Tommy

I helped out the cause and installed Windows XP on my laptop. I was using CentOS on it and I ended up messing up Samba so...here I am now on Windows XP. ;)

Oh I know, right! In fact I was saying that myself, Spectrum is way overused in a lot of things and the real question is, why? What is so special about the word Spectrum?

Yep, just be careful because if it sounds too good to be true, most likely it is. There's no way a reputable company would sell Windows 7 keys for $5-$10, not even this late in its life. Heck, even Windows Server products that are out of date run a pretty penny on eBay. I'd say even for Windows 7 Home Premium, a fair price would be about $39.99 for a key only.

I'm much more open to trying out Edge than I am switching to Windows 10. At work we use Windows 7 and because of our outdated web platform, we're FORCED to use IE11 and I hate it. I'd much rather use Firefox myself but compatibility issues prevent this from happening. I've given Windows 10 a few chances and I will not use it on any of my machines and when "doomsday" arrives, I'll just continue using my Windows 2000 and if need be, I'll switch over to Linux as a secondary operating system. I'm still trying to learn it but it's still a big curve for a power user like me. If I'm forced to use Windows 10 at work, then obviously I have no choice, but it has no place in my home. But more on the topic note, I am more open to trying out Edge a bit more. Chromium isn't a bad platform in my opinion although again, I'd rather use Firefox except I'm not that fond of the Quantum platform (isn't Quantum another one of those overused words, like Spectrum?) So on this I'm keeping an open mind, not saying I'd ever switch over to it but I'll at least give Edge a test run.

That's not 100% true. There are many legitimate reasons why someone may need an actual ISO image. It could be a reinstallation or that you lost the original product media. The real problem falls into either: 1. Asking for a cracked version that defeats the need for a product key and/or activation. 2. Providing a product key on the board with the ISO installation media that belongs to you and only you, or another organization that has a special license. Windows 7 works a bit differently than Windows XP VLKs where Windows XP didn't require activation if you had a special VL edition with an approperiate key. Windows 7 on the other hand requires activation even with a VLK and requires activation generally through a KMS server, on or off site. 3. The ISO comes from any other source other than Microsoft's official website/download source. Any other source can cause issues of integrity of the ISO file, or can have the issue of #1 where it could be a cracked version and when we advertise that, we get into trouble. We're not the pirate bay and never will be. If it happens to be a product key issue, then you'd have to contact Microsoft themselves for a solution because we're not allowed to provide any license keys on the forum whatsoever. That's what seriously violates rule 1a-d.

Old version is also a bit friendly with older IE versions so if you have a vanilla version of say Windows 98 or Me, it's more likely to download stuff from it as it is. That is unless they changed it in the past half year.

Makes you miss the days of Windows 2000, before all this activation nonsense. Perhaps product activation is a bit irrelevant these days. It doesn't really stop piracy but instead just causes more headaches for users with valid licenses. The fact that it sounds as though it continuously phones home regardless of activation status is another issue in itself. Once a product is activated, it should no longer have to communicate with the activation server unless hardware drastically changes or you reinstall Windows in which you should be able to backup your activation status by a generated hash from Windows itself by hardware status, BIOS strings, etc. That way you can't port it to other computers but still easily be able to reinstall and reinstate your activation without having to reconnect to the server and possibly having issues doing so. Eh, pipe dreams. Then again, I'm sure someone would devise some sort of activation crack to bypass activation via a saved file for restoration so Microsoft still wouldn't be ahead of the piracy game. Maybe there isn't an easier answer for Microsoft to cut down on piracy but also make it easier for users not to run into future issues like this. Then again, I wonder how much the company is losing via paying overtime having employees fix the activation issue.

Yep, it's all taken care of. cc333 offered their apology and took the situation in stride. It's not easy reprimanding someone but it's that nasty thing that needs to be done sometimes. Even I was reprimanded on other forums when I was a youngster to the point I was almost temporarily banned. So I appreciate the understanding and if anyone else has anything to add to this thread's actual purpose, have at it!

Please do not discuss politics here, it's strictly against forum rules and has nothing to do with the topic at hand. 2.b Topics devoted to political or religious debate, unless technology related, are prohibited. MSFN is a technology forum and both political and religious debates have caused many problems and distractions in the past. Political or religious links in signatures or polite, courteous comments in non-political or non-religious topics are allowed, but we cannot allow any topics in which the sole purpose is to debate political or religious issues. Next comment out of line and I'm locking this thread so please keep it clean. Thanks.

Welcome to MSFN! We're happy to have you here! :)

Well, I guess I could be considered one of the green men. Although we also have red men that can come out and do even more than us green men can do.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Black-15-6-15-f233wm-Laptop-PC-with-Intel-Celeron-N3050-Processor-4GB-Memory-500GB-Hard-Drive-and-Windows-10-Home/46429969 That's what it is! Did someone change the title of this or did I say 1233 because all along I have been searching f233 and not 1233. Been quite a long week...

I saw that a few said a BIOS update and of course I'm generally not too concerned with doing that but since it's not my machine, I'd like to make sure that I exhaust other possibilities before I explore actually updating the BIOS. Then again, it's a lot less dangerous to do it these days than it was 20 years ago. As for some of the other chat up above, I haven't tried anything special as far as installation goes except for enabling legacy mode. I know that there's a non-changable entry that says something to the effect of "loaded OS" and it says Win10 which is how it came from the factory obviously. (Heh, I remember when I wanted to downgrade a Windows XP machine from HP to Windows 98, which I did and it was much easier than doing this!) I had a look at a few videos but some of them I didn't bother listening too much into only because they had a decent amount of downvotes and sometimes I don't always have the time to sit there and listen carefully before I have company so to speak. But when I get the chance, I'm going to check out all these links and see what I can dig up. I've never been one to just give up so I'd like to explore other options to make this work.

So I'm working on my girlfriend's laptop. I installed an SSD in it because it came with a wimpy 5400rpm hard drive. It came preinstalled with Windows 10 and we'd like to install Windows 7 on it. We're not even concerned with the drivers at the moment as it seems some people have had success in getting stuff to work but when I go to load setup, I get an error saying the BIOS isn't fully ACPI compatible. We did install Kubuntu on it for the time being and it works quite well but I'm really wondering what is going on with this. I'm not very familiar with UEFI setup programs but I did set it to legacy support which it says for Windows XP, Vista, and 7. I tried Windows XP and it gave me the same results. The setup program is so stripped down though that there isn't a whole lot to change. Anyone else try doing this on anything similar and at least got Windows to install?

I'd recommend just grabbing one of the recent HF_SLIP packages from tomasz86's website and making an ISO of it and then just installing blackwingcat's patches over it after reinstallation, that's how I do it when I reinstall Windows 2000. It's not that much of a process afterwards. But there seems to be a bug unless it was fixed in some of the recent Extended Core releases so if you use dual monitors, it will not function and you'll only be able to utilize one monitor, I think the problem starts with v16a?