BitDefender remorse

[Slarti]

Why do you mess about with strange antivirus programmes then? Surely just accept W10 and its security like millions of others?

Because there are still more of us on Win7 than Win10?

And after 2 recent experiences of it, I still don't want it.

Later in the year I'm going to have to experiment with Linux, as soon as I am no longer tied to Micro$oft by work.

Slarti

[Howard]

Why do you mess about with strange antivirus programmes then? Surely just accept W10 and its security like millions of others?

Because there are still more of us on Win7 than Win10?

And after 2 recent experiences of it, I still don't want it.

Later in the year I'm going to have to experiment with Linux, as soon as I am no longer tied to Micro$oft by work.

Slarti

I don't think you are right. W10 users now outnumber W7 users 47% to 43%, see below:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... minds.html

Windows software powers 86% of the world's machines and Linux 2.5%, so you will be joining a select minority if you go there.

As someone who has used Windows 7,8 and 10 on the same machine without any problems over the last eight years or so, I guess if one just wants an easy, trouble-free life one uses Windows but if you like dabbling with technology you might prefer something a bit more fiddly.

regards

Howard

[Infrasonic]

Windows software powers 86% of the world's machines and Linux 2.5%, so you will be joining a select minority if you go there.

On desktop true, but if you added in all the Android phones (most popular gross numbers OS by far) and web servers (again the majority now) then the Linux user stats would be drastically different (depending on how loose you want to be with your definition of 'Linux' and 'users').

I use Linux Mint on a VM (+ dual boot option), I like it, but my daily drivers are still W10 with an Android phone, which is a great combination for me.
It's interesting how flexible Microsoft have become towards Linux in the past few years, a 180 from the Ballmer days, bending over backwards to accommodate developers no doubt lest they lose ground on the OS front?...

It isn't there yet for the mainstream user on desktop but I wouldn't bet against Linux picking up more and more credibility there going forward.
If MS move to the subscription SaaS model across the board I'm ready to switch...

[Slarti]

Why do you mess about with strange antivirus programmes then? Surely just accept W10 and its security like millions of others?

Because there are still more of us on Win7 than Win10?

And after 2 recent experiences of it, I still don't want it.

Later in the year I'm going to have to experiment with Linux, as soon as I am no longer tied to Micro$oft by work.

Slarti

I don't think you are right. W10 users now outnumber W7 users 47% to 43%, see below:

https://www.computerworld.com/article/3 ... minds.html

Windows software powers 86% of the world's machines and Linux 2.5%, so you will be joining a select minority if you go there.

As someone who has used Windows 7,8 and 10 on the same machine without any problems over the last eight years or so, I guess if one just wants an easy, trouble-free life one uses Windows but if you like dabbling with technology you might prefer something a bit more fiddly.

regards

Howard

Ah, the last figures I'd seen for useage were from early January. Plus I don't see how they can be correct as many places I used to go had numbers of machines not connected to the internet where upgrades had never happened and never would, because what they were controlling only worked with that version of the software.

As for the easy, trouble free, life, having spend quite a lot of time, with help from here, recovering a Win10 machine stuck in a boot loop and then a couple of days trying to get mission critical software to keep working on a Win10 machine ...

Plus, the amount of work you need to do on the router firewall to keep Win10 from calling home is not fun.

Slarti

[ReformedCharacter]

Ah, the last figures I'd seen for useage were from early January. Plus I don't see how they can be correct as many places I used to go had numbers of machines not connected to the internet where upgrades had never happened and never would, because what they were controlling only worked with that version of the software.

As for the easy, trouble free, life, having spend quite a lot of time, with help from here, recovering a Win10 machine stuck in a boot loop and then a couple of days trying to get mission critical software to keep working on a Win10 machine ...

Plus, the amount of work you need to do on the router firewall to keep Win10 from calling home is not fun.

Slarti

I've used MS operating systems since DOS 3.x and like Win 7 a lot. But I won't be going any further down the Windows road for two reasons. Firstly, it has become unnecessarily bloated and complicated. Secondly, the constant updates and so forth would drive me nuts.

I've used Debian for the last year or so and really like it although I do use Win 7 via VirtualBox when I need to run MS software. I get update notifications on Debian from time to time and do them when I choose to do them. Then it's just a matter of a reboot and install taking maybe 90 seconds from start to finish. Debian has been completely reliable for me, it just works as it supposed to.

RC

[Breelander]

It did die, seven years ago. I use Norton Ghost and an external HDD as backup, run only for weekly backup then switched off, but transferring to the new PC was a right pain.

I used to use Norton Ghost and liked it, but it's getting a bit long in the tooth now. More recently (in preparation for the W10 free upgrade in 2015) I've use the built-in Windows system imaging (temperamental and unreliable, at best). MS have now deprecated their own system imaging and recommend you use something (anything) else.

System Image Backup (SIB) Solution
We recommend that users use full-disk backup solutions from other vendors.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-gb/hel ... reators-up

Macrium Free is full-featured, actively developed, well supported and (for me, at least) 100% reliable. One of the paid-for features is 'redeploy to dissimilar hardware', but IME the free version is quite good at restoring to another machine. The restore media includes tools to repair Windows boot problems, sometimes encountered after restoring to a dissimilar machine.

The Pentium is a G630, so middling....

With a CPU Mark of 2373 compared to the 1715 for the PC I'm currently using to reply to you, you should be fine - more than fine if you add some more RAM.

[88V8]

At last a reply of sorts from BitDefender to the email I sent on the 11th. They don't tell me why I can't switch on the Protection Shield, nor whether I can control the update times, instead they suggest unloading and reinstalling. Helpfully, they send me a link to the uninstall programme.
So I have.

And reinstalled MSE and Malwarebytes. Goodbye BitDefender.

As to why I installed BitDefender in the first place... Which Computer regularly rate it in the high 70%s, against MSE in the 50%s. They also give MWB poor ratings.

Never mind, I don't want this bloatware on my computer, and MSE + MWB seem to work for me.

V8

[Breelander]

S'cuse my denseness, but what exactly is a 'system image'?

A system image is a copy of the partition(s) on your hard drive. It contains all the sectors of each partition that are in use and contain data. Should your hard drive die, then you could replace it with a new one, restore the system image to the drive, and it will be an exact replica of the drive as it stood when you made the system image. You will have your PC back up and running as it was before, complete with all your files and installed software.

The usual practice is to make the system image onto an external HDD. Only the used sectors are copied to the image, and because compression is used the image is generally about 60-70% of the total used space on the partitions being imaged.

The imaging software can make a bootable recovery usb that is used to restore an image to the hard drive. The imaging software I use is called Macrium Reflect Free.

So if I bought a brand new machine and installed a system image from and older pc, the new one would be the same (but better)

You could, but there will be a mismatch in the installed drivers because of the hardware differences between the two machines. Windows 10 is usually quite good at sorting out new drivers though when it finds itself running on new hardware.

Activation of Windows may be a problem too. For Windows 10, as long as the new machine has the same edition of W10 installed as is in the image (Home or Pro) and has been run, configured for use and says it is activated with a digital licence, then the image should be activated when it is put on the new machine. I cannot say how a Windows 8 or 7 image may react. An additional problem with Windows 7 is that it cannot run on the latest hardware and/or processors.

I'd recommend, if you're buying a new machine, to use the Windows it comes with. Install any software you may need and copy your user files over to the new machine.

[88V8]

The imaging software can make a bootable recovery usb .

Is that, ummm, a jolly big memory stick?

V8

[Breelander]

The imaging software can make a bootable recovery usb .

Is that, ummm, a jolly big memory stick?

V8

The bootable recovery usb just contains the software needed to restore an image. For Macrium this is less than 1GB, so virtually any usb stick will do. Once booted from the recovery media you can restore an image from an external usb HDD.