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</span><div><span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">The air is clear, and my data has been backed up, so I can re-think my situation. The only "urgency" is if a Black Friday special is something to consider.<br></p></span><div><span><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%"><br></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">I really prefer
Linux, but there are a handful programs that I want/need that only on
Windows: tax software, some engineering packages. Nothing that
needs the latest version of Windows. Generally I focus on that one
activity.
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<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">I’ve used WINE,
but it hasn’t been reliable. For example, upgrading Debian seems
to break it.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">Quite a while ago,
we decided the choices for multiple OS are:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">1 Install Win 7 or
older. Then install Debian. At the end, the installer sees windows
and installs dual boot.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">2 Win 8 and newer
use UEFI. Not compatible with GRUB. What I did was get big USB
drive to install Debian. Fuss with BIOS to allow enable Legacy Boot.
I still have to press F12 to manually select the loader.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">3 IF you have
install media for Win, first install Linux, then virtualization
software, and run Windows in a virtual machine. Rick likes
virtualization. Makers of new computers generally don’t include
the install media.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">As discussed in
different email, my vintage machine has multiple hard drives. The bad drive has the Linux root partition. The old, but working, drives have the windows OS, so I could
simply buy a new SATA drive and re-install Debian per #1.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.49in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">
I also was wondering about Windows recommending a back up. Re-thinking, I realize that a lot of MS offers to help are
just “feel goods”. Like the pop-up that says I have a high-speed
USB device in a low-speed port and offering to find a faster
connection. It searches, says none found. Then opens the same
pop-up 5 minutes later. Same for the one that says that the disk
(partition) is full, but “cleanup” has already been done.</p>
<p style="margin-left: 0.49in; margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">
There are probably better save and recovery choices.</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">Back to hardware
options:</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">A. While I have the
box open, replace the mother board and get newer CPU. After a bit of
research, there are so many options that should go someplace like
Central Computer or Zareason or ??? to make sure all of the pieces
are compatible.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">B. Buy assembled
laptop or desktop. Expect that the MSRP for a laptop should be more
than a desktop.
</p>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 100%">If it wasn’t Black
Friday, I would just get a SATA drive. Maybe I can find a good
discount on a machine that is just old enough to have good Linux
support. Other emails recommended getting a chip set that is about
a year old.</p>
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On Wednesday, November 21, 2018, 7:37:41 PM PST, Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> wrote:
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<div>Quoting Paul Zander (<a shape="rect" href="mailto:paulz@ieee.org" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">paulz@ieee.org</a>):<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">... deleted discussion of disk diagnostics.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If memory serves, there is a fairly easy way to create an optical disc<br clear="none">image housing the contents of the 'recovery partition', so that you have<br clear="none">at least that half-measure reinstallation software on something tht<br clear="none">won't go 'Pfft!' if the hard drive fails. Of course, the time and<br clear="none">trouble and (tiny) expense of burning the DVD is on you, and only an<br clear="none">insignificant percentage of MS-Windows users think to do so -- before<br clear="none">the hard drive fails or becomes unreliable, at which point, oops, it's<br clear="none">too late.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">What is a 'recovery' image or partition? This is a deliberately<br clear="none">reduced-functionality MS-Windows installer that offers no installation<br clear="none">options, e.g., doesn't permit you to state how to partition the target<br clear="none">hard drive and which existing partitions to leave alone. Instead, IIRC,<br clear="none">it blows away 100% of the existing contents and all filesystems on the<br clear="none">target drive and reconstructs the hard drive contents exactly the way<br clear="none">the hard drive was partitioned and loaded by the OEM. This means the<br clear="none">'recovery' installer will blow away alternative-OS contents on that<br clear="none">drive, and will reinstall MS-Windows 7 plus all of the 'ratware'<br clear="none">third-party junk and advertising that the OEM accepted money to throw<br clear="none">into the bundle.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">More of what you really didn't want to hear: When your PC was<br clear="none">brand-new, it was strongly in your interest to stop and think: 'Where's<br clear="none">my off-system means of reinstalling the operating system and (any)<br clear="none">bundled software? I.e., where's my master installation copy of the<br clear="none">software I'm paying for?' Any time you pay for proprietary software, <br clear="none">you're supposed to receive a reinstallable master copy, either on an<br clear="none">optical disc (sometimes with an activation code), or possibly as a<br clear="none">downloadable installable set of file (sometimes with an activation<br clear="none">code). This being something you paid to acquire, and knowing that<br clear="none">accidents happen to computers (including but not limited to failing hard<br clear="none">drives and malware), you make sure you have the complete means to<br clear="none">reinstall that software from scratch tucked away somewhere off-system,<br clear="none">right? Like on a DVD scrawled with the activation code (if any) in<br clear="none">Sharpie on the front?<br clear="none"><br clear="none">So, where's your offsystem installable copy of MS-Windows 7, the OS <br clear="none">you paid for as part of your once-new PC? What is your plan of action<br clear="none">when, not if, the hard drive it's OEM-installed onto fails?<br clear="none"><br clear="none">It boggles me, still, to this day, but your average MS-Windows user <br clear="none">never planned for this -- and so is completely unaware that he/she has<br clear="none">been totally screwed over.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Maybe I'm wrong in the above guess. Maybe you, Paul Zander, have a<br clear="none">proper retail copy of MS-Windows 7, acquired separately from your PC,<br clear="none">with required activation code, sitting in a ziplock bag in your office.<br clear="none">But the smart money's on 'Gee, I don't have that.'<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If the latter, what do you do? Personally, I am firmly of the view<br clear="none">that, if you don't have a fully installable master copy of your software <br clear="none">(or at least the ability to acquire one quickly), then you don't<br clear="none">_really_ own it, because you're one hardware fault away from losing it <br clear="none">completely.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">As I see it:<br clear="none"><br clear="none">1. You could go buy MS-Windows 7. Again. And maybe make sure it isn't <br clear="none">a restricted 'recovery disc' or such.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">2. You could decide you've had enough of awful compromises and abusive<br clear="none">customer relationships, and go open source. (I said farewell to<br clear="none">Microsoft operating systems on my computers for good around 1992.<br clear="none">For me, the last straw was when MS-Windows for Workgroups 3.11<br clear="none">hard-froze while I was copy-editing articles for _Blue Notes_ magazine,<br clear="none">the 40 page monthly newsletter of San Francisco PC User Group, My <br clear="none">copy-editing session were a pair of DOS sessions running shareware ASCII<br clear="none">editor QEdit on several files that I had been frequently updating to a<br clear="none">floppy disk. However, upon reboot, I found that not only had I lost the<br clear="none">contents of the QEdit buffers in RAM (no big loss), but also that<br clear="none">Windows for Workgroups had rewritten the edited files on-disck to zero<br clear="none">length, destroying hours of saved work.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">That was it. I was done. That machine got reloaded with the beta of<br clear="none">OS/2 2.0 the same day, and then converted over to Linux a couple of<br clear="none">years later.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">3. Work with the terrible hand you've been dealt.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If you can still boot that hard drive (which I believe you said you<br clear="none">can?), then perhaps you can (at least) create a 'recovery disc' on<br clear="none">optical media. That sucks, but it's way better than nothing. Or<br clear="none">perhaps you already have such an optical disc. I wasn't clear on that<br clear="none">from your very fragmentary description.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">If your PC came with a 'recovery partition', then it's probably fairly<br clear="none">easy to poke around and figure out how to use it. Usually, this<br clear="none">involves pressing F8 or something like that during POST, bringing up a<br clear="none">menu of bootable targets. One is probably labelled something like<br clear="none">'Repair Your Computer' or something of that sort. If so, that's the<br clear="none">recovery partition. I would guess that it's perfeclty safe to boot that<br clear="none">partition to look around, i.e., I would guess that you are asked to give<br clear="none">confirmation before the 'recovery' installer blows away everything and<br clear="none">overwrites the hard drive. Suggest you explore that.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Inside MS-Windows 7 itself, I see alleged on the Web that there's a<br clear="none">built-in utility (Start menu, Back up and Restore, Create a System<br clear="none">Image) where you can request that the contents of the recovery partition<br clear="none">be burned / copied to somewhere.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Once you have, say, your 'recovery' image stored bootably on an optical<br clear="none">disc or a spare external hard drive, or someting like that, you can<br clear="none">experiment with it to see if you can trick it into doing something<br clear="none">useful. Like, for example, you could create a virtual machine inside<br clear="none">VirtualBox, then make the VM boot the 'recovery' installer, and let it<br clear="none">do a 'recovery' installation entirely within the VM -- writing only to<br clear="none">the VM's virtual disk file, not to the host OS's hard drive(s). The<br clear="none">beauty of VM technology is that all software running there gets lied to<br clear="none">and told 'No, you have full control of an actual real computer. You're<br clear="none">not running in a simulation. Trust me[tm].' Such a Win7 installation <br clear="none">would then doubtless squawk about needing 'product activation'. So, I<br clear="none">guess at that point you telephone Microsoft's telephone line for<br clear="none">activation, say you've moved Win7 into a VM, and badger them into<br clear="none">helping you. Scuttlebutt says they're not unreasonable about this.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">(This was one of your questions above, so this is my verbose way of <br clear="none">saying 'Yeah, at least one variant on your idea might well be a plan.')<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Of course, in the alternative, maybe you imagine that you ought to<br clear="none">somehow back up the current exact state of your MS-Windows 7<br clear="none">installation including installed applications and somewhat ratty and<br clear="none">worse-for-the-wear Registry -- and then do a corresponding restore<br clear="none">operation later. I personally think this is a tactical error, for<br clear="none">multiple reasons including MS-Window's tendency to accumulate bobbles<br clear="none">over time that are best dealt with by (infrequent) from-scratch<br clear="none">reinstallation of the OS, then from-scratch reinstallation of<br clear="none">applications, then re-creation of application configuration, then<br clear="none">restoration of user data files.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">But, if you're feeling lucky and prefer to back up and later restore the<br clear="none">current exact state of your MS-Windows 7 installation including<br clear="none">installed applications, I'm sure you can somehow do that, possibly with<br clear="none">bundled backup/restore software, possibly with third-party software from<br clear="none">any of the cheerful publishers of proprietary MS-Windows utilities<br clear="none">standing by happy to accept your money.<br clear="none"><br clear="none">Or, third alternative, there are ways to create _directly_ a virtual<br clear="none">disk image of your exact, literal, MS-Windows partition, for use under<br clear="none">VMware or VirtualBox. This notion has been the subject of discussion<br clear="none">within the year on this mailing list, so, if interested, let me know and<br clear="none">I can dredge up Mailman archive links to the relevant back postings.<br clear="none">(Or, you know, you could research that yourself. I don't have any magic<br clear="none">for finding such things.)<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">Disclaimer: Although I'm confident what I say in relation to Windows 7<br clear="none">is correct in broad outline at least, you are solemnly advised to verify<br clear="none">particulars before follwing the advise of someone who gave MS-Windows<br clear="none">the heave-ho in disgust more than a quarter-century ago.<br clear="none"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">(A propos of nothing in particular, I'm pleased to note that QEdit's<br clear="none">current incarnation as The SemWare Editor = TSE is still around for<br clear="none">MS-DOS, OS/2, and MS-Windows users. It was nice.)<div class="ydp2d129930yqt1617734677" id="ydp2d129930yqtfd56796"><br clear="none"><br clear="none">_______________________________________________<br clear="none">conspire mailing list<br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="mailto:conspire@linuxmafia.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">conspire@linuxmafia.com</a><br clear="none"><a shape="rect" href="http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://linuxmafia.com/mailman/listinfo/conspire</a><br clear="none"></div></div>
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