Computer guru's?

[Chuck Wintle]

Seems that when Defender flagged my G7 program as a virus, and I then went into Services and disabled Defender, it was in the process of quarantining and I interrupted the process. That's all I can figure as to why G7 was missing a critical start file afterwards. Then I went and corrupted the registry...

8 days of getting the computer ready- and it WAS ready- all for naught. Gave up trying to save anything, and put it out of its (and my) misery. And reformatted the drive...

I downloaded and ISO of Win7 Ultimate 64, burned it to a flash drive, the computer actually started installing it, no questions asked...

Woke up this morning to a fresh new computer that just needed some drivers loaded, found what I needed online-

Everything's loading up and working as it should, oddly enough! And since I just went thru the whole process it's still fresh on the brain what to do and not do...

So in a day or two I'll be right back where I started, trying to keep the thing OFFLINE....

why is it so necessary to keep your computer offline?

[Curt Harms]

Get things working then create a complete image? When I was using Windows for anything significant I'd create a complete backup every few weeks or months. I used a product called TeraByte Image. It was/is available for Windows, Linux & DOS. I used the Linux version, it booted off a DVD and used DVDs for boot and restore media. My thinking was that I'd get the cleanest Windows image if Windows wasn't running at all. At the time it only took 3 DVDs, I'm sure it would take more today but if I used it today (I don't). I'd use a flash drive or external HD or SSD for restore media.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux/

I also used their BootIt products for a while. The caveat with BootIt is once you install it, you MUST use only BootIt to manipulate partitions. Using anything else will probably trash the boot sector.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Every time I replace my PC or laptop, I swear I'm going to create a virtual machine and run everything from there and leave the host machine untouched.
That way, in the future, all I have to do is move the virtual machine to the new hardware and not have to fool around doing stuff like this.

Since you have to rebuild from scratch, is there any chance you can just make it a virtual machine?

[Lee DeRaud]

Every time I replace my PC or laptop, I swear I'm going to create a virtual machine and run everything from there and leave the host machine untouched.
That way, in the future, all I have to do is move the virtual machine to the new hardware and not have to fool around doing stuff like this.

Since you have to rebuild from scratch, is there any chance you can just make it a virtual machine?

I don't think that helps Kev's main problem: at some level, the virtual machine is using the host's device drivers, which don't play well with the external hardware it's connected to. We're not talking "mainstream" here.

[mike stenson]

I have what could be a stupid question. Why is it networked to the internet? I'd just have a separate network, that is NOT connected to your router.

[Malcolm McLeod]

Every time I replace my PC or laptop, I swear I'm going to create a virtual machine and run everything from there and leave the host machine untouched.
That way, in the future, all I have to do is move the virtual machine to the new hardware and not have to fool around doing stuff like this.

Since you have to rebuild from scratch, is there any chance you can just make it a virtual machine?

I used this VM route in my previous life. When my PC came due for replacement, IT handed me a new, basic WIN PC and I would spend 2 weeks installing applications and transferring files.

Finally built a VM for every customer I had - with proper OS, application versions, and files for each. The VMs lived on a separate HD. I started w/ external HD, but switched to internal when the size vs form factor allowed. All IT had to do was install VMWare on my new PC and send it to me. I dropped in the D: drive, point VMWare at 'my' VMs, and I was back working - in 10 minutes.

I don't know if there is any salvation here for Mr. Williams, especially on the security side, but you can run an 'old' OS inside an new OS (on new hardware). (I recall running Win95 inside WinXP, to maintain backward compatibility to customers still running fossilized control systems in their plants.) And, you can allow/deny the VM access to the Ethernet port of the host OS.

[Jim Becker]

I like VMs, too. But in Kev's situation, there are hardware challenges that come into play with the devices he controls with each of those "mature" computers.

[Malcolm McLeod]

I don't think that helps Kev's main problem: at some level, the virtual machine is using the host's device drivers, which don't play well with the external hardware it's connected to. We're not talking "mainstream" here.

I don't know beans about Mr. Williams' production equipment, but I was successful in every attempt to network to some unusual (to say the least) automation and control devices. VM drivers and host seemed to generally play well for me - but that 'previous life' ended ~10-11 yrs back. My knowledge in this regard is certainly not mainstream anymore, but hope it may be some use.

For me VMs meant I could get software setup done and working - once! I routinely used 25-30 different applications, with some of them having 10 different released versions. And backups were a breeze.

[Kev Williams]

why is it so necessary to keep your computer offline?

-- From my opening post:

...I know that Microsoft is still 'background' updating win7's and other computers with 'critical' security updates, regardless of the fact their 'support' ended almost 2 years ago, and also regardless of the fact my computers have been set up specifically to NOT update for YEARS. Sounds like a conspiracy theory, but I've read this online, and been told this by a couple of customers who 'do' computers for a living. And these updates are supposedly slowing the hell out of the computers, supposedly on purpose... I can't speak to the truth-or not- behind the talk, but I DO know that ALL of my win7 computers are so ridiculously slow that they're unusable. I swear, the characters "(Not Responding)" appear in the upper ribbons so often they're tarting to burn-in to the monitors! These computers used to be fast..

--THAT'S why--- IMO Microsoft poses a bigger threat to my computers than hackers!

As to virtual machines, I have an XP machine on every computer. I love 'em, but hate 'em morel Because never ever have I been able to get them to do what I need them to do; USB ports won't work right, display issues, etc, for every 3 days of decent virtual computing I spent a full day fixing crap. I'll take real machines, thanks!

My end goal is in sight, which is: ALL of my machines will be offline, EXCEPT for ONE Windows 11 computer I don't even have yet, that will sit by itself with no hardware connected to it whatsover. It will be my "internet" computer, accessible by every other computer via Remote Desktop, like I do now. That's ONE thing I know how to make work!

Once I get the new computer how I like it, I may just make an ISO image of it and burn it to a couple of new SSD's, put them in the garage and office computers, download some drivers and be done...

I wish...

[Rich Engelhardt]

I used VMs all the time in a previous life for work.
Having the ability to revert back to a previous stable state if/when some update or software install went haywire was such a blessing.

I don't think that helps Kev's main problem: at some level, the virtual machine is using the host's device drivers, which don't play well with the external hardware it's connected to. We're not talking "mainstream" here.

Maybe not but - it sure would have helped a lot when the Gravo7 install went bad.

[Lee DeRaud]

Maybe not but - it sure would have helped a lot when the Gravo7 install went bad.

Getting an app to install is only half the battle. Again, it depends on whether the host machine's driver can handle the legacy hardware GS7 is driving. Some of this stuff requires very low level access to control registers etc that post-XP Windows simply will not allow.

[Rich Engelhardt]

According to the OP - his machine busted during the install.

I know myself, I used to shut down my VM - then make a copy of it to another drive - before I made any changes to the operating system. That saved my bacon more than a few times when things went wrong.

[Jim Becker]

That's true, Rich...something happened during the original install on the new/temporary machine that caused the target application to not want to work. I believe he got beyond that with a complete rebuild. But another important factor in Kev's environment is that the old gear he has attached to the various older Windows machines have hardware requirements that are not possible on new machines with current OS. It's both physical connections plus the drivers want to write directly to hardware like Lee mentioned and that is totally precluded in recent versions of Windows for security reasons. So he can't use a VM to actually run the devices...no way to write to hardware memory directly. May it could be a good way to preserve a clean copy of the environment, even if it can't run the applications, but there are other ways to clone systems for backup, too. I don't envy Kev's situation trying to keep the older stuff online for sure!

[Lee DeRaud]

May it could be a good way to preserve a clean copy of the environment, even if it can't run the applications, but there are other ways to clone systems for backup, too.

I wondered about that: if you have Windows XP/7/whatever and a bunch of apps installed on a VM, is there actually a way to transplant that whole image onto new hardware? By that I mean, not moving it to a new VM host, but installed as a "real" OS.

[mike stenson]

I wondered about that: if you have Windows XP/7/whatever and a bunch of apps installed on a VM, is there actually a way to transplant that whole image onto new hardware? By that I mean, not moving it to a new VM host, but installed as a "real" OS.

Probably not with windows. It's pretty trivial in unix/unix-like environments. But windows isn't as flexible in that regard as I recall. Then again, it's been years since I did anything outside the *nix environment.