The smoke got out

**RknRusty** Wed Mar 02, 2016 10:59 am

I knew it was coming a couple of months ago. I ignored it. Yesterday it happened. My computer had begun refusing to turn back on after being powered down, but if I waited an hour or so it would re-light. I haven't cold booted on purpose since It started, but yesterday I accidentally shut it off and it was dead... ded ded ded.

I scavenged through years of computer junk and tried about six different power supplies, and none of them fit. Back in the day, I would have hacked wires and soldered the old connectors onto one of the older power supplies to make it work. But no, not now. I bought a new desktop box last night, an HP Pavillion with a 1TB drive and 8 GB memory, and a Bang & Olufsen sound package. There's a name I hadn't heard of in a long time. I also bought a new 2 TB backup drive. But worst of all for me, it's Windows 10. Not that it's a bad system, but I had gotten along swimmingly with Win 7 since 2009. It never failed me. This is a basic system by today's standards, but it's an upgrade. I just last week upgraded my Internet service and am getting about 25 megabits down and 2.5 up, not blazing, but an improvement over the 15/1 that I had before.

So after a spectacular weekend flying expedition up at Watt Field with the Carolina Gang, my flight report, videos and pictures are all on my backup drive as well as the internal drive in the old machine. So if y'all sit tight for a while, I'll get it all sorted out and be back in business in a couple or three days. What a pain... on the other hand, I have a new toy.

So, I'll be back, bigger, stronger, faster. As soon as I can.
Rusty

Kim Wed Mar 02, 2016 11:23 am

GO GET'M TRON !!!!!

pkrankow Wed Mar 02, 2016 11:32 am

Did you order the hard drive enclosure for the old drive? Usually that is all it takes to save the old files... and some hunt-n-peck to locate them all.

Phil

fredvon4 Wed Mar 02, 2016 1:02 pm

My shop laptop that had seen me well through XP , then Vista, then a long time with Win 7 ( I much prefer) was showing signs of impending doom so wife got me a new laptop for Xmas and ordered it with Win 7 but came with 10 installed... can revert but much too lazy to jump through the hoops so living with this hog right now

Rusty...DUDE! 25Mbps down! and you said "not blazing"

I wish...out here is hicks vile I am lucky some days that everyone is at work and I can get 1.7Mbps down....usually around 700~800Kbps

I pay for 5Mbps but the service always falls back on the typical disclaimer....yadda yadda

crankbndr Wed Mar 02, 2016 3:48 pm

New computer is always good, you should love the improvements!! I struggled with Win 8, haven't seen 10 yet.
As for download speed I'm paying Comcrap for 50 mbps but when something is downloading that I can measure its around 10.
Still pretty rapid compared to Dial-up and DSL from ATT, everything loads really fast even at 10.

rsv1cox Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:11 pm

I'm still running Vista on my 10 year old HP Pavillion which barely supports my Hotmail (Windows) email and just gave up the ghost on sending funds via Paypal. But it accepts the sim card (think matchbook size) from my old Oylmpus cameras and I'm afraid the new computers don't. So I'm caught between yesterday and tomorrow.

Bob

Nice shot Kim.

happydad Wed Mar 02, 2016 4:55 pm

crankbndr wrote:New computer is always good, you should love the improvements!! I struggled with Win 8, haven't seen 10 yet.
As for download speed I'm paying Comcrap for 50 mbps but when something is downloading that I can measure its around 10.
Still pretty rapid compared to Dial-up and DSL from ATT, everything loads really fast even at 10.

Just for the record Win8 and Win10 are almost the same. Win10 allows you to use the features of Win7, desktop view, or Win8/10, the tile based view. I still prefer the Win7 desktop view and add whatever applications I need to the taskbar instead of using the Win8 tile view. The new browser, Edge, is better and faster and less suceptable to hacking, but I prefer Google Chrome for the same reasons.

*** I recommend no one continue to use Internet Explorer due to the massive hacking effort by offshore people to trick you into paying $49.00 for fake "problems" with your PC. They arrange pop-ups on your PC that look very legitimate and ask you to call a phone number to fix your problem, but ultimately they want money to do nothing. It is a large "phishing" scheme that has made network news in the south-west area. Many of my senior students where I volunteer have been tricked by this scheme. ***

I have personally had great success with Win10 except for their insistance on having me create a password to add a new application to read a certain word file because I didn't purchase Word365 when I bought the laptop. SURPRIZE. I now have a password locked laptop and it can't be removed. Just be careful when answering questions about anything Win10. Two Cents

happydad

rsv1cox Wed Mar 02, 2016 5:00 pm

happydad wrote:
crankbndr wrote:New computer is always good, you should love the improvements!! I struggled with Win 8, haven't seen 10 yet.
As for download speed I'm paying Comcrap for 50 mbps but when something is downloading that I can measure its around 10.
Still pretty rapid compared to Dial-up and DSL from ATT, everything loads really fast even at 10.

Just for the record Win8 and Win10 are almost the same. Win10 allows you to use the features of Win7, desktop view, or Win8/10, the tile based view. I still prefer the Win7 desktop view and add whatever applications I need to the taskbar instead of using the Win8 tile view. The new browser, Edge, is better and faster and less suceptable to hacking, but I prefer Google Chrome for the same reasons.

*** I recommend no one continue to use Internet Explorer due to the massive hacking effort by offshore people to trick you into paying $49.00 for fake "problems" with your PC. They arrange pop-ups on your PC that look very legitimate and ask you to call a phone number to fix your problem, but ultimately they want money to do nothing. It is a large "phishing" scheme that has made network news in the south-west area. Many of my senior students where I volunteer have been tricked by this scheme. ***

I have personally had great success with Win10 except for their insistance on having me create a password to add a new application to read a certain word file because I didn't purchase Word365 when I bought the laptop. SURPRIZE. I now have a password locked laptop and it can't be removed. Just be careful when answering questions about anything Win10.

happydad

I tried to download google chrome but couldn't. Seems you need window's 10 to do so. Can I install windows 10 on my present computer? My photobucket account is so corrupted that I never use it. Whenever I do I get PC matic like popups wanting to fix it.

happydad Wed Mar 02, 2016 5:34 pm

rsv1cox wrote:
happydad wrote:
crankbndr wrote:New computer is always good, you should love the improvements!! I struggled with Win 8, haven't seen 10 yet.
As for download speed I'm paying Comcrap for 50 mbps but when something is downloading that I can measure its around 10.
Still pretty rapid compared to Dial-up and DSL from ATT, everything loads really fast even at 10.

Just for the record Win8 and Win10 are almost the same. Win10 allows you to use the features of Win7, desktop view, or Win8/10, the tile based view. I still prefer the Win7 desktop view and add whatever applications I need to the taskbar instead of using the Win8 tile view. The new browser, Edge, is better and faster and less suceptable to hacking, but I prefer Google Chrome for the same reasons.

*** I recommend no one continue to use Internet Explorer due to the massive hacking effort by offshore people to trick you into paying $49.00 for fake "problems" with your PC. They arrange pop-ups on your PC that look very legitimate and ask you to call a phone number to fix your problem, but ultimately they want money to do nothing. It is a large "phishing" scheme that has made network news in the south-west area. Many of my senior students where I volunteer have been tricked by this scheme. ***

I have personally had great success with Win10 except for their insistance on having me create a password to add a new application to read a certain word file because I didn't purchase Word365 when I bought the laptop. SURPRIZE. I now have a password locked laptop and it can't be removed. Just be careful when answering questions about anything Win10.

happydad

I tried to download google chrome but couldn't. Seems you need window's 10 to do so. Can I install windows 10 on my present computer? My photobucket account is so corrupted that I never use it. Whenever I do I get PC matic like popups wanting to fix it.

You should be able to download Google Chrome using Win XP. Some of our oldtimers still use XP. The only limitation is usually the version of the browser you are using. And Chrome should tell you, "you need version xxx.xxx of browser yyy to download Chrome. Some users have been using Mozilla Firefox, but they have been getting notices that it is being phased out this year, possibly bought out by another monster computer company. I also teach Apple iMac and I encourage those students to use Chrome for the same reasons.

I have experienced similar "phishing" schemes on the mac products claiming to be apple representatives. The give away is when the reps also claim to know PC products as well. That is a big no no at Apple.
My only question for you is what virus protection program do you use? If you don't use one, ... We recommend a free basic program called AVG free. You can purchase a more internet inclusive program for $39, but the free program works fine. We have recommended it for as long as I have volunteered at the local senior center, 6+ years. I use it also.

As far as being able to upgrade to win10. You must have ALL the win7 updates and the required free HDD space before you can upgrade. Google "upgrade to Win10 requirements".

On an older desktop win7 with an Intel Core 2 duo CPU I had to do 200+ updates before I got the message "win10 upgrade now available".

PM me if I can help more.

happydad RC Plane

rsv1cox Wed Mar 02, 2016 6:17 pm

Thanks, PM forthcoming.

Sorry Rusty for hacking in here.

Bob

**RknRusty** Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:12 pm

Lots of replies I can comment on, but not right now. I laughed out loud at Kim's AOC monitor. Did everyone have one like that?
My files are transferring as I type. I loaded my Acronis TI 2009 in compatibility mode and it's transferring selected folders out of Sunday night's backup. My Rocketfish backup drive enclosure had a power plug that wouldn't fit my old computer's more modern drive, so I put the bkup drive back in the Rocketfish and tinkered with Acronis till I got it to work. Appears to be Caddilaking now. I spent hours trying to boot my Acronis rescue flash drive with no success. The new BIOS is too protective. I bet Linux developers hate that.
Rusty

**RknRusty** Wed Mar 02, 2016 9:23 pm

I forgot to mention what I learned while trying one of my bright ideas. I opened up the case to just hook up my old drive and manually mine the folders. Of course there was no extra cable or even socket for another drive, because THERE'S NOTHING IN THERE! Modern computers are composed of mostly space-time... or as we know it here on Earth, AIR.
lol!

roddie Wed Mar 02, 2016 10:53 pm

You wouldn't believe what we scrap for data-system AVR where I work. It's what we do. Much of the stuff is big cabs filled with servers, switches and DAE's that have reached the end of their useful life. Generally 3-5 years. One of my jobs is data sanitization. There's a "keep" and "scrap" list.. depending on the type of media. Spindle-type hard-discs under 250Gb get shredded.. because they're not worth selling after the cataloging, erasing, and stocking (handling). They still must be serial-tracked for shred records though. We have 4' x 4' x4' (Gaylords) full of power-supplies, fans, power-cable, CU, Bright CU, AL, PCBA 1, 2, & 3 (graded by the ratio of gold to contaminates), steel, plastic, batteries... These are all recycled monthly and more often; depending on the business.

I'm glad you were able to recover your files Rusty. Congratulations on the new system.

**RknRusty** Thu Mar 03, 2016 9:52 pm

Damn this thing is fast. Not talking about the internet, I mean the machine. And I don't think 8 gigs of memory is a lot for Win 10. Seven(Home-32 bit) ran well on 3 gigs but that was about its minimum.

Bob, you were asking about an upgrade on your existing hardware. Dad answered, and I can add to what he said. Here's some info I copied:

Now, let's take a look at the hardware. There are five key requirements that a system will need to meet in order to support Windows 10, and those are the processor, RAM, hard disk space, graphics support, and minimum display resolution.

Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster processor or SoC
RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) for 32-bit or 2GB for 64-bit
Hard disk space: 16GB for 32-bit OS or 20GB for 64-bit OS
Graphics card: DirectX 9 or later with WDDM 1.0 driver
Display: 800-by-600 resolution
If you're thinking that these basic requirements don't seem that demanding, you're right. Aside from up-to-date software and drivers, these are pretty much what you get with every Windows PC sold in the last decade. As a result, unless you're stuck on some really old hardware, any PC you own should be Windows 10 compatible.

For processing, Windows 10 requires a CPU with a minimum speed of 1 gigahertz (GHz). This is a very low bar to clear, as even Intel's low-powered Atom and Celeron processors have been above the 1GHz mark for several years. If you're running an AMD processor or Intel Core processor from this decade, you'll have no problems.

You'll also want to look up whether or not your processor supports a 64-bit operating system. If not, you'll be limited to the 32-bit version of Windows 10, but many inexpensive systems that are currently running the 32-bit version of Windows are capable of 64-bit support.

This processor will need to be paired with at least 1 or 2 gigabytes (GB) of RAM—1GB is the minimum for running at 32-bit, and 2GB is needed for 64-bit. There are also basic requirements for storage, with a minimum 16GB of hard disk space for the 32-bit version of the OS and 20GB for the 64-bit version.

ian1954 Fri Mar 04, 2016 3:40 am

Be careful when considering upgrades. They are not backwards compatible.

Some of us "old timers" still use XP because it supports parallel cards. Windows 10 doesn't and never will.

Drivers for some products can also be a problem - if you use old printers, web cams etc.......

I use XP, Win7, Win Vista and Win 10. Win 8 and 8.1 were a disaster.

I recently upgraded my drives to SSD drives - that made a phenominal difference to the speed of my machines.

Google Chrome will soon no longer support Windows Vista - Microsoft no longer support XP.

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Win8 and Win10 are almost the same

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