Older Versions of Windows / General Windows Discussion
 

Howdy everyone,

Is anyone still running older versions of Windows? Does anyone dual-boot a modern Windows with an older version?

I have a home-built desktop with 8.1. I've started toying with the idea of either dual booting 8.1 and Vista (I really liked Vista :p) or even possibly reverting to Vista.

I've been considering this for two reasons really. First, both 10 and 8.1 are getting on my nerves with the Microsoft ads they've inserted. On 8.1 I've been getting the "UPGRADE TO WIN 10! HEY! UPGRADE!" and on the laptop I get ads for Office and maybe a few other things.

The other reason is the giant pile of old games sitting on my desk. I know I've had problems with a couple of them on 8.1, so I'm thinking Vista might handle them better (or even XP, but to be honest I'm not really big on XP) without me having to build a pc dedicated to old games.

I was going to run an XP 32-bit virtual machine on my Windows 10 laptop to try and get Toyota Techstream working (it doesn't like 64-bit and none of the workarounds were successful), but turns out 10 Home doesn't support that. Thank you, Microsoft.

VirtualBox should do the trick..

https://www.virtualbox.org/

Why in the world would you want vista!? I just upgraded last year from xp 64bit to 7 64bit, i like that most things are simpler but some of the security crab is just annoying.

Microsoft is downloading Windows 10 to your machine 'just in case'- The Inquirer

Windows 10 is FORCING ITSELF onto domain happy Windows 7 PCs

Do you have automatic updates turned on?

Get windows 7, turn off automatic updates and be careful what you allow windows to install. Windows Vista was the worst OS windows ever made (even worse that Windows ME). Please don't use it.

Vista? No, please!! I sometimes have to use it on my Dad-in-law's old laptop, ever since my even older XP laptop gave up:(

My new box had Win 8 installed (even though I did not want it), and I had to use it until I got Fedora working. Those 2 months were so bad, that I decided to format the whole disk, instead of leaving Win 8 for a dual boot.

If only Win XP was still supported, I'd give a lot to have it! It had the best of both worlds: Not as old-fashioned as the previous versions, but still simple. More control, less resource hogging.

Oh well, but no sense in remembering the good ol' times. We must get used to being served automatic updates "because they're better for us":(

I have the W10 nag updates disabled. Hardware doesn't play nice on W10 anyway.

All five of my computers are running some version of Linux. Two are also dual boot with Windows XP. One (the one I'm using right now) is dual boot with Windows 7 (though I'm using Linux right now). Automatic updates are turned off on all my Windows operating systems.

I almost always use Linux when on the internet. I have a manual switch which connects the desired computer to the internet. If I'm not actively on the internet, the switch is turned off so there is no hardware internet connection. My modem is also only turned on when I'm actively on the internet.

Those sound like best practices. I used to have a DSL modem wherein the wi-fi was a separate module with it's own connector. Throw that in a drawer and you know it's turned off.