Disk Issues

[Newtun]

It's time for another visit from the Amateur Hour.

My only Windows PC is a 10¼-year-old Dell Inspiron 3847 that I got with a big rebate. It's Win 10, and cannot be upgraded to Win 11, so I knew it would be obsolete after October.

The only things I use it for are to host a Pi-Hole VM, the very handy Canon scanner software that lets me assign one of the buttons to print directly from the scanner, and to run the World Community Grid BioMed research 24×7×100% CPU.

I replaced the original rotating disk drive with an SSD years ago, and that started having file-corruption issues a few weeks ago. Some symptoms are that I can't get into Windows Update, my shortcut keys aren't working right, and my Pi-Hole VM file wouldn't run any more (I recreated that on another PC). Other things seem to run fine, like the scanner software and the numerous daily World Community Grid research task results that validate OK. I tried several times to fix the problems, to no avail.

Before the disk issues came up, I had mentioned the Win 10 non-"upgradability" to a friend who is even less tech-y than I, and he suggested that I could just keep using it after October, since I don't really do any manual browsing of the internet, etc., and so it "should" be safe.

Does that seem reasonable, or too dangerous?​

The alternative would be for me to get a replacement SSD and upgrade the PC to Ubuntu, but then I might lose the easy functionality of the scanner.

 

[sedrosken]

In my professional capacity, my recommendation is to replace it with something that's at least still supported. Ideally under warranty, too.

Man to man, though, you all know I still regularly make use of XP-era equipment and Windows XP itself online. I do hobbyist level stuff with Windows 9x and DOS still. I'd be a hypocrite if I told you to do any different especially considering no one rawdogs the internet without a firewall anymore. You're intelligent enough to not go running every executable that gets shoved under your nose, no plugging in strange USB devices. You don't forward every port to the machine and then turn the Windows firewall off.

Keep it to those tasks and only those tasks, and I'd say your risks are pretty much managed. If you're paranoid, you could put it on a separate network that has access to the printer via firewall rules exclusively, and nothing else. That'd limit your exposure to the printer, though it could perhaps still affect other machines on the network theoretically if the vulnerability exploited was bad enough to botnet the printer. I'd say the likelihood of such an occurance would be low enough to be effectively a non-issue, personally, but weigh that risk for yourself.

That said -- that failing disk is a time bomb. You're going to want to address that, period. Regardless of what operating system you install on it. I'd say the Canon software ought to run fine under a VM, though, as long as it's on the same network or you pass through the printer's USB device ID through whatever hypervisor you end up using, so there's an option.

 

[Newtun]

Thanks very much for your rapid response.

That inspired a third alternative for me; I'm going to go ahead and get a new SSD, and try to clone the old one onto it and get it to work at least as well as the old one on the PC. Then I won't have to worry about the old one getting progressively more flaky.

In the meantime, I'm going to see how well I can get that scanner working on another PC under Ubuntu.

Thanks again.

 

[Mercutio]

The advice I'm currently giving customers is that they should be making good-faith efforts to remove Windows 10 from active service, including the ones they use at home. A lot of people have perfectly good systems that are thrust into unsupported territory and that sucks. Not everyone wants to blow $500 on a new PC.

It is possible to install Windows 11 on unsupported hardware. It's not even a big deal. The down side is that you don't get the annual/semi-annual OS revisions. If you install Win11 24H2, you're not going to get 25H2 unless you do something extraordinary. What's the extraordinary thing? Either wipe your machine and reinstall with updated media for the new release, or go through the trouble of making upgrade media and then manually upgrade. The upgrade media creation process includes grabbing and replacing files from a Windows 10 installation ISO, then rebuilding the Windows 11 ISO. I have been doing this because I have scads of Kaby Lake systems out in the world, mostly in the form of Lenovo Tiny desktops. i5-7500s with 16GB RAM and 500GB SSDs that cost $130 are still 100% valid PCs.

You can also install Windows Server. I do this for the PC at my desk in my office, which is a Xeon-whatever equivalent to an i9-7900 that somebody was going to toss, along with its 64GB RAM and Quadro RTX5000. Windows Server, at least up to the 2024 release, doesn't have TPM hardware requirements and works just dandy. Down sides? Well, obviously you aren't going to be paying much attention to licensing. You lose access to the Windows Store and associated apps, although the only one of those I really like is Your Phone. Every once in a while you'll try to install something and it won't run because you're on a Server OS, like Discord. Shucks. You might not have a supported NIC. You can either edit the INF file to make it work or just plug in a different NIC. You have to install a trial version and tell it to use the graphical interface, then install "Desktop Experience" for something that approximates desktop Windows. You'll also have enable the Windows Audio service, which is off by default on Windows Server. To do all this, you just download the trial version of the OS, then supply the easily google-able generic Windows Server product key for whatever edition you're trying to use (probably Windows Server retail but if you want to use Datacenter edition, go nuts), then you can either buy a grey market key or just use the Massgrave activation script.

Likewise you can obtain a Windows 10 LTSC ISO and do the same thing. It's easier to get Windows Server IMO, and new-ish Windows Server will keep getting updates longer, but it's more familiar so I understand. I have copies of both Windows 10 and 11 LTSC eval client ISOs from February of 2025 if anyone wants them.

If you're willing to trust it, there's also 0patch, which is a third party that apparently reverse engineers and supplies updates for older Micrsoft OSes and Office versions, currently including Windows 10 going all the way back to 2018 releases, and Windows Server going back to pre-R2 2012. 0patch has a free tier for individuals and a paid tier for enterprises. Given the amount of liability they'd be on the hook for if their patches don't work, it's probably safe enough for your random one off desktop, but I'm not the one using it.

As a long-time Debian-and-its-derivatives-hater, Fedora 42 is pretty nice for a desktop.
You could also look at FydeOS, which is a ChromiumOS derivative that can run both Android applications AND has native Linux application support. It's actually owned by Google although I'm not sure Google knows that. It's lightweight and basically zero-effort. I've been putting it on 10 year old notebooks and I'm pretty happy with it for that.

 

[mubs]

I need to get off my ass and move to W11 - my 2021 vintage hw supports it. I'm just dreading doing a complete fresh install of it, the amount of configuring required, and re-installing all the programs. Not a spring chicken anymore, and when you get old, patience is the first casualty.

 

[Newtun]

I did order a new SSD, to be delivered next Tuesday.

And I also did try to get my scanner working on another of my PCs under Ubuntu, but like me, it was too dark and not pretty.

But (short story long), I then checked into my non-Win11-eligible Dell PC. It came with an Intel i5-4460 CPU with built-in graphics, but to relieve the CPU of the graphics burden, I had added a cheapo Radeon 5450 vid card. Unfortunately, that precluded the PC from showing the BIOS options upon rebooting. So I unplugged that card and booted into the BIOS to change the boot order to USB first. Then I created a USB flash drive to boot into Ubuntu 24.04 "temporarily". When I did, I could get the scanner to make a nicer, lighter copy.

So now, when I get my new SSD, I'll try to clone the bad old one onto that, and get it to boot offa that clone.

Then I'll have some time to decide if I want to dare to keep on using Win 10, or upgrade it to Ubuntu.

 

[jtr1962]

I need to get off my ass and move to W11 - my 2021 vintage hw supports it. I'm just dreading doing a complete fresh install of it, the amount of configuring required, and re-installing all the programs. Not a spring chicken anymore, and when you get old, patience is the first casualty.

This is exactly why I'm still using 7. If MS wants people to upgrade, they need to make the process seamless where all your old software and settings remain.

 

[Newtun]

I need to get off my ass and move to W11 - my 2021 vintage hw supports it. I'm just dreading doing a complete fresh install of it, . . .

Since it's NA for me, I haven't looked into it, but isn't there an "in-place upgrade" option from W10 to W11, instead of a re-install "from scratch"?