Tripredacus

Yes the end-of-sale date for Windows 7 is not so cut and dry. It means OEMs cannot pre-install it anymore except for RMA scenario. Also it cannot be advertised on a website or a flyer for sale. Direct OEMs are still allowed to sell remaining stock if they have COAs. That is for direct version, OEM Facilitated Downgrades cannot be done at all. For OEM System Builder Kit, it is different. I believe that it is still true that it cannot be advertised for pre-install on a new computer, but can be made available for sale as the kit. If you were to call up a company and ask for it, and they have it, then you can buy a computer with it pre-installed. The end-of-sale is just for advertising. There is no "legal" part to it, you can still sell Vista or XP if you had the kits. It depends on the type of company that it is. If it is just a small computer/repair shop that is not a MS shop (as in, they do not operate under contracts) they can still sell a computer with XP if they had the media/COA for it. I think even System Builders may be able to do this, but certainly big OEMs can not. I checked distribution. There is a ton of Win7 Pro SP1 x64 System Builder Kit still available.

I don't think I have ever attempted to boot Vista on GPT before, but I am wary of what those links say. Specifically, I would trust less UEFI 2.3.1 for Vista than 2.0, however UEFI 2.0 usually does not work for desktop OSes in my experience anyways. It is tricky because I have only ever seen UEFI 2.0 on server boards and some (Super Micro) workstation boards, and UEFI 2.3.1 is the typical one to find on desktop and and SoC boards. Another issue I see if that modern UEFI 2.3.1 systems, say Intel 8x series chipset and newer, the WinPE is a problem. WinPE2-4 booting in EFI mode can have real problems, which were only fixed in WinPE5 or WinPE10. Random things, like lock-ups, BSOD, black screen/BCD errors, resources not loading properly, software going very slow, all symptoms of booting old PE on modern UEFI. Even happens on stock builds from the OPK/AIK.

With all these different tools to change Windows 10 look, is it still possible to use gradients on title bars?

There are 3 types of OEM media. 1. OEM System Builder Kit: the software you can buy from a distribution house, comes in a white box with hologram DVD and COA label. 2. OEM OS that the OEM uses to pre-install Windows onto a new computer for sale. This comes from Microsoft, previously "white-label" media, MS does not ship this anymore. 3. OEM Recovery media, which is a Setup that the OEM uses #2 to create. This is made by a Replicator (presses DVDs or makes USB keys) In the physical wise, and bit-wise, #1 and #2 are different. An OEM should not use System Builder media to make a pre-install image because they have access to the appropriate media. I think with Windows 8.1 and 10, it is possible to actually do this, but in the past with XP, Vista and 7, it would not work or activate properly. And of course, bit-wise it is also different, for the previous OS examples. #2 is created by the OEM and is not likely to be identical to the source media. Even from MS perspective, they are different, they have different part numbers and often contain different updates and of course end up being different file sizes. And do not confuse what is technically possible with what is allowed by license. Windows 8.0 OEM System Builder Kit under Personal Use License (like Retail) is allowed to be transferred to different computers. Windows 7, 8.1 or newer OEM System Builder Kit, or OEM pre-installed (COA with OEM's name on it) are not allowed to be transferred. MS makes so many different licensed versions of Windows, it becomes complicated. End users don't have to worry so much, even if they are technically violating the license. But if you are in a company, then your company should always follow the licensing rule because Microsoft does do audits for license compliance among other things.

That's quite simple. Many companies do not want to use or cannot use Windows 10, and Windows 7 is end of sale. So this leaves only distribution (which I'm not sure what the stock levels are at, I can check next week) or the secondary market to obtain Windows 7 licenses. Companies are the big factor here because they have more purchasing power in the desktop/notebook market than average consumers. The only way for a company to purchase a new computer with Windows 7 now is to use Embedded. What ends up happening is that the secondary market dries up quickly. The same happened to XP when it went end of sale and people didn't want to buy Vista.

Personal Use License is only available for Windows 8 OEM System Builder Kit editions. The ones in the pop-up when you visit that page. It is for 8.0 ONLY, it is not available for 8.1 or 10.

Another new Windows 10 version is no such fun for me because it means having to recreate all my images. Each and every version are whole new OSes and no update method for existing images exists. I know it, it is because they want you to use one of their deployment systems where you can just replace the OS image, but that process is not applicable to the work I do.

The actual safest is to not have a network connection, but if you want one, a whitelist only firewall approach is the best. That being whitelist in both directions, out and in, including "standard" ports that firewalls like to leave open like those for email and FTP. Most firewalls do a fine job of stopping stuff from coming in, but fail to safeguard against the biggest threat... the user.

Can you post the MGADiag report?

The SLUI command will show the appropriate phone number to call. MGADiag can be downloaded from here: https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=52012 Run it as Administrator. Click Continue button. After it finishes working, and you can see information, click the Copy button. That will copy the relevant info to the clipboard. You can then paste this into a post here or into a notepad or whatever.

If you want to use the COA you need to do telephone activation. From the Run you can put slui 4 To show the phone activation screen. If you have a smart phone, use this to call the number and then when it prompts to text you, choose that option. It will sent you a link you can use to get the activation codes on a website. If you have further problems, then you will need to run MGADiag on the OS and copy/paste the output to here. I can look at it and tell you what the problem is.

Whoever owned it should have known this to be a possibility. In the future, keep your fake people in the trunk to avoid unwanted attention!

Linux isn't some miracle cure for being safe from a virus. It has viruses because it is a widely used platform, it is just that simple. The reason why Mac was able to go so long under the notion it was virus free was because MacOS had such a small piece of the market share that virus writers didn't develop for the platform. I don't have antivirus on a phone, so I can't say if they are "break-fix" products or not.

Yes, game servers for Steam games, outside of large publishers, will use VAC or PunkBuster. They make it so if you join the game, you need to have the appropriate version of that on the client side running. For example, it was a PunkBuster issue I ran into recently that wouldn't let me play COD4:MW online. I have the newest PunkBuster for another game, but it did not cross-over to COD4, so it wouldn't let me connect. This was a new install, actually parts of the COD4 installer from Steam did show an HTTP 404 error, so something was missing. So you could still play on unprotected servers, but you are more likely to run into people using bots, unless it is an actively maintained clan server. And then in that case, you may not be allowed to play if you are not known to them, which is another thing I've also seen.

Those Steam servers are likely using VAC, especially for Valve games.

The use of stream ripping software is not permitted on Spotify. https://www.spotify.com/us/legal/end-user-agreement/#s8 Closing topic.

Thanks to @dencorso I found this website and they have a Bus Mouse board! http://www.recycledgoods.com/microsoft-inport-bus-mouse-controller-900-255-018-rev-e.html

Yes first idea is you just made a data disc instead of a video DVD. Has happened to many others when you go to burn an ISO and instead of having a disc image, you have a disc with a disc image on it as a file. The second is that some players may not like certain types of discs. It was for a long time that DVD-R were best to use for video and DVD+R were best for data. Some players don't care about the type of disc but some do.

Strangely, there seems to only be 1 seller that has an IDE model on all of Ebay, this one from Germany: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/272378917991 Although, finding them on Ebay seems difficult in itself. I found this one by way of Amazon but not from searching ebay. http://www.ebay.com/itm/252384881340 Wikipedia says that SuperDisk was popular in Australia, enough that the LS-240 was released over there, but none of those can be found on Ebay either. If there is a popular classified site for Australia outside of Ebay, that would be a place to look also.

I will disagree here. The best solution is to not to the dumb thing that allowed a virus onto your computer in the first place.

I typically have it set up so that videos do not work (or I don't try to make them work) using Firefox/PM and prefer to use Chrome for watching videos. DESPITE the issue of the sound being better while watching a Flash video in PM vs Chrome for whatever that reason is. So in Chrome I use both the adblock and adblock plus extensions. They both are not 100% themselves, and one even has "Exceptions" where an advertiser can pay to have something not blocked. But both running together seem to handle anything in a video. It is very rare (it has happened, but I cannot think of which site it was) where a video would not play because the ad was blocked. I think there are some sites that will disable specific parts of their site from loading (including perhaps the video loader) if an adblocker is detected... One site I know that does that particularly is http://nexusmods.com .

There is no problem with the name. The filename is not referenced within the XML or Index at all. So any name is fine, then if you want to use it (easily) with Windows Setup, you just rename it to install.wim, or you can use an XML to instruct setup that the wim file name is different or where it is located.

NoScript doesn't help in all cases. You can still come across sites that go into loading loops and slow everything down. I see it most often on Ebay for some reason. Another issue with the modern web is I've been seeing the return of memory leaks. Spending any long period of time on Facebook or Imgur will cause your computer to lock up and open programs to crash.

Are you using the binary appropirate for your WinPE architecture? I haven't seen that message before.

I use NirSoft's DevManView to get a Device Manager on WinPE: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/device_manager_view.html