gerry wrote on 2025-10-29, 19:13:

So how many 10 users here got extended support for windows 10, either paying or getting 1, 3 or some other years worth through having MS ID or some other means?

"Or some other means" always works.

Hehe.. I have 6 windows 10 machines, and they've all been enrolled for that extra year of support. It's all legit, and I didn't have to pay.

One machine gave "something went wrong", so I compared some registry things against a machine that worked, applied a resulting patch, and then it worked too.

dr_st wrote on 2025-10-29, 21:08:

gerry wrote on 2025-10-29, 19:13:

So how many 10 users here got extended support for windows 10, either paying or getting 1, 3 or some other years worth through having MS ID or some other means?

"Or some other means" always works.

*happy pirate noises*

The support doesn't really end until IoT LTSC in 2032, but by that time you really will be struggling to launch anything new on Windows 10.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-10-30, 13:27:

The support doesn't really end until IoT LTSC in 2032, but by that time you really will be struggling to launch anything new on Windows 10.

I even use Windows 7 for online PC now, up to 2032 and beyond with 10 is good for me.

What do you people think of KernelEx style hacks? If Windows keeps going where it's going, could they become a viable alternative? Assuming more clever person appears to develop them. I'm not sure how much they were used in the past "to get things done" rather than just tinkering.

They were unstable and unreliable in my experience. KeePass 2 remained decently compatible with Windows 98 for the longest time, until some point in this decade actually. KernelEx breaks it so it can't decrypt the database. I tried such extension for Vista once and could play de-DRMed Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Remastered from 2016. On the other hand, it broke hardware acceleration in one of the web browsers.

I also briefly tried something like that for XP and...again, KeePass suffered. That's one of the most widely compatible applications I've ever seen, so such incident is an immediate disqualification for me. Not worth using, moving on.

TBH, I doubt anything viable will come out of such attempts. Especially for someone like myself, who's rarely happy with software as it is.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-11-01, 21:39:

What do you people think of KernelEx style hacks?

What to think of them? They are pretty much dead, because modern Windows versions are more complex and not many people are interested in solving this. Vista extended kernel is in alpha state. Windows 7 has VxKek forks that supposedly bring some compatibility, but are still very limited. Also VirusTotal scans don't bring any sort of optimism, because the original project was hijacked by malware and you have to go in blind (all forks are tagged as malicious by majority of AV software).

Any type of extended Kernel for Windows 10 will bring droves of bad actors looking for easy pickings.

UCyborg wrote on 2025-11-01, 21:39:

What do you people think of KernelEx style hacks?

I never tried OS-wide KernelEx hacks, but do use portable program-specific KernelEx-dlls quite often. In Windows XP that is.
Supermium browser uses a custom KernelEx file (pwrp_k32.dll etc. https://github.com/win32ss/supermium/discussions/816).

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2025-11-01, 22:33:

UCyborg wrote on 2025-11-01, 21:39:

What do you people think of KernelEx style hacks?

What to think of them? They are pretty much dead, because modern Windows versions are more complex and not many people are interested in solving this. Vista extended kernel is in alpha state. Windows 7 has VxKek forks that supposedly bring some compatibility, but are still very limited. Also VirusTotal scans don't bring any sort of optimism, because the original project was hijacked by malware and you have to go in blind (all forks are tagged as malicious by majority of AV software).

Any type of extended Kernel for Windows 10 will bring droves of bad actors looking for easy pickings.

There are 3 legitimate VxKex forks, dotexe1337, YuZhouRen86 and i486.

Like I said, VirusTotal statistics is not so optimistic about their safety or potential security holes on top of Windows 7 ones, so it's going completely blind and hoping that these projects are developed in good faith. That's a risk I'm not willing to take for a PC connected to the internet. Or any network.

Even the original VxKex (I believe dotexe1337 is the original creator btw) had a lot of false-positives, it's because of the way it works. They are open source, if there was anything malicious going on I think people would know. I've been using dotexe1337's for years now, and I've not had any unusual connections nor lost any files.

No, dotexe1337 and YuZhouRen86 picked up the project. Original author (vxiiduu) no longer maintains it and i486 github page serves as a repository for it, after it was hijacked by malware.

They are open source, if there was anything malicious going on I think people would know.

Such assumptions are very dangerous for obscure projects with not a lot of eyes watching it. And VxKek is very niche.

Well I haven't had any issues, I frequently check Wireshark for any odd connections and haven't had any in the years that I've used it. I did some reading, dotexe1337 apparently worked with vxiiduu on the original, he's had his github account since 2018 and has 40+ repositories. I doubt he's planting malware in anything.

I am Sorry, but I absolutely hate the Win-11 desktop.
It’s so Clumsy and weird.

I will use Win-10 until the internet no longer supports it.

Un Information wrote on 2026-01-01, 15:53:

Even the original VxKex (I believe dotexe1337 is the original creator btw) had a lot of false-positives, it's because of the way it works. They are open source, if there was anything malicious going on I think people would know. I've been using dotexe1337's for years now, and I've not had any unusual connections nor lost any files.

Same happens with OTVDM, another type of system-related extension. It's even mentioned on a site.

OTVDM aka WineVDM is an 16-Bit compatibility layer based on WINE and an x86 emulator.
It runs Windows 3.1 applications on 64-Bit Windows and uses the Windows EXE loader for its purpose.
More information here

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2026-01-16, 00:20:

I am Sorry, but I absolutely hate the Win-11 desktop.
It’s so Clumsy and weird.

I will use Win-10 until the internet no longer supports it.

I'm using Windows 11 because it has ARM support, mainly. 🤷‍♂️
Windows 10 had some ARM support, too, but I think it was removed after Windows 11 was available.

Strictly speaking, even Windows 8.x had ARM support once (Windows RT), because of the MS Surface tablets.
There was a third-party Win32 emulator even, called Win86emu, to run normal x86 Windows programs. That was in the past decade, already.

Microsoft just added another year to Win10 ESU.

So support will be provided until October 12th, 2027.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-06-26, 13:08:

Microsoft just added another year to Win10 ESU.

So support will be provided until October 12th, 2027.

This is good news for those sticking with 10.
I migrated to 11 quite some time ago.
I don't LOVE Windows 11...but I didn't LOVE Windows 10 either.

They are basically the same OS, if a person can get by on 10 there is little reason they can't get by on 11.
Unless it's just a unsupported hardware thing, and I totally understand that.

Or a resource hog thing. I've watched a snappy W10 laptop become a not very responsive W11 laptop and now it's a borderline unusable W11 laptop that's soon to become a snappy Linux laptop. The owner was terrified of Linux... until W11.

Also, after that Micron announcement I'm thinking this isn't the last extension.

Jasin Natael wrote on 2026-06-26, 14:00:

This is good news for those sticking with 10. I migrated to 11 quite some time ago. I don't LOVE Windows 11...but I didn't LOV […]
Show full quote

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2026-06-26, 13:08:

Microsoft just added another year to Win10 ESU.

So support will be provided until October 12th, 2027.

This is good news for those sticking with 10.
I migrated to 11 quite some time ago.
I don't LOVE Windows 11...but I didn't LOVE Windows 10 either.

They are basically the same OS, if a person can get by on 10 there is little reason they can't get by on 11.
Unless it's just a unsupported hardware thing, and I totally understand that.

Hi,

For me Windows 11 was the breaking point, when I finally decided to change my main OS from Windows to Linux, with Win 10 I held the two on equal footing with dual booting, hoping that Microsoft reverses direction and they make a good OS instead of a "lemon".

But instead of getting a better version of the previous operating system, like in the cases of WinME->XP and Vista->7 transition (BTW, in my opinion the problem with Vista was not the concept of the OS itself, it was bad timing, the HW for most users was not yet here to run it properly on most home PCs, and people didn't felt the need to upgrade while WinXP was still supported, Vista was a competent OS if you ran it on a HW that was able to support it.), we got a transition from a better to worse OS: 10->11.

What extra we got from going from Windows 10 to Windows 11?:

• Less HW support(As you have mentioned)
• Even more "You don't actually own the computer, you are only leasing it from us!" attitude
• And later on they have basically said: "I don't care what is your opinion about us forcing AI on you, here it is, and you are gonna like it!"

After seeing where it was going, I did the option that I still consider to be the good choice, keep my existing Windows systems for retro and compatibility, and go for Linux in the foreseeable future, currently I'm using Debian as my main OS and with Wine and Proton I didn't had to look back too often.

MagefromAntares, you are 100% correct on the Vista reasoning. A lot of it was manufacturers selling it pre-installed on machines that had zero business running it.
Celeron with 512MB of ram? Sure why not. I will say there was some driver hell in the early days but that was largely ironed out by the time the first service pack release.

Windows 11 is a resource hog without a doubt. But it isn't just Microsoft doing that, even if they are one of the worst offenders.
I think developers just got used to being able to rely on gobs of cores and tons of ram and huge storage drives being available, cheap and easy.
That and code just being slopped together as fast as possible with zero care for optimization. At least not at initial release.

The later builds of Windows 10 are not any better though.
The AI crap....it sucks but it's there in Windows 10 as well.