Windows 7 question

Mark K5XH · February 2018

I posted an earlier post about having a problem installing the software for my new 6600. The problem was that I had abandoned W10 and put a new drive with a copy of W7 on the computer without realizing the consequences. The DAX drivers would not install. A quick search of the Community revealed the problem to be that W7 needed to be brought up to date. I have tried the steps suggested by Tim and others but the updates referencing SP1 all fail. Earlier I had asked if I bought a new copy of W7 Pro 64 SP1 would that solve the problem and the answer was NO. And I understand that it would not until it was updated to current levels.

My question is: If I do install a new W7 Pro SP1 will MS push all the updates I need in some timely manner? Or do I have to manually install them?

How will I know when it is safe to install the Flex software?

Sorry for the follow up questions – not really an IT guy.

Mark K5XH

Neal_K3NC · February 2018

With WIn7, MS doesn't 'push' updates like it does under Win10, it will let you know there are updates and you can choose to apply them. The initiative is on you, not Microsoft.

73
Neal

Tim - W4TME · February 2018

I am going to make a comment here that is probably not going to be popular with some, but I feel it needs to be said. Windows 7 has not had mainstream support for 3 years now and it will be unsupported in 2 years. FlexRadio only supports our software products running on supported operating systems, so for long-term support, Windows 10 is your only viable option. I know, there are issues with Win10, upgrades break things, ya-da-ya-da-ya-da, but resistance is futile, so you might as well take the plunge and get assimilated sooner than later.

Burch - K4QXX · February 2018

I believe Windows 7 support ends in January of 2020. I work in IT and Windows 10 causes me all sorts of problems at work but we have pretty much 90% of our machines now running Windows 10. Nothing I can do about it and like Tim says, "Resistance is futile".

Burch
K4QXX

N4UW- Luther · February 2018

Here is a link to an article about downloading and installing a Windows 7 "convenience" roll-up that will speed up the manual updating process. There have been quite a few additional Win 7 updates issued since then, so you will need to continue to check for updates even after installing the roll-up.
Whenever I install Win 7, I always set the update option to manual and keep checking/installing until there are none left. If your disk is old, the updater itself will need updating before any additional updates will appear.

https://www.howtogeek.com/255435/how-to-update-windows-7-all-at-once-with-microsofts-convenience-rol...

Hope this helps...

73
Luther
N4UW

KY6LA_Howard · February 2018

Life is too short to be debugging W10 issues

I plan to hang on to W7 (on my 9 computers in the house) until at least Jan 1, 2020 when official support end....

Maybe by 2020, Flex and MS will work out their issues and produce a stable platform that do not **** each other with every minor update

IIRC.. the commercial pressure to support WXP kept MS Supporting it years after it was officially supposed to be dead. - Since a significant number of commercial shops are still on W7, I suspect that 2020 death will slip.

Neal_K3NC · February 2018

I did a new system for a customer last month with Win7 and I swear it flew! I had not noticed a speed advantage to WIn7 over win10 but I certainly did with this system. The caveat here is that any hardware released in the last year or so will register as 'unsupported' by Win7 and you will get this annoying dialog box every 15 minutes or so (or so it seemed) saying that we had unsupported hardware and get upgrade to Win10. I had to find the various patches that cause this and uninstall them but I suspect that it will be a continual battle to keep this from happening.

Get good antivirus and malware protection (and ransomware protection) if you go down this path.

Greg N8GD · February 2018

If you do upgrade to Windows 10, make sure you get the "Pro" version - it has several features that make it worthwhile.

Most Windows 10 users do not know that updates for new program features can be delayed. This is easily found in the new "Fall Creators Update," Version 1709 (it was available earlier under the Group Profile Editor, but you needed the Pro version for access to that). Under "Windows Update," "Advanced options," there is a section entitled "Choose when updates are installed." A critical setting there can be set to "Semi-Annual Channel (Targeted)" which causes feature updates to be installed sooner, for typical users (every 6 months), while "Semi-Annual Channel" is for business users and schedules feature updates to be stretched out to a year or more (businesses don't like constant/quick changes). There is also a setting called "Pause Updates" that can be turned on to push all updates out 35 days by default when enabled. This can be easily changed to a greater value by editing the registry to pause updates for a year or more (to as much as 2.5 billion days!). I use these features to eliminate disruptions for accounting firms that cannot have Windows 10 updating during tax season.

There are a lot of ways to eliminate many of the "disliked" features of Windows 10, including one of my favorites, a program that gets rid of the tiles menu system under the "Start Button" and makes everything like it was in Windows 7 with a menu listing and a separate page for program listings.

Also, one of the things many users here have mentioned is to make sure CAT and DAX are disabled (closed) whenever you do Windows 10 updates. Flex has never stated that this is a necessity, but my experience, as well as that of other SSDR users is that if CAT and DAX aren't running, updates are always trouble free as far as corruption to those programs goes. Personally, I never have CAT or DAX run at Windows startup - only when I start SmartSDR (via a batch/script file I run).

As much as you may dislike Windows 10, it will go the way of Window XP, and we know that it isn't supported any longer. Tim is right - you need to bite the bullet and move to 10 (the sooner, the better), because one of these days Flex won't allow SmartSDR to be installed on such an "old" operating system as Windows 7!

Windows 7 question

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