Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-11, 23:17:

That would be awesome. I skipped Vitsa through Win8.1 or whatever. Used my wife's laptop with Win10 on it for 12 months and then decided to put the P4 with Mint on it back in to service. Theres a nice 19" Trinitron crt the matches it 😀 File management on this is a dream compared to Win1o . Even my wife is using this ol gal more and more for her craft-work. I've installed Palemoon on both the laptop and she finds using this system is much moother for her. Even she has complaind about things having changed on Win1o compared to when she bought the laptop new. Performance wise there is very little difference with that laptop and this P4 system in respect to surfing the internet a doing things like viewing Youtube etc. Basically it's not what you have but what you actually do with it at the end of the day that matters.

Your last line is the most true thing ever written and I wish more people would realize it.
I make my living with these things, I need them to work and I can't be wasting time troubleshooting updates that were forced on me, silently, which broke my development environment!
I don't care what OS I have or what hardware it's running on, it has to do what I NEED IT TO! That's all that matters.
At first I was stunned, and as I was a paying member of the MS dev network I looked for help. When it didn't come, I did what I do best - I wrote an app called "WinEnema" which ran as a service constantly and nuked Windows Update anytime it tried to run. It also ripped out all those apps Windows10 came with and refused to allow the user to uninstall. My app tore it up and almost civilized that bloated piece of shit. Then when I let a few people have it for testing, word got around. Two weeks later a Windows Update came down and my app never worked again. And no code debugging I could do showed me WHY. That's when I said - no more. I was spending 50% or more of my time messing with Win10 or VisualStudio2019 instead of writing my code. And clients don't want to hear excuses, and I certainly can't bill for those hours. So I'm late with my work, and losing money like mad. I actually registered "www.WindowsFU.com" and put a web-site up with the story and with DETAILED instructions for how to GUT Win7.64 and make it work every bit as good as Win10. BETTER even as the performance and hardware demands are all incredibly much better on Win7. I even run VirtualBox on it with various Linux dists, while writing code and doing everything else. Win7 is rock solid, haven't had a single problem.

And yeah, Mint is nice, very speedy and not greedy with hardware. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of all my older hardware because even if I only run 1 task on a machine it's still better than dealing with the nightmare I had before. I've taken to using Raspberry Pies for a LOT of things, and really am surprised at how much they can do without getting bogged down. I have one that hosts 12 web-sites with Apache/php and even runs the Linux version of Microsoft SQL Server (database). Another one runs MAME and Dosbox constantly, while I'm logged into 3 ptys with ssh. And another is a Pi4 that I'm testing KUbuntu on as a desktop machine. I love KUbuntu for desktop, very classy. But needs hardware for sure.

Well enough of my rambling... Did your reply indicate you'd like to know more about my "customized" Win7 config? A lot of it is obvious but there are a few hard-learned lessons as well. But I have it running so lean now, task manager and services mgr combined are still less than my Pi is running! 🤣 I'm always happy to share my experiences, let me know and we can take it off-line so as not to be chastized! (pretty sure some of my other posts will warrant that!)
Cheers!

HannibalAnthrope wrote on 2020-05-11, 23:56:

Your last line is the most true thing ever written and I wish more people would realize it. I make my living with these things, […]
Show full quote

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-11, 23:17:

That would be awesome. I skipped Vitsa through Win8.1 or whatever. Used my wife's laptop with Win10 on it for 12 months and then decided to put the P4 with Mint on it back in to service. Theres a nice 19" Trinitron crt the matches it 😀 File management on this is a dream compared to Win1o . Even my wife is using this ol gal more and more for her craft-work. I've installed Palemoon on both the laptop and she finds using this system is much moother for her. Even she has complaind about things having changed on Win1o compared to when she bought the laptop new. Performance wise there is very little difference with that laptop and this P4 system in respect to surfing the internet a doing things like viewing Youtube etc. Basically it's not what you have but what you actually do with it at the end of the day that matters.

Your last line is the most true thing ever written and I wish more people would realize it.
I make my living with these things, I need them to work and I can't be wasting time troubleshooting updates that were forced on me, silently, which broke my development environment!
I don't care what OS I have or what hardware it's running on, it has to do what I NEED IT TO! That's all that matters.
At first I was stunned, and as I was a paying member of the MS dev network I looked for help. When it didn't come, I did what I do best - I wrote an app called "WinEnema" which ran as a service constantly and nuked Windows Update anytime it tried to run. It also ripped out all those apps Windows10 came with and refused to allow the user to uninstall. My app tore it up and almost civilized that bloated piece of shit. Then when I let a few people have it for testing, word got around. Two weeks later a Windows Update came down and my app never worked again. And no code debugging I could do showed me WHY. That's when I said - no more. I was spending 50% or more of my time messing with Win10 or VisualStudio2019 instead of writing my code. And clients don't want to hear excuses, and I certainly can't bill for those hours. So I'm late with my work, and losing money like mad. I actually registered "www.WindowsFU.com" and put a web-site up with the story and with DETAILED instructions for how to GUT Win7.64 and make it work every bit as good as Win10. BETTER even as the performance and hardware demands are all incredibly much better on Win7. I even run VirtualBox on it with various Linux dists, while writing code and doing everything else. Win7 is rock solid, haven't had a single problem.

And yeah, Mint is nice, very speedy and not greedy with hardware. I wish I hadn't gotten rid of all my older hardware because even if I only run 1 task on a machine it's still better than dealing with the nightmare I had before. I've taken to using Raspberry Pies for a LOT of things, and really am surprised at how much they can do without getting bogged down. I have one that hosts 12 web-sites with Apache/php and even runs the Linux version of Microsoft SQL Server (database). Another one runs MAME and Dosbox constantly, while I'm logged into 3 ptys with ssh. And another is a Pi4 that I'm testing KUbuntu on as a desktop machine. I love KUbuntu for desktop, very classy. But needs hardware for sure.

Well enough of my rambling... Did your reply indicate you'd like to know more about my "customized" Win7 config? A lot of it is obvious but there are a few hard-learned lessons as well. But I have it running so lean now, task manager and services mgr combined are still less than my Pi is running! 🤣 I'm always happy to share my experiences, let me know and we can take it off-line so as not to be chastized! (pretty sure some of my other posts will warrant that!)
Cheers!

Yip I'm curious how you customized your win7 setup. Had a bit of a clean out a while back and found a unused commercial pack of Win7 Home Premium. Would be nice to have a play with it. I have absolutely no idea where it came from at all. I'm not complaining though as I mentioned earlier I collect computer operating systems.

I like the way linux scales. I've tried Debian/Duvian Jessie on my K6-2 266 testing rig(was a P166mmx). Startup takes a bit but once up and running using xfce4 as the desktop and use NetSerf to view my favorite old computer sights as well as my usual motorcycle pages just fine when I'm not on Connies laptop or this P4 box. Now try that with Windows 9.x or Classic Mac OS reliably without any sort of proxy. I can hotplug USB thumbdrives no problems at all as well as use usb mice and keyboards on it. Modern encryption to boot.

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-05-11, 23:07:

One of my good friends who was a Mac developer at the time grimly predicted 5 years ago that Apple would slowly turn macOS into […]
Show full quote

One of my good friends who was a Mac developer at the time grimly predicted 5 years ago that Apple would slowly turn macOS into a mostly locked-down operating system with heavy sandboxing for all apps, draconian privacy/security restrictions and no way to distribute applications outside of Mac App Store.

I would say he was almost spot on, Catalina is not only a steaming pile of garbage, it's also a total nightmare when it comes to app entitlements (the system is not only cumbersome, it's also broken in many places and some things that used to work now don't), and given the notarisation requirements, I feel the move to Mac App Store only is basically just around the corner. If they switch to ARM, this would be a good excuse to enforce the MAS-only policy.

I used to worry about the state of Mac hardware, these days I'm much more concerned about software. I'm not running Catalina on my main Mac, but the latest Boot ROM update managed to completely break display detection both on my Mac mini and my MacBook Pro. It's now a total gamble whether the displays would wake when I wake up the computer, half of the time I need to unplug them and plug them in again. Thanks, Apple.

In the last 3 years, they went from "It just works" to "It mostly works" to "It sometimes works". What's next, "It just doesn't work"?

Welcome to the club!!! Where do I sign up?

EDIT: About Windows 7, I was recently undecided about doing another VM for a few games I have, they are somewhat resource hungry. A few tests showed I can run them on Win 7 and Win 10. I can't choose which I should go for. But after reading these posts, I'm fu***ng sure as h*ll that I will go for Win 7 this time. Can't waste another night fighting to put down the Windows 10 privacy settings, data collection stuff, their mixture of new and old UI, settings, file explorer mess, and finally... the cream of the top that made me decide... the fu***g start menu. Oh, boy, the tiles, the disarray of programs and groups... my OCD just collapses.

At first I went for Windows XP + Inexperience patcher, because I wanted the Windows 2000 appearance and the classic logon. But even Win XP does not get any love anymore from VMware (its running SVGA II driver instead of the much loved SVGA 3D driver).

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-12, 01:03:

Welcome to the club!!! Where do I sign up? […]
Show full quote

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-05-11, 23:07:

One of my good friends who was a Mac developer at the time grimly predicted 5 years ago that Apple would slowly turn macOS into […]
Show full quote

One of my good friends who was a Mac developer at the time grimly predicted 5 years ago that Apple would slowly turn macOS into a mostly locked-down operating system with heavy sandboxing for all apps, draconian privacy/security restrictions and no way to distribute applications outside of Mac App Store.

I would say he was almost spot on, Catalina is not only a steaming pile of garbage, it's also a total nightmare when it comes to app entitlements (the system is not only cumbersome, it's also broken in many places and some things that used to work now don't), and given the notarisation requirements, I feel the move to Mac App Store only is basically just around the corner. If they switch to ARM, this would be a good excuse to enforce the MAS-only policy.

I used to worry about the state of Mac hardware, these days I'm much more concerned about software. I'm not running Catalina on my main Mac, but the latest Boot ROM update managed to completely break display detection both on my Mac mini and my MacBook Pro. It's now a total gamble whether the displays would wake when I wake up the computer, half of the time I need to unplug them and plug them in again. Thanks, Apple.

In the last 3 years, they went from "It just works" to "It mostly works" to "It sometimes works". What's next, "It just doesn't work"?

Welcome to the club!!! Where do I sign up?

EDIT: About Windows 7, I was recently undecided about doing another VM for a few games I have, they are somewhat resource hungry. A few tests showed I can run them on Win 7 and Win 10. I can't choose which I should go for. But after reading these posts, I'm fu***ng sure as h*ll that I will go for Win 7 this time. Can't waste another night fighting to put down the Windows 10 privacy settings, data collection stuff, their mixture of new and old UI, settings, file explorer mess, and finally... the cream of the top that made me decide... the fu***g start menu. Oh, boy, the tiles, the disarray of programs and groups... my OCD just collapses.

At first I went for Windows XP + Inexperience patcher, because I wanted the Windows 2000 appearance and the classic logon. But even Win XP does not get any love anymore from VMware (its running SVGA II driver instead of the much loved SVGA 3D driver).

I 🤣'd at your list, pretty much same as mine and everyone I know who ever touched Win10. And between the cruddy Start Menu abortion and the "new" File Explorer I basically took 3 months off work and wrote my own freaking UI, start menu, taskbar, file explorer, the whole works. Figured if I was going back to Win7 I sure wasn't going to be happy with the standard stuff. By the way if you ever want a "classic" start menu on ANY version of WIndows, check out ClassicShell (or OpenShell I think it became). Very nice Start Menu replacement.

The bloated Win10 consumes so much in system resources and MOSTLY to do stuff the user 1: isn't aware of and 2: didn't ask for and 3: doesn't need - EVER. For example, I showed my friends once that Win10 put the MS app "Photo" on their machine and it had control of their camera AND WAS RUNNING! Without having been executed! 🤣 Then I showed them my former MS Live Account and it had literal MAPS of places I had been recently. So, privacy? Data collection? Yeah I don't anything to be private about really, but I don't like them wanting to watch me that closely. It's the same reason I use a "non-Google" build of the Chrome web-browser (Chromium actually). It has zero Google hooks in it. I sound paranoid, I actually hate the idea - the balls of those companies, it's far more wide reaching than most people know.

The only difficult part of using Win7 is to find drivers for the hardware you want to use. MS mandated that most hw mfgrs stop releasing Win7 drivers and utils. However, since they're all lazy farks, their Win10 drivers can usually be used on Win7 as long as the proper modifications are made to certain files (.inf for example). And often a manual install is required since they rig their installers to spew snark at you for having the wrong OS. But I found all sorts of solutions and have my main workstation as a 1yr old HP Envy Laptop, so rather new, and have 100% driver coverage for it all including multiple monitors, VirtualBox VMs, sound drivers, you name it. So far, there has not been one single piece of software or hardware that I wanted to use that wouldn't work. It won't be that way forever of course, but since I'm in my twilight and inching towards retiring my keyboard and just using computers for what they're best at (p0rn of course 🤣 I mean arcade games). Having to make my living on these damn things has taken a huge toll.

In any case - if you or anyone wants information or assistance, just let me know. I'm happy to help always. Especially if it involves helping people take control of their computers and be able to do whatever the fark they want.

PS: Just remembered you mentioned Win2k at some point, just remember that compatibility over the various incarnations of Windows from NT through 98, XP, Vista, 8, 2k - all the way to Win10 - each one has a different degree of compatibility. And also, differing degrees of driver availability. Win2k would be, along with Vista & 8, my last choices if I wanted to run any games or do anything more than MS-Word (joking, sorta).

Bruninho - Have you tried VirtualBox instead of VMware? It's open source and despite Oracle owning it, it actually works quite well. And I have several WinXP VMs, the hardware/driver support in VBox is really great. I run all sorts of OSes for testing right on my Win7 machine.
And re; driver support for XP, note my other reply about being able often to coerce drivers intended for newer Windows to work anyway. Also, much hardware from differing vendors use the same or similar chips which makes it possible to use drivers between them. Just takes a little persistence, and helps if you have some assistance 😉

I just ran a "benchmark" between 3 of my video cards under DOS using Quake's timedemo. Much to nobody's surprise, DOS does not give a lot of a damn about the power of the video cards. Got only 9FPS difference between the 27FPS of the slowest video card I tested (1MB ATi Mach32 PCI) and the 36FPS of the fastest one (Voodoo 3 2000 PCI). Sure, that's a 33% improvement, but the voodoo eats the ATi for breakfast several times under Windows. Anyway, at least there was a difference. The middle card was a Trident TGUI 9440 1MB, which made 30FPS.

HannibalAnthrope wrote on 2020-05-12, 01:59:

Bruninho - Have you tried VirtualBox instead of VMware? It's open source and despite Oracle owning it, it actually works quite well. And I have several WinXP VMs, the hardware/driver support in VBox is really great. I run all sorts of OSes for testing right on my Win7 machine.
And re; driver support for XP, note my other reply about being able often to coerce drivers intended for newer Windows to work anyway. Also, much hardware from differing vendors use the same or similar chips which makes it possible to use drivers between them. Just takes a little persistence, and helps if you have some assistance 😉

I did try it. But Virtualbox is limited to 256mb for video ram, and I needed more. Plus, Virtualbox SB16 support is pretty lame for my Win 3.11 VM. Yes, I could use DOSBox - but DOSBox does not offer the networking connectivity I needed to play with. Virtualbox is currently the best I can do for now. Better than that, only if I used Parallels Desktop - then I would have a 98 and XP vm, with the 3.1 VM running inside of the XP vm within another VMware product. Kinda an overkill.

I'm currently rebuilding the Win 7 VM I had lost when my external HDD went kaput days ago.

About Win 2k being your last choice - actually I had run with success all my games of that era when I had a real computer running it. I took way longer than others to jump into XP (and I regretted it). But with the inexperience patcher, the "toy theme" of XP vanishes.

Today ordered a few new Pentium 2 heatsink+fans to go with some slot1 cpu's that need them. Also boxed up some PCI, AGP and ISA video cards, after testing, into good separate boxes and labeled them as such. Took the 16bit ISA VGA that also work in 8bit ISA either as-is or by jumper change and put them in a special marked box.
Also pulled some bad caps from the 2004 Antec TP480 PSU, more than one looks bad but attached a picture of a particular ugly one 🤣..... That is about it so far....

Didn't XP have the Classic Theme as an option anyway.? I remember using it as my default and didn't need to do anything fancy at all..

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:17:

Didn't XP have the Classic Theme as an option anyway.? I remember using it as my default and didn't need to do anything fancy at all..

Yes, XP has the Classic Theme as a standard option. Edit: is called "Windows Classic" under XP Sp3

Horun wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:20:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:17:

Didn't XP have the Classic Theme as an option anyway.? I remember using it as my default and didn't need to do anything fancy at all..

Yes, XP has the Classic Theme as a standard option. Edit: is called "Windows Classic" under XP Sp3

Yup, the XP is easier to make it look like the classic days. on Win 7, I have only the standard option, but I guess I can import from any other old build the Classic theme. I am customizing the bits now, I just got the Quick Launch icons back. The file explorer will be a hard one to make it closer to the old (XP was even closer).

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:38:

Horun wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:20:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:17:

Didn't XP have the Classic Theme as an option anyway.? I remember using it as my default and didn't need to do anything fancy at all..

Yes, XP has the Classic Theme as a standard option. Edit: is called "Windows Classic" under XP Sp3

Yup, the XP is easier to make it look like the classic days. on Win 7, I have only the standard option, but I guess I can import from any other old build the Classic theme. I am customizing the bits now, I just got the Quick Launch icons back. The file explorer will be a hard one to make it closer to the old (XP was even closer).

Thanks. Yeah it was back in 2004ish I used it. After putting my win98FE box into retirement.

Here's my K6-2 266 Desktop for the doubting Tomas's

I like it. XFCE 4, right? Works great ( I used it once to customize a Win 95 look for it).

Yip. The K6-2 doesn't seem to be as stable as the P166mmx was with 128megs less ram.

Nano is a thumbdrive. Its even possible to do wireless networking if I wanted without too much bother at all but wired is much faster. I use midnight commander(mc) to do most of my file related stuff. It's a good way to learn how the directory/file structure works in linux.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:38:

Horun wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:20:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:17:

Didn't XP have the Classic Theme as an option anyway.? I remember using it as my default and didn't need to do anything fancy at all..

Yes, XP has the Classic Theme as a standard option. Edit: is called "Windows Classic" under XP Sp3

Yup, the XP is easier to make it look like the classic days. on Win 7, I have only the standard option, but I guess I can import from any other old build the Classic theme. I am customizing the bits now, I just got the Quick Launch icons back. The file explorer will be a hard one to make it closer to the old (XP was even closer).

Let us know what you come up with for Explorer under Win7. I hate the default and the few customizations tried do not even come close to the old XP style. Thanks !

Horun wrote on 2020-05-12, 03:18:

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:38:

Horun wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:20:

Yes, XP has the Classic Theme as a standard option. Edit: is called "Windows Classic" under XP Sp3

Yup, the XP is easier to make it look like the classic days. on Win 7, I have only the standard option, but I guess I can import from any other old build the Classic theme. I am customizing the bits now, I just got the Quick Launch icons back. The file explorer will be a hard one to make it closer to the old (XP was even closer).

Let us know what you come up with for Explorer under Win7. I hate the default and the few customizations tried do not even come close to the old XP style. Thanks !

Of course. I started customizing the start menu and the desktop. I have downloaded this set of icons. I might be able to replace the default icons elsewhere with Windows 7 Manager (I wish there was a free alternative).

Bruninho wrote on 2020-05-12, 02:54:

I like it. XFCE 4, right? Works great ( I used it once to customize a Win 95 look for it).

Why? There's LXDE that has that look like win9x by default and it is lighter on resources. Just change the theme to Redmond iirc.

Been updating the bios on my two MU440EX (MAUI3) boards to their respective latest versions - one each from Intel & Packard Bell. As they're identical board revisions with only one more minor bios update for the Intel over the PB I just did a quick test on the Intel version, fully pimped out with 512MB of memory (spec says max of 256MB) and a Celeron 533 on a Gigabyte GA-6R7 sloket.

Installed the newly acquired DTC 2278D VLB I/O EIDE controller card in my 486 and had to fix the jumper settings as they were totally wrong (mouse was detected, but not working and the IRQ for the serial and parallel ports were interfering with my Aztech sound card). Also wrote the jumper settings per "DTC-2278S/D (900140-89B) Hard Disk/Floppy Controller Settings and Configuration" in the manual that it came with and wrote a diskette with the drivers as the original diskette and the 1.44MB it also came with that had Windows 95 drivers stopped working. The 1.44MB drive was also not working (stepper motor for the heads is shot) so I connected one on the side temporary until I install the drive (greased it first and foremost). Not only does everything work now, the system runs swiftly than before (I'm out of IDE cables for the secondary IDE port). Next would be swapping the CPUs as the Kingston TC5X86/133 has low performance with some games and Windows. I'd install my Evergreen 586 as a Write-Back, but, the turbo button doesn't work with write-back CPUs. Might do some testing and see what happens.