Virtual machines and gaming do not mix except for edge cases and even those have complications. Stick with the host OS for gaming.
For PC gaming emulators work fine but only if pcem for DOS and 9x, DOSBox for DOS.

Do not just jump to Linux and assume your games will work, you'll need a dual-boot with a modern Windows OS before doing that otherwise you'll be in for a world of hurt.

If you want extended support for Windows 7 then you'll have to be a business and you'll have to pay MS big money until 2023 when they end support. It sounds good in theory for businesses but in practice it's not since the updates do not get very good QA and seeing how Windows 10 has had issues with updates and that's their current OS they are supporting then you can see the issue there.

None of your hardware should have any issues with Windows 10 if it works on Windows 7.

If you are just gaming in Windows 10 there shouldn't be any issues and it shouldn't be very difficult just game.

As for the community supporting Windows with updates.... They do for 9x and 2K. XP had POS updates provided by MS but no work has been done on backporting security fixes like had been done for 2000. I wouldn't rule it out but I don't see any work being done currently and even if there were the updates would be rare putting your system at risk.

You can download Windows 10 for free and try it out without activating there are no repercussions except for a watermark and personalization of the Desktop. IIRC I think if you enable the accessibility features in Windows 7 and then upgrade to 10 then likely you can still get a free Windows 10 but I haven't verified that.

The Start Menu sucks but you don't have to use it (I've been using 10 since it came out and I don't touch it) and Win + X works fine.

What to do? Absolutely nothing.

TBH, I don't really have that much fear about EOS being the death knell for secure computing. For one, there's no such thing as secure computing. For two, I still have XP and Win 7 machines that I haven't bothered to enable WU on. They're fine. They can reach out to the dirty old Internet any time they like, and have yet to contract a social disease from doing so.

#1 rule: Be smart about what you run.

It wouldn't be the worst idea to have a "modern" OS that you use for web browsing, since browsers these days are essentially a shell within an OS. Patched browsers, sandboxes, walled gardens... preferably all of the above. Use an iPad or a Mac or Linux.

If you really want to be paranoid, fire up a VM and install new apps on that to vet them before allowing them to touch your "real" machines.

For software you already have, and games, and whatever else you want to run in Windows, just keep using Windows 7 until the wheels fall off.

SirNickity wrote:

TBH, I don't really have that much fear about EOS being the death knell for secure computing. For one, there's no such thing as secure computing. For two, I still have XP and Win 7 machines that I haven't bothered to enable WU on. They're fine. They can reach out to the dirty old Internet any time they like, and have yet to contract a social disease from doing so.

I did a fun little experiment a couple years ago.

I installed XP on a machine and didn't update it or install any security software on it.

Hooked it up to my cable modem and let it sit there doing nothing.

Within about 15 minutes the system was hosed with viruses/malware.

I think the cargo cult surrounding EOS operating systems is a bit extreme. I'm no network security specialist, but ...

I still browse and fool around on WFW, 9x, xp, etc and nothing evil has ever happened to me, and I browse into random corners of the net and click on stupid things often. I've been doing so for decades. I feel if you're educated enough to understand what an EOS operating system is, then you're probably not going to be browsing shady websites and then logging into your bank account on a computer with an old OS and old browser. Aside from that, I highly doubt you have top secret classified sensitive data on any constantly connected machine in your home 😜.

If you want to be ultra secure, get yourself some cheapo machines and set up pfsense firewall(s) and ditch using browsers on old OSes. I got a bunch of dual nic dell optiplex SFFs for practically nothing which do the job.

My solution is a bit of a "layer 3 approach" multiple subnets, each has it's own dedicated pfsense firewall/router. I use a cheap laptop for e-shopping and banking which is essentially quarantined from any other computer in this house. Nothing else is done with that laptop. No flash drives, nothin.. I power it off after use.. GL stealing the data just to get access to my 6 figure student loan debt, lmao... Don't really care if a virus gets on one of my toy machines (which has never happened), I'll just reformat it.

Additional thought: Ever notice how when you fix other peoples computers that are riddled with viruses, they're always on the latest OS with an up to date browser? It's because they (or usually kids) are clicking on things and executing programs a sane person wouldn't bother opening.

I wouldn't panic about it either. Software just doesn't stop working for the hell of it. Cheap and cheerful works for me wrt the internet. My 286 is my primary irc box and anyone is quite welcome to hack in to that. Dedicated subnets at home is a good idea and keeping an image of your daily drivers last know good install will quickly sort thing out if things go tits up. Any important data gets backed up in a number of places and removed of the daily driver reasonably smartly..

I've been using Common Sense 2019 all year after upgrading from the 2018 version and haven't gotten a single virus, malware, trojan, or anything else.

In fact, the only thing that borked my computer in the last decade was a Windows 7 update that ruined NVME booting (KB4474419 and KB4512506) and forced me to boot into recovery mode and manually roll it back.

Caluser2000 wrote:

I wouldn't panic about it either. Software just doesn't stop working for the hell of it. Cheap and cheerful works for me wrt the internet. My 286 is my primary irc box and anyone is quite welcome to hack in to that. Dedicated subnets at home is a good idea and keeping an image of your daily drivers last know good install will quickly sort thing out if things go tits up. Any important date gets backed up in a number of places and removed of the daily driver reasonably smartly..

Totally bending the topic but which network card you have in the 286?

Was trying to get on IRC myself re another thread I opened about the etherexpress pro/10+ but opening the packet drivers causes my keyboard to crap out. Never managed to figure out why.

BeginnerGuy wrote:

Caluser2000 wrote:

I wouldn't panic about it either. Software just doesn't stop working for the hell of it. Cheap and cheerful works for me wrt the internet. My 286 is my primary irc box and anyone is quite welcome to hack in to that. Dedicated subnets at home is a good idea and keeping an image of your daily drivers last know good install will quickly sort thing out if things go tits up. Any important date gets backed up in a number of places and removed of the daily driver reasonably smartly..

Totally bending the topic but which network card you have in the 286?

Was trying to get on IRC myself re another thread I opened about the etherexpress pro/10+ but opening the packet drivers causes my keyboard to crap out. Never managed to figure out why.

D-Link DE-220. Works on Dos,NetWare, WfW 3.11, OS/2, win9x and NT3/4. I use IRQ10 and Address 0x340 on all my current legacy set ups. Never had any bother with them at all. Make sure you run it through a 100/10 switch or hub though.Others I've had good success with are Etherlink III, SMC and Genius(KYE) ISA nics. That was with 10Base2(sharing a ppp internet connection) as well as 10BaseT.

I use Win10 at work. My HTPC has also been running it for about a year now, mainly for 4K Netflix and HDR/Dolby Vision support. Other computers are still on Win7.

However, I think I can finally say that Win10 is stable enough for Main Rig Use. Planning on upgrading the rest of my machines next month, once build 1909 is released.

Much like everyone else, Win 7 still has some life left in it if your sensible.
What stopped me using XP was when software dropped support. In my case main stream browsers, that was a good 2-3 years after it went EOL

I'll do the same with 7, keep it up to date, change to some free but decent antivirus (just using Microsoft's ATM, no doubt that'll complain once it goes EOL) and if really paranoid use my laptop that has Win10, which I don't like but its ok.

chinny22 wrote:

I'll do the same with 7, keep it up to date, change to some free but decent antivirus (just using Microsoft's ATM, no doubt that'll complain once it goes EOL)

Windows Defender on Vista is still receiving definition updates, even though Vista doesn't. The same may happen to Win7.

I think moving to Windows 10 is the obvious step. You can still do the free upgrade from Windows 7. It's documented on the web. The upgrade only pertains to your license key. So you can do a clean install of Windows 10 side-by-side with Windows 7, and set up a dual-boot that way. That's what I did.

Moving to linux makes no sense whatsoever, I would think. If you could/would use linux, you'd have moved years ago. You obviously need/want Windows.

dr_st wrote:

chinny22 wrote:

I'll do the same with 7, keep it up to date, change to some free but decent antivirus (just using Microsoft's ATM, no doubt that'll complain once it goes EOL)

Windows Defender on Vista is still receiving definition updates, even though Vista doesn't. The same may happen to Win7.

Good to know! I seem to remember a nag screen saying the system was vulnerable in XP's days. Assumed they would do the same but if they haven't in Vista maybe were safe

I'll be replacing the HDD in my laptop with an old SDD I have around and install Windows 10 with an OEM license for 7 bucks.

I hate to do it, but I will.

i love your netscape avatar

install Windows 98SE obviously.

There's actually a website I can't remember the name of that provides updates for deprecated OSes like XP who said they'll be supporting Windows 7 as well.

I read about it a week ago, and forgot to save the link and now I can't find it!

if you want to stick with windows and are feeling adventurous, you could do what i did and use windows server 2016 essentials. my rig is a maximus viii ranger, 6700k and gtx 1080.

pros: no cortana, no metro apps, no telemetry, native nic teaming, hyper-v, more control over windows updates.
cons: some software, like antivirus, is more expensive although, it does come with windows defender. all my other software works fine. most windows 10 drivers will work but, from what i've read, might have issues with newer amd graphics cards. my onboard intel I219V nic wouldn't install properly either, had to install a supported nic.

after install, just remove the roles you don't need, like domain controller, active directory and iis.

keys are cheap on ebay however, i'm sure their source is questionable.