Hi, Microsoft will stop supporting windows 10 security in October, which I get a reminder about every now and again. No surprise there, I suppose.

Regards Nick.

It might be worth following the progress of this discussion:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/jan-2025-latest-windows-update-has-created-havoc/f304e89d-b01d-4b8e-8c56-a16aab431b4b

MichaelG.

.

Edit: __ See also

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/06/microsoft_2025_windows_refresh/

Following Michael’s link to MS answers took me to a page with no return to the forum.  Expletive deleted!

I shall avoid Windows for a while in hope this is a temporary problem.

Be interesting to see how W11 progresses.   Once upon a time Windows dominated the computer market, but it’s lost some important battles.  Beaten by Linux on supercomputers, and, far more seriously, by Android in the huge smart phone market.  MS are losing ground because the market has changed. Their main hope appears to be getting everyone to buy new PCs fitted with AI hardware, not the old stuff I’m using.

Interesting times.  Annoying customers from a position of strength is one thing, annoying them when there are alternatives is asking for trouble!

Dave

On 16 January 2025 at 17:53 duncan webster 1 Said:

How can I get to Linux when the PC won’t fire up? I think I might have a very old version of Linux on a memory stick. Will I then be able to access files created under W10? I don’t think NanoCad will work under Linux,

Using another computer, download a recent linux image on to a USB stick.  Follow instructions to make the stick bootable.  If the machine is an old banger consider a lightweight distro.  Then boot with the image stick plugged in.

If the computer doesn’t see the stick, reboot and immediately start tapping whatever function key gets into the BIOS, often F12.  Once in the BIOS find the menus that control boot order and what’s recognised as a boot device.   Tell the BIOS the USB stick is first choice, and try another boot.

Linux should start, but run slowly because it’s not installed. This allows the user to test what works, or not!  Also allows networking, mouse, and other hardware to be tested before committing. It should allow access to the Windows file system, which is good for recovering files., and there’s a lot of information on the web about using Linux to repair Windows,

If you decide to install Linux it should partition the disc and insert a dual boot menu.  Be aware that Linux isn’t a Microsoft clone, the organisation and look and feel are different and it can’t run all Microsoft software.  Some folk suffer severe culture shock!   NanoCAD might be OK – try it and see.

Dave

There as been plenty of warning in the press and even from MS that the latest update of windows was ‘breaking’ PC’s. I agree that a move to Linux should be considered.

H

On 16 January 2025 at 18:23 duncan webster 1 Said:

Tried Qcad, couldn’t get on with it. Nothing wrong with it, just too different to what I was used to

All change, involves (often considerable) initial conversion effort.

Got to think long term…

Unless you got paid version, NanoCAD is not really supported (not to mention that it comes from the Dark Empire)

There are 3D CAD solutions that work equally well in Linux and Windows, but judging by your issues with QCAD you might have equally strong reaction 🙂 so I will not mention it.

On 16 January 2025 at 18:59 duncan webster 1 Said:

I’m not really used to any 3D CAD system, I’ve dabbled in alibre and SE, but what works in Linux, I might get on just as well.

You not having used one before is actually an advantage…

Too many users coming from other system never stop bitching 🙂

Try this – works in Windows and Linux as well as MAC:

https://www.freecad.org/downloads.php

Hmmm… Worried now. My PC uses WIN-11 after Mickeysoft moved it from W10 without asking me. The little curly arrows sign in the corner has an orange dot signifying “up-dates” waiting.

I wonder if Microsoft has lost its way, For some time now all it’s done is take what had been a good system and tinker with it. One effect is that it is very hard to construct your own filing system properly as in all previous Windows since WIN-5. If you keep a lot of photographs on the PC (or as MS wants, on its OneDrive which you can “uninstall”), MS cannot resist digging around among them without your authority. Perhaps it hopes you have lovely scenery images it can use as Home Page decoration without permission, credit and royalties.

If so many people have trouble with Windows that it is Mentioned In The Press and even Microsoft admits it, one has to wonder if it no longer employs any really good programmers.

The problem with someone like me, is having no choice. Linux is all very well if you really understand computers and operating-systems, and all your third-party software, data and Internet services will operate on it. If not you are lumbered with the Seattle mob’s increasingly down-market stuff.

On 16 January 2025 at 19:40 Nigel Graham 2 Said:

Linux is all very well if you really understand computers and operating-systems,

Have you actually tried it?

or…. do you just believe it?

Linux desktop for masses have made a lot of progress since the days it was black art 😛

and there are some versions that cater for reluctant Windows refugees

Chris,

No I’ve not tried using Linux and don’t want to risk it.  I have used computers since the last year or so of MS-DOS but do not have the IT knowledge to play around with operating-systems, and I very much doubt any of my non-MS software, written for Windows, will run on anything but Windows.

Someone once gave me an early version of Open Office, probably in WIN-5 days, and although this was a set of application programmes, not an operating-system, it totally ruined my PC, irretrievably. I found another PC, also second-hand and tried again but it soon crashed the thing. Luckily at that time you could go behind the Windows and use DOS to manipulate files, so I was able to remove the OO files.. Took ages, one long “del/dir…./…/..”  command-line at a time for well over a hundred of them. (You could not delete a directory while it still contained even one file.)

So I’m afraid like so many other people I am very much at the mercy of Mr. Gates’ goons.

It is a long time since I looked at Linux (Free CD with magazine days!) but I think it might now be time for me to make the change (from Windows).

Which (if any) version of Linux has something of the look and feel of Windows?

I’m not so much asking for myself but more to limit the culture shock if I convert the PC my wife uses!

Ian P