Oh tried windows 11

[mouldy]

Windows 10 loses support in 2025 so not far down the road. I rarely use it except to run yearly tax software. Again this year tried tax software in WINE. It installs, it runs, the fonts even look nice. BUT it wont let me enter activation code and it wont update. So thinking, three years away, what about win11.

I found a hacked n-lited version online, download a meager 1.6GB, tiny compared to official version. Burned the iso to dvd. Booted. LOL, the installer is in Portuguese. It gives an install option of "Ingles". So off to the races. This by way on my ancient HP DC5100 with P4 processor. Well this hacked version had been hacked to where it doesnt check hardware and at the end doesnt try to force one into a Microsoft Account. And it finally boots to desktop....

Its of course in Portuguese, I imagine the hacker person to reduce size removed all language packs except for his native one. To my eyes it looks just like variation on win10 so guessing they needed an influx of cash to bring this out. Oh I did like way its organized better than win10. But not enough to ever want to use it on daily basis. I installed the tax software and no surprise it installed fast and worked well. Just to use it once a year for tax software, dont even care that its in Portuguese, the software installed is in English.

Its funny this old computer gets yet another lease on life. Maybe 30 years old when its finally retired. It originally came with XP on it though some may even had win2000. Then the tax software sniffed for XP and refused to run one year. I think it could, they just purposefully made it check and not run on XP. That year I got tax softwaer to run in WINE but it was a painful experience for a one time use. So found out win10 could be run unactivated indefinitely so installed that. Sure wasnt going to buy it. Amazingly worked ok. No sound card driver for it in win10 but who cares. Now as win10 winds down it gets chance to continue with win11. Never would have believed it. I will of course lock it so it wont try to update. That would probably not be a good thing if MS gets more um, determined to micromanage things.

I wouldnt count on win11 continuing this lax about what it installs on. I imagine Microsoft will lock it down to where it cant be installed on older computers and eliminate the workarounds, but for now, works fine for my purposes. Yep win11 on a nearly 20 year old computer. LOL With all that bloat hacked away, it really even runs fairly reasonably, not sluggish.

[amethyst]

Download link?

[mouldy]

https://ia904506.us.archive.org/2/items ... 00.x64.iso

Thats the link I found in my browser download history. I didnt otherwise keep track of it. I am not promoting this in any way. But kinda interesting.

[Flash]

Windows 11: Latest updates bring a wave of new features

Written by Ed Bott, Senior Contributing Editor March 8th, 2022

Six months after it launched Windows 11, Microsoft is delivering an assortment of new features for its flagship operating system.

What are these new Windows 11 features?

The new feature Microsoft has chosen to highlight is the Windows Subsystem for Android, which allows Windows 11 users to download and install a "curated" (that means small) selection of Android apps from the Amazon Appstore. This feature isn't installed automatically, and it doesn't require the latest Windows 11 cumulative updates -- more on that in a minute.

Another group of new features are focused on the Windows 11 taskbar. There's now a Weather icon at the far left side of the taskbar (where the Windows 10 Start button used to be), which shows the current temperature and a brief forecast. Clicking that icon opens the Widgets pane. If you don't want either one, you can hide the Weather icon by turning off the Widgets option in Taskbar Settings.

Windows 11 now displays a clock on the second display on multi-monitor setups. Some Windows watchers might argue that this is not a new feature but a bug fix, and it's hard to argue with that.

For audio calls using Microsoft Teams with a work or school account, the microphone button on the taskbar now allows you to mute and unmute your audio with a single click. Likewise, buttons at the bottom of every app window allow you to share that window (and only that window) with the current Teams call.

Two "redesigned" apps with very familiar names, Media Player and Notepad, are also available.

What does the new Media Player app do?

Microsoft has a rich history of attaching confusing names to new products, but they've really outdone themselves this time.

If you're running Windows 11, at some point soon, you will find that the Microsoft Store has automatically installed a new app called Media Player on your PC. This app is, in fact, the replacement to the ill-fated Groove Music, which in turn had followed the even more ill-fated Zune Music, which…

Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, the best part of the story is that the absolutely ancient Windows Media Player program (Wmplayer.exe) still exists on Windows 11, with its Windows Vista-era theme intact. It still allows you to rip CDs and can still sync with your 20-year-old MP3 player if you insist.

Meanwhile, the new Media Player is a rebranded version of the Groove Music app that's just as good-looking as its predecessor and equally irrelevant for any music fan who doesn't own a 20-year-old MP3 player.

The article goes on for quite a while.

[mikewalsh]

@mouldy :-

Oh, I love it, I love it!

All this crap that's been floating around the tech blogs for months about 'must have TPM', and moaning about the number of new-ish machines that'll be put on the scrap-heap......and here's you, got the damn thing running on an ancient P4!

Goes to show just how much unnecessary crap MyCrudSoft have added to Windows over the years.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Just out of curiosity, why d'you do your own taxes? I know our American brethren don't have any choice in the matter, but AFAIK, it's only ever been optional for us here in the UK....and a fairly recent introduction, at that.)

Mike.

[rockedge]

@mikewalsh it's true Windows really as it could be runs pretty well. I have a hacked XP version that is also been made registration free and lightened but still full featured.

Runs beautiful on VIrtualBox

[mouldy]

(Just out of curiosity, why d'you do your own taxes? I know our American brethren don't have any choice in the matter, but AFAIK, it's only ever been optional for us here in the UK....and a fairly recent introduction, at that.)

Mike.

I am American. So as you say, not much choice. Well one can hire it done, costs more and they just use their own software. but my taxes arent that complex and if one watches around Black Friday or Cyber Monday they offer quite a deal on the tax software. Little bit of luxury I allow myself, I used to do it with pencil and scratch paper back in the day and get the forms at post office or public library. Yea I still mail it in. Think its crazy to have ones personal info in some third party's database if not absolutely necessary.

[wizard]

While MS Windows 11's CPU/TPM requirements have been widely criticized they are in fact a response to the recent security exploits aimed at a CPU's micro code such as Spectre or Meltdown and successful cyber attacks of US companies. I'm sure they are receiving support and encouragement from the government to try and move business/industrial users to more secure hardware/software platforms. Big picture, this is good for everyone.

They also clearly understand if they cannot provide secure solutions they will lose their market position.

For those who want to run Win 11 on older hardware, there are multiple ways to bypass the requirements. You just have to accept the security risk that may result.

wizard

[mouldy]

@mikewalsh it's true Windows really as it could be runs pretty well. I have a hacked XP version that is also been made registration free and lightened but still full featured.

Runs beautiful on VIrtualBox

That wouldnt be one the hackers called TinyXP would it? Back when Puppy was like 80MB iso, somebody n-lited XP down to 150MB iso. I was on dialup and downloaded the iso off pirate bay or some such site. That was painful on dialup, all day event. Not everything worked, dont think I ever did get printer to work, they had removed some necessary bits, but TinyXP was as fast as Puppy and would run decent enough, even on P2 computer if I remember. My favorite windows of all time, the hacker that did it, did good job of it, very stable. You go hacking system like that, to that degree, and pretty easy to make it wonky and very unstable. Microsoft tried to tie it all together specifically so one couldnt remove parts of it willy nilly. But as you probably know, XP is pretty deprecated anymore, not even a modern browser for it. Too bad, I was ok with it for those few things that required windows. Thats the death knell for any operating system, when there is no up to date browser for it. Or drivers for newer hardware though as you are doing can run it virtually.

[mikewalsh]

(Just out of curiosity, why d'you do your own taxes? I know our American brethren don't have any choice in the matter, but AFAIK, it's only ever been optional for us here in the UK....and a fairly recent introduction, at that.)

Mike.

I am American. So as you say, not much choice. Well one can hire it done, costs more and they just use their own software. but my taxes arent that complex and if one watches around Black Friday or Cyber Monday they offer quite a deal on the tax software. Little bit of luxury I allow myself, I used to do it with pencil and scratch paper back in the day and get the forms at post office or public library. Yea I still mail it in. Think its crazy to have ones personal info in some third party's database if not absolutely necessary.

My mistake! I was convinced you were based in Staffordshire, here in the UK. I must be getting you confused with somebody else.....

Mike.

[amethyst]

@mikewalsh it's true Windows really as it could be runs pretty well. I have a hacked XP version that is also been made registration free and lightened but still full featured.

Runs beautiful on VIrtualBox

That wouldnt be one the hackers called TinyXP would it? Back when Puppy was like 80MB iso, somebody n-lited XP down to 150MB iso. I was on dialup and downloaded the iso off pirate bay or some such site. That was painful on dialup, all day event. Not everything worked, dont think I ever did get printer to work, they had removed some necessary bits, but TinyXP was as fast as Puppy and would run decent enough, even on P2 computer if I remember. My favorite windows of all time, the hacker that did it, did good job of it, very stable. You go hacking system like that, to that degree, and pretty easy to make it wonky and very unstable. Microsoft tried to tie it all together specifically so one couldnt remove parts of it willy nilly. But as you probably know, XP is pretty deprecated anymore, not even a modern browser for it. Too bad, I was ok with it for those few things that required windows. Thats the death knell for any operating system, when there is no up to date browser for it. Or drivers for newer hardware though as you are doing can run it virtually.

You can use MyPal with Windows XP. It's a third party version of Palemoon actively developed especially for XP. I'm still running XP (with MyPal) as a dual-boot with Puppy. It's at version 29.3 so not far behind the official Palemoon releases. I need XP for my scanning and printing requirements. Still a very useful operating system.

[mouldy]

Back in XP days still websites that insisted on latest IE browser. Anymore Firefox and Chrome are the default so doesnt really matter windows or linux. My only windows uses are Kindle app and tax software. WINE and Kindle finally progressed to where they work together without having to use some ancient version Kindle. As say the tax software is ever so close. It runs and looks fine but somehow it wont activate in WINE. It will let one try it as demo without activation so know it works, but without activation, it wont install updates and for American tax code, there are always updates. Oh and yea we have both Federal and State taxes, every state having its own income tax code. Maybe next year.... I found some guys blog that said he got software I use to work in the Codeweaver Crossover version WINE couple years ago. I assume therefore its some small tweak that hasnt made it to regular open source WINE yet. But its not big deal. Long as I have some version windows available, even one only working temporarily that tax software works that one time per year.

Oh the tax software does offer MAC version, but I have never tried making a Hackentosh. Since MACs use particular hardware, MAC OS doesnt have drivers for just any PC.

[rockedge]

I just did and submitted successfully the taxes for federal and state. That was my once a year Windows 10. The laptop it's on was pretty decent in it's day Dell INSPIRON E1505 (32 bit) which came with Windows 7 pro. I upgraded the machine to 10 during the free offer to do so, which totally surprised me when it actually worked. I had another even better Dell but it could not be upgraded from 7 to 10.

The E1505 works hard with Windows 10, is always hot and fan going and the HDD is constantly in motion. Tax software is not like compiling code, crunching out large fractals or doing large video editing, yet the machine grinds away.

On a USB stick I have VoidPup32 set up with Grub4Dos which will boot quickly into that Puppy Linux and what a difference! With VoidPup32 running the laptop remains relatively cool and the fan is mostly silent. Quick in response and browses well across many sites using palemoon. This laptop has other Puppy's frugally installed on the Window's drive/partition that start from a Grub4Dos menu. I don't have as many these days preferring to use USB drives which this machine handles well.

VoidPup32 makes this Dell INSIPRON run like new. So far all of the features work as well like volume control buttons.

[wizard]

@rockedge

Had a couple of the Dell 1505, nice computers in the white case. Both mine came with Intel T2xxx 32bit cpus so I upgraded them to T7200 64bit, about doubles the Passmark speed. The T7200 is currently selling for about $5 US on Ebay. It's pretty easy to upgrade as laptops go, takes about 30-45 minutes. Here's a Youtube video that shows how it's done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_C2X1s6vEo

wizard

[amethyst]

The T7200 is currently selling for about $5 US

Geez, that's a bargain. Send me one per ordinary mail.

[mouldy]

And the biggest downside of windows, you never know if you got all or even most of the holes and backdoors plugged. I did get Firefox installed with ad blocker and cookie autodelete. Some of old tools to lock down windows hadnt been updated in couple years so had to find new ones. But at very least it shouldnt try to update itself and install bunch crap. Oh surprised Firefox was pretty snappy. I didnt push it and stay online very long with it, cause frankly as say, one is never sure and dont need it sucking up bunch cell data if I missed something. Hey and looks like I am going to learn at least a few Portuguese words. Course its probably not going to show me any choice words that are truly useful if something goes wrong.

[mouldy]

I just did and submitted successfully the taxes for federal and state. That was my once a year Windows 10. The laptop it's on was pretty decent in it's day Dell INSPIRON E1505 (32 bit) which came with Windows 7 pro. I upgraded the machine to 10 during the free offer to do so, which totally surprised me when it actually worked. I had another even better Dell but it could not be upgraded from 7 to 10.

The E1505 works hard with Windows 10, is always hot and fan going and the HDD is constantly in motion. Tax software is not like compiling code, crunching out large fractals or doing large video editing, yet the machine grinds away.

On a USB stick I have VoidPup32 set up with Grub4Dos which will boot quickly into that Puppy Linux and what a difference! With VoidPup32 running the laptop remains relatively cool and the fan is mostly silent. Quick in response and browses well across many sites using palemoon. This laptop has other Puppy's frugally installed on the Window's drive/partition that start from a Grub4Dos menu. I don't have as many these days preferring to use USB drives which this machine handles well.

VoidPup32 makes this Dell INSIPRON run like new. So far all of the features work as well like volume control buttons.

Could be if you havent tried to block win10 phoning home that its trying to update itself. That will slow it way down cause it considers even marketing updates more important than anything you want to do. Its designed to serve two masters and you arent at the head of the line. I know people complain to me that new windows computer not even usable until you give it half a day to update itself. And heaven help you if it runs out of space or other complication in middle of all that. My experience with win10, its much more pleasant if you can lock it down to where its only mostly doing your bidding and not wasting lot computer resources trying to go behind your back with its own agenda.

For average user of windows, usually most important to have an up to date browser and up to date anti virus. Unlikely anybody will try to attack some home users windows system directly. Though maybe if you use the thing daily, you might consider updates?? Now its different for some corporate network. Though even then attacks are usually something stupid like getting some clueless person to click something in some email.

[rockedge]

That's the trick.....I disable and restrict a few things and I shut down most ports and Windows 10 can and will run fairly well. If the bloat was removed and all the calls home severely limited it would be pretty decent enough. Like this time around I had zero updates in 2 days solid running. I only used the tax software and did not browse the net in any way with it. Only network needed was to update the tax software one last time and for the electronic filing of the returns to the IRS.
The E1505 is back in the closet for now. The machine has given a lot of reliable service over the course of it's lifetime. I tested VoidPup32 on it and some of the WeeDog32-Void systems I've built with it which all run really well. Bionic32 goes good but Tahr6.0.5 was really fast and responsive. Still boot that up with it to do some work that isn't with browser's.

[amethyst]

I don't get this worries about Windows updating stuff. It's so easy to disable any updates, mostly with very little effort. In very rare cases it may need some extra effort to actually dig into the Windows registry and change values there but that is hardly ever necessary. As for anti-virus - that's another boogeyman story. I operated Windows for years without any anti-virus software, besides, that software bogs down your system. It's good to run some small malware removal tool every now and then though.

[mikewalsh]

Could be if you havent tried to block win10 phoning home that its trying to update itself. That will slow it way down cause it considers even marketing updates more important than anything you want to do. Its designed to serve two masters and you arent at the head of the line. I know people complain to me that new windows computer not even usable until you give it half a day to update itself. And heaven help you if it runs out of space or other complication in middle of all that. My experience with win10, its much more pleasant if you can lock it down to where its only mostly doing your bidding and not wasting lot computer resources trying to go behind your back with its own agenda.

The other day, I read on one of the many tech blogs I follow, that some experts consider the many problems users have with Windows almost all boil down to Windows Update. Seems the prevailing opinion is that most people don't leave Windows running for LONG enough........apparently, Windows need to be on-line for a minimum of 6 hours - continuously - each & every day, in order for the update mechanism to be happy!

Talk about having your cake AND eating it. Not only do they get to spy on you for longer with all that telemetry, but it also gives them more hours during the day in which to bombard you with advertising (which generates them additional revenue, of course).....

Mike.

[mouldy]

Been reading, apparently its been an escalating war between MS and people trying to block telemetry and updates. Meaning when tested using wireshark to find where packets are going, the best of the blocks gets removed or eroded away mysteriously. Couple small programs, one called WUB to turn off updates and one called WPD for telemetry. But even their changes dont hold long term. So yea, use windows at your own risk. Its been designed to self repair into a spy machine for sure, no matter what you do. But with the crap blocked at least temporarily, can say this n-lited version runs pretty well even on my antique. Firefox surfs pretty well, except when it was doing its own forced update and was downloading v98 in background. Bleh, nobody wants to ask pretty please anymore or give option to just say NO. I am in full support of an uptodate browser, but do like to be kissed first... LOL

[rockedge]

@mouldy I am really bad at accepting that "they" know better than I do what I will "need" or how "secure" my systems should be.

I love horrifying those light weights by running as root with never a firewall in sight and me flying along ripping around the net with some "obscure" operating system completely (in their minds) oblivious to the dangerous hackers lurking all around me.

Lately I have not been in one operating system for longer than it takes to boot it and open somethings to see if it works.
I have to add wallpapers that note what OS is presently running or I'd get lost.

[wizard]

Easy way to stop updates is use StopUpdates10, available from:
https://www.softpedia.com/get/Tweak/Sys ... s-10.shtml
Works on W11 too.
wizard

[sonny]

Windows updates are MANDATORY for both "Windows and software for Windows".
If you disable the update, your "Windows and software for Windows" will experience "issues" sooner rather than later.
Last but not least, Windows always knows how to turn it back on before you know it.
Oh, and if you're also encountering issues with certain websites... you know what I'm talking about.

[Flash]

Orchestra plays Microsoft Windows™ - the waltz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGKwx-BFO0E

[wizard]

@sonny

Windows updates are MANDATORY for both "Windows and software for Windows".

My experience is very different from that. My W10pro daily driver is running v1511 (2015) and has never been updated. I have no OS or software issues with that system. The only software issue I've ever encountered with W10 was with a customers system when it had to be updated to v1607 to run the latest Quickbooks (accounting) package (even though they claimed it would work with "any" version of W10). There may be other newer software packages that demand newer W10 versions, I just haven't seen them.

No system I've installed StopUpdates10 on has ever reverted to automatic updating. YMMV

Thanks
wizard

[mouldy]

On the DC5100, its a fairly early version win10. At time it was huge download, so I got one of those $5 burned dvds off ebay. Its just same version that somebody at sometime downloaded free from MS site. When win10 came out, there were several "privacy" scripts floating around. Well one I used did fine. Cant remember name of it. That version never updated. But at some point I did buy a one of those mini cloudbook things. It came with win10. That version win10 was much harder to lock down. These cloudbook things have very limited space on their eMMC drive and very low end processor with like 2GB RAM. In other words not really designed for win10, more a netbook/chromebook type laptop. But I found another script, think they called it Blackbird, that did finally seem to keep it quiet. Cant say how long that lasted as I ditched win10 and replaced with some version Puppy on it. It had very limited space and win10 wanted it all. Fine, dont want to share, bye-bye. Will say while locked down win10 wasnt horrible, its that phoning home and constant updating that is the biggest PITA. thats what makes it feel sluggish on computer with minimal resources. I also tether to cell phone for all my internet (rural) so dont need some data hog using it all up.

On this win11, I tried Blackbird, but noticed it hadnt been updated for couple years and it popped up warning that I was trying to use it on an unsupported operating system, meaning it detected it was win11. Blackbird developer gets kudos for that. So found article comparing several of these privacy scripts. They compared them and used wireshark to tell when win10 was phoning home. They said MS had made it harder and harder to lock win10 down. So the newer the version the harder it is. That of those privacy scripts they tried none completely stayed locked down. The best they tried that WUB (windows update blocker) and WPD (windows privacy dashboard). Second one does more things and blocks telemetry, not just updates. But win10 would slowly start increasing its phone home traffic. And guess once that happens it starts ever so slowly repairing things. Wire shark detected more packets sent after just few hours. I am thinking maybe only real block would be a complete 3rd party firewall with appropriate rules. Or even router or linux computer with firewall that windows computer has to go through. Lot of smaller firewalls are just frontends for the built in windows firewall. May or may not work, I sure didnt do any extensive tests or anything.

So yea you can lock down early version win10, like on my DC5100 (its on old original mechancal hard drive, win11 on a SSD), probably forever, but think any late version, good luck. You will have to rinse and repeat to keep its phone calls to a minimum. Now where I use it minimally, once a year, doesnt matter. But as a daily driver, it would become a chore and PITA. MS knows most people arent going to fight it constantly or even check it regularly. The proverbial frog in the pan water being slowly heated.

[wizard]

Trying to get Windows to play nice and stop spying.

https://tenor.com/view/surprise-cat-box-gif-11145541

wizard

[sonny]

REALITY CHECK

"I have a Windows machine we needed for a particular purpose in our business. It is the only Windows machine we have. All others are Macs. We are running our point of sale system on 2010 and 2012 Mac Minis. They rarely need an update and they never get viruses. Every time we turn on the Windows machine it is running virus checks and downloading updates. Doing any thing to configure the machine takes 3–5 steps more than a Mac (sometimes a lot more). I have no doubt there are people who have fined tuned their Windows machines and are every bit as productive as the most productive Mac user. But the average Mac user is a lot more productive than the average Windows user simply because the operating system doesn’t get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish." (a Quora contributor)

IBM says it is 3X more expensive to manage PCs than Macs
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ought.html

IBM seeing great returns on over 277,000 Macs and iOS devices issued to employees
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10 ... -employees

[Wiz57]

REALITY CHECK

"I have a Windows machine we needed for a particular purpose in our business. It is the only Windows machine we have. All others are Macs. We are running our point of sale system on 2010 and 2012 Mac Minis. They rarely need an update and they never get viruses. Every time we turn on the Windows machine it is running virus checks and downloading updates. Doing any thing to configure the machine takes 3–5 steps more than a Mac (sometimes a lot more). I have no doubt there are people who have fined tuned their Windows machines and are every bit as productive as the most productive Mac user. But the average Mac user is a lot more productive than the average Windows user simply because the operating system doesn’t get in the way of what you are trying to accomplish." (a Quora contributor)

IBM says it is 3X more expensive to manage PCs than Macs
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... ought.html

IBM seeing great returns on over 277,000 Macs and iOS devices issued to employees
https://appleinsider.com/articles/18/10 ... -employees

Those posts are OLD...6 yrs! Sheesh...guess that's why IBM bought/merged/tookover Apple...errr, ooopsy! That was Red Hat Linux!
Getting any Linux to run well on a Mac/iOS is no easy task, especially now that Apple has ditched Intel CPUs for their own designs
pilched from ARM.
Some of us know HOW to setup MS Windows to work the way we want...it stays out of my way, I turned off all telemetry except for
crash reports, of which I have had...let's see...ZERO in over 12 years! The last time I had a BSOD was when I, foolishly, tried a beta
version of Nvidia drivers on my old Dell Inspiron, currently stored in my shed.
Maybe I'm just lucky.
Wiz