ScuzzBlog: Diaries February 2025 Entry 28th February 2025: Post 1: Loss of Win7 - Knocked me for six. Loss of Win7 - Knocked me for six. I have to say that even though I have been conscious of the Win7's impending retirement I hadn't realised it would impact on me so much. The HP Win7 machine has been simply the best computer I have aver owned. She arrived here in February 2011 and other than having two NVIDIA graphics card failures the machine has worked without fault. I do not recall 'ever' and I mean ever, her locking up or becoming unresponsive. I seriously love this computer. Win7 for me represents the end of the line for classic Windows OSs. The current crap that is Win10/Win11 is just that 'CRAP'. I need not elaborate. Sadly the closed off world of the Apple and the incomprehensible, to me , Linux, makes my future computing activities tortuous. So what happened ? This machine has been operating here every day since Feb 2011. To say she has been hammered is an understatement. She holds all my Amiga reference files, the website, my image and video manipulation software and ThumbsPlus... the greatest image browser ever made. Sadly at the start of the year the monitor began to fail due to low temperature. I have to warm the monitor to get the cap to kick over and switch on. That can take a while, but the monitor and the computer have been partner for fourteen years. Next when I switch the Win7 machine on the hard drive goes in a spin, twice. First to boot and that can take several minutes to clear. Next though when I fire up Google the hard drive goes into max read state for like fifteen minutes plus and on completion eats away a part of the remaining drive space and just keeps nibbling what is left. I had around 25GB free and over the last few months have deleted nearly everything from the drive other than the OS. But the march to finally burning out the drive goes on relentless. Software is failing. Thunderbird does not now send mail. It also goes into a spin and the drive goes bonkers. Browsing has become a near impossibility with YouTube taking several minutes to clear. I have deleted as much as I can, but the Roaming folder does not get any bigger so the drive destruction is from a validation process that runs on boot, and moves the good stuff out of the bad regions and then marks the bad zones unusable. Classic hard drive failure. This week I learned that the guy that made ThumbsPlus has died and the makers have withdrawn the software. I have the software but I cannot get a validation code. My version of Photoshop that cost me over five hundred quid won't work on crappy Win10 I have to pay a new monthly sum. Whoopeedoo. I have tried a few alternatives but they are all 'sh*t'. So what have I been doing. I have been recovering 2TB of files and data mapping their structure and file organisation. I have made multiple copies and have probably the drive backed up at least four times. I do have a flash drive with the OS on plus a back up set of Win7 disks, but MS would still need to validate the OS. Not gonna happen. To add further salt Win 10 kicks over this year and MS have already told me the 2017 DeLL computer I have will not support the new OS. Sadly the days of the Win7 machine are limited and she hasn't got much time. I am forced to take her offline, and without my camera image editing software and file manager I am going to have to put the website on hold. Sorry about that. This last few weeks have been very hard for me. It has made me realise just how reliant I have become on my Win7 computer, a bond that lasted for 14 years. Some would say get over it and move on. I agree, sadly its the moving on that I struggle with. I don't do mobile phones at all, I have no idea how apps work, I haven't the first clue about synchronising devices and to cap it all off I am getting ancient myself. Some ten or twenty years ago I may have been willing to educate myself about the new ways but it all feels its a bit late for me now. I like my computing safe and generally offline. I just don't trust MicroSoft, Google or Apple enough to trust them with my world. I close the doors and all the new stuff just wants open house. Everything these days wants active links. Anyhoo as I am known to say.... I am minded to take a break. I have renewed the website for another twelve months. I may venture back when I have calmed down. but for now I am spending more time offline and in my own world where I am in control and out of harms way. It is easy for those that are up with things to just move on, but I truly hadn't anticipated a day without this wonderful Win7 machine. Watching her slowly die is truly heartbreaking. I wish it were different. That's that then. Was good while it lasted, but for now I'm taking a break. For how long I have no idea. I have all that I need here to keep me happy, just not going to be sharing in the days blogs. Look after yourself. Loss of Win7 - Knocked me for six.

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Last updated 28th February 2025

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