# Windows 7 to Windows 10 transition . . . and back to Windows 7



## NRA_guy (Jun 9, 2015)

Well, I have been stuck in the Windows 7 world, but the dire warnings I get from my computer engineer son and others, and the impending end of Microsoft support for Windows 7, got me worried.

I never could get a straight answer to a simple question: "If I transition to Windows 10, will I still have access to purchased software such as MS Office 2013, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, and small specialty programs (such as photo editing, home screen settings restoring, and greeting card creating programs) that I either downloaded or installed off of CDs long ago and no longer know where it came from---but I use them often?"

So I cloned my Windows 7 hard drive to make sure I could go back if I didn't like Windows 10.

Then I bought a genuine MS Windows 10 upgrade CD for around $18.

I ran the upgrade and it worked great. No problem at all.

What I found was first a warning that my graphics card was not going to give me all of the joy that Windows 10 could provide. I ignored that and my monitor worked fine.

Just as I feared, after installing Windows 10, Adobe Pro demanded that I enter the original 25 character key (which I no longer have at hand but might be able to find).

Then MS Office 2013 demanded that I reinstall it. (I probably could do that, but knowing Microsoft, I bet it would demand that I buy a new version.)

Then I could not get my "home screen" to look like I wanted it to---even after several attempts.

Then my database of about 100 names and addresses stored in a Brother Label Printer file disappeared. The Brother Label Printer file was there, but all of my data was gone.

The greeting card program was still there and still worked.

A purchased version of Karu (some game my wife plays) wanted me to re-register with the user ID and password---which I might be able to find.

But the photo editing and home screen restoring and other special programs were completely gone.

Chrome browser was still there, but all of my bookmarks were gone.

I fooled with it about 2 hours and showed it to my wife. She was not happy with it.

The Windows 10 installation allows one to revert back to Windows 7 if they do it within like 10 days; so I clicked "Revert back to Windows 7".

Hmmmm. I get a message that says many of my programs did not make it to Windows 10; so they will not be in Windows 7 when I revert back.

I Googled "how to revert Windows 10 back to Windows 7" and most of the hits said, "Just try Windows 10 for 6 months and you will get used to it."

Well, I fooled them. I removed the Windows 10 hard drive and reinstalled my cloned Windows 7 drive and am now back where I started.

Some good things are just not worth the cost. I think that new users of Windows 10 can be very happy with the transition if all they do is surf the net, read email, and do Face Book or Twitter.

Yeah, I know: My PC will be in grave danger after MS drops support for Windows 7 in the near future. But I will deal with that. 

Heck, most of the "Windows 7 Important Updates" fail to install anyway; so I may not know the difference.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Yep, you will never regret making actual cloned backups of your system. Cause guess what, people lie if they say everything is reversible. They will say anything to make you do what THEY want. If you hadnt made that backup, you would be screwed.

I played with win10, and once you do fifteen backflips in a row and put aluminum foil on your big toe (left foot), and lock it down so it cant phone home. Then its not bad, at that point shows how nice it could be if pure greed werent such a factor, but to do that you have to block updates or it will revert, and correct your "mistakes".... Oh and watch out for version 10S, it only lets you install software from the Microsoft Store....

I just dont enjoy using an operating system that wants to fight me all the time. Or one I have to hogtie and castrate to bring it under control.

I am not a gamer (unless you count solitaire) so if you are, then I get that windows is pretty much a necessity. But having used linux for over 20 years, frankly it has progressed to where most home users that arent gamers or into major video editing, probably get used to it very quickly. Most of those years with Puppy Linux, its philosophy of life and mine are similar. Its still my favorite. But every once in while I experiment. Used Lubuntu for while, AntiX a bit, now using Debian 10 (Buster) the version with the LXDE desktop, so somewhat similar to Lubuntu though Lubuntu now switched to LXQt. I really like Buster, super stable and it lets me actually log into full time root account and run as root. Debian just assumes everybody using it has their big boy pants on and knows what they want to do. Ubuntu/Lubuntu wont let you run as root, its sudo this and sudo that, entering a password each and every time. I finally just gave user, what are supposedly full root powers, surprised it let me do that as control freak oriented as it is. It still wants me to type in sudo with some commands but then no longer asks me for password. Its that stupid password stuff on personal computer only I use that drives me nuts. Typing sudo without having to enter a password, is not that big of a hassle. Kinda stupid to have to give yourself permission on your own computer. I get the hierarchy permission stuff on a multi user computer or network. But on own personal only computer, no.

And no you dont actually have to know how to use commandline to use linux. Especially on a distribution like Ubuntu. But it makes life easier if you do when things come up. And frankly there are lot very handy commandline only programs.


----------



## 101pigs (Sep 18, 2018)

NRA_guy said:


> Well, I have been stuck in the Windows 7 world, but the dire warnings I get from my computer engineer son and others, and the impending end of Microsoft support for Windows 7, got me worried.
> 
> I never could get a straight answer to a simple question: "If I transition to Windows 10, will I still have access to purchased software such as MS Office 2013, Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro, and small specialty programs (such as photo editing, home screen settings restoring, and greeting card creating programs) that I either downloaded or installed off of CDs long ago and no longer know where it came from---but I use them often?"
> 
> ...


Installed windows 10 some time ago. No i did not like it at all. I did go back to windows 8.1 which i been using for some time. It works well for me. I hope version after 10 will be better. I will use 8.1 as long as it works for me.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

The big deal with win7 becoming unsupported is not stupid Microsoft updates, its when you can no longer get an upto date browser for it. Then other software starts not being able to run on it. Thats what killed off XP and Vista though nobody really liked Vista. it was cause first version Vista was pretty much alfa (not even beta) with whole lot problems. After first and only service pack update it was much better. Actual win7 was just Vista with second service pack update. They gave it new name for marketing purposes. Vista name by then had really poor reputation.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

101pigs said:


> Installed windows 10 some time ago. No i did not like it at all. I did go back to windows 8.1 which i been using for some time. It works well for me. I hope version after 10 will be better. I will use 8.1 as long as it works for me.


With constant updates current win10 is quite different from original release. So we already had win11, win12, maybe win13. But all still just called win10. I think Microsoft is gradually moving to an operating system in clouds that you just log onto with a dumb terminal and pay monthly rent or something.


----------



## NRA_guy (Jun 9, 2015)

HermitJohn said:


> With constant updates current win10 is quite different from original release. So we already had win11, win12, maybe win13. But all still just called win10. I think Microsoft is gradually moving to an operating system in clouds that you just log onto with a dumb terminal and pay monthly rent or something.


Yep. Exactly.

As they are doing with Office 365.

I call it the "Gillette Trac II" business model. Gillette figured out that the real money, the continuing income, was in selling blades---not razors. So they gave away Trac II razors and 1 or 2 sample Trac II blades to everybody. Then they sold folks expensive Trac II blades for years. 

Microsoft would like for hardware manufacturers to leave hard drives out of computers and have us pay monthly for cloud storage of everything.


----------



## NRA_guy (Jun 9, 2015)

HermitJohn said:


> Yep, you will never regret making actual cloned backups of your system. Cause guess what, people lie if they say everything is reversible. They will say anything to make you do what THEY want. If you hadnt made that backup, you would be screwed.
> 
> I played with win10, and once you do fifteen backflips in a row and put aluminum foil on your big toe (left foot), and lock it down so it cant phone home. Then its not bad, at that point shows how nice it could be if pure greed werent such a factor, but to do that you have to block updates or it will revert, and correct your "mistakes".... Oh and watch out for version 10S, it only lets you install software from the Microsoft Store....
> 
> ...


I'm not a gamer either. I play a few hands of solitaire at night to go to sleep most nights.

I have been thinking about giving Linux a shot.

Actually, I still like DOS. I never could wrap my brain around OOLs (object-oriented languages).

I quit watching TV several years ago. Maybe I should just put my computer in a closet and have a life.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

There are some hard core linux people that only use commandline and run without x windows. Thats too much for me, but if you liked DOS, then you probably like linux. You can do a lot with commandline and scripts but you dont have to.

I understand maybe needing MS Office for employment reasons. But for home use, LibreOffice is fine. And its probably gross overkill for what most people do. I imagine it would do 90% of everything Office does except power point. I am not sure what newest MS Office that you can run in WINE, but I know you can run some of older versions. Getting so its easier to run some of older windows software in WINE than in win10.

Since you are comfortable swapping around hard drives, try linux, dont like it just swap back your windows hard drive. Hmm, I am not a big fan of full Ubuntu, but it might be easiest for somebody used to windows. Very structured and you can definitely use it without any commandline. Its meant to be newbie friendly where you dont have to know anything about linux to use it once its booted live or installed. Not most pleasant for more experienced linux user as it has strong big brother knows best and 'Mother, May I?" feel. Not nearly as obnoxious as win10 though.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

While I understand the value of preserving personal settings and user files, a lot can be said for starting with a fresh installation of Windows 10.

I'm a big advocate of keeping user files in shared cloud folder, such a Google Drive. There is really no excuse for losing user files in this day & age. When you can get 15GB of cloud space for free I don't understand why anyone would risk all of their user files to a single point of failure. It's not easy for me to muster up sympathy for someone who loses his user files that weren't in a shared folder.


----------



## Meinecke (Jun 30, 2017)

I tried W10 on my private machine and we have moved customers over to it...and the more i work with it the more i hate it...
Software as a service and the pressed major updates all the time are a real deal breaker for me...and on top it is constantly calling home...awful
When it comes to install, i like a fresh install but havent tried a digital license from the still free W7 to W10 upgrade used with a fresh W10 install...so no idea ift hat works


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Meinecke said:


> I tried W10 on my private machine and we have moved customers over to it...and the more i work with it the more i hate it...
> Software as a service and the pressed major updates all the time are a real deal breaker for me...and on top it is constantly calling home...awful
> When it comes to install, i like a fresh install but havent tried a digital license from the still free W7 to W10 upgrade used with a fresh W10 install...so no idea ift hat works


Like it or don't, we're pretty much stuck with Windows. There will always be those who are willing to put up with Linux desktops, but corporate America is staying with Microsoft products (both Windows and Office). Corporate leaders know that their rank & file employees are familiar with Microsoft products and don't want to take a chance on losing productivity by trying something else. Corporate America has made a huge investment in training their employees to use Microsoft products and they aren't going to give it up easily.

I doubt that much productivity would be lost by using Linux desktops and open source office products, but you'll never convince corporate America of that. As I said, we're pretty much stuck with Windows.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Win10 as Microsoft intends you to use it sucks. But you can lock it down where it cant phone home and no automated updates. Though to block updates, you block all updates forever on that install. Though you could just do a fresh install every couple years with current version if you are worried about security updates. Once any computer has had an officially activated version win10, same level win10 (home, professional, etc) can always be reinstalled and automatically activated. Win10 phones an activation server to check if its activated and it checks database of computer id numbers known to have activated win10. It doesnt care about keys or whatever unless fresh install on computer that has never had win10. The older versions win10 would just wait, assume the server was down and not try to punish you if you blocked it from phoning home. But I tried a newer version and if it cant contact the activation server, it seems to want to assume its unactivated so does try to punish and you have to manually disable the screen watermark. Watermark is only truly annoying thing if you dont activate. There is no time limit to how long you can run it unactivated. But its minor to get rid of watermark, just google for several alternatives. 

All locked down with forced marketing scumware removed, its actually rather pleasant. Its that forced marketing updates and cloud stuff that truly sucks. I still prefer linux. It doesnt try to play all the cloak and dagger "spy vs spy" games. Win10 has more holes than piece of swiss cheese. Just when you think you have them all plugged....


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Nevada said:


> Like it or don't, we're pretty much stuck with Windows. There will always be those who are willing to put up with Linux desktops, but corporate America is staying with Microsoft products (both Windows and Office). Corporate leaders know that their rank & file employees are familiar with Microsoft products and don't want to take a chance on losing productivity by trying something else. Corporate America has made a huge investment in training their employees to use Microsoft products and they aren't going to give it up easily.
> 
> I doubt that much productivity would be lost by using Linux desktops and open source office products, but you'll never convince corporate America of that. As I said, we're pretty much stuck with Windows.


Corporate America maybe stuck with windows desktop, though most servers run linux. You as an individual are not bound by what CORPORATE AMERICA does. You can have the latest browser and email client. And do most everything else with linux that you do with windows. If you are big into latest computer games or specifically NEED (not just want) some windows only software then thats different. But for most home uses, linux is fine. Try it, you'll probably find its LESS hassle than windows. I am still amazed how many people still think linux is like it was in the 90s. Its not DOS anymore than windows is DOS.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> Corporate America maybe stuck with windows desktop, though most servers run linux. You as an individual are not bound by what CORPORATE AMERICA does. You can have the latest browser and email client. And do most everything else with linux that you do with windows. If you are big into latest computer games or specifically NEED (not just want) some windows only software then thats different. But for most home uses, linux is fine. Try it, you'll probably find its LESS hassle than windows. I am still amazed how many people still think linux is like it was in the 90s. Its not DOS anymore than windows is DOS.


I like to remind people that their Android phone uses the Linux kernel, so it's as much Linux as any distro.

But I've found that familiarity with Windows is an asset. When it comes to PCs, people want Windows. Some will consider Android for a tablet, but PC users still mostly want Windows.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Nevada said:


> I like to remind people that their Android phone uses the Linux kernel, so it's as much Linux as any distro.
> 
> But I've found that familiarity with Windows is an asset. When it comes to PCs, people want Windows. Some will consider Android for a tablet, but PC users still mostly want Windows.


Android is a phone operating system. Try running it on a pc with a mouse and you will quickly find this out. Somethings work, lot doesnt.

Most people that have used a computer have only used windows. They have no clue what linux is or what its like. Handed a computer already set up with linux, I think most would not have any problem using it. No they arent going to know how to do stuff "under the hood" but few know how to do that in windows either. Plus stuff you change in windows tends to get reset to the default factory way with the constant updates.

Did I mention what a nightmare it was trying to tether my old BADA phone in win10. Easy peasy in linux. People that should know better kept telling me you couldnt do that in windows, that its too old or there are no drivers. Well the real reason I couldnt was cause by default the service for wired connection is turned off in windows. I just happened to find it buried deep and turned it on. I could then tether the phone. If windows is so easy and convenient, why didnt any windows experts know this? Why is it buried where no reasonable person would ever look?


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> Most people that have used a computer have only used windows. They have no clue what linux is or what its like. Handed a computer already set up with linux, I think most would not have any problem using it.


Keep in mind that big computer decisions like that aren't made by people who are computer savvy, they're made by managers who are above the I.T. department staff. So when you have someone who isn't really comfortable using a computer in the first place making command decisions, he's not going to want to put his job on the line by changing something as significant as the operating system the office will be using.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Nevada said:


> Keep in mind that big computer decisions like that aren't made by people who are computer savvy, they're made by managers who are above the I.T. department staff. So when you have someone who isn't really comfortable using a computer in the first place making command decisions, he's not going to want to put his job on the line by changing something as significant as the operating system the office will be using.


But we arent talking corporate. If you go work for corporation, you use whatever they tell you to use. You dont make any repairs, thats left for IT dept. You wont even have root access. Just enough access to do whatever your job is. In other words like a kiosk.

Talking average home user that isnt also a gamer and not editing the next block buster movie. The average home user given a computer with Ubuntu (I am not an Ubuntu fan but it is designed for people new to linux) would have no more problem using it than some new version windows. Might not even realize it wasnt windows except it doesnt have flashing colored squares jumping and jiggling to get your attention.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

HermitJohn said:


> But we arent talking corporate. If you go work for corporation, you use whatever they tell you to use.


It's not that simple. Not being fluent with Windows can make someone less marketable in the job market. Simply put, office employers are looking for Windows users.


----------



## HermitJohn (May 10, 2002)

Nevada said:


> It's not that simple. Not being fluent with Windows can make someone less marketable in the job market. Simply put, office employers are looking for Windows users.


You may need to know how to use whatever your job requires, but for personal use at home, its up to you. You surf, you do facebook, you do email, you watch some youtube or other streaming video.... whats special about windows for that? Frankly you probably can use your cell phone for those things if you really want to. Lot people dont have actual pc/laptop anymore. I personally dont understand wanting to stare and swipe at tiny screen but each their own.


----------



## mml373 (May 2, 2017)

W


Nevada said:


> While I understand the value of preserving personal settings and user files, a lot can be said for starting with a fresh installation of Windows 10.
> 
> I'm a big advocate of keeping user files in shared cloud folder, such a Google Drive. There is really no excuse for losing user files in this day & age. When you can get 15GB of cloud space for free I don't understand why anyone would risk all of their user files to a single point of failure. It's not easy for me to muster up sympathy for someone who loses his user files that weren't in a shared folder.


Well, not too big a fan of those places that offer "free" cloud storage going through my personal "user files" and reading/stealing my information.

Files are much safer on a hard drive that is backed up regularly. Matter of fact, I've gone to a SD card for storing working files. When the computer is on a network, SD card is removed. I work on files when offline only and use other security measures. Will be off Google and Youtube soon, too.


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

mml373 said:


> W
> 
> Well, not too big a fan of those places that offer "free" cloud storage going through my personal "user files" and reading/stealing my information.
> 
> Files are much safer on a hard drive that is backed up regularly. Matter of fact, I've gone to a SD card for storing working files. When the computer is on a network, SD card is removed. I work on files when offline only and use other security measures. Will be off Google and Youtube soon, too.


I encrypt (hash) sensitive files in my Google Drive directory using a free utility called AxCrypt.

https://www.axcrypt.net/


----------



## Nevada (Sep 9, 2004)

Meinecke said:


> the pressed major updates all the time are a real deal breaker for me


Speaking of which, Windows 10 version 1903 had a major update released today. It's pretty big, 250MB. I've applied it.


----------

