Computer Backup

We had that trouble upgrading machines from a W7/32 to W7/64. There was no 64-bit driver for the scanner.

So we bought a new standalone scanner (getting more difficult at the domestic level) and I inherited the old one for my Linux machine, where it continues to work happily many years later.

There are always examples. Edlin (text *line* editor for early DOS) survived an improbably long time into the Windows era. I have a feeling it still worked on W7/32 but I can't check it now.

There is DOSBOX. Otherwise, the SysWOW on 64-bit Windows runs 32-bit software. The SysWOW on 32-bit Windows runs 16-bit software. With lots of caveats about runtime libraries, whether the loader will recognize it as something it wants to load, and so on. It can very much be "recipe-country" to do certain things as bar-bets.

If the software you want to run, is something you want to run every day, then it is likely worth going to extra effort to make a nice environment for it. For a one-off bar bet, not so much.

Paul

I just tried out the new version of Thunderbird (see other thread). Before I did it, I made a snapshot of my TB profile and called it 'tb102':

zfs snapshot home/me/.thunderbird@tb102

I installed Thunderbird 115, played with it, found it was probably better if I set up my profile from scratch again, decided that was a job for another day. Went back to Thunderbird 102, oh no, TB won't run because the profile has been upgraded. Never fear:

zfs rollback home/me/.thunderbird@tb102

and we're back to how we were before I did the upgrade. TB102 now starts happily, just as it did before.

I could have copied it, but my profile is many gigabytes which would have been slow, and I didn't have the space. The snapshot was instant and only uses disc space for the deltas between the snapshot and now, which was about

Theo

If you have Windows 10, try the scanner again.

One of the differences, is Windows 7, "you" the operator, find the drivers.

On Win10/Win11, the OS attempts to load the drivers. Some of the items in Device Manager, "resolve" before others. (Right-click Start, to find the Device Manager executable.)

There are a few drivers missing, such as my Hauppauge TV tuner card has no driver. But in many other cases, Device Manager is "clean", like the Device Manager on this machine, completely populated itself.

WIn10 and Win11 are flexible enough, I can take the Win10 boot drive from my AMD Zen3 machine, plug it into my Intel 4930K, and... it boots. Which is not something a lot of previous Windows OSes could do. My WinXP would have frozen if I tried something like that. When I move the Win11 over, as it boots, it "sniffs" hardware at runtime, and a number of subsystems are shut off.

If you work hard enough, you can likely find some disk movements like that, which crash or don't work. I would expect though, a good percentage of test cases will work. For example, Win11 needs 4GB of RAM... or does it ? What happens if you plug a Win11 into a 1GB RAM machine ? There is a good chance it will boot, and shut off the Sandbox. The actual minimum for a lot of Windows OSes, is on the order of 350MB (comfortable min). There are situations where some of the machines have run with 128MB or 256MB, but to do tests like that, you gradually drop the quantity of RAM, until it croaks. And that's how you figure out the real min. I've run a Win10 on 256MB, in a VM. One VM I tested, the "session" was normal, but the VM crashed while it was shutting down :-)

In low memory situations, Windows has a Memory Compressor. An "innovation" by Microsoft, is the Memory Compressor no longer appears in Task Manager. But, if you download Process Explorer, you can still see the little f***er. Task Manager is no longer to be trusted -- keep a Sysinternals Process Explorer in your kit, when you have questions about what is really running. It's better than nothing.

Paul

I have done that on (intel based) Macs in the past, when a client wants to run their (typically windows only) CRM tool on their home machine. Then mentions "Oh I have got a Mac, does that make any difference?" :-)

So ages installing virtualbox, and win 10 installed first, then the app that normally takes 30 secs to install.

Not been able to do it on the latest Arm based ones yet though.

Oh, I know it can be done. But the above is not backwards compatibility.

I had a 32 bit program with a 16 bit installer. DOsBox won't hack that.

I run it in an XP VM on FreeBSD now.

You can try right-click on the executable file, choose "Properties", then click on the "Compatibility" tab, choose "Run this program in compatibility mode for:"

You could have gone to your scanner's website to look for a Win7 driver. Good brand name scanners should offer new drivers for subsequent Windows if they want to keep selling the same scanner.

Didn't work. The system cannot run 16 bit executables at all.

It is doable, but requires more work:

How to Enable 16-bit Application Support in Windows 10

I did.

Or, they want to sell you a new scanner

Why would a company write a new 64 bit driver for scanners that were obsolete, then pay MS to have it certified for Windows, in order to reduce the potential sales of its current models?

People are accustomed to buying new computers when MS withdraws support for the OS on their current machines. Companies are accustomed to buying new hardware when the old is more than three or four years old.

It isn't part of the ethos of the Microsoft world to try to extend the life of hardware. Concepts like recycling and minimising the use of resources have no place in that world.

I run full backups.

The backup drives are in the house.

The backup drives are unplugged when not in use.

Paul

But Linux can and does support old hardware: If the driver worked at 32 bit it can be recompiled for 64.

Earlier I mentioned that I continued to use the scanner on Linux, with no need for recompiling: a 64-bit Linux has a 64-bit sane (Scanner Access Now Easy). We've had the scanner for 23 years.

But this is not true 'backwards compatibility', as claimed.

That's down to the specific hardware manufacturers not providing a driver - I lost a laser printer and a scanner (separate items) with Vista.

More importantly, Microsoft removed an important component, which meant that Autocad no longer worked - resolved with XP in a virtual machine. I still have that, but use NanoCad for private use.

Well indeed... I thought I would try and throw all the basic advice into the article as a baseline.

The real "value" will probably come with the more inventive scenarios for layering an integrating different technology and platforms. Sometimes just having the nudge that something is actually possible is handy.

For example many people might not directly think of using Azure, or S3 cloud storage for backup, but if you have the right software it becomes transparent and quite easy.