VOGONS


First post, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I'm putting together a socket 775 system for someone on Freecycle who needs it for home schooling. I'll be setting it up with a 1080p monitor, but will only be donating the base unit, as I don't have space to store donor monitors. I'll be installing Windows 7 pro, with an unused license. If the monitor they have sourced doesn't support HD resolutions, will NVidia drivers automatically adjust resolutions for the different monitor? If not, how do you get into safe mode to change it? I've never needed to do that, so don't know how to tell them to do it.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 1 of 9, by rmay635703

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Only if the monitor is plug and play, but in this day and age, it should

If it’s quite obsolete (more obsolete than you should attach to W7) you would need to manually setup the resolution and refresh rate before attaching the screen.

Reply 2 of 9, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

OK,, thanks. I'll check with them what the monitor is capable of, if they know, or at least get the model number to Google the info.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 3 of 9, by dionb

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Slightly offtopic, but giving somebody Windows 7 now it's out of support isn't really a good idea, particularly if they are inexperienced around computers and online security. It should be possible to upgrade that Win7 to Win10 (I forget exactly how, iirc you needed to set some accessibility option, then it would let you upgrade free-of-charge like back at first release of Win10).

Regarding age of monitors that won't support Plug'n'Play: well over 20 years. Pretty much any TFT will do so, only (much) older CRTs might not do EDID.

Reply 4 of 9, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
dionb wrote on 2021-01-24, 18:32:

Slightly offtopic, but giving somebody Windows 7 now it's out of support isn't really a good idea, particularly if they are inexperienced around computers and online security.

I'll look into how to do a Win 10 upgrade, or see if Win 10 will activate with an unused Win 7 code. If I'm stuck with Win 7 (only because that would be legal) it will have all the updates (thanks to NTLite), and I will be putting a free AV package on it, as well as providing them with an OS disc and a disc containing any required drivers and the AV package.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 5 of 9, by Hoping

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I used to set the resolution to 1024x768 at 60hz so that almost any monitor would work and the customer had to set his/her desired resolution after windows detected his/her monitor.

Reply 6 of 9, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Hoping wrote on 2021-01-24, 18:59:

I used to set the resolution to 1024x768 at 60hz so that almost any monitor would work and the customer had to set his/her desired resolution after windows detected his/her monitor.

That makes sense as well, thanks

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 7 of 9, by Jo22

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
dionb wrote on 2021-01-24, 18:32:

Slightly offtopic, but giving somebody Windows 7 now it's out of support isn't really a good idea, particularly if they are inexperienced around computers and online security. It should be possible to upgrade that Win7 to Win10 (I forget exactly how, iirc you needed to set some accessibility option, then it would let you upgrade free-of-charge like back at first release of Win10).

Regarding age of monitors that won't support Plug'n'Play: well over 20 years. Pretty much any TFT will do so, only (much) older CRTs might not do EDID.

Is recommending Windows 10 really better, though?
Windows 7 surely is old and vulnerable by now, but it was a true blue Operating System, at least.

By comparison, Windows 10 is sly, fake, untrustworthy.
And near criminal: The updates and auto-reboots are truely unresponsible.
Imagine, a system relevant computer that's unattended simply stops working while it's in the middle of handling an important task.

In my opinion, people who are recommending Windows 10 to others are partners in crime.
- No offense, though. 😀

Edit : Never mind. I guess I slightly over-reacted here. 😅

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 8 of 9, by dionb

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++
Jo22 wrote on 2021-01-24, 19:15:

[...]

Is recommending Windows 10 really better, though?
Windows 7 surely is old and vulnerable by now, but it was a true blue Operating System, at least.

It is old and vulnerable. That's the problem.

By comparison, Windows 10 is sly, fake, untrustworthy. And near criminal: The updates and auto-reboots are truely unresponsible. […]
Show full quote

By comparison, Windows 10 is sly, fake, untrustworthy.
And near criminal: The updates and auto-reboots are truely unresponsible.
Imagine, a system relevant computer that's unattended simply stops working while it's in the middle of handling an important task.

In my opinion, people who are recommending Windows 10 to others are partners in crime.
- No offense, though. 😀

Fake? It's a real enough OS. It has some very nasty habits, but what's the alternative? I'm a great proponent of Linux, but having tried (and failed) to offer enough support to nitwit users to do what they need to on their own, it's just not a option for a situation like this. MacOS is hardly any better than Windows 10 when it comes to privacy and autonomy, particularly now it's converging with iOS and more and more of iOS' walled-garden approach is leaking in. Beyond those, you're in the realm of real enthousiast stuff. It can be great. You can even run it on toasters. But it's even worse than Linux when it comes to letting a non-tech-savvy user just do their thing without you having to do pretty much everything for them.

IMHO the most important thing here is handing over a system which is completely patched up so all known vulnerabilities are fixed. Firewalls and antivirus can't help against attacks targeting vulnerabilities fundamental parts of the OS they're running on. So Windows 7 (or anything other than 10 in the Windows family) is out. Next, if you're donating something to help someone else, it needs to be usable by whoever gets it. I'd love to live in a world where educational institutions only used free, open-source software available on multiple platforms (indeed I agitate for it whenever I can), but that's not the world we live in, so there is going to be commercial closed-source software designed for Windows (and maybe MacOS). Yes, you can probably run most of it on Wine. No, you do not want to get a phone call whenever someone needs to do so. So however much I dislike both closed source operating systems in general and the privacy and autonomy trainwreck that is Windows 10, I simply can't suggest anything better at this point in time.

Reply 9 of 9, by debs3759

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie
Jo22 wrote on 2021-01-24, 19:15:
By comparison, Windows 10 is sly, fake, untrustworthy. And near criminal: The updates and auto-reboots are truely unresponsible. […]
Show full quote

By comparison, Windows 10 is sly, fake, untrustworthy.
And near criminal: The updates and auto-reboots are truely unresponsible.
Imagine, a system relevant computer that's unattended simply stops working while it's in the middle of handling an important task.

In my opinion, people who are recommending Windows 10 to others are partners in crime.

This PC will primarily be used for home schooling by the child of someone who already has internet access themselves, so although I understand your concerns, I don't think it will be a problem.

After a little Googling, it looks likely that I can install Win 10 with a Win 7 code, so I will be trying that out with the Win 10 spring 2020 build, as that is likely to have most, if not all drivers built in, and it worked when that build was first released.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.