I'll be buying a new computer...

[zedd151]

Magnus, yes "hot-swapping" USB drives may cause data corruption. I learnt that years ago. USB drives are a little more robust these days, but if it is still being written to when unplugged, whatever it was writing at the time will be corrupt.
In around 2006 or so I unplugged a USB flash drive at an improper time. It rendered that flash drive unusable. It could not be reformatted either. "Unknown device" or some such error was given in that instance. It was relatively inexpensive thankfully, and most of the data was also stored elsewhere, so not a huge loss either way.

[daydreamer]

Hot swapping with smartphone /tablet can cause more damage,because its similar to destroy c: drive on PC when internal SD card is wrecked
Of course cloud based or internet used to transfer might be safer
Physical remove tiny micro SD card and place in USB stick converter might be safer for internal drive,but I hate to use my strong hands to fiddle with tiny micro SD removing/ reinstalling with risk of break things

External drives cheap these days and I already own many external drives ,so keep one USB stick connected at all times adding aviable HD space,there are now tiny USB sticks that only extends few millimetres from USB port

[zedd151]

Don't even get me started on those tiny micro SD cards. While they might be perfect solutions for digital cameras due to their size, they have a huge drawback - their tiny physical size.

I once had a 64 GB micro SD card that I used for additional storage for a netbook (mini laptop) that I had purchased at a very good price. The netbook only had a 32 GB hard drive which was only big enough to contain the Windows 10 operating system. I had the micro SD card already, and the netbook conveniently had a port for it.

I had 50 GB worth of code, installers, programming related tools, some other miscellany... I had discovered it was missing one day, and lost forever.

I think the vacuum cleaner had eaten it, but still never found any trace of it.

Many of the installers are no longer available, and some I do not even remember the names of. A big tragedy back then.

[zedd151]

Xmas time is coming soon...    

I have on order a refurbished computer...

Dell Optiplex 7050 SFF Desktop PC
Intel i7-7700 4-Cores 3.60GHz
32GB DDR4 Ram
1TB SSD drive
Windows 10 Professional

at a very reasonable price... as a replacement for my aging desktop(s).

While it is not brand new, its gotta be better than what I have now. It has a 4 core i7-7700, Plenty of RAM, and a huge hard drive.
I have already checked to see if drivers are available for Windows 7 on it. YES (for both 32  bit, and 64 bit Windows 7)!!! A huge plus in its favor.   

[daydreamer]

Looks like a amazing computer zedd 
But it's overkill for asm 
But not overkill for a Windows gui program without hardware accelerated graphics
Better possibilities multitasking one program doing a task while you do other things with 4 cores

[zedd151]

Looks like a amazing computer zedd 
But it's overkill for asm 
But not overkill for a Windows gui program without hardware accelerated graphics
Better possibilities multitasking one program doing a task while you do other things with 4 cores

I'll just have to wait until it gets here, to find out how it performs "in the real world". Should be arriving here by 11th of December.   

[zedd151]

The new desktop computer arrived today. 
I ran a few tests on it, it is noticeably faster than all of my previous desktop computers. I used a few programs in which I already know the fastest timings on my old desktop PC. Under 700 ms., where the old computer ran in 1200 ms. for one particular program (generating a series of 1000 sudoku puzzles). I also ran one test in the Lab. here.

It came with Windows 10 Pro on it, and I am letting it install the first batch of updates.    I had made a backup of the hard drive before even firing it up for the first time.

I plan on installing Windows 7 on it later tonite. At first, it will be on another partition, dual booting with Windows 10 on another partition. If it all goes well, I will ditch Windows 10 altogether.

Only one thing I don't like about the new computer. It said it had Wifi, but then it came with a USB Wifi thingy. Not exactly what I would want, but it does work.     I'll get a real Wifi card one day.

[NoCforMe]

Only one thing I don't like about the new computer. It said it had Wifi, but then it came with a USB Wifi thingy. Not exactly what I would want, but it does work.    I'll get a real Wifi card one day.

I have a li'l USB wifi adapter that I never really used (I don't have any use for WiFi around here, as the one computer that I could use it with, an old Macbook that I use to watch movies on pirate sites on, has a busted wifi adapter). But when I did use it it worked every bit as well as a "real" wifi adapter. Nothing magic about WiFi that can't be achieved by a really tiny USB dongle.

[zedd151]

I did successfully install Windows 7 on it. But lo and behold, the stupid USB wifi adapter does not work with Windows 7, else I am missing a USB related driver. At any rate, since Windows 7 cannot connect to the internet, I cannot get the missing drivers for it. 

So, ok. I thought I'd boot back into Windows 10, and remove the useless Windows 7 partition. Butt... Now I cannot boot into Windows 10. Dammit. Now I'll have to pull the hard drive and reinstall the backup I made earlier (of Windows 10), and hopefully it will work. The boot partition though, I did not backup. 

I have been down this road before.... I'll see you guys in a few days.    just kidding, it should be back up and running some time this evening. I just have to check whether I changed any other bios settings other than safeboot. I don't remember offhand... I didn't make a list of changes. 

Edit:  I have a quick thought, I'll create a USB installer and try to repair the Windows 10 installation that way. Else, do a long install, the hard way.   

[zedd151]

It only took a couple of minutes, and I have windows 10 up and running again.    'fubar' is my middle name.
It will take me a couple days though, until I have it all set up the way I like it. My favorite programs, personalized settings, etc.

Later:
Guess what, I installed the backup that I made for my laptop -  on the partition (on the desktop pc) that I had the unusable Windows 7 on. Windows 10 Home Edition, I installed the drivers from the original Windows 10 professional and it works fine. 

As an added bonus, it is already activated by a digital license. I was worried that I would have to pay for a key, but apparently, the desktop is already licensed for both pro edition and home edition. 

[greenozon]

Intel suxx
buy AMD EPYC 192 core beast!

https://youtu.be/S-NbCPEgP1A

[jj2007]

I loved Windows 7, but after a year with Win10 I'm quite satisfied

[zedd151]

Intel suxx
buy AMD EPYC 192 core beast!

https://youtu.be/S-NbCPEgP1A

192 cores, are you nuts? Have you ever even had the opportunity to use all of them? 

I loved Windows 7, but after a year with Win10 I'm quite satisfied

On my laptop, I think I have Windows 10 tamed. No more collecting 'telemetry' and phoning home with it, Have almost everything excluded from Defenders scanning and snooping, and have not seen much unwanted behavior, as opposed to the way it was 'out of the box'. I have also removed all of the 'Metro Apps' crapware - for all intents and purposes. Still traces of it, but none of it runs.
I would rather use Windows 7, but if I can't get drivers for more recent hardware, I'll have to learn to live with Windows 10.

Windows 11 is a non-starter for me though. I tried it and didn't like it - so I installed Windows 10 on it and tweaked it into submission. 
My new laptop and this newer refurbished desktop wil probably be the last two computers I will ever own (barring any catastrophic failures), so I will try to make the most out of them. I do get updates every now and again, but both the laptop and desktop no longer nag to upgrade to 11.

Any recommendations on a program to test the i7's capabilities?

I will still try to get Windows 7 up and running on the desktop though. But I will use a second hard drive next time I attempt it. I will have to go to the mfrs site to try to locate drivers for it first though (I had read somewhere that this computer is compatible with Windows 7 - but some missing drivers are needed for it to work properly). The saga continues... 

[daydreamer]

@stewart
192 cores cpu sound its for a big online store to easily handle 192 customers simultanously
curious how many cores this server is on?
now Zedd also has 4 core cpu,like my latest but I wanted to try SIMT coding on my cpu,but no ideas howto use 4 cores for,anyone suggest some SIMT coding for 4 cores?

[NoCforMe]

So it's good to know that Windoze 10 is a decent fallback in case Win7 isn't possible.
Hopefully I'll never have to find out.
Windows 7 foreva!

Heh; @zedd, maybe you should package up your de-Micro$ofted version of 10 and make it available to others who don't want to go through all the gyrations you did to cleanse it of all that filth. Like post a .iso image of it somewhere. (Of course you'd have to remove any PII--personally identifiable info--from it.)