You have got to be kidding me
9I’ve gone on a quest to find old pictures of our oldest son. Pulled a computer out of the garage and hooked it up. Found some old pictures and also a hard drive enclosure.
Went to shut the computer down normally and Windows XP is starting to install updates it installed who knows how many years after the updates were downloaded.
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Shit now you got Bill Gates fighting the wrong virus.
I think I’ve got an old one in a closet somewhere that still runs windows 2k.
Thanks for the warning about hat will behave when it’s booted
You can still upgrade yo Windows 10 for free. Not sure you can find drivers for that 9600 baud modem, though.
@mike808 For frees? I’ve still got a Win7 box I’ve neglected updating, should get on that soon I s’pose.
@mike808 @MrHappypants Yep, Microsoft seems to have left the option there, either intentionally or by accident. You can find some articles online that will tell you how. For a lot of people I think it is a pretty seamless process.
@mike808 @MrHappypants yup ALL WINDOWS 7 AND windows 8 keys work when activating windows 10
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10
just did my update yesterday
@mike808 @MrHappypants One warning: check your specs before upgrading. I’ve spent a fair amount of time restoring 7 and 8.1 to relatives’ computers that were absolutely hobbled when they upgraded to 10. If you have less than six gigs of RAM, save yourself the hassle. (Yeah, it’s less secure. But there’s plenty of free antivirus out there. Just don’t be a dumbass.)
Luckily it was only 12 updates. It’s off now and I’m about to pull the hard drives out and put them in the enclosure (once I’m done yanking stuff off of the drive in it) and I lost my train of thought somewhere along the way and now am just rambling… I can’t stop…
@jst1ofknd Yeah, Windows updates have a way of derailing things.
@jst1ofknd I need to do this…suggestions for hard drive enclosures that can be used to find those pictures and extract? I don’t even have a desktop that is functional anymore…
@tightwad
We have one from Adaptec. I have absolutely no memory of buying it or anything. It has just been in a drawer under our bed for 10 years or so. We have another external hard drive that is not just an enclosure. That one came from Best Buy when a laptop hard drive crashed and could no longer be read. Side note on that one, they sideloaded the drive into a Linux machine to read it.
I’m going to be looking for enclosures for laptop hard drives soon…
@jst1ofknd @tightwad
You’re better off getting an adapter cable (maybe one with ye olde 4-prong power supply cable if the drive is that old) and transferring all the data to a newer drive. Then pitch the old drive. No need for an external housing.
One big “gotcha” about upgrading old machines - you are very likely not to have working drivers in Windows10 for old end-of-life hardware (video cards, sound cards, USB-attached devices like Bluetooth adapters and TV tuners, etc).
Big name-brand stuff might have supported drivers (like printers and scanners), but more specialized stuff won’t, like old discontinued XP-only USB HDTV Tuner dongles.
If there’s something you have that falls into this category, post and I’ll see if there is a path to keep that device or upgrade the device. i.e. do you really need that old SoundBlaster-16 card working in Windows 10?
Keep in mind that a brand new refurb/open box Windows 10 PC from someplace reputable like MicroCenter or BestBuy can be had for under $500. And that will likely run laps around your vintage XP box in addition to being current, supported hardware that also has supported peripheral technologies like HDMI, Bluetooth, G-Sync, 4K resolution displays, WiFi n/ac 5GHz or WiFi6, and more that didn’t exist in the XP glory days of the last century.