That’s my second Douglas Adams refrence I’ve used on my site, can you find the other one?
With January 2020 now coming to an end, Microsoft has ceased support for Windows 7… well, kind of. There have been some very serious vunrabilities that Microsoft had to patch and send out for XP, 7, 8.1 and 10, so if you haven’t run an update recently, GO DO IT RIGHT NOW! Yes, even though we have passed the cut off date for Windows 7 support, the existing patches are still available, they just won’t be releasing any new patches (we’ll see about that).
If you are running Windows 7 and want to update your pc click the [Start] button on the bottom left of your desktop, type “Windows Update” and click on the first result.
NOTE: DON’T click on “Windows Update Anytime” unless you want to be automatically upgraded to Windows 10. This will also only work if you have a valid/licenced copy of Windows 7 or 8.1.
Once you’ve clicked “Windows Update”, run through the update wizard and restart your computer. If it’s been a while since your last update, you may need to repeat this process one or two times until it Windows states it’s “Up to date” or something similar.
This is going to be the main driving force behind why people need to move on from Windows 7 (Perhaps Linux? See past blogs :)), due to the program being at its end of life and it no longer being actively supported by Microsoft, it will inherently become more susceptible to attacks. But what does that actually mean? Well Windows 7 has millions of lines of code (in its basic form, 1’s and 0’s) and as nothing is perfect, there can be some defects or vulnerabilities that aren’t picked up. Usually over the lifetime of a program or operating system, these errors get reported by users or found by ‘pen testers’ (penetration testers probe programs and networks to find problems to get fixed) and they are ‘patched out’ (fix the errors in the code with small updates.)
Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, welcome back from restarting your computer a few times. If you’re already running Windows 10, then it should run automaticly (and probably restart when you least expect it or when it’s most inconvenient) but that’s not for me as I’m still on Windows 7 for my home computer, “gasp!” Yep, I’m living on the edge, a real risk taker, the IT equivalent of a ‘bad boy.’
As mentioned in previous blogs, I don’t plan on moving to Windows 10 but rather intend on moving to and using Linux as much as I can. But unfortunately I’ve not been able to buy the new computer hardware that I was hoping to have by now to make the transition, so I’ve got some thinking and decisions to make. Not to bore you with the details, the result of my musing is that I’m going to dual boot Windows 7 and a (as yet to be named) distro of Linux. I’d like to at least install it on a new HDD (Hard Disk Drive) but I don’t have that option either.
I’ve got enough space on my current HDD to partition it (separate space on one HDD to make them seem like two or more seperate drives), so here’s what I’m planning to do;
- Clear up some space by moving some stuff to my external HDD
- Make sure that my important documents are backed up
- Run EaseUS Partition Master (a very good freemium [free with a premium version] program for partitioning HDDs)
- Create a new partition for Linux
- Decide which distro of Linux I want to run
- Use the same steps in my previous blog post to install it on new partition
Once all that is done, which will definitely need to be a video, I’ll be able to dual-boot. This means that when I turn my computer on, and as it starts to load, it will ask me which OS I want to boot to. The idea behind the dual boot method is to have a means to try out Linux and see what I can get working, if I hit a roadblock I can still revert back to Windows 7, effectively dipping my toes into the world of Linux. I feel like I need to go back to my checklist and see what I may need to add to it. Now that I’ve been running Linux on my Laptop for a short while, I feel that I’ve got some new ideas of things I will need.
That’s all for now, I want to keep these blog posts shorter so they’re not as daunting for me and so I can get them out more regularly.
Pour one out for Windows 7, but not near your computer of course. We will miss you, but we are moving onto greener pastures. On wards to Linux!
Until next time, never stop learning.
Warm Regards,
Paul
HobStar Computer Solutions 