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Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free!
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Subject: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:13 PM 6 months ago I was given a perfectly good PC at work which was about to be taken to the dump with some others - minus hard drives of course. My boss also gave me a hard drive which he thought had been seriously wiped. I figured out how to connect it at home but my monitor showed "no signal". So I used it as a putting place for CDs. Today being a rainy, windy sort of day and with a few hours to spare before Waitrose home delivery, I had another go at this PC. I disconnected all interior cables, reconnected and hey ho - text on the monitor telling me it cannot detect a keyboard - I'm in business and it was running Windows 7 Professional - so much for "serious cleaning"! So piggy backing my main PC's wireless connection, I'm upgrading it to Windows 10 so I can get some practise before our machines are upgraded at work! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: punkfolkrocker Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:28 PM Bonz - this may require more detailed research... A few months ago I was googling on this topic and turned up various versions of what may or may not be true... 1 - it may still be possible to upgrade free to Win 10 from an official microsoft server, if you can find the right one - and own a legal qualifying older version...??????? 2 - Anyone can install Win 10 from a microsoft server, and it will work but display a permenant nagging pop up in a corner of the screen...?????? You can buy cheap as chips Win 10 key off semi legit internet software shops/ebay, and they will work for any amount of time from a few months to forever, depending how many people already bought the same key [ customers advised to register the key immediately on download]...???????? I really don't know how true any of this is, but I reckon they are not completely untrue... What I want is the cheapest legal install of win 8.1 or 8.1 pro... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: SPB-Cooperator Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:35 PM I had copies of a number of CDs on my hard drive so I could listen to them with earphones in while at work,and keep the orignals from wear and tear/damage. However, following on from a windows upgrade, every 9(music) file was rendered unplayable. From experience Win 7 has been one of the most robust op systems since win 3.1. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:48 PM Yes, I have to say that it's very very slow, but I'll see. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 29 Jul 18 - 12:52 PM Yes, you can install Windows 10 from MS servers and run it without activating it. You get a watermark saying 'Activate Windows...' and you cannot personalise it - so you're stuck with the default wallpaper. I have such a machine - I use it to test the big biannual 'feature updates'. The free upgrade (and activation) from Win 7 expired in 2016. ISTR Win 10 introduced a new music player so it might not have played existing music tracks without a bit of configuring. As usual, installing VLC would be a good start. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 29 Jul 18 - 03:34 PM Oh dear, blue screen and rebooting back into Windows 7! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 29 Jul 18 - 04:00 PM Maybe I need to install 4 years worth of Windows updates - 92 of them! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 30 Jul 18 - 02:28 AM I'll give it one more go, then if that fails I'll stick with Win 7 Professional! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 30 Jul 18 - 03:49 AM I did this upgrade several times on an old box when W10 first came out. I had several BSDs which were all (?) related to the video 'card'. W10 dropped support for many old video cards. I usually got it going by dropping to lower resolution which involved 'safemode' or equivalent - I can't remember but it involved numerous reboots and was quite different to W7. Eventually I bought a newer video card from CeX for £20. MS publish a program that checks the hardware for compatibility. I had run that but it didn't identify this video card as a problem. You'd be better off with a clean install, but I assume you don't want to overwrite W7. Get another HD? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: punkfolkrocker Date: 30 Jul 18 - 08:01 AM Just an idea... I had a old PC which threw frequent blue screen wobblers... Turned out it was the graphic card gradually vibrating loose on it's contacts to the mother board.... Which just required being pushed firmly back in again.. Dust on the contacts might also have been involved... all photographers should own at least one good rubber bulb puffer like a pricey Giotto Rocket... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 30 Jul 18 - 03:28 PM 4 hours on - "working on updates 24% Don't turn off your PC. This will take a while!!! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 30 Jul 18 - 04:45 PM Success after 4 3/4 hours! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 31 Jul 18 - 02:58 AM But it really is an abomination, why ms see fit to change a decent explorer system is beyond me. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Roger the Skiffler Date: 31 Jul 18 - 04:43 AM Many friends including a former IT manager have reported problems with upgrades to Win10 that may require them to scrap laptop or rebuild PC. It seems some devices lack enough memory to cope with upgrade. Our IT chap advised us to avoid upgrading to Win10 until all these bugs have been fixed. RtS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 31 Jul 18 - 08:06 AM I shall probably revert to Windows 7 in due course! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 31 Jul 18 - 11:13 AM Explorer is a bit of a mess. You can customise it - for example make it start in My PC (right-click Quick Access, then Options). But what I'd like to do is get rid of a lot of it. I've got used to it, and I don't remember Win7's explorer being any better, but I prefer XPs simpler version. There are just two features in Win 10 that I'd really miss if I had to use Win7:
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: punkfolkrocker Date: 31 Jul 18 - 11:57 AM I've found win 8.1 to be a reasonable compromise, and will look for a cheap legal install of that for a Lenovo laptop I want to swap out the HD for a solid state drive. Problem is the laptop is factory installed with Win 8.1 Bing which is never supplied on a back up CD/DVD; and it is impossible to download ISOs of that from microsft or Lenovo for a fresh install. I'm reluctant to try copying the existing system to the new solid state HD, because I just want a clean new install without all the Lenovo bloatware |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 01 Aug 18 - 02:08 PM I still fail to see how people can get bothered about operating systems. I think I have used all of them since Windows 3.1 but can't get excited or bothered about them one way or the other. Not a fan of Windows ME, Vista or Windows 8 but apart from that they are tools that do things and things run on for me. Mostly I use a browser, Photoshop, Office and various music software. Is it difficult to navigate round Windows. No. I can't see any real difference in practical terms between 7 and 10. But there we go. I did have THE most bizarre thing two days ago though which I have never come across. My keyboard partially stopped working. Number pad and everything right of the Insert/Delete/Arrows worked. On the top row the numbers 4 to 0 and - and + worked. Backspace didn't. No keys worked on the Q row. A couple of keys on the next row and the keys on the bottom row right of the letter V. Right shift worked everything on the left didn't. The upshot of that was that I could get to the log on page and log on but never got to the icons on the desktop so it was unuseable. Could get to Advanced Options from the log on page by shift restarting on the Power option but it would not System Restore or use any of the sorting options apart from Resetting the machine. I also had to splash out on a £5.95 keyboard (why do keyboards range from £6 to £150? - weird) But the ability to restore windows without disks etc from the machine itself I think is a good thing. Reinstalling the programs I wanted was a bit of a pain but it does tell you everything that it has removed. At least half I won't bother to put back again. Strange. But still can't get too excited about operating systems even when they go a bit (or a lot) wrong :) My machine is about 6 or 8 years old with 8gb of RAM and I don't have any real issues apart from this latest bit of fun. I look it as an opportunity to do some spring cleaning |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 01 Aug 18 - 02:15 PM Ought to explain... Part of what made it unuseable might have been me clicking on some unknown combination of keys which meant that it never properly logged on. I had a Windows icon, search and task view icon. And some in the right corner and a black taskbar. A blue spinning icon and an ability to click on anything that would respond. The disk yellow light was on constantly and very occasionally the screen would refresh. but even leaving it for HOURS didn't let me click on anything. Odd. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 01 Aug 18 - 02:20 PM It removed 283 programs. I have reinstalled 35 and will probably add about 50 plugins etc to do with music and photography) So probably a good thing |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Backwoodsman Date: 01 Aug 18 - 02:25 PM "I still fail to see how people can get bothered about operating systems. I think I have used all of them since Windows 3.1 but can't get excited or bothered about them one way or the other. Not a fan of Windows ME, Vista or Windows 8 but apart from that they are tools that do things and things run on for me. Mostly I use a browser, Photoshop, Office and various music software. Is it difficult to navigate round Windows. No. I can't see any real difference in practical terms between 7 and 10. But there we go." I completely agree. But then I'm neither a clever-shit who's constantly trying to outwit my computer, nor a Luddite who resists change as a matter of principle. Things change, the world moves on - get with the program. The usual disclaimers apply......IMHO, YMMV etc. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 01 Aug 18 - 03:00 PM :) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Backwoodsman Date: 01 Aug 18 - 03:38 PM :-) :-) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 02 Aug 18 - 02:58 PM So, B3L, is the title of this thread true? Did you end up with an activated Win 10? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 02 Aug 18 - 04:24 PM Yes I did because its previous Windows 7 Pro was activated. However, the PC itself is odd because when it is connected to the mains, the fan starts and when I power on, but the system will not start up. But if I hold in the switch and stop the fan, then the system will start as normal when I power on. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 03 Aug 18 - 03:08 AM In my experience Intel-type PCs only start up when you push the power button, not when you plug them in. PSUs have a fan which sometimes starts when you plug them in or switch them on - if they have a switch - but usually doesn't. The PC itself controls its fan(s) and the PSU controls its fan, depending on temperature. Or they don't, if they're cheap. When this free Win 10 update was first released you had 30 days to revert to Win 7/8. Are you sure it's activated, BTW? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 03 Aug 18 - 06:38 AM Wouldn't be anything to do with your hacked copy of Photoshop which is known to cause a few problems :) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 03 Aug 18 - 08:42 AM No the problem was there before!! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 03 Aug 18 - 07:35 PM Adobe are very good about intention... |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Roger the Skiffler Date: 04 Aug 18 - 06:51 AM Having spent 2 hours on live chat to network provider, four visits to shops one call to manufacturer "help" line to try to get an old phone unlocked so someone else could use it, my wife told final third tier "help" person, who like the others couldn't solve the problem, "forget it, I'll throw the phone in the pond and buy one from X" (a competitor provider). It seems all IT "help" line staff just read from a script and have no real understanding of their products. Rant over. RtS |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 04 Aug 18 - 06:59 AM Got it in one!!! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: GUEST,Jon Date: 04 Aug 18 - 07:13 AM I doubt there is much IT knowledge on most "help lines" and that support will usually be limited to a very limited number of devices and circumstances. One I noticed the other day concerned VPN, which I wouldn't have thought too uncommon a requirement these days... I'd noticed my own (outside to my router) was broken and started to look at the Plusnet support. What I found there was that there were users (although going the other way, eg. like a home worker to an office server) who had problems in the past and that l2tp/ipsec was broken on some IP ranges (seemed like they were moving people around). But the telephone help lines did not support questions about VPN... (was able to fix mine btw as a firmware upgrade for the router offered ipsec/xauth which did work) |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Nick Date: 04 Aug 18 - 08:31 AM I used to work in IT support (sort of - quite specialised) and the competence of people was huge. Even if it was outside of what we were doing they would help and share. I had an interesting experience recently. I got in touch with Google Chromecast because my wife's laptop couldn't see what the ipads and kindles and desktops could see. Very helpful and a REAL person phoned me from abroad to help. Genuinely surprised. Now I could grumble that he didn't immediately know the answer but he pointed me in a direction and I then sorted it. I know so little about 2.4 and 5ghz wireless but now I do. Good for them. My shock was to speak to a person. I dealt with google years ago - once when I had an issue with a search getting spammed (it got sorted in a day though no response from them) and when the company I worked for spent hundreds of thousands of pounds with them every year but speaking to anyone. No. Interesting company. Noone in the world knows how many support staff they have. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: punkfolkrocker Date: 04 Aug 18 - 02:50 PM happy coincidence... https://www.tomshardware.co.uk/get-windows-10-free-or-cheap,review-34459.html by Scharon Harding August 3, 2018 at 4:52 PM |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 06 Aug 18 - 03:32 AM My batch file renaming program would not install in Windows 10, so I found a way of doing it with a batch command !! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 07 Aug 18 - 01:47 AM Might seem a daft question - how should a SATA hard drive be connected to power when there is no switch on back of PC, with SATA cable or the red & yellow cable? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 07 Aug 18 - 02:09 AM It does seem like a odd question. There are normally two cables, one (narrower) for data to the motherboard, and one with power to the PSU. Whether there is a switch makes no difference. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 02 Jun 19 - 04:08 PM It's a tossup which thing killed my 2010 HP last night - the Windows critical update that was trying to install when the power went out, or the flickering of power as the power went out. The router also died - and both were attached to battery backups. Getting stuff from the old computer (that works, but that refuses to let me fix the "Diagnostics Policy Service is not running" any more—this has happened a couple of other times in the past year or so) will have to be by drive or by cable. And the new computer will be ordered - with - wait for it - Windows 10. Pro. But at least it won't have been installed over a couple of other operating systems that no longer play well together. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: beachcomber Date: 02 Jun 19 - 04:59 PM I got a Lenovo Desktop PC two Christmases ago with Windows 10 installed. I continued to use Firefox to access the net but, Lately it will not open attachments on emails sent under the Firefox Logo (You'll gather from my post that I know nothing of the technology.) Wondering if there is something I can do to restore the facility ? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Mr Red Date: 03 Jun 19 - 04:40 AM depends what the facility is, and where you access your e-mails. If Office Outlook - you can inspect the header and see if the e-mail comes from Mozilla. If it doesn't it is spam. Some webmail will allow you to inspect the header, nut it may be buried deep IME. The point about having the courage to open the e-mail is that genuine FireFox e-mails will have an unsubscribe link. And you can always add it to a blacklist in webmail. It is not impossible to have two e-mail addresses. One for friends, family & important businesses, the other for things that will require your e-mail to get started. And When they start spamming, blacklist them. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Iains Date: 03 Jun 19 - 05:41 AM I upgraded to Windows 10 two weeks ago. The only problem was locating the product serial number of the existing windows system in the bios. There is plenty of info online to do this. It took a couple of hours online in total and several restarts to install the system. So far it seems fine. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 03 Jun 19 - 04:48 PM My "main" PC as I call it is of 2010 vintage, which I upgraded to Windows 10 Home a couple of months ago. Apart from a couple of minor annoyances it still runs well. Spare PC 1, a Lenovo of around 2016 vintage given to me by my boss when replaced, was upgraded to Windows 10 Professional and is loaded with all the software I use on my main PC so a direct replacement if needed. No product ID were needed when I did the upgrades to Windows 10 Spare PC 2 runs Windows 7 Enterprise only + Teamviewer. I have wifi adapters on all 3 because I cannot get sharing through ethernet cable to work - something is not set correctly but I can't figure out what! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 03 Jun 19 - 05:27 PM beachcomber wrote: ...will not open attachments on emails sent under the Firefox Logo...What is an email 'sent under the Firefox logo'? |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 03 Jun 19 - 08:17 PM An update was attempting when the computer died, but the message that pops up, that I can no longer remedy (I've fixed it a couple of times in the past) is "Diagnostics Policy Service is not running." When you use the cmd line and go to the Services list, there it is, and not responding to administrator status, not letting me restart it, etc. And when this isn't running, the computer won't talk to the world. When I put all of my files and programs into the new computer that will arrive next week, I'll fight with a lot of files that may need to be moved over, because simply plugging the external drive will mean having to go through steps to claim the files (they will be protected by the identity of the previous computer that wrote to them.) It may be easier now, I'll have to research it. My email is in Mozilla Thunderbird, but it's gmail accounts. Gmail doesn't like Mozilla, so we'll see how setting up those accounts now is (and transferring the data, which I learned is stored in a way that it can be transferred pretty easily.) The new computer will have Win10 Pro installed on the SSD boot drive. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: DaveRo Date: 04 Jun 19 - 02:38 AM Unless it's changed since I last set up W10, it will ask you for you for your Microsoft Account and if you don't have one invite you to create one. If you have one or want one, fine, but you don't have to; in this house we're running W10 with local accounts, in the old-fashioned way. But you need an account to access the Store and some programs (and browser addons) have to be loaded from the Store. Be aware that there is a version of Thunderbird in the Microsoft Store but the T'bird maintainers don't know anything about it (ref), so avoid it and get T'bird from thunderbird.net.. You can certainly move T'bird mail files from machine to machine, both whole profiles and mail folders - plenty of info online. If you're still using POP then I would bite the bullet and switch to IMAP. If you, or anyone else reading, uses addons in Thunderbird, be aware that it is dropping support for a lot of old addons* - many don't work in TB60 and more will fall away with TB68 in a couple of months. New versions of many of the most useful addons will appear eventually, I think, in addons.thunderbird.net but the situation is currently a bit confusing. I've updated some myself - e,g. Use BCC Instead (which has been discontinued by the original author). Others have updated versions but cannot publish them until 68 is out. *This has been forced in them by technical changed to Firefox; there is a lot of Firefix code is in T'bird. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 04 Jun 19 - 06:31 PM I have a Microsoft account but I never use it to log onto my computer. You have to force them to your will these days, difficult, but possible. Google keeps sending me emails on my various accounts saying it wants to keep my gmail safe and to eliminate less safe applications. The one time I clicked "yes" it blocked Thunderbird and it was a pain in the ass to unblock it. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 05 Jun 19 - 07:23 AM One problem I did have with Windows 10 which took a while to solve concerned Task Scheduler. In Windows 7 I had a tasks scheduled to run batch files for recording a number of BBC Radio programmes from the webstream, to start 1 minute early and finish 5 minutes after the end of the program. But both batch file and Task Scheduler settings had to be rehashed to work in Windows 10. The new batch files follow this pattern: @echo off for /f "delims=" %%a in ('wmic OS Get localdatetime ^| find "."') do set DateTime=%%a set Yr=%DateTime:~0,4% set Mon=%DateTime:~4,2% set Day=%DateTime:~6,2% set Hr=%DateTime:~8,2% set Min=%DateTime:~10,2% set Sec=%DateTime:~12,2% set BackupName= File Name__%Yr%-%Mon%-%Day%_(%Hr%-%Min%-%Sec%) ffmpeg -i "http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/ak/bbc_radio_three.m3u8" -c copy -t 01:35:00 "Early Music Late %Yr%-%Mon%-%Day%".ts Eventually I found a forum in which this very matter was being discussed, and someone suggested not using the " " around the m3u8 URL. When I removed them from the Program Script box on the "Start a Program" page in Task Scheduler, I got this error message. So I clicked Yes and it worked!! Oddly enough the task to shut down my PC at a given time still worked in Windows 10. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 20 Jul 19 - 10:18 AM We have an old Fujitsu Esprimo Mobile laptop bought in 2006 originally running Windows Vista, which we normally just use on holidays. I upgraded this using a Windows 7 Home disc a couple of years ago which was fine, then recently attempted the free upgrade to Windows 10, in order to get updates after next January, which failed on each of 3 tries. After some research, I found a guy who with the same laptop had success in upgrading from Windows 7 Ultimate, by using the option to download the Windows 10 upgrade as an ISO file, then mounted on a USB memory stick. I tried this and it worked first time - roughly 1 hour to download the upgrade, then a further 2 1/2 hours to install. The laptop was a little sluggish to start with, but once I did a disc cleanup and got rid of the Windows.old file it's a lot faster. |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Bonzo3legs Date: 21 Jul 19 - 05:07 AM So I claim my computer tech badge!!!!! |
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Subject: RE: Tech: Windows 10 upgrade is still free! From: Stilly River Sage Date: 28 Jul 19 - 11:42 AM Good for you, Bonzo, you earned it! This morning I went under the hood in my new Dell XPS and installed a 6TB hard drive in the second (of three) HDD slots. (It's a WD black version.) These aren't "plug and play," you have to initialize them, and I split it into two partitions, one for photos, one for music. I'd copied the data from my old non-networkable computer onto an external hard drive and how I'm downloading it into the new computer. I'm going to have to move around the Library settings when this is finished, and I'll run one of the duplicate finder programs to weed out (in particular) duplicate photos. That external drive will be on the shelf for a while as a backup of current information and I'll take the backup hard drive from the old computer and format it and use it for weekly formats of the new computer. Redundancy is the name of the game. I mention all of this here because I'm doing this work on a computer that I got with Windows 10 Pro installed at the factory. It behaves the way I expect Windows to behave; in my old computer that originally came with Win 7 and after upgrading to Win 10 suffered through a couple of bad service packs and updates, had some glitches so the firewall would never turn on, it refused to let my Malwarebytes (paid version) run real time protection, etc. If I decide at some point to completely refresh the Win 10 in that old computer I'll lose all of the software but it might decide to network again. To me, the value in it now is the software I can still use in that computer, but I have to remove the results with a USB drive. |
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