Replies

Thanks for your reply Paul. While I understand and appreciate the issue, there isn’t much I can do about it. These days we all have to decide how to allocate our shrinking resources. I started with Gizmo’s free TechSupportAlert. He “sold out” to Windows Secrets and I received the free version of their newsletter. WinSec brought me to AskWoody. Now WinSec has been “re-incorporated” into AskWoody. Unfortunately, for me, it appears that now AskWoody will only be a resource if I have a specific problem. Sad but true. Still, I wish you guys success.

Susan

I notice that the newsletters that are available to non-plus members begin around end February. This is three months out of date. I thought the original “delay” was much less? If this is intentional – a three month period – then I don’t know why I’m still bothering to come here. Once upon a time, I used to visit AskWoody several times a week. Now I’m finding less and less available to me.

SusanA

@PKCano

Hi PK. Thanks again for the reply. I checked my own WinSec archives and found –

Fred’s article was not a LangaList feature but was “Top Story” and it appeared in –

“Windows Secrets Newsletter • Issue 493 • 2015-08-13

Top Story: How to make lithium-ion batteries last for years”

I don’t need the article for myself since I have it from WinSec but the info and correct location might be of use to “Edwin” who posted anonymously on December 24, 2019 at 5:06 am.

Cheers, SusanA

[SusanA]

@PKCano,

Thanks for the reply. If I click on the link “Read the full story in AskWoody Plus Newsletter 16.47.0” on the AskWoody main page, I’m eventually taken to the rather unhelpful https://www.askwoody.com/newsletter/hunting-for-an-elusive-win7-esu-license/ in the Newsletter/Alerts archives which is still restricted to Plus members.

The same applies if I click on the Newsletters/Alerts button at the top of the page.

In my case, it’s academic because I have Fred’s full article from the free newsletter in my own Windows Secrets collection. This is not the case for all of Woody’s readers though.

My point really was that this is an old article, it’s not been updated (AFAIK) and it was originally “free”. All Tracey did was to post an old LangaList article that became paywalled at AskWoody. In my opinion, that’s not fair. Just my opinion. We all have one.

SusanA

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by SusanA.

[SusanA]

PK & Woody – I have to put my 2 cents in. I was a TechSupportAlert subscriber (free) and when Gizmo sold out to WinSec, I became a free subscriber there. I remember Tracy Capen’s articles well. You will recall that even their “free” newsletter had many articles fully available. I have followed AskWoody for many years and was happy to see that Woody was absorbing the WinSec stuff. I realize that Woody has to raise funds to keep the lights on. If I could support him, I would. I can’t. He lived in Thailand for many years and knows what Asian life is like. I’m not in Thailand but live not terribly far away.

Now, the thing. This “paywalled” article by Fred Langa was part of the free WinSec content. It seemed familiar and I found the original in my archives. Isn’t it unfair to paywall what were free articles years ago? I’m sorry to say but it seems like there is little point in just being a “non-Plus Member” and I cannot hide my disappointment. – SusanA.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by SusanA.

I’ve been a Win7 user for a long time. Recently a friend upgraded her computer and gave me her older laptop with Win10 installed. I have programs that will not run on Win10 because there are no available drivers so I expect that eventually my Win7 desktop will become an offline machine. All well and good. Now the problem. My internet connection is not terribly fast and I have a data cap. For me, anything over about 100MB is a large download. I understand that Win10 updates are cumulative and average 200-300MB. Is that true? And what when they have one of their “feature” updates (the numbered ones – I don’t know what they’re called). How large are those? I can see a situation where I will be unable to allow Win10 to update. Perhaps I should just stay with Win7 and take my chances? Any opinions or advice would be most appreciated.

OK, I understand that Total Meltdown applies only to 64 bit Win7. I’m running 32 bit Win7 and am holding off installing any post Dec 2017 patches because I’m confused. Should 32 bit users still be holding off? If not, what patches should we install? I’m on the “security only” side and generally follow Belarc Advisor – at least up to end Dec! Thanks for any advice!

I just want to take this opportunity to say how glad I am that Susan Bradley has become such a prominent fixture here at AskWoody. Susan’s posts in Windows Secrets was one of the reasons I stayed with them for so long after being migrated from Gizmo’s TechSupportAlert. Thank you Susan Bradley!

11 users thanked author for this post.

johnf, Jan K., satrow, AlphaCharlie, CADesertRat, Geo, Laptop Boy, flackcatcher, mcbsys, woody, columbia2011

Yes, their Twitter feed is still up but, as Cybertooth mentioned, silent since Feb 12. Their Facebook page https://web.facebook.com/pg/WindowsSecrets/posts/ is also still up but seems to be inactive except for a number of commenters complaining. I was a free subscriber to WS for a long time having been brought there by Gizmo’s TechSupportAlert. It was great while it lasted but the best thing is that it brought me to AskWoody!

Using Belarc Advisor, I checked on some of the Sept patches for Win7. I tried to download KB3175024 but it appeared to have been pulled. I read a comment somewhere online that it had been superseded by KB3172605. I’m not sure if this is true but I did find KB3172605 and it is meant for Win7 – even though Belarc didn’t call for it!

Today I found that KB3175024 has reappeared as KB3175024-v2. I can only assume that there was some problem and it hopefully was fixed? Unusual for MS to do that so quickly!

My biggest worry is that the “new” update rollups will be huge downloads. That’s okay if you have fast and reasonably priced internet but lesser netizens like me are really going to get slammed. I was always a Windows girl. I loved XP and grew to like Win7. Now I just received a recent version of Linux Mint to play with. Do you hear that, Redmond? WE’RE NOT HAPPY ANYMORE!

EP asked about my internet connection – it’s variable. In any case, it’s what you actually get rather than what they say you “might” get! If the planets are aligned just right I can manage about 2Mbps. Since it took about 4 hours to download the ISO, that would probably equate to about 1.5Mbps. Of course the quality of the connection is important too since it’s easy to end up with a corrupted download even if the speed is decent.

Maybe I’ll give it one more go. I’ll let you know – and thanks again to all of you for your advice!

Update – well, I tried installing the ISO from TechBench and it failed with the warning

Operating System Failed to Load Because the Kernel is Missing or Contains Errors
File:windowssystem32ntoskrnl.exe
ERROR CODE: 0x0000098

I guess that puts an end to my Win10 experiment if my connectivity, even with a download manager, isn’t good enough. Not that I needed it. I’m happy to stick with Win7. I wonder what we’ll all be doing four years from now? Maybe we’ll all switch to to some flavour of Android/Linux? Maybe I should start experimenting with Wine!

Thanks Bob?(Maybe?err…ok). I’m in Asia where many places have far from reliable connectivity.

I used FreeDownloadManager to download the ISO and resume was supported. It took 4 hours to download. I can extract the files from the ISO, using 7zip, without any warning so I can probably assume that the download is not corrupt. Thanks also for the hash but I have the 32bit version. It says “Win10_1511_2_English_x32.iso”. Do you have a link for the page where the hashes are?

Susan

Thanks Woody, Mike & LT, for the responses!

1. Yes, I already made a system image of my Win7 install. My plan was to revert to Win7, using that image, after playing with Win10. Of course, I would also image the Win10 install if I thought I might want to keep it.

2. I already downloaded a Win10 ISO from TechBench but couldn’t find an MD5 or SHA-1 hash to confirm the integrity of the download. I thought I’d try the direct method just in case it worked better. I’ll probably try installing the ISO using my Win7 key anyway.

I’m happy to know that it’s not a case of missing “bad” patches that affect the download.

Happy Birthday “Ask Woody” and a big thank you to Mr Woody Leonhard for all the hard work and advice that you have freely given to all of us during the past 12 years!