technology Why do people still use Windows 7?

[Dark Bun 681]

Windows 7 is just better developed. It's had a longer life cycle and the cataclysmic failure that is Windows Vista forced MS to make an actually useful OS, or they'd lose the PC market to Apple. I used W7 for about 8 years maybe more. Never had any problems with it. Windows 10 is far worse performance wise and feature wise. That being said, all these Windows 7 Stans are going to need to update eventually if they wanna use the better apps/programs that require Windows 10 infrastructure.

Windows 10 isn't that bad on a SSD c'mon guys...

[Pentium100 2,056]

1 hour ago, Dark Bun said:

Windows 10 isn't that bad on a SSD c'mon guys...

Really? It does not randomly reboot to force an update or have telemetry on a SSD? 

[Dark Bun 681]

6 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

Really? It does not randomly reboot to force an update or have telemetry on a SSD? 

Nope actually. I haven't been forced to reboot ever. But then again, I always shut off and update my PC when I go to bed. What I meant by that was, on a SSD the load times for the OS are way shorter.

[Pentium100 2,056]

7 hours ago, Dark Bun said:

But then again, I always shut off and update my PC when I go to bed.

I don't. Unless the PC crashes or the power fails for long enough for UPS batteries to discharge (less likely), it stays on. My main PC probably crashes or needs to be rebooted more often than my servers, but I can sometimes go a year without a reboot.

7 hours ago, Dark Bun said:

What I meant by that was, on a SSD the load times for the OS are way shorter.

That's true for any OS and I was just making fun, since my issues with Windows 10 is not the load times.

[RDDash 18,864]

They've never upgrade it to windows 10?  At one point you could have just jumped the system from the 7th or even 8th (wasn't the 8th version was a complete garbage? I don't remember)

Edited January 16, 2021 by RDDash

[Dark Bun 681]

1 hour ago, Pentium100 said:

I don't. Unless the PC crashes or the power fails for long enough for UPS batteries to discharge (less likely), it stays on. My main PC probably crashes or needs to be rebooted more often than my servers, but I can sometimes go a year without a reboot.

I used to just leave my PC on too, but Windows 10 started crashing a lot and I thought I had some kind of weird hardware issue (maybe still do). I then started shutting it off for a few hours and no problems. It also saves on power. Like, Windows 10 is absolutely inferior to Windows 7 (for now), but the problems can be solved with a novice level understanding of computers.

[Pentium100 2,056]

29 minutes ago, Dark Bun said:

Windows 10 started crashing a lot and I thought I had some kind of weird hardware issue (maybe still do).

I would see that as a sign of Windows 10 instability if Windows 7 did not crash on that Pc before.

And no, I do not want to reboot my main PC more often that absolutely necessary (it has dual power supplies and RAID for redundancy and uptime). Getting back those ssh sessions and such is a bit annoying to say the least.

I have multiple servers, those are on all the time as well, though, for some of them, rebooting is not that big of a deal because everything starts back up automatically (or at least it should) or (in case of my router) there is a backup. No real way to do that on a main PC though.

[Northern Star 1,023]

5 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

I would see that as a sign of Windows 10 instability if Windows 7 did not crash on that Pc before.

And no, I do not want to reboot my main PC more often that absolutely necessary (it has dual power supplies and RAID for redundancy and uptime). Getting back those ssh sessions and such is a bit annoying to say the least.

I have multiple servers, those are on all the time as well, though, for some of them, rebooting is not that big of a deal because everything starts back up automatically (or at least it should) or (in case of my router) there is a backup. No real way to do that on a main PC though.

If you dont mind me asking, you're running a server psu setup then or your main computer is a server like setup? If you're running standard PC PSUs redundant, I'd be interested to know how that is done.

I don't think I've replied here yet, but I'm still on 7 as its stable and running a rather decent size array of now 12 HDDs, the last thing I want to do is sit and power cycle them, as that seems to be the killer of them. Also I'm too cheap to buy a nvme ssd yet.

[Pentium100 2,056]

10 hours ago, TheGleaner said:

If you dont mind me asking, you're running a server psu setup then or your main computer is a server like setup?

I bought a server case for it (made by Supermicro). It has dual hot-plug power supplies and hard drive bays accessibe from the outside, so I can replacea failed drive without turning the PC off or removing it from the rack. 

A standard ATX or EATX motherboard fits inside and there are a couple of 5.25" bays for a CD-ROM drive and such. The case takes up 4U in my rack.

My main PC has a server-style motherboard though, with two CPUs and ECC RAM support, however, any standard EATX or ATX motherboard would fit in that case.

 

[Northern Star 1,023]

9 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

I bought a server case for it (made by Supermicro). It has dual hot-plug power supplies and hard drive bays accessibe from the outside, so I can replacea failed drive without turning the PC off or removing it from the rack. 

A standard ATX or EATX motherboard fits inside and there are a couple of 5.25" bays for a CD-ROM drive and such. The case takes up 4U in my rack.

My main PC has a server-style motherboard though, with two CPUs and ECC RAM support, however, any standard EATX or ATX motherboard would fit in that case.

 

That was what I figured. So then I assume it has a SAS back plane and such in it? If it wouldn't be too troublesome, could I have the model number? 4U rack mount, 5.25 bays, and hot swapping bays sounds interesting to me, an improvement from my current setup anyway, which currently lives in a rack in a somewhat home made case that has aged poorly. That and if I recall supermicro correctly, they seem to have 10 similar models for everything. 

So then you're running windows 7 or its windows server equivalent? I'm just thinking back to when I tried to hot swap a couple of sata drives with my setup(5.25 hot swap bays) and that ended in a blue screen both times, and then maybe I read it for windows 10, but I thought standard windows editions didn't support two cpus? Not saying you're wrong, just curious if something changed or I was doing it wrong. 

[Pentium100 2,056]

4 minutes ago, TheGleaner said:

could I have the model number?

It looks like CSE-743 or CSE-745

There is a kit to convert this to rack mount.

11 minutes ago, TheGleaner said:

That and if I recall supermicro correctly, they seem to have 10 similar models for everything. 

Yes, they do. The differences are in power supplies (for example, I made the mistake of ordering a model with only one power supply and had to buy the other one spearately), fans, backplane etc. Just read the specs and you should find the differences. I do not remember the exact model number of the case I bought.

14 minutes ago, TheGleaner said:

So then you're running windows 7 or its windows server equivalent?

Windows 7 (it's probably more compatible with games as I built this to be used for gams as well at the time). I use a hardware RAID controller (Adapter 5805Z) to have, well, RAID of 15kRPM drives and hotplug works normaly with it. I have tried to hotplug SATA drives attached to the motherboard and it worked OK. I mainly did that with my older main PC (XP), I even had a SATA cable polled out of the case so I could connect a drive when I needed to (faster than USB).

17 minutes ago, TheGleaner said:

but I thought standard windows editions didn't support two cpus?

The higher editions of Windows 7 support two sockets. XP Professional supports two sockets as well (as I have used that in my old main PC).

[Northern Star 1,023]

26 minutes ago, Pentium100 said:

 

Thank you for that, I will start looking into them.

[Northern Star 1,023]

On 1/17/2021 at 12:46 AM, Pentium100 said:

 

Not to derail this topic further, but would you happen to know how Windows 7 would handle a disk shelf?

It was something that I thought about screwing around with when I got my first storage server going, but I needed it up more than I needed to know what would happen. 

[Vefka 1,499]

I used Win 7 on my old laptop because Win 10 ran slowly on my it. Now I don't have hardware problems and I don't see any reason why I should use obsolete OS. None of them crashed even once btw

[Pentium100 2,056]

6 hours ago, TheGleaner said:

Not to derail this topic further, but would you happen to know how Windows 7 would handle a disk shelf?

If the admins don't like thism they can tell us to continue in PM, but so far they have not done that.

What do you mean by "disk shelf"? The removable drive bays from the front? It depends on the controller, but most sata and probably all SAS controllers support hotplug.

[Stardust 640]

I dunno still use it on the older home laptop. I guess we just never upgraded really even tho the updates and all those security messages. And it works fine. 

All my other stuff is windows 10. Tbh windows stuff is getting more annoying these days the updates seem more pushy than before.

As for game compatibility well after windows XP that's gone anyways for a lot of things even in compatibility mode lol have to resort to VMware or virtualbox (blegh windows 98 on that doesn't work very well). 

[baba_booey 4,299]

I mean, it was the most popular Windows version for a pretty long time and I don't feel like a lot of people really care enough to upgrade for one reason or another. To be honest I would downgrade back to it from 10 if I wasn't worried about software/hardware support and security updates.

[Northern Star 1,023]

16 hours ago, Pentium100 said:

If the admins don't like thism they can tell us to continue in PM, but so far they have not done that.

What do you mean by "disk shelf"? The removable drive bays from the front? It depends on the controller, but most sata and probably all SAS controllers support hotplug.

I suspose a disk shelf isn't the correct name, as in, for whatever reason, you plug in a super micro jbod or das to it. As in like 30+ drives on a sas/sata backplane, in a rack mounted box.

I dont think I know the proper name for it...I remember calling supermicro once on it, the model number has JBOD in it, and they came back with "oh a disk shelf or das only you mean".