The crashed machine was a Win7 machine. I am not sure that I can get an image off the harddisk to get a licensed Win7.
If the new Win10 machine work, I might try a new harddisk (SSD) in the old and play a bit with linux as a test station (I do use linux, but for now mostly on servers).
My test stations get not update very often, they do never use browsers of handle emails or other internet stuff. This makes it fairly unlikely that they catch something.
My main computer is usual up to date.
From my modest experience with long-term data logging via serial port (some 25 years) I can clearly state that good Linux distribution (like CENTOS) is VASTLY superior to any version of Windows. Such machines run for years without reboots and without loosing a single bit of information. Regarding SSD: forget it! Only good HDDs are usable in heavy-loaded production environment.
Hope you’ll get backup soon. My suggestion is to get some SSD HKJ (one for backup). 2017-2012 = 5 years = 60 months = 1.800 days = 43.200 hours!! For a mechanical HD this is awesome. I thought I’m the only one who runs a laptop 24/7 for years, turned out not the case hahaha.
Disabling Win10 auto update is a VERY popular topics: https://www.google.co.id/search?q=how+to+disable+windows+10+auto+update&oq=how+to+disable+win&aqs=chrome.4.69i57j0l5.7246j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
I got mine turned off with some efforts.
Cheers,
Clemence
I ordered a new computer yesterday, I expect it to arrive in the coming week. It was a cheap laptop with a 12” display, 4GB ram, 64GB SSD and Win10 (Probably home edition).
My last solution is to leave the router field empty in the network configuration. The computer do not need to get onto the internet.
Might be a stupid question but what if you disabled the network adapters? therefore there’s zero web connectivity possible?
Some of my test equipment is connected via network and I also use network to get the test data.
As far as the Old Machine—As long as you have a license code of some kind for that machine—you can do a clean install—OEM codes for 7 are not that expensive on Ebay
I do not believe that I have a license key for the current windows, it is an OEM version for that brand of computer.
I’ve bought several OEM codes on ebay—-I usually get them to email them to me along with mailing the disc when possible
That’s a shame you don’t have an image of that drive saved elsewhere——I usually make an Acronis image very early on and every so often
Usual I do not see any reason to save an image. The problem this time is that Win10 is not the perfect replacement for Win7.
I have two usb serial devices:
That might have been true 10 years ago when SSD:s were in their infancy. Today SSD:s are more reliable than mechanical HDD:s (and the performance of SSD:s is vastly superior to HDD:s).
I agree.
Modern SSDs rule!
This is a prime example why I save an image of every machine I own and work on (kids/family)
Drive failure/ failed updates etc—I’ve even gone as far as having a cloned drive ( In my payroll /business machine)installed in my machine already—that way I can switch and boot from it at any time—-sometimes it saves hours of re installs
on mission critical machines i have full image backups refreshed each time i make a change vital to its job.
that way if it loses a hdd i can come back to fully running from “bare metal”
and forget about installing 7 on a brand new machine built for 10.
often the drivers for that new systems hardware do not exist for 7.
how bad is the current drive?
what does SMART say?
if it is still running you might be able to clone to a new drive.
i have cloned many noisey and slow drives in old industrial stuff.
several that sounded like my old circular saw!
I have four test stations, all running windows 7. They will die sooner or later and instead of fighting a loosing battle to maintain an old OS (Win7). I prefer to get a newer OS. For now it will have to be Win10, but in the future it might be Linux. My logging software is in Java, this means it run fine on both Windows and Linux (Except the serial port).
I have not looked at SMART and if the new computer works I will not bother doing it.
Yep, I agree. I was also a hard nut to crack when it came to SSDs, but the performance of my own machine with an SSD plus the following article turned me into a believer. 
http://techreport.com/review/27909/the-ssd-endurance-experiment-theyre-all-dead
For me, the price vs capacity is the only limiting factor that still make me buy HDD. When I worked in a big projector rental company the big Christie 3 DLP projectors were definitely much more fragile than some SSD in a Spyder. We destroyed some HDD and huge 3000watt xenon bulbs during road trips just because relatively normal speed bumps. But multiple accidental droppings multimedia boxes consist of SSDs in custom check scanning never ruined any of them.
I used to be in charge of the Cloud computing operations for a rather big global ERP company.
6 years ago we started to swap out HDD:s for SSD:s and our total costs went down. SSD:s break less often and less other H/W (mainly CPU:s and RAM) is needed for the same performance level. Costs down and performance up makes everybody happy.
Just a word of caution: to really benefit from SSD:s, the architecture of the Datacentre needs to change. (There are lots of bottlenecks, due to the much higher speed of SSD:s, to overcome.)
I keep multiple backups of all my data on external hard drives and in the cloud just in case of hard drive failure, fire, theft, etc. That said, I hope HJK can fully recover from this setback.
