My clients are aware Win 7 will fade, and someday, I won't be able to help them. Win 7 and Win 10 are the only operating systems I support right now. I have a low end Win 10 laptop I used to test a revised program after a new build. After I have done all that, I still have clients using Win 7 who are not going to stop using it until the machines it runs on die. I could get a developers Win 10 machine, get the current Visual Studio, and pay to transfer some licenses of VS add-ons I rely on, sure. However, the development system is based on a version of Visual Studio that will not install on Win 10. After 10 came out I tweaked them to run well on Win 10. Developing desktop apps on Win 7 was a breeze. I brought them forward to Win 7, added features, and kept adding projects. I had Clipper Summer 87 on there, dBase III, Blinker, and could tweak the code and recompile if I needed to. Should I use Windows Backup and Restore? If so, how?Ĭlick to expand.I specialize in maintaining custom written software that runs on obsolete platforms.įor example I used to have a Compaq 'Lunchbox' computer I kept so I could run certain DOS programs. Should I use a disk cloning product? Perhaps one with Win PE included? If so, which one would you recommend?

I believe I am on my own and need to figure out a way to get back to normal after this hard disk fails. That's not going to work in the future because Win 7 support has ended. When the last Win 7 laptop crashed I just bought another used Win 7 laptop, did Windows Update, installed programs again, restored my files, and all was good. Lately I've used FreeFileSync for this and just about everything I care about is backed up to an external hard disk. What I am used to doing - for many years - is making copies of files and folders I wanted to keep. That means downloading the ISO from Microsoft won't work because they do not accept OEM product keys.

When it fails, I'd like to be prepared to put a new hard disk in it, recover / restore, and go back to using it from time to time. I would like to set it aside but use it from time to time, knowing that someday the hard disk will fail.

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