game pc: stick with win 7 or go to win 10 ?

[you2]

the general feeling is that cable and htc is dying breed. silicon dust (maker of hdhomerun prime) is actually working on a replacement for window media; it has the advantage of supporting linux.

One question: what happens to my window 7 key if i upgrade to window 10 ? Can i still do a fresh install of window 7 at a late date ?
-
Also does the upgrade process actually work or is a clean install required. I have a bit over 1.5 TB of stuff (mostly games); so I hate to actually do a clean install (if this was linux no issue; but darn window registry will screw up everything on the 'data' disk).

I think those that need DRM are most effected by lack of WMC, however there are work a rounds to get WMC working with DRM on Win10, you just need to use a good search engine.

Side Note: You would think more software companies would jump on the chance to correct the lack of WMC in Win10.

 

[you2]

Used to prefer freebsd but now I prefer linux.

Or you dual boot with OpenBSD and W10.

 

[DigDog]

blah blah blah/

again, explain why i need to make you happy. i prefer W7 because of many advantages which W10 does not have, some which might not have, and some disadvantages which W7 does not have.
i asked you to provide me with some reasons why it would be advantageous to me to upgrade, and all you can come back with is "slightly better multithreading, sometimes".

Its not 2005 anymore.
i dont care.
Installing patches and fiddling with tweaks is just as obsolete as 7.
sure, why would i want a third party sw which allows me to bypass the horrendous explorer bug. or route my audio correctly. or have lower latency while playing. god forbid that i upgrade my OS for free with functionalities M$ has not been capable of replicating since W95
The same for the all rest.
does this mean anything?
Spyware this and forced upgrade that.
does this mean anything?
7 is dead in the water.
https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0
47% of market share.
Its old
so is this:

It's in extended support only.
i not only do not care, i do not WANT M$ to have anything to do with my PC. lol, "support".
The rest of that rant are non-issues.

buddy, YOURS is a rant.

I told you several reasons why MY W7 is better than a generic W10; you have not bothered to discredit any of them, and cannot provide examples supporting why a generic, unmodded W10 would be better.

i think the argument is over.

 

[jlee]

i not only do not care, i do not WANT M$ to have anything to do with my PC. lol, "support".

Lmao, well then you are running the wrong operating system.

 

[mnewsham]

Lmao, well then you are running the wrong operating system.

Seriously he has that many issues with windows and thinks M$ is after his data, yet he doesn't switch to any number of other OS's that are free and far more secure...

 

[William Gaatjes]

Both! Image or clone your windows 7 install. Then do the upgrade or clean install of 10 using your Windows 7 license. Once you have it set up the way you want it or just after the fresh install then image or clone the Win10 install. Now from what I understand you can go back and forth as you please. I haven't done this yet but this is what I plan on doing to make sure I get the free upgrade then I'll go back to Windows 8.1.

I agree. A virtual machine would be great. One can just install windows xp, windows 7 or any other os as a guest os and install the games in the virtual machine image.
Make a backup of the clean virgin install image first. If anything goes wrong while playing a game(after installation), just delete the image and copy back the virgin image.

But some research is necessary. How do the virtual machines perform under windows 10 ? Does the hardware acceleration function properly under the used virtual machine software. Otherwise, the gfx card is not supported properly and you would not be able to play a game on a guest os under a virtual machine. (Does the vm allow 3d acceleration ? )

It makes sense that at a given moment, windows 10 will no longer support all old games. But with a virtual machine and a powerful cpu with virtualization extensions (and IOMMU support) and a mb with a bios that supports it and a powerful gpu a lot of those issues can be solved.

VMware 12 (free or) pro.
Virtual pc from microsoft.
Parallels is also a very good one.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I agree. A virtual machine would be great. One can just install windows xp, windows 7 or any other os as a guest os and install the games in the virtual machine image.
Make a backup of the clean virgin install image first. If anything goes wrong while playing a game, just delete the image and copy back the virgin image.

But some research is necessary. How do the virtual machines perform under windows 10 ? Does the hardware acceleration function properly under the used virtual machine software. Otherwise, the gfx card is not supported properly and you would not be able to play a game on a guest os under a virtual machine.

It makes sense that at a given moment, windows 10 will no longer support all old games. But with a virtual machine and a powerful cpu with virtualization extensions (and IOMMU support) and a mb with a bios that supports it and a powerful gpu a lot of those issues can be solved.

VMware 12 (free or) pro.
Virtual pc from microsoft.
Parallels is also a very good one.

I thought cloning won't work because going to 10 invalidates your key UNLESS you roll back to 7. You can't have both versions activated at the same time. If I was going to go to 10 now, I'd do it on a new system not an existing system.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I thought cloning won't work because going to 10 invalidates your key UNLESS you roll back to 7. You can't have both versions activated at the same time. If I was going to go to 10 now, I'd do it on a new system not an existing system.

You are right about that. I was still thinking of really old dx7 games that would probably never work under windows 10 (always 64 bit) . But they should work with windows xp in an image.
For old (non gaming) stuff i use a windows xp with sp3 image that has no connection to the internet.
I think all games that have been brought out with windows 7 as a minimum os will work fine under windows 10.

For gaming, the IOMMU is really needed for 3d acceleration, that is what i understand of it.
When it comes to the IOMMU, i myself may need to invest in another MB in the future if my current motherboard does not support it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_IOMMU-supporting_hardware

It seems that i have the proper apu (A10-6700) and chipset(A75) but i also need bios support for it. And i do not know if my MB has that : GA-F2A75M-HD2 (have to look up the revision, i forgot about it)
I think i will write an email to gigabyte to ask for it.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Here is a comprehensive guide about gaming and virtual machines :

http://www.overclock.net/t/1205216/guide-create-a-gaming-virtual-machine#

 

[frozentundra123456]

Lmao, well then you are running the wrong operating system.

It is called "the lesser of 2 evils". I definitely want Windows, so yes, MS is going to have a foothold on my computer. But I agree with the other poster that Win 7 is less intrusive than Win 10. It also has fewer bugs, includes more software like Media Center, doesnt try to direct you to the Windows store for everything you want to do, and has a more attractive interface.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, i was asleep yesterday when i checked my bios. I just checked again after looking into the manual and overlooked the IOMMU option. It was just on top of the list instead of in the middle.

The MB GA-F2A75M-HD2 from gigabyte i have does support IOMMU and the bios has an option for it and it is enabled by default.
Unfortunately, for the apu i have there is no windows xp driver. And it is a question if the free vmware version 12 that i have supports even iommu.

 

[bystander36]

You are right about that. I was still thinking of really old dx7 games that would probably never work under windows 10 (always 64 bit) . But they should work with windows xp in an image.
For old (non gaming) stuff i use a windows xp with sp3 image that has no connection to the internet.
I think all games that have been brought out with windows 7 as a minimum os will work fine under windows 10.

Like 64-bit XP, Vista and 7, Window 10 will run 32 bit and 64 bit programs. In fact, most programs you run in those OS's are 32 bit.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, i did some tests and i have direct3d hardware acceleration. I turned it off at first because one of my programs gets confused and stops showing what i am working on. I enabled it again for now for testing purposes and did run dxdiag and did the dx7,dx8 and dx9 tests in the guest os and it seems all to run fine. So old games that have problems running under windows 7-64 bit should highly likely run under a vm windows xp (vmware player 12) without a problem. as long as there is IOMMU support and the 3d acceleration is enabled. That means that older games could also be played again under a windows 10 host os.

Most common problems i know of for getting games to run are getting the proper videocodecs for the cut scene movies. Especially older bink videocodecs are hard to come by or one game overwrites a codec and another game stops functioning.

When i have some time i will make another windows xp virtual machine and install some old dx7 game like clive barkers undying. I will also try a few soul reaver games.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Like 64-bit XP, Vista and 7, Window 10 will run 32 bit and 64 bit programs. In fact, most programs you run in those OS's are 32 bit.

Interesting, is it also dx7 and dx8 compatible ?

 

[Sabrewings]

Interesting, is it also dx7 and dx8 compatible ?

I've played games as old as Quake III based games and they work fine on Windows 10.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I've played games as old as Quake III based games and they work fine on Windows 10.

That sounds hopeful for the games i am interesting in. They are from the same time frame.
But they are dx games and quake is opengl, that might be something to keep in mind.

I have old soul reaver games as well that i would like to play in the future.
I even have turok still laying around.
But perhaps i am better of playing turok on my N64.

All i need now is to get rid of that ugly ui from windows 10.

 

[CP5670]

I'm using 8.1 and almost certainly won't upgrade to 10 before the deadline. I plan to disable all the auto-updates and telemetry in 10 anyway, but am afraid of breaking some old game or obscure driver that works right now. I want DX12 sooner or later, but I spend the vast majority of my gaming time with older games and have spent some effort getting things the way I want in 8.1.

VMWare is the best of the VM platforms, but its 3D support is very hit-or-miss and is no substitute for a native OS install. The slower speed is not a big deal in most cases, but many games have rendering glitches or won't start at all. I still have an XP install for a small number of games that won't work anywhere else, but it's a hassle to boot into it.

I tried W10 and went straight back to W7 after "bumping heads" with several older games having issues. Eg, Medal Of Honor Allied Assault, Quake 4, etc, worked fine for a while but then refused to start for many people after certain W8/10 patches, whilst NOLF requires the Microsoft Application Compatibility Toolkit to be downloaded and installed to remove the 30fps lock (introduced by Windows 8) whilst running perfectly at 60fps on W7 without hacks.

That's useful to know. I recently found that Battlezone (with the 1.5 patch) gives a runtime error and won't start anymore, even though it used to work fine in the past. I don't do auto-updates but load them in manually every now and then. The DirectDraw 30fps issue is a common problem in a lot of games. There are several custom versions of DirectDraw out there that solve it for specific games, but some games don't work with any of them.

 

[sm625]

Windows 8 actually broke a LOT of things. I am learning about all these "api-ms-win-core*" dll files and also about "AppData\Local\VirtualStore" crap which is ruining the functionality of a lot of my software.

 

[jlee]

That sounds hopeful for the games i am interesting in. They are from the same time frame.
But they are dx games and quake is opengl, that might be something to keep in mind.

I have old soul reaver games as well that i would like to play in the future.
I even have turok still laying around.
But perhaps i am better of playing turok on my N64.

All i need now is to get rid of that ugly ui from windows 10.

Or just buy it again, Win10 compatible: https://www.gog.com/game/turok

 

[William Gaatjes]

Or just buy it again, Win10 compatible: https://www.gog.com/game/turok

I already have a working legal copy i bought. Why should i buy another copy of a game i already have ? That is burning money.

 

[mnewsham]

I already have a working legal copy i bought. Why should i buy another copy of a game i already have ? That is burning money.

Meh, if you have the free time and are willing to dick around with trying to get it working in modern OS, by all means, spend your time how you like.
BUT, for everyone else, there are plenty of other things they'd rather be doing, or spending their time working to make more money to "burn" and paying more for a copy that "just works" isn't burning money, its a smart investment, especially anyone who makes more that $10-20 an hour working

 

[William Gaatjes]

Meh, if you have the free time and are willing to dick around with trying to get it working in modern OS, by all means, spend your time how you like.
BUT, for everyone else, there are plenty of other things they'd rather be doing, or spending their time working to make more money to "burn" and paying more for a copy that "just works" isn't burning money, its a smart investment, especially anyone who makes more that $10-20 an hour working

That is sort of true in some situations. But it is a principle. I do not like to enlarge the already present waste pile just because i find something inconvenient. Also, just because something is hard and therefore not doing it is not a good sign of character.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Here is a comprehensive guide about gaming and virtual machines :

http://www.overclock.net/t/1205216/guide-create-a-gaming-virtual-machine#

It's certainly not a bad place to start, but that guide is a little out of date. If I were to do this now, I would suggest using KVM instead of the XEN used in that guide. There are also some tools that have made life easier, especially if you are using Fedora or CentOS (or really any linux distro originally based on Red Hat), such as "virt-manager", and "virsh", which make creation of the network bridge as simple as running a single command "virsh iface-bridge <interface name> <bridge name>" and simply disable the network manager (which if you ask me is a piece of crap anyway and causes more problems than it ever fixed).

 

[jlee]

I already have a working legal copy i bought. Why should i buy another copy of a game i already have ? That is burning money.

First, you don't already have it unless yours functions properly out of the box in a new OS. Second, because it works properly in Win10.

That is sort of true in some situations. But it is a principle. I do not like to enlarge the already present waste pile just because i find something inconvenient. Also, just because something is hard and therefore not doing it is not a good sign of character.

Downloading a digital copy of a game doesn't enlarge any waste piles. Do what you will, but if it takes you four hours to get it running properly you're effectively earning less than minimum wage.

 

[bystander36]

Interesting, is it also dx7 and dx8 compatible ?

DX is backwards compatible, but that doesn't mean that all old games work on newer versions of Windows.