QUESTIONS | Computers

Questions & Capabilities

This is a written explanation of common questions people have had and explaining about some of the history or how things are with some of the services work or about in a clearer fashion, going over requirements for services being done.

Windows

Is it safe to operate using Windows 7 in the current time period where in?

Using Windows 7 is an Operating System by Microsoft, it first came out in 2009. It has officially lost support for security updates or other updates from Microsoft.

This means you don't want to use the modern internet with using this operating system, you can't entirely keep using it with even using a great Antivirus Solution its more than that it's about the integrity and the core of Windows isn't being updated to patch and stop flaws that are found in the old dated security that Microsoft left Windows 7 in. Normal consumers it's absolutely unsafe to be using in 2024 and beyond.

The best you can do if you care about your legacy system from Windows 7 to still be sticking around is upgrading it to Windows 10.

Is it safe to keep operating using Windows 10 past when the cut off date is?

Using Windows 10 is a great operating system it was when Microsoft was finally able to strike a balance of a tiny splash of Windows 8 while still retaining the Windows 7 type aesthetic of the start menu and got rid of the charms menu, and removed so much of what users hated about Window 8 just focused on not going overboard with gimmicks that made for only touch screens like full screen Metro Apps that really didn't take off all to well.

When it comes to Microsoft cutting off OS updates or pulling out the life support on Windows 10 fully. The estimated usage of people still using Windows 10 on a global scale is around 54%. The migration of Windows 11 has been very slow where its still in the mid 40% range, of users running Windows 11. When October 2025th comes and Microsoft wants to try and start the official full brakes on Windows 10 the best sign to know how it will be handled is to look at how Microsoft gave Windows 7, 3 to 4 more years of life by offering emergency Windows updates & security patches. That's how that is gonna have to be and we don't exactly know until we experience how and if Microsoft will behave the same or differently.

World Wide Usage

How is it using & adapting to Windows 11

When using Windows 11 when it first launched it was an uphill battle of Microsoft in a metaphorical sense taking Windows 10 and just slapping a fresh coat of paint on it and pumping out a new OS and calling at a new OS. The first Windows 11 release truly had a lot of issues and loads and loads of Windows 10 under the hood code is still stored in Windows 11.

Now in Windows 11 24H2 soon to be 25H2 it's legitimately a very capable OS it can still run into glitches that's what happens an OS when your running 10,000+ threads and tasks in the background just for Windows 11 to operate then thats what its like operating the Titanic Ship it can only take Windows running for more than 30 days in a single session of you using your machine for your machine to say okay I can't run on and on for over 30 days plus without restarting at least once. Windows XP & Windows 7 ran way lighter on the machines they were built for the time period.

Everything Windows 11 removed from launch that used to be in Windows 10 did finally get added back in to Windows 11 again, Microsoft had unknowingly created their own mistake of making a Tweet about Windows 10 was going to be one and only last OS ever they ever made. and Microsoft had to ever so much with in no time retract that statment very quickly and then pump out Windows 11 so that the investors that pay Microsoft's light bill and keep them running don't fade away at all. Microsoft launching Windows 11 was a oh no moment for Microsoft to wake up real fast.

Where is A: & B: Drive?

Using the Windows Operating system by Microsoft the A: and B: Drive letters used to be used for the use of back when machines had 2 Floppy Drives installed in old 80's and 90's Machines. Floppy Drive 1 was Drive A: and Floppy Drive 2 was Drive B: so that the Software knew were to look for files when floppys were in use.

You can change your OS to change the drive letter from C: to A: but that's not the best recommendation there's way too much software that could by chance be written to search for the C: drive by default to read or install software too.

Future of Windows?

Microsoft's plans for keeping windows alive is going anywhere anytime soon, but the way in which they conduct the way they operate moving from Windows 11 to Windows 12 to Windows 13... etc is where there is going to be a time and place where there's only ever going to be a 1 OS needing support and patches at a time. So if Microsoft wants to dictate that an OS is only going to live for only 3 to 4 years then thats where there going to be doing and moving forwards and doing.

Apple in contrast only has ever had to deal with supporting 1 OS for there devices when it comes to there Laptops & High-End Desktops Luxury professional machines. There Devices for iPhone, iPad and there WatchOS have there own sub-group team that works on that task and doing features and security, so in terms of organization there's structure.

Microsoft learned the hard lesson that you create headaches with almost supporting 3 Operating Systems all at the same time, it absolutely requires a lot of manpower and hours of testing and thinking about the hardware it's going to be running on all at the same time. So that's why Windows 7, Windows 10 and Windows 11 was where they really had to chop off Windows 7, not give much attention to Windows 8 and 8.1 not very many people liked or cared for Windows 8 & 8.1 so being able to drop 8 as fast as they could was just about painless because they were able to already have Windows 10 out so if you were on Windows 7, 8 or 8.1 you could move on to Windows 10 very easily.

Once Windows 10 is done for in October of 2025 then Microsoft will have done their duty of being able to finally now lighten there load of dealing with Windows 10 Support. Windows 10 will surely still hang around there might still be at least 35% - 30% of people going into 2026 that will still be using Windows 10 because they are not in favor of how Windows 11 is to them and they still want to stay with what they know best.

Capabilities

Is it possible to Mirror my OS from a HDD to an SSD?

Yes this is a very easy painless task to accomplish. The only time when this can go sideways is when your HDD has Weak sectors or bad sectors on the drive that can create corruption in the OS that a Clone would bring over those same issues over to the SSD Clone. This task can have a 70% to 100% success rate all depending on how healthy the drive is that your cloning from one to another.

When a clone wont work to bring over the Operation System to another machine or drive is when a fresh install with a Data Migration is necessary.

Is it possible to take programs from Windows 7 & somehow keep them to still move on to modern hardware?

This is a very complex situation but yes it's possible. Heres some of the requirements needed.

The older machine needs to be fully functioning to the best of its abilities.
The HDD that the machine is running on for the old machine has to not have any weak or bad sectors on the drive.
The OS needs to not be not corrupt or having problems booting in order to be able to move programs from 1 OS to another one.
Special Third Party software such as old lifetime license Adobe software such as (CS4, CS5, or CS5.5, CS6), Microsoft Office versions like 2007, 2010, 2013 have a tendency to not be compatible with being able to move over the deep core associations that the software has made and identify the machines hardware ID is.

It's a case by case basis and can incur taking more time than normal to get working. There's always going to be the risk that when your dealing with using older software that you're going to need to keep it updated to a certain point most softwares like Outlook allow you to natively locate and or export the data if needed to be able to use in a newer version of the software.

If a piece of software needs special login for it to operate such as accounting software, specialty CAD Design software, any kind of software that needs to check a with a server or phone home in any kind of way will most likely require that it's going to want you to re-login again. Adobe has a habit of doing this as one example.

Apple

Is it possible to go from an Older Mac Device to a new Mac Device?

Yes, Apple has already built this into MacOS where you can use a utility called "Time Machine" and it will essentially grab 98.99% of everything and then allow you to restore on to another Mac.

Requirements are:

Some programs that are specific to that older MacOS version may not work at all in the newer OS like going from an Intel X86 OS Install to a Apple Silicon ARM OS nearly all of the X86 programs are going to possibly want to 1 have a gray cross sign on it and wont launch. 2 your maybe going to have to see if your going to be able to use MacOS Rosetta 2 to resolve the programs you have moved over. It's going to very clearly be one or the other.

Can a iCloud Locked device still be used?

Apple for years hasn't addressed a legit method to turn and older device into being able to be unlocked later down the line hardly.

If your forgot your iCloud Password
If you lost access to an old phone number you can't access
If your loved one passed away and you don't know the password to retrieve the information out of it.

These are a few examples of Apples negligence that Apple has considered if they made a backdoor then it could have bad consequences for being over used, also it makes them loads of money that forces the user into getting a new device to stay locked into there eco system, it keeps the eco system of there locked garden secure.

Apple cares more about there security than to let a key of there iCloud protection backdoor exploit get out into the wild, so the best option is to not let there let that exist in the first place, and completely reap the benefits that it also makes them loads of money when users have to buy a new device and create a new iCloud Account and start all over.

There have been rare cases of Apple devices being unlocked but that's only been for high priority cases involving crimes.

Is it possible to Install MacOS Sonoma on an older device from Apple?

Yes being able to upgrade the OS on an older 2012 or later Intel Mac is very possible to do.

This method to make an older Mac run a newer version of MacOS is on borrowed time & the gate that's making these older macs run Sonoma is getting to a point where theres going to come a time where even Mac OS Sonoma has not much life left in it to be used to install new software and applications.

The last line of being able to use an old Mac to the point where you can keep fully using it is through using a Linux distro that's able to run smoothly on older Mac Hardware.

The requirements are as follows:

You must be using an SSD (Solid State Drive) this is what the OS is stored on its way way better than a HDD with a spinning platter.
At least 8GB of Memory
The processor needed can totally be a dual core i5, but its going to feel ever so slightly sluggish with a dual core processor. So if you had paid for or have found a Apple Machine with an i7 Quad Core option, will you with be able to surpass the slower operation when being on MacOS Sonoma.

The only downsides of upgrading a 2012 and beyond Mac Machine is where:

Apple Silicon specific software, utilities or features that may require a neural processing unit found on the M1, M2, M3, M4 or all M-Series Processors will by default not be functional at all because its directly linked to a hardware specific feature that the Intel x86 Mac's dont have the hardware capability.
DDR2 Mac's are very dated and aren't remotely strong enough to handle even running on MacOS Big Sur.
All of the tweaks to make all of this happen are open source and have been made possible by reverse engineering & back porting to make it possible in the first place due to one Mac Machine which is the Mac Pro 2019 Desktop Workstation still being supported on even the newest versions of MacOS. Once Apple removes support for Intel Macs in the kernel it could be game over for real with making a 10+ year old laptop run a modern current OS Sonoma.
Some older 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 Machines Apple made, were made with using USB 2.0 on the majority of the ports so when using modern USB 3.0+ Flash Drives can feel sluggish.

Networking

What is a Modem versus what a Router Does?

A Modem takes the Coax Cable from your ISP (Internet Service Provider) to bring the data from the lines that are layed in the ground to bring service to your area from Spectrum or Frontiers service lines installed under the ground.

What the router does? The Router takes what the Modem is converting from the service provider line of the coax cable and turns it into a single Ethernet connection that you use an Ethernet cable to connect the Modem into the Router with.

The Modem doesn't provide any wireless network at all on its own that's what the router is for and does. So a Laptop, Desktop, TV, Printer wont be able to use a Modem just on its own.

You can use the Modem to connect a single device over Ethernet this isn't commonly recommended if you want to use more than just 1 device in your place.

There are in special scenarios cases where in apartments ISP's use combo units where the Modem & Router are 1 device. This is 10% the case for people that are setup in large places where there's loads of condo's and apartments.

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Online Accounts

Can't get back into my Email Account?

Dealing with getting back into you're email account can be difficult or challenging to accomplish.

When you first create a Google, Yahoo, Apple ID, Microsoft Account, Facebook Account 98.88% of the time there's going to be a function for dealing with how to recovery and setting up another means of getting back into your account. I have personally noticed that the problem most people run into is with people who haven't added a secondary email to there main email or online account so they can have a successful recovery for there main account.

Can my online accounts vanish?

This can happen! and is true. Yahoo if you haven't logged in over 6 months will have no problem with freezing your account or out right deleting your account from existence.

Normally the average is about 5 years before anything happens. Some services will never delete your account and it only will be deleted when they as a service go out of business they go bankrupt that's when everyone's gets wiped out.

In the terms of service that nobody reads your to be able to find the answer to that per what ever platform or service your using.

• Facebook does not automatically delete accounts simply because you never return. It remains until you delete it yourself or Meta removes it for policy reasons.

• Microsoft accounts can be closed after 2 years of inactivity.

• Google's Inactive Account Manager policy can delete data after a period of inactivity (default can be configured). Google says accounts inactive for 2 years may be deleted under its inactive account policy.

• Apple IDs generally stay active indefinitely unless you request deletion.

• Spectrum generally requires the account to remain associated with an active Spectrum Internet subscription, if you cancel you can lose your old long standing email account with them. Long periods of inactivity can also cause issues, especially if the account is no longer properly linked to an active customer profile.

• Earthlink Mostly tied to ISP subscriptions; inactive accounts can be lost.

• Hotmail Migrated into Microsoft accounts. Old accounts can be closed after long inactivity.

• Netzero/ Juno old free accounts are vulnerable.

TL:DR

Some platforms will even email you a warning to come back to the platform before they do anything sort of like a grace period. From researching this a big majority of time it requires the user to go out of there way to manually delete there account and only it seems to be that if there's a service that's providing an email for you to have an online identity that's subject whats written above. If you provide an email for you're identity online it seems to never go away unless you close it out yourself.

I get 10,000+ Emails a day

You can do 1 of 2 things! its very simple

• Be careful who or what platform you give out your email too.

• Just "unsubscribe" instead of deleting. deleting is a temporary short term solution to the root of the problem and your only cutting off the top of the weed that's going to keep growing back. Spending the 30 seconds to unsubscribe is better than seeing and dealing with 10,000 emails you don't care about.

Bonus:

• Use a temporary 10 min email to get around having to give away your email to a website that demands you give them your email!

• Have a dedicated email account only just for junk mail newsletter subscriptions if you must have them or be subscribed to them.

• If you have over 500,000+ emails just make a new email account already its not worth the hassle of dealing with making sense of having that many emails.

• Google has the best system for the ability of cleaning up your Gmail account if you must and want to delete 1,000 or 10,000 emails at once you may have to wait a short period of time for Gmail to process the request but at least you can mass delete emails without how some other email platforms limit how much email you can delete at a time.

Can't Find Unsubscribe Link

If there's no "Unsubscribe Link" then that means the email didn't originate from the United States. All emails that are from the United States have to follow a rule and a type of etiquette for how emails should be handled. Just like how the prescription drug medication ads on TV uses Illegible print that is tiny to read that's grey on white background or how ever.

Some emails companies do very naughty tactics of using light grey colored text with also using small print so its hard to find or read. Everyones System to "unsubscribe" is different.

Data Recovery

Drive Failure?

Dealing with getting data off of your failing drive can be challenging. Hard Disk Drives, Solid State Drives, SD Cards, USB Drives all have wear that can happen over time just exactly like a car tire.

Hard Disk Drives are mechanical in nature so they have the life expectancy of about 5 years. Older drives can occasionally last for a tad bit longer depending on how there treated. If a machine has been running and on for over 9 years your asking the drive that has very little life in it that could fail within a week or tomorrow. On average that's why given expectancy for a Hard Disk Drive that a manufactures will warranty that. If you have a brand new drive that you buy and this drive dies under 1 year all you can do is warranty it through who you bought the drive from this behavior isn't normal.

Solid State Drives (SSD) come in 2 form factors they can last a lot longer than your average Hard Disk Drive they also can preform 10x to 250x better than a spinning hard disk drive. Solid State Drives (SSD) in the SATA form factor are way better than Hard Disk Drives of the same form factor.

The secondary form factor that's taking over the market by storm is the NVMe (Non Volatile Memory Express) its light speed faster than your average SATA SSD.

NVMe Drives are the hot new thing on the block they make everything way more awesome in computers. NVMe Drives are also prone to failures just as anything does. The Nand that's used in combination with the storage controller brings more into the equation for evaluation. NVMe Drives are sometimes able to be patched with firmware updates. There have been cases where the drive has completely forgotten where the namespace of the data is stored on the drive and a firmware update that's pushed from another machine has been able to fix it or make it usable again after the drive has been wiped over again with a fresh Windows install. Again the standard 5 year warranty rule is applied.

Best Drive Usage Tips?

• Hard Disk Drives are prone to slowing down at about the 75% usage amount. when you go past 75% of disk usage this is when the drive runs slower when it can also possibility be heavily fragmented with data on it.

• The top 15 SSD Companies who make SSD's such as Samsung, Kingstion, Western Digital, Lexar, Sabrent & other brands. Make SSD firmware & health monitoring tools that you can install thats free to keep an eye on the health of the drive, or update the firmware.

• Hard Disk Drives are the only kind of drive that should be "de-fragmented"

• Solid State Drives should not be "de-fragmented" there's no need to de-fragment an SSD. All Solid State Drives are managed by an on hardware package called the Storage Controller that manages the wear leveing of the Nand Cells.

• NVMe drives and SATA SSDs can operate being completely filled. This is a horrible practice to do. The so called Free Space on an SSD is actively being used by the Storage Controller to help keep the drive working and lasting longer. I would suggest that you keep at least 100GB to 150GB free if you want to keep the data on the drive working and running smoothly.

There are some non-reputable brands who sell NVMe drives where when in normal operation the SLC Cache or storage controller will completely run into running completely slowly because there's no available free space to be used to keep the operation of the drive operating smoothly.

SD Card, USB Drives, eMMC Storage Life?

All kinds of temporary storage mediums:

• USB Flash Drives

• SD Cards

• Floppy drives

• eMMC (Embedded Storage)

All are designed to be throw-away they will work for an undisclosed-able amount of time. the best guarantee from manufactures are 3 years. Manufactures think hey even if its working okay after 3 years if you don't want to lose you're data buy a new "drive" from us.

eMMC Storage is used in low end budget devices such as Intel Celeron CPU devices. They can be in All-in-one Machines, or small 13 inch stream laptops & even Chromebooks. The eMMC Storage is just the raw storage chips soldered on to the motherboard directly making data recovery impossible to be achieved.

The way I like to think of USB Flash drives is Storage Nand that's basically throw away or trash Nand that's made from the scraps from the mass producing of other Nand or silicon that couldn't have been used elsewhere.

All Apple Macbook Pro's after 2018 are using storage chips that are soldered on to the motherboard directly but there of quality of a NVMe. Apple is slowly beginning to be forced to make "more repairable" devices with removable storage. Apples M4 Mac Mini has removable storage along with the Apple Mac Studio but you're paying for the extra tax for that ability for the storage to be able to be repairable in the long run around and above $3,000 with the Apple Mac Studio.

Migration & Cloning

What is a Data Migration?

A Data Migration is very simply taking an Operating System drive copying over all of the User's Data from:

• Desktop

• Documents

• Pictures

• Music

• Videos

• Browser Data & Bookmarks

• Passwords (Machine must be functional, to manually export them)

Data Migration operations doesn't include dealing with bringing over programs, Windows Settings, custom functions that the user has setup.

This method is best when a clone isn't successful to complete.

What is a Clone?

A Clone is where Windows is an environment. Windows is where your Applications live it holds all of your settings, its tailored and customized with all of your hardware profiles with your drivers that allows windows to function correctly and know what hardware you have and how to communicate with it.

If your Windows environment is having issues if there's issues with how Windows is operating in a fashion where there's corruption with the Operating system where when you Clone the Operating System and the problem on your old machine doesn't go away. It can and will bring over any kind of Virus, Corruption, Bug, Issue on to your new machine.

The best use of Cloning an Operating system is when your going from a Smaller Drive to a Larger Drive on the same system this is always the easiest use case.

Cloning can be used to go from Intel to AMD. Or take a System from AMD to Intel. This method has it's caveats or limitations on success. This process can have risks in how this operation can be done but its possible to do, this is always a case by case operation never a grantee that every experience is going to be successful.

Cloning a Drive are primarily a failure when:

• Drive is failing, or has failed completely.

• Windows partitions are missing.

• Drive has way too many Bad Sectors.

• Drive controller is failing to read data.

These are common things that can cause a clone not to succeed, then the next resort is a Data Migration to save and bring over as much as possible.

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