Microsoft Joy!

[Lowpe]

Computers, what joy![:D]

My son is home from college and we are upgrading this old beast I play on. For a couple of reasons, one I took up the good General's advice and bought Distant Worlds on sale. My machine is kind of low end for that game....and then the son wants to play Total War Warhammer in a few days when it comes out and that game needs a 64 bit machine to run on and I am at 32...but capable of 64.

First we upgraded the ram from 2 to 4 gig. No problemo.

Then we slapped in another hard drive, a scrounger from a laptop but it did have a sata connection and doubles the hard drive capacity on the ole beast. Again, no problemo.

The we slapped in a cheapy geoforce video card. Low profile because I am using a low form factor base. But, once again, no problem.

Then in goes a a used processor, for 10 bucks, to upgrade the speed from 2.2 to 3.2. Works like a charm.

Now, I have a dual boot machine, Win 7 Home and Ubuntu 14.04 lts. The machine here is running 32 bit, but can upgrade to 64 bit.

So I grab my Win 7 key, my original disk and load that up on the newly installed drive and get Win 7 up and running. Easy - but it is 32 bit and I want 64.

Next step is to upgrade to Win 10 for free, but it has to be to the 32 bit version. Ok, done and validated. Looking good, but it does really eat up the day.

Then I need to upgrade Win 10 Home 32 bit to Win 10 Home 64 bit...and I get it installed and working but no validation. 2 hours on the phone thru tedious number strings, remote control, commands typed and finally Microsoft will validate it for 40 bucks.

Argh!

I was perfectly happy with Win 7, and my goal was simply to get to 64 bit.

So, I slap in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS 64 bit in about 30 minutes. Upgrade the drivers and I am good to go.

So now I can load Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, 16.04 LTS 64 bit, Win 7 home 32 bit.

But I still wanted to get Windows to 64 bit, Win 7 or 10, I don't really care...but why do they have to make it so absolutely painful?

I guess I like computers but dislike Microsoft right now. Back to Ubuntu...

Working now on getting WITP AE up and running on the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS to see how much of an improvement the 64 bit machine will give me. I ran it under 14.04 and really like the very crisp graphics thanks to the upgrades.

And yes, I am a cheap b@#$%rd and begrudge Microsoft their 40 bucks when they will be stealing and selling all my data to advertisers.[:D]

[Lowpe]

Oh, and our other project is getting a Raspberry PI 3 up and running....wonder if I can get WITP AE to run on it....perhaps if I water cool it like a heavy machine gun?[:D]

[crsutton]

Muther f**kers hijacked both my laptop and desktop and installed win 10 in the last two weeks. They made a change and scheduled the change on all systems unless you opt out. Did not make it clear and win 10 was there. Terms of agreement say you can't sue but I wonder if those who did not give permission can do a class action. I don't mind Win 10 but it has totally screwed up WITP on my computers. I was able to change switches on my laptop and get it running well but can't find the solution for my desktop.

[wdolson]

How did you get forced into Win 10?

[Lowpe]

I think if you use recommended updates it will migrate you to Win 10 now...

Free upgrade to Win 10 ends next month I believe. I need to decide whether go thru the pain of upgrading again, and I bet if I do Microsoft won't recognize my key since I used it once.

I went thru today all the privacy toggles for Win 10....my goodness there are a lot of them.

[NigelKentarus]

I went through the same thing this morning, but I think mine was self inflicted. Win 10 uupdate came yesterday (again) and said it was updating in 15 minutes. I did not want that after everything I read about it. But I think I clicked on delay 8 hours instead of just saying no. Lo and behold, this morning while I was playing Oblivion, it kicked me out and started updating to Win 10. After it was done, I played with it about an hour, way too slow, and 'downgraded' back to Win 7. Maybe 10 would be better with a totally clean install, maybe not, but at least I got it back to 7.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Muther f**kers hijacked both my laptop and desktop and installed win 10 in the last two weeks. They made a change and scheduled the change on all systems unless you opt out. Did not make it clear and win 10 was there. Terms of agreement say you can't sue but I wonder if those who did not give permission can do a class action. I don't mind Win 10 but it has totally screwed up WITP on my computers. I was able to change switches on my laptop and get it running well but can't find the solution for my desktop.

Same thing happened to me a week ago, crusutton. I was livid.

I absolutely think there's a valid cause of action against Microsoft. In fact, I bet you there are dozens of cases under review that will result in lawsuits. In a year or two, we'll be getting notices to opt in or out of class action suits.

[Dili]

64bits makes you be able to use 4 Gb memory and over. With 32 bits you memory limited, i don't quite remember what was the limit 2 or 3 Gb.

If you have several programs open, lots of browser tabs, libreoffice, etc they all use memory, so the more memory you have the more things you can have open simultaneously.

[BillBrown]

I used never 10 found here: https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Works great.

[Lokasenna]

I'm also picking up Total War: Warhammer. It looks awesome, especially as a Warhammer-ite of old.

For Win10, I have updates turned completely off on my machine. I only do them manually, and I look them up by the package ID number every time before I install. It's a chore, but it's how I avoid things like forced "upgrades." I should do them again soon, I think the last time I did any was about a year ago.

[Macclan5]

I actually found t conversion to 10 to be rather benign for for change; albeit I went from 7 premium an 64 bit (I think) to 10. Perhaps that make a difference.
Everything was in the same folder same path. The 10 suggestions thread in this forum solved my only issue in terms of games or apps. My Steam and Good Old Games files experienced no issues at all.

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: Dili

64bits makes you be able to use 4 Gb memory and over. With 32 bits you memory limited, i don't quite remember what was the limit 2 or 3 Gb.

If you have several programs open, lots of browser tabs, libreoffice, etc they all use memory, so the more memory you have the more things you can have open simultaneously.

With 32 bit Windows, the memory space is limited to 4 GB. That's the most a 32 bit memory bus can handle (2^32). A 64 bit bus can theoretically 18 Exa bytes. 32 bit Windows reserves 1-2 GB, so depending on the settings you can only effectively get 2-3 GB of usable memory.

32 bit programs running under 64 bit Windows run on a virtual 32 bit machine, so you can get the full 3 GB of memory for a program.

Bill

[bilbow]

ORIGINAL: BillBrown

I used never 10 found here: https://www.grc.com/never10.htm

Works great.

I used this as well. Kills the constant badgering by Microsoft. This will also allow you to change back if you want.

[AndyDuke]

You think you have problems I've been forced to reinstall windows 7 this weekend after my machine started to throw tantrums and wouldn't boot at all. But I've spent a day and a half trying to get windows update to run without any success

[Korvar]

For all the forced upgrade sufferers - if it's any consolation, you're not alone...

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

I went thru today all the privacy toggles for Win 10....my goodness there are a lot of them.

The bad news is that even after setting all those, Windows 10 is still 'phoning home' all the time.

Also, have you read the Windows 10 privacy statement?

Microsoft collects data to operate effectively and provide you the best experiences with our services. You provide some of this data directly, such as when you create a Microsoft account, submit a search query to Bing, speak a voice command to Cortana, upload a document to OneDrive, or contact us for support. We get some of it by recording how you interact with our services by, for example, using technologies like cookies, and receiving error reports or usage data from software running on your device.
We also obtain data from third parties (including other companies). For example, we supplement the data we collect by purchasing demographic data from other companies. We also use services from other companies to help us determine a location based on your IP address in order to customize certain services to your location.
The data we collect depends on the services and features you use, and includes the following.
Name and contact data. We collect your first and last name, email address, postal address, phone number, and other similar contact data.
Credentials. We collect passwords, password hints, and similar security information used for authentication and account access.
Demographic data. We collect data about you such as your age, gender, country and preferred language.
Interests and favorites. We collect data about your interests and favorites, such as the teams you follow in a sports app, the stocks you track in a finance app, or the favorite cities you add to a weather app. In addition to those you explicitly provide, your interests and favorites may also be inferred or derived from other data we collect.
Payment data. We collect data necessary to process your payment if you make purchases, such as your payment instrument number (such as a credit card number), and the security code associated with your payment instrument.
Usage data. We collect data about how you interact with our services. This includes data, such as the features you use, the items you purchase, the web pages you visit, and the search terms you enter. This also includes data about your device, including IP address, device identifiers, regional and language settings, and data about the network, operating system, browser or other software you use to connect to the services. And it also includes data about the performance of the services and any problems you experience with them.
Contacts and relationships. We collect data about your contacts and relationships if you use a Microsoft service to manage contacts, or to communicate or interact with other people or organizations.
Location data. We collect data about your location, which can be either precise or imprecise. Precise location data can be Global Position System (GPS) data, as well as data identifying nearby cell towers and Wi-Fi hotspots, we collect when you enable location-based services or features. Imprecise location data includes, for example, a location derived from your IP address or data that indicates where you are located with less precision, such as at a city or postal code level.
Content. We collect content of your files and communications when necessary to provide you with the services you use. This includes: the content of your documents, photos, music or video you upload to a Microsoft service such as OneDrive. It also includes the content of your communications sent or received using Microsoft services, such as the:

subject line and body of an email,
text or other content of an instant message,
audio and video recording of a video message, and
audio recording and transcript of a voice message you receive or a text message you dictate.


Additionally, when you contact us, such as for customer support, phone conversations or chat sessions with our representatives may be monitored and recorded. If you enter our retail stores, your image may be captured by our security cameras.
You have choices about the data we collect. When you are asked to provide personal data, you may decline. But if you choose not to provide data that is necessary to provide a service, you may not be able to use some features or services.
Service-specific sections below describe additional data collection practices applicable to use of those services.

It should be stated that some things which may sound alarming, such as the storage of payment data, are actually necessary when you think about it - if you buy something from MS, obviously they need to be able to process the payment. Yet I also believe that everyone should be aware of the aggregate data that MS is technically allowed to collect about you per the terms of service. There are ways to curb the information that MS collects, but unfortunately, clicking a few privacy toggle switches is only the beginning.

ORIGINAL: AndyDuke

You think you have problems I've been forced to reinstall windows 7 this weekend after my machine started to throw tantrums and wouldn't boot at all. But I've spent a day and a half trying to get windows update to run without any success

You've probably already tried this, but make sure to try manually updating the Windows Update Agent, especially if you're installing a pre-service pack version of Windows 7.

Actually, if you don't have service pack 1 installed, you might as well just download and install SP1. You can easily check what version of Windows you're running by pressing [Windows key] + [Pause/Break].

[Denniss]

A Windows 7 key should be valid for both 32 and 64 Bit, pending it's the same version (not Home Basic vs Home Premium etc). You should grab a Win7 64Bit DVD/ISO of your version and do a clean install, an upgrade from 32 to 64Bit is not possible. Doing so might affect the Linux Bootloader though so this should be done by someone with experience in this stuff.

[Anachro]

Got Windows 10 with a new computer. So far, it's decent; I can hardly tell the difference between it and Windows 7 (what I had last). Took a little bit of trouble-shooting to get WitP working on it, but now the game is running smooth as butter.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Denniss

A Windows 7 key should be valid for both 32 and 64 Bit, pending it's the same version (not Home Basic vs Home Premium etc). You should grab a Win7 64Bit DVD/ISO of your version and do a clean install, an upgrade from 32 to 64Bit is not possible. Doing so might affect the Linux Bootloader though so this should be done by someone with experience in this stuff.

Thanks for the idea but I was under the impression I couldn't do that since windows was pre-installed on the machine. I am back to running windows 10, 32 bit for now...and this time I think I have the 64 bit upgrade migration figured out properly.

I don't have a problem setting up the linux bootloader at all, in fact the upgrade to linux 64 bit was so smooth it was downright scary.[:)] Windows installs normally screws with the normal great ubuntu bootloader (grub something or other) but it is really easy to get it back up and running.

I am going to take a few days off before upgrading to 64 bit windows 10...computer fatigue. I have checked everything processor, hardware, drives and memory and I am good to go I think. Just have to get up the nerve to do it, because it will be a clean install.

I got witp ae/tracker all working fine in windows 10...no problem there, and tracker can usually run very well off a usb dirve so I anticipate no problems with that. Just the activation from Microsoft.

[Lowpe]

Attacked the upgrade to windows 10 64 bit fresh this morning, and while doing many other things a complete success.

Microsoft was kind enough to validate the install.

Now I am loading up all the programs I use and trying to figure out how best I can save what is left of my privacy...if nothing else make'em work to violate it. At least a little.

Son is very happy as the release date for Warhammer is tomorrow I think. I am less happy because it was so painful to do...but it is done now.

Back to the wars with a reinvigorated machine![:)]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

Attacked the upgrade to windows 10 64 bit fresh this morning, and while doing many other things a complete success.

Microsoft was kind enough to validate the install.

Now I am loading up all the programs I use and trying to figure out how best I can save what is left of my privacy...if nothing else make'em work to violate it. At least a little.

Son is very happy as the release date for Warhammer is tomorrow I think. I am less happy because it was so painful to do...but it is done now.

Back to the wars with a reinvigorated machine![:)]

The privacy thing got over-worked in the press. Many things were already back-ported to older versions of Windows, and others are already in services/apps from other vendors. Thing to do is just go through the Settings item by item and turn off any one you want.

One thing that really fanned the flames was someone's claim that they turned off all those things and then found Windows was still sending out personal stuff over the wire - but the claim was (possibly deliberately) false. A week or two after the claim was made a tech journalist/writer decided to replicate it on his own machine. He installed W10 with all the settings to keep things private, looked on the wire and... nothing! After he contacted the author, the author sort of 'disappeared', even taking down the blog web site where he had written the article. A little unclear what was the original intent, but obviously the original article was not legit.

W10 (and any other OS) privacy is a genuine concern you do have to pay attention to, but just hit the settings, including maybe searching for articles that have covered which settings to pay attention to. Ignore the fear-mongering like that article I referred to.