Windows 7 Update and Windows 10 issue

[perez007usa]

Yea! That is true, but when your other half gave me a NEW one, an Aleinware no even, how could I say no! So I just tweak the mess out of it. It's suppose to be Win7 all souped up, (yea, right!!). But I still have my Win7 rig next to it hooked to the same big screen I have, just go back and forth on it. Like  I said, before, TWEAK THE MESS out of it, then you could play your games.

[krakr]

You could also run two operating systems on the same computer (aka "Dual-Boot").

[SNIP]
Speaking personally, I can't imagine why anyone would want Windows 10 in the first place... considering the fact that Windows 7 is still being supported by MS and most hardware manufacturers. It saddens me to see that so many people are still being sucked into the "newer must be better" trap... especially when you realize that each successive version of Windows for the past 15 years has been successively worse than the versions that came before it. Microsoft gets rich, and the rest of you get screwed. And then you bend over, and ask them to screw you again 2 years later. That's my take on it.

The fact that Win 10 requires hours of tweaks to disable the data-mining aspects of the OS is why I didn't bother listing dual-boot as an option I had discarded.
I would never use Google CHrome for similar reasons. I'm also 500% more selective in the actual "windows updates" I do dl for my Win 7x64.

I'm just appreciative of the OP for his/her reference to the specific update that sabotages Win 7.
If I may be so bold, I think a post of user-found work-arounds for M$ issues might be advantageous for your visitors/members.
One that excludes the inevitable "Microshit suxorz" type posts that tech-workaround posts tend to garner and get muddied up by.
I highly doubt my fix for my CK2/Bayonetta issue would help though, since it stemmed from an obscure and no longer available version of 2010 C++.
I just hope the level of detail I put into my own work-around (above) is enough to help your average non-IT type user.

I'm a retired IT tech, and I've never used win 10 (much to the chagrin of friends/family members that think I can walk them thru a fix over the phone for their issues)
I'm currently considering my next OS for when M$ stops supporting 7, and depending on the gaming compatibility of the latest Linux windoze emulator will determine my OS choice.
I've never installed a version of windows that wasn't AT LEAST on service pack 1, and never will. Dual boot has never interested me despite my knowledge on how to do it. I use Dos-Box for really early 8-16 bit games (although not so much anymore). I've become a bit of a graphics whore in my old age.

The fact that the hardware/software industry cow-tows to M$ means that consumers must as well. Plenty of valid points about M$ in this thread, but I think they detract from the spirit if not the gist of the OP. Everyone can find a thread to bash M$, not everyone can wade thru the mire of hate posts to find answers for actual issues. I'd be appreciative if there were some kinda user-inspired db of work arounds.

[perez007usa]

krakr, I'm retired also, I love to play around with my rig, to make it the way "I" want it to, not the way MicroSlop wants. When it said to dual-boot you have two OS's on the same drive. Tess and I have 4 or 5 OS's, but on each in it's own drive. We have a switch on them, Tess has the rotary type, I on  the other hand have it on the toggle (on and off, that type of shit) it works for  me.  See I have drives galore on my old rig. When I want Linux, I have Linux as the "main" OS. Same goes for Win 7, XP, Ubuntu, with all my gaming, movies, music, drives and docks. It works, look into some Tess's old topics on  the matter. Me, I'm tweaking the mess out of Win10 to make it work right, so far, I have the docks working, I have new games working good on high def, no even, I have most of the old games working like Duke Nukem 3D, and I am not using Dosbox. I'm retired, I'm no tech guy, I just learn it by just doing it. I have a mess of HD's to use on this new rig. So lets get it on.

[krakr]

Well, this is fun.
Just bought a 10 TB HDD for my rig, installed it and Windoze refused to boot. Even after I restored it to it's old configuration (without the new HDD since my MOBO supports 6 SATA devices and I had 6 counting my dvd/rw) . Seems MS & SSD's don't like each other. (my boot drive is the SSD) So I sent them a nastygram asking if they were spreading ransomware:

https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-update/is-there-a-new-ransomware-in-one-of-the-windows-7/e3d6d71c-f38a-4ddd-9194-03a594f0fe47?messageId=fddf44ac-35bf-4b94-ba50-421ce1136c4f

Read the response for yourself if you like. Thankfully, I posted on a few forums and got a knowledgeable response. Didn't actually help me since I had to re-install anyway, but it gave me an answer. Win7x64 doesn't like SSD's , so it creates a BOOT dir on the next available HDD. Unplugging that creates issues, apparently f'd up issues that require reinstallation of the OS. Too drained mentally to go into more detail now, but there you have it.

Oh, & sorry for the direct link to M$, I can't remeber the anonymizer pre-link off the top of my head. If it's a major issue I would take it as a kindness for a Mod to edit the link, otherwise I will do it myself in the next 2 days or so (I have 138 windows updates pending)
Just thanking Satan I have a reference to the KB# here so I can uninstall it again. Wish I knew what KB fucked my system this time.

[Tessera]

Win7x64 doesn't like SSD's , so it creates a BOOT dir on the next available HDD. Unplugging that creates issues, apparently f'd up issues that require reinstallation of the OS. Too drained mentally to go into more detail now, but there you have it.

Not exactly. I'm using Win 7 x64 with a Samsung SSD and everything works fine. Samsung SSD's are bundled with special software which clones your existing drive to the SSD, sets up the correct Windows boot sectors and partitions, and so forth. Then you just switch over to the cloned SSD and all is well.

In your case, I think a good part of the problem is due to the enormous SIZE of your SSD. You did say 10 TB, yes..? Also, your system BIOS may not be configured properly for a large SSD.

There was no such thing as a 10TB drive back when the Windows 7 kernel was developed... and while it should be possible for Win7 to read and write to a drive that size (after the proper drivers have been installed), it may not be able to actually BOOT from a drive as huge as 10TB. Keep in mind that until Windows finishes loading all of its AHCI drivers and so forth, it won't even recognize a drive of that size. Natively, the Windows 7 kernel doesn't recognize anything much larger than 512 GB.

By the way... did you go into the system BIOS and change your HD controller to AHCI mode, after installing the new SSD..? Because most SSD's... especially very large ones... won't work properly unless they run from an AHCI-enabled controller.

Also, Windows 7 always installs a 100 MB EFI system partition on whatever drive the OS is installed to. If that drive is larger than a certain size, then it looks for a different drive to install its EFI partition to. So once again, in your case, your SSD is simply too large for the Win 7 OS to boot from.

A workaround might be to create primary partitions on the drive, prior to placing any data on it. The first partition, which I presume will be for your Win7 OS, should be no larger than 512 gigabytes. Windows doesn't need a boot partition any larger than that -- I personally use a 256 GB boot partition in my rigs. Create the partitions, then quick format them, and the new SSD should be ready to go.

Samsung SSD's come bundled with excellent software (Samsung Magician; Samsung Data Migration Wizard) that make the process of moving your existing OS over to a new SSD almost painless. I don't know if other brands of SSD's come with similar software... I would hope so.

Like I said -- until Windows finishes loading all of its motherboard AHCI drivers, it doesn't even know what to do with a 10TB drive. You're trying to force Windows 7 to load from a drive that is 20 times larger than anything that was available back when Windows 7 was being developed. The system drivers that came with your motherboard will allow Windows to "see" those enormous drives, but those drivers don't even kick in until after Windows 7 has finished booting up.

So here's my advice:

(1) Make sure your hard disk controller is set to AHCI operation in your system BIOS. Most large SSD's depend upon this.
(2) Create a 256 - 512 gigabyte primary partition on the SSD, prior to installing any data on it.
(3) Install (or clone, if your SSD came with the appropriate software) Windows 7 x64 to that partition.
(4) Hook everything up and the system should boot from the SSD. If not, then you might consider getting a smaller (~256 GB) SSD and using it for just the Windows boot drive, and your larger SSD can be used for everything else.
(5) All computers... regardless of what they are or how they are set up... will run more smoothly and efficiently if you partition very large hard drives into multiple, smaller partitions (as opposed to a single enormous partition). There are several reasons for why this is true -- feel free to research it, if you are curious.

[krakr]

sorry, my SSD is 1 TB, had an existing windows install on it already.
The issues arose when I unplugged one of my standard HDD's to install the new standard 10TB HDD.
All shit is fine in BIOS, all drives detected. There is no longer a problem since I was forced to (once again) re-install windows.

[Tessera]

sorry, my SSD is 1 TB, had an existing windows install on it already.
The issues arose when I unplugged one of my standard HDD's to install the new standard 10TB HDD.
All shit is fine in BIOS, all drives detected. There is no longer a problem since I was forced to (once again) re-install windows.

Yuck... well, glad you finally got it straightened out.

[igor]

All you need to do to play with True Patch on Windows 10 is put vampire.dll files from infamous mod/patch. That's it, works like a charm. Wish I knew how to reverse-engineer this .dll so that I won't have to even touch anything made by wesp.

[Tessera]

Thanks for the tip, Igor.

But I'm sure you can understand why I can't recommend that people have ANYTHING to do with Wesp's stuff.

It makes sense, though. The vampire.dll file would be a likely candidate. It probably has the code that calls the safedisk driver. Perhaps I'll look into that DLL file in the future, and see what I can find. I've already edited it a couple of times for the True Patch, so it shouldn't be too hard to track down.

What I still have a hard time understanding is why ANYONE who plays PC games would be using Windows 10 in the first place. It's a horrible operating system... ugly, un-intuitive and generally dysfunctional. I tried out Windows 10 for kicks a few months ago, on one of my laptops, and I ended up screaming at how awful it was within the first 15 minutes of using it. About 10 minutes later, I removed it from that machine and reformatted its hard drive. Good thing I didn't pay for it, because Windows 10 truly sucks... especially for gamers.

[Walking Blood Pack]

I suffer the same problem, running on Windows 7 Ultimate x64. I am using image CD copies of VTM: Bloodlines, but where players can get retail version of the game nowadays?.. And there is no guarantee that retail version will solve the problem, I am pretty sure my system will not notice any difference between those copies. With Wesp's vampire.dll hitting New Game doesn't cause a crash, but it is not a solution, during a play you can watch through the console as game constantly calls for missing files, that dll has a lot of changes, so it is obvious that it may cause many problems, including critical ones.

My immersion into the World of Darkness has been canceled...