• Hey Guest!
    British Car Forum has been supporting enthusiasts for over 25 years by providing a great place to share our love for British cars. You can support our efforts by upgrading your membership for less than the dues of most car clubs. There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Upgraded members don't see this banner, nor will you see the Google ads that appear on the site.)
Tips
Tips

8.1 Anyone?

Share this page

PAUL161

PAUL161

Great Pumpkin
Silver
Country flag
Offline
Anyone going for the 8.1 upgrade? Not me! I already have the W-7 menu plus some other past features that was eliminated. Everything in my system now works great. Took a lot of tweaking to get it there, plus removing some 8 added features I had no use for. No sense of fixing something that isn't broken. PJ
 
Paul - I'm sticking with Fedora Linux. Might be moving our library desktops to Win7 soon (from XP). Even though I like W8, I don't see any advantage, especially with the learning curve for our part-time volunteer staff using only one or two database apps (ResourceMate).

Great cartoon. I'd caption it "Hit any key to continue"

4118967269_a46aff35e3_d.jpg


Tom
 
I WANT to go back to windows 7. I hate 8. evertime you brush you fingers across the mouse pad, you change screens. I really don't see anything that is a positive over 7.

Jerry
 
Jerry said:
I WANT to go back to windows 7. I hate 8. evertime you brush you fingers across the mouse pad, you change screens. I really don't see anything that is a positive over 7.

Jerry
Click to expand...

Jerry, Funny, I don't have that problem, but then again I had numerous problems before I tweaked everything. Took awhile and with help from some of the much more knowledgeable folks on this forum I finally got everything in order. You can get the W-7 menu in a download and it works very well. Your situation on the mouse pad might be a setting in your system, but others would have more knowledge than me. PJ
 
You need to download the full Synaptics driver package to eliminate the swipe issue, Jerry. Better is a wireless mouse.
I looked into 8.1, more of the same from MS, I have Start8, normal desktop, green XP start button....thread them.
Not going to do it. In fact, first thing I did when I got this laptop was to disable all updates. I figure if my old XP boxes can run until the hard drives wear out without MS invading my system, it will work with Gates8.
 
I don't have 8 at all. I have heard though that 8.1 gives you the option of booting to a traditional desktop.
 
My 8 boots to the traditional desktop. The version of the W-7 start menu I installed gave me a choice of start menus, XP and W7, also in 32 or 64 bit. During boot, the W-8 desktop appears for about 3 seconds, then goes to the traditional desktop of your choice with the start menu. Arrow to the right side of the screen to get the W-8 desktop. Works great!
 
Hi guys, anybody have any ideas how I can get an old DOS operating program back on one of my computors? Thanks tom
 
Tom - you might want to start a new topic. Your question could get "involved".

When you start the new topic, include things like what computer (make/model), what operating system (Apple OS, Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux, etc.), and what DOS program you want to run.

Thanks.
Tom
 
sabot said:
Hi guys, anybody have any ideas how I can get an old DOS operating program back on one of my computors? Thanks tom
Click to expand...

Format the hard drive then install DOS on it. From that point you can upgrade to a later version if you don't already have it. Biggest problem anymore is finding a DOS setup program. I used DOS for years, but would never go back to it! I even have a complete set of 5 1/2" floppies and the drive that came with one of my old computers with a Microsoft "UPGRADE"! Why do you want DOS out front? Just to play with? Later versions of Windows don't like it. If you want to learn C++ or other writing programs, you can get those to run as an APP to Windows, an easier route to take I think. JMHO. PJ
 
Recently crammed CentOS 6 on an old IBM T-40 Thinkpad, bit of a tweak to get the WiFi chipset to play nice with the kernel but now it runs so well I'll use it (with a wireless mouse) "in the wild". No RAM pig MS O/S runs as quickly on that machine.
 
I'm wondering if DOS would even recognize modern hardware. SATA drives and USB might confuse it unless someone wrote drivers. Those interfaces didn't exist when DOS was current.
 
I have an old HP laptop that is DOS based. The thing weighs a ton! And to think I thought it was unique in it's light weight when I bought it years ago. It will not recognise hardly any modern software. I got an old version of W-95 and MS Works to work in it and it excepts JPG files, so I keep it for the shop with most all my MG stuff and photos in it. The batterys totally dead and I have to plug it in when I use it, but it works fine that way. Not paying 90 bucks for a battery for it just to use it once in a while as a referance tool. Don't know why I keep it as some basic computers now are so cheap, it really makes no sense. PJ
 
Paul - if you keep important photos, etc., on that laptop, you might really want to make backup copies on another device.

On a different tack, I have a 1980s vintage RadioShack Tandy 102. I use it nearly every week at the air museum - inventories, research up in the stacks, etc. No hinged drive to get loose when moving around, runs on inexpensive AA batteries, drop it on a table and it "keeps on ticking". File export through serial to USB cable. I know there are more sophisticated devices, but I'm not one to rush in to things.

View attachment 27946
 
Except it isn't really a "start button" any of us would be used to.
Trust me.
Get Classic Shell, Start8 (which I use) or any of the others to return some usefulness of a start button and start menu.
 
NutmegCT said:
Paul - if you keep important photos, etc., on that laptop, you might really want to make backup copies on another device.

On a different tack, I have a 1980s vintage RadioShack Tandy 102. I use it nearly every week at the air museum - inventories, research up in the stacks, etc. No hinged drive to get loose when moving around, runs on inexpensive AA batteries, drop it on a table and it "keeps on ticking". File export through serial to USB cable. I know there are more sophisticated devices, but I'm not one to rush in to things.

View attachment 27946
Click to expand...

Geesh Tom, I thought I was bad keeping this old lap top, but you beat me by a mile with that old Tandy! I haven't seen one of those in years! As for a back up, I have a external USB powered hard drive that I now back up everything. The 500 gig drive is partitioned so I can back up files from any of my computers with no interference from one to another. Plus I'm a nut for USB sticks, I put everything on them and their constantly coming down in price and going up in storage space. PJ
 
Paul - here's another "memory" for both of us. A Seagate ST506 hard drive from 1980. Stored a whole 5 megabytes, and sold for $1500. Compare that with a multi-gig flash drive today. There were commercial hard drives before the ST506, but this was available for personal computers, either as internal or external Wow.

Winchester-Festplatte.jpg
 
GregW said:
I'm wondering if DOS would even recognize modern hardware. SATA drives and USB might confuse it unless someone wrote drivers. Those interfaces didn't exist when DOS was current.
Click to expand...
I just had a nasty chain reaction failure with my primary Linux box at home. PSU went out and took the motherboard with it. The motherboard was 5 years old and the CPU was 3. It started out as an AM2 and hacked the BIOS to support quad-core CPUs. Anyway, I had to replace the whole shebang. I ended up with a new MoBo, CPU, RAM, and case for the system. I was expecting to be able to just move all the drives over and be good. However, the new system with its new fangled BIOS (now called UEFI) threw everything for a loop in Linux. After researching and following countless how-tos (because they all claimed Linux could run an UEFI system native), I threw in the towel after 3 days and flipped a switch in the UEFI to make it run in "legacy mode". OSX and Windows supposedly handle UEFI more gracefully. With Linux, I found that if you have a "non-standard" installation (i.e. not just click next install) you should be prepared for an adventure. I think that's the biggest down side with Linux: cutting edge hardware gets relatively slow support.

It's rare that I do a full upgrade like I just did. So, that one downside isn't that big of a deal. Linux is still my primary rig for all things at home.

On the subject of Windows 8.1, I watched half a video on Tested.com (some of the guys from Mythbusters help run it), and the presenters were getting frustrated with Win8.1 preview. It made me chuckle. I did like the stuff they were showing though. It seems like they took Win8 and added/re-added Mouse and Keyboard usability, and a start button that opens a full screen start menu. There were other things but I forgot what they were... I won't be getting it though. I have a Win7 "toy" for playing games on, and don't see a need to upgrade.
 
Yikes! Sorry to hear that, Rob.

It seems every time I upgrade hardware here at th' hovel, the chase to find kernel modules for the hardware is the most time consuming part. But I refuse to abandon Linux on the machines I personally use.

Win8 can dry up and blow away for all I care. I have to deal with it on clients' machines, that's as torturous as it will get. Win7 is no friend of mine either. Getting it to behave in a Class-C LAN environ is like cat herding, Win8 is even worse.
 
Back
Top