from the same point as with the last session, so if any malware had been introduced during that session, it would be gone. Starting the VM from that point takes a few seconds (about two seconds on my G3 laptop with NVMe SSD, or about 15 seconds on my desktop with 7200 RPM HDD). No need to boot up each time; it starts from whatever point you want it to.
If you make a change that you want to keep, you can simply select “Save the machine state” from the VirtualBox shutdown menu, and it will save the current machine state as a new snapshot that you can restore next time.
When you want to make a permanent change, first restore the current snapshot to get to a known good state, then make whatever change you wish, whether it be reconfiguring your UI, installing a trusted program, or whatever it is. Once that’s done, save the snapshot (using the Snapshot menu option or by shutting down with “Save machine state”), and from that point forward, use that snapshot as your main one.
You can use these options to provide far greater protection from malware than you can achieve with the bare-metal OS. If you use “Power Off” with “Restore current snapshot” as your standard shutdown (it will be the default after the first time you use it), it will discard any malware that may have gotten a foothold, even if you’re not aware of it. Just be in the habit of using external storage for any files you want to keep, since you know you’re going to roll back the machine state.
I do this with my Windows 7 VM even though 7 is still supported. If I didn’t intend to make any changes to the VM that I want to save, there’s no reason not to roll back.
There is software that can approximate this with a bare-metal Windows installation, but it can’t be as fast and easy as with a VM. Rolling back to a known good state is no harder than saving with persistence, and you can use whichever option suits you at the time.
When you consider that you can do all of this in a VM that lives in a window that allows you to keep doing whatever you wish in the host OS, it allows you to do any incidental browsing in the host, which provides a security advantage over a bare-metal installation where any such browsing will necessarily be done from the vulnerable OS, since that’s all you have at that moment.
It’s true that this isn’t “automatic” security that happens without you having to think about it, but security isn’t automatic. It always requires thought and planning, whether in fully-patched MacOS or Linux or long-unpatched Windows. Security isn’t a quality that a given piece of software has or does not have… it’s a series of decisions made by everyone involved, from the devs of each program used to the end-user down there at the end of the chain who is using all that stuff.
A VM is a powerful tool that allows for a lot of added security if you have a security mindset when you use it. If you don’t have such a mindset, you’re not going to be safe no matter how up-to-date your operating system and other software may be. It’s something that corporations have a lot of difficulty with– they try to keep all of their computers safe, but a workforce that doesn’t understand security (and generally, it won’t) is very difficult to protect from itself. Even with a dedicated IT team to handle administrative tasks, which allows locking a PC down far more than is feasible with a standalone home PC, it’s hard to keep people safe if they insist on infecting themselves, as they so often do.
Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon 6.2
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, Kubuntu 24.04
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, Kubuntu 24.04 (and Win 11) -
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I’m watching this project with interest. I’m trying to hold out on Win 7 as long as I can, but corporate rules don’t allow for us running that after the January drop-dead date.
However…
Microsoft obviously wants to push all Win7 users into buying Windows 10 (the free ride is over). And many industry pundits say that you shouldn’t keep using your Win7 hardware anyway — it’s too old, and there’s much better stuff on the market.
January 2020 isn’t the end of the line, for at least some hardware. The blind spot for the industry pundits (as well as Microsoft) is the assumption that everybody wants/needs the latest features, as soon as they’re available.
Even after Microsoft released Windows 10, it wasn’t hard to get machines shipping with Windows 7 (even if the licenses were Win 10, and considered to be “downgrades” by Microsoft), and there’s still plenty of machines out there where the hardware is contemporary with the 1507, 1511 and 1607 updates, and even a few at 1703. In my opinion, there’s no hardware reason to replace those machines, and it’s still possible to upgrade them from Windows 7 (see below).
Even for older hardware, upgrade isn’t beyond consideration, although with caveats. For business-grade laptops (not cheapo consumer rigs), if there’s no obvious stability or performance issues, and they haven’t been abused by rough use, I think it’s worth considering upgrade of machines dating back to approximately 2015, especially Lenovo ThinkPad and Dell Latitude. I’m not quite as enthusiastic about HP ProBook and EliteBook, because I know that HP was more aggressive in pushing Windows 10, from the beginning. I do know that that during the GWX promotion, it was more frequent that HP machines were having problems with not having Win 10 versions of drivers (causing problems with upgrades), although I’m inclined to believe that that was more of a problem with HP consumer models. Still, it may be that HP models are more likely to have problems with upgrades.
Something else that also gets missed in the hype over latest features is that with Windows 10 itself (as with all Windows versions since Vista) is Windows 6.x, and the overall hardware requirements haven’t really changed very much. I won’t discount that there’s technical advances in CPUs, chipsets, video cards, etc., and that for some, those are important, and that applications often expect closer to the leading edge for their own hardware needs.
@woody: The thing that Microsoft isn’t saying is that Windows 7 and 8.1 licenses can be activated in Windows 10. This was a key part of the GWX promotion, that once Windows 10 was downloaded/installed, all it took (or was supposed to take) to activate was acceptance of the Win 10 EULA. And for users that didn’t want to do the upgrade in place, it was possible install a copy of Win 10 from a formatted hard drive, and then activate with a Win 7 or 8.1 license. Although the GWX promotion is gone, Microsoft is still accepting those licensees for activating Windows 10. There’s a number of guides out there, for how to do it — one of the more prominent ones is from Ed Bott at ZDNet: https://www.zdnet.com/article/heres-how-you-can-still-get-a-free-windows-10-upgrade/Thus, all it takes is in getting the correct Windows 10 .ISO (32 or 64, language, release edition), and installing. Heidoc.net all the downloads available (as well as Office .ISOs, as well), and a really useful downloadable tool for navigating the archives apart from a browser: https://www.heidoc.net/joomla/technology-science/microsoft/67-microsoft-windows-and-office-iso-download-tool .
In my case, I’ve upgraded several machines (both Win 7 to Win 10, and Win 10 to more recent versions after deferral, and not using Windows “Check for Updates”), and both Pro and Home editions. In my own work, I take things a step further by not physically burning the .ISO to external media — using Virtual Clone Drive, and then mounting that way is sufficient.
I’m not suggesting that all older machines can or should upgrade to Windows 10. There’s plenty of reasons to leave old machines on Windows 7. However, if you have a machine that’s still working adequately, and the primary reason that you didn’t upgrade with GWX was that you weren’t ready to do so, you haven’t missed out on the ability to do so without having to pay Microsoft for a Win 10 license. The capacity is still there, just that Microsoft isn’t advertising it.
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We’ll find out for sure later this year, but it wouldn’t surprise me if TurboTax, in particular, continued to run on Win7 for a few more years.
As for finishing your taxes already… yer a better man than I, Gunga Din!
1 user thanked author for this post.
I am somewhat concerned with Google Chrome support on Windows 7. Google stopped issuing updates for Chrome on Windows XP two years after its EOL, yes, but it simultaneously also ended support for Vista as well, even though it still had another year of extended support.
I tried doing a Google search but I can’t seem to find the page explaining Google’s policy on when to stop supporting Windows versions. I seemed to recall reading somewhere that they only supported the last three or so Windows releases. I’m still not entirely sure what their policy about Windows 10 is. To my knowledge, they’re still releasing updates even for 1507 users (if they still cling on to that).
Chrome doesn’t offer ESR releases to my knowledge the same way Firefox does (if they do it’s not for regular consumers cause I’ve never heard of it) so who knows for how much longer will Chrome be viable for Windows 7? I don’t run any Windows 7 PCs anymore, but at one point in time keeping things in sync over Chrome made it much easier to keep all of my devices harmoniously connected (the dream that Microsoft keeps trying to dream). For those who still want that connectivity, they’re probably going to have to abandon Chrome completely when it goes EOL on Windows 7 and use Firefox everywhere.
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