Windows 10 updates on 'unsupported' hardware

[philo]

The specs clearly said Win10 so I did not make the assumption older operating systems were supported, but I thought for sure I could come up with something.

There were Win7 drivers available for everything but the USB and an add-on card was a whopping ten bucks so it could have been used with Win7.

I was going to use it for myself actually as my own Windows machine supports a maximum of 8 gigs of RAM and I put 16 gigs in this new machine...however I do not need 16 gigs...so now the machine is ready for the next person who wants from me, something better than a used machine.

It could be gone next week or it may sit in my shop for a year...so I figured might as well put Win10 on the machine rather than give someone a machine with a soon to be obsolete OS

I was absolutely not expecting my buddy to write drivers for me.

I was not aware of that driver pack at the time but I did try one of those universal driver packs with no results

The NPO where I did the volunteer work wanted me to setup machines for the members to use for web access and do their personal stuff.

I gave them all Linux machines, put a shortcut to Firefox on the desktop and gave no one special instructions. Many of the members have cognitive problems but they all were able to use the machine with no problem.

Unless something like a power supply blew, I did not maintenance work on the machines and they'd go for years with no trouble.

Had they been Windows machines they would have ruined them. The desktop was often filled with Windows .exe crapware

I normally would not spend the money to have a speaker re-coned but for my grandmother's radio I sure would.

I have two of my grandmother's radios here, one is a console and the other a nice wooden table top.

I am also leaving my grandmother's wiring modification in place.

She made the cord longer on one of the radios. She cut the cord somewhere in the middle and spliced-in a section of extension cord that the cut the ends off. The splices are wrapped in friction tape!

You are right, there is no way I can toss it. When I had the cabinet disassembled it looked pretty hopeless but as of a few minutes ago it's all back together. I will save it until I find a new home.

[philo]

I tried everything I could think of, I did find a hacked version of OSX that would run on a PC but it was not fully functional.

I needed a laptop anyway for when I;d go on vacation back in the days before I had a smartphone so for $60 I figured I could not go too far wrong.

My second one was one of those all in-one pieces of shit that I swore I'd never own, but I got one in pristine condition for $60.

It's handy when I want to give a slide show and just let it run...and not have clutter in the living room.

I do in fact hate Macs, they are built for style and to look cool.

The old ones especially were almost impossible to work on.

True, some of the most badly infected machines I've worked on had all the updates. At any rate I am not worried about someone "hacking in" to my wife's computer.

Just remembered that on my main machine which runs Linux, I still have the XP drive in it and can dual boot. I did the registry hack to make it look like XP- POS and am still getting updates for it

My wife told me she would accept Win10 as long as her Wacom fully functions. I will put her Wacom on another Win10 machine and see if it meets her approval.

[philo]

While I was writing here, a friend on FB told me she would take it!

That was fast.

[philo]

My normal work-week on my "real" job was 40-45 hours but we did get a contract in a nuclear power plant and for six weeks, I had 102 hour work weeks! Not fun but I got a nice bonus.>

No Novell but at one time I did try to get a hold of every OS I could.

I even had a Solaris machine at one time

During me long break from computers I did have some minor contact in that I did have to log-in at work and do inventory.

My machine was a 286 used as a dumb terminal.

It was so slow I eventually just stopped doing my inventory and let the boss yell.

Other departs were so much worse off than mine it did not much matter.

Eventually they fired a few guys for stealing. One was so bold as to just have the parts shipped directly to his house.

One was eventually prosecuted and went to prison.

[Diesel]

I might have to look into this more, at some point, mebbe. :)

I suppose not, if that's how you look at it. Personally, I would have spent the $60 on a new electrical tool or something. Perhaps another external hard drive...Can never have too much free space, right? :)

To a yuppie mebbe.

Agreed. They want to hold your hand far too much for my tastes. I really can't stand something that wants to do everything for me, and won't let me explore the control systems because it thinks I might do something wrong.

Infected with a virus, or some lame ass trojan that reconfigured various settings? Updates can't always defend against that, because the 'malware' in question is acting like a normal program would.

Just be careful with that hack. I've seen a couple of boxes that didn't have the 'right' dll file, and, because MS thought they were POS machines, it patched it and BSOD'd the box as a result. There are some differences (mostly with the GUI subroutines) between them.

Evidently, when someone found that registry key, they incorrectly assumed that POS version of Windows (aka, windows embedded) was basically the same OS as they had on their normal PC, and, it isn't.

Do either of you fully understand that your local files aren't really yours anymore if you do? MS can retain copies, at will. And, you're agreeing to it if you elect to run Windows 10.

[Diesel]

[snip]

Novell was an awesome! OS. Rock solid, dependable. Stable, I can't praise it enough, actually.

I had access to several Sun Microsystems via a client. Damn thing would crash X windows out on you at random times, taking whatever you had entered for data right along with it. It really tested my patience.

Did you know a 20mhz 286 actually existed? It beat the pants off my Tandy 3000NL. It was a whopping 10megahertz 286.

[philo]

If I made any changes to the system, it would no longer boot. IIRC: something critical such as USB was lacking

Someone gave an an ancient macbook. It was not working and they just wanted me to recover their data.

Normally removing a HD from a laptop is a two minute job. In this case I basically had to destroy it to take it apart. Had I wanted to re-assemble it I would have had to have been painstakingly careful and it would have taken an hour or more.

Thus fas nothing has been damaged and I have no reason to use XP anymore other than to support one ancient slide scanner that I never use anyway.

You mean our own personal data?

That would be stealing :)

[philo]

Mine did not crash but I only used if for fooling around and I eventually gave it away

I have a Zenith Data Systems 286 that I modified a bit.

I was once given an ISA RAM card probably intended for use on a 386.

At any rate, I got it working on that 286 and was able to add, 16 megs of RAM...the maximum amount a 286 can address.

Had I had 16 megs of RAM at the time a 286 was built, it would have been worth more than my house!

[Diesel]

The 386SX had the same limitation. OTH, the 386DX could access

4gigabytes of ram.

:)

[Diesel]

What did you do prior to USB? :)

I suspect your hands on experience with laptops is that of a hobbyist or end user as well, then. It's not uncommon these days to find the laptop requires a teardown to gain access to the hard drive. :( It's a shame. I suspect it's because they don't want you repairing it, they want you to replace it; the laptop, not the HD.

When recommending one for a client, I try to factor that into my recommendation whenever possible. For future repairs, upgrades, etc.

[snip]

I like your attitude. it reminds me of some service calls where by the time they called me, it was a bit more than changing out a breaker or running a new feed. I made a shitload more money than I otherwise would have. :)

Same with many IT service calls. They'd wait until the system didn't boot at all. Heh. Not that I'm complaining mind you, I'm used to people making my job a little harder and/or more interesting. I just bill accordingly.

:) You might want to re-read the agreement that you accepted when you loaded Windows 10. And, no, it wouldn't be stealing, either. As, that deprives you of the material; since you no longer have it. At best, you're looking at copyright infringement, if the material is infact, copyrighted.

[philo]

Obviously you have never worked on the old PPC macbooks.

they require a tremendous amount of work just to remove the HD.

as to a normal laptop I am quite capable of taking one completey apart and re-assembling. I've often had to do so to re-solder the power connector.

[Diesel]

You really should have learned by now to quit making assumptions about what I have/haven't worked on. I find your erroneous comments to be very amusing, but, alas, this seems to be rather typical of you. You've repaired machines as a hobby for the most part, I've been doing it professionally for a bit longer than seventeen years. To have three machines on a bench would be a blessing. It would be a slow day. I'd have time to do other stuff that needed to be done.

I don't know if it's because I remind you how different we actually are in terms of service work history, or, because BD propped you up on a pedestal and I've smashed it. Hard to know for sure. He led me to believe that you were my equal, if not outright exceeding my knowledge and expertise. I've discovered from chatting with you, that's simply, not the case. I've got certs older than your 'career' in IT, as well as copyrighted software written by myself, entirely from scratch. Ah well. For that matter, I've got virus families older than your seventeen years in IT. heh...Not that I'm proud of that aspect of my own career, but, it is what it is.

I'm well aware of that. I don't enjoy servicing any macbooks, but, I don't shy away from the opportunity to make money, either. I shared a pic of a job I did on a macbook awhile back for BD's enjoyment. By comparison, it was one of the easiest machines to get into as far as Apple products go, despite the oddball screws they opted to go with.

There's not that much to them. :) I've personally found changing out the cold backlight tubes to be more of a pain. Atleast, for me. I was pleased to see they finally ditched that old POS technology for LED. So much more reliable, much easier to repair if necessary too. Atleast, for me.

If you're finished trying to one up me, and failing miserably I might add, we could move onto more interesting discussions.

[trader_4]

I see you've made another friend in the newsgroup.

[trader_4]

That's not exactly true. While the 386SX can access only 16MB of physical memory, it has the full memory management, protection and paging system of all 386 chips, so programs can make use of a full 32 bit, 4GB address space, just like in the 386DX. And 16MB of physical memory was plenty for the era of the 386, given what typical systems were shipping with. The real limitation of the SX that was of consequence was that it had a 16 bit data bus instead of the 32 bit bus of the DX version.

[philo]

You are the one making assumptions here.

I told you I had my own business repairing computers .

Because it was my secondary occupation does not mean I did it as a hobby.

I stand by what I said, on any PC laptop or any Intel Mac laptop removing a hard drive is a two minute job.

On those old macbooks the entire dang thing has to be dis-assembled.

In the situation I had mentioned the person only wanted their data back, they had not use for their non-working computer.

Another one is a tower type G5. Takes all day to replace a mobo on one of those. On a PC it's a 15 minute job.

[philo]

Diesel is the most insecure people I've seen posting on Usenet.

If he is capable of repairing computers I don't see why my ability to do so should be a threat to him. Perhaps he's more proficient , who cares?

[Diesel]

[snip]

I'm not here to make friends, Trader.

[Diesel]

[snip]

I find your psy assumption concerning me to be very amusing. I've seen much worse things written about me, or, some of the things I've done though. So, if you actually want to insult me, you'd have to make a real effort.

You're absolutely, no threat, to me. Don't kid yourself. BD seems to be the only one who actually cares one way or the other, as I've told you, several times, now. You aren't the first one he's tried to compare me to, and, I'm certain, you won't be the last.

[Diesel]

I've made no assumptions concerning you.

Did you run it out of your house? Did you have the proper business license, insurance, etc? You already stated that you had on occasion three machines on your work bench. That's NOTHING by comparison to myself.

I disagree. A Dell Inspiron N4010 laptop is not a two minute job to get access to the hard disk, let alone replace it. It requires a teardown as well as the careful removal of the mainboard to access the SATA interface hard disk. As the hard disk is located on the bottom of the mainboard. You'll also have to tear it down to locate the CMOS battery. Looking at the top of the laptop, it's to the upper right about an inch behind the card reader interface.

You can't access it by removing the keyboard. You will have to seperate the chassis. Which also if memory serves (it's in pieces now and I took it apart a year or two ago) also requires seperating the flatpanel from the base.

OTH, you can access the ram modules by removing a small cover on the bottom of the system, without having to tear it down. But, you won't be removing the hard disk via a small cover. :)

Go ahead, google the make/model. :) I've got one sitting beside me that I tore down to recover the hard disk for another machine, as the mainboard itself is bad.

Stand tall, Philo, be proud in knowing you're WRONG.

And, that's just ONE make/model PC based laptop that requires a teardown and mainboard removal to gain access to the hard disk. You won't be doing it in two minutes. There's a lot more than this particular model that require a tear down and mainboard removal to gain access to the hard disk. You won't be doing this in two minutes. It's not a two minute job. I just happened to have this one handy, in my parts bin. ROFL. :) The panel is good, the keyboard is good, the touchpad is good, the hd is good (it's running fine in another brand laptop), the ram modules are good. It still has the cmos battery on the board, though. I just can't be arsed to remove it, as I don't presently need it for anything.

See above. They are NOT the only ones that require a full disassembly to gain access to the hard disk. Not even close.

That depends on the PC, too. If you swap out boards using a different chipset, you will have to manually edit a specific registry hive file to ensure a BSOD doesn't occur when you try to start the machine on the new board. That's one of the joys of PnP based operating systems.

OTH, if you have an identical board (or very close match component wise, same chipset, atleast) depending on the case and additional cards, sure, it's possible to pull the old board and drop a new one in in fifteen minutes or so. Getting the OS back up and going might take longer though, since you most likely didn't put the cards back into the same PCI/PCIe slots as you found them. And, that is important. They are numbered for a reason, after all.

I stand by what I wrote, initially and have since repeated several times. You do NOT have anywhere near the IT experience as myself.

[Diesel]

A search engine is a useful tool...

noun, Slang.

1. a homeboy or homegirl.

Contemporary Examples

Because I kinda look at him as my friend, or at least my homie.

Definition of homie homie noun

a friend.

He is my precious homie.

Me and my homie taking a trip this summer.

That took all of two seconds. Clearly, you missed the sarcasm implied. And you want to question my cleverness? :)