New Computer, End of 7 or Duel Boot?

Shadow Cat

Shadow Cat

Death Scythe
After owning my PC for a number of years now and the support for Windows 7 ending January 2020 I'm left with a few options what I'd love to hear peoples suggestions on...

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My Current W7 Specs:

4690K (Not overclocked 3.5ghz)
MSI GTX970
Gigabyte z97x-Gaming Mobo
16gb Corsair DDR3 1600

These specs are still perfectly fine with me, I'm not a huge gamer as I was when I purchased the computer and looking at current PC build sites I'd be looking at spending near £1000~1200 for a similar current-generation computer. There is nothing on the computer that I feel is a drawback so I'd rather not spend unnecessary money

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Choices:

Remain with W7 as main OS:

An option I'm not sure about, with Microsoft updates stopping next year and my love for fresh installs every 5 or so years to keep the computer fresh this is something I'm not really considering at the moment, while I've used W7 for friggin years now I think it should be time to move on

Pro's
Dont have to do anything
Programs still work, everything still works, no issues

Cons:
Support Ends next year
No fresh install what I usually do every 5 years

Duel Boot current W7 with new install W10

This is my currently planned option, I'll keep Windows 7 untouched on my PC's SSD and purchase a Samsung 970 M.2 drive, install W10 as my main OS and use that. If I need to use programs that support W7 only then I'm fine as I'll just boot up W7

Pro's
Both options easily accessible
Keep my current OS as-is while getting a fresh OS to play with

Cons:
Never duel booted OS's before*. I dont know how W10 will conflict with W7 and I'm not sure how it would react to my Programs (stored on a separate drive than c:). If I install Steam and other apps on W10 that share files with W7, will it mess up my Windows 7? Or should I buy ANOTHER internal drive, use my current Programs B:/ for W7 and but a new Programs V:/ for W10?

*Actually a lie, I've duel booted XP and Linux like, 10 years ago. Went fine, forgot 99% of it

Total Fresh install of W10 on current hardware

This is my other option, Fresh install by buying a 970 and 2 Hard Drives. Cloning my Media drive as a back up... fresh install of all programs for W10

Pro's:
Total Fresh install
I'll basically back up while fresh install

Cons:
Not everything will work with W10
I'll be stuck with W10, no W7
More expensive than above

New PC

Pro's
...

Cons:
£££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££££
 
What's your budget because it would be cheaper to by a pre built pc with ether a 1080ti or a Rtx 2080/ti.scan are good for pre built PCs.
 
Anime1977 said:
What's your budget because it would be cheaper to by a pre built pc with ether a 1080ti or a Rtx 2080/ti.scan are good for pre built PCs.
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Its less about budget and more about having no issues with current hardware, not being much of a gamer at the moment I'm mostly looking at software (OS) support, I play Skyrim, C+C, Fallout and stuff but not really anything crazy anymore. I've looked at Ryzen builds and I could likely get a bundle for close to £750 ~ £900 with something like a GXT 1070. Intel I get closer to the £1200 mark :)

Ryzen build was an option for a very long time as it was it was <£800 and very good specs... after a few financial commitments over the last few months, my budget is now below that...
 
I'm a little confused as to what it is you're asking tbh. Like if you have no problems with your current hardware why would you do a compeltely new build? :/ Also what you using that won't work with W10?
 
Buzzkillington said:
I'm a little confused as to what it is you're asking tbh.
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Out of the options:
Keep with W7
Duel Boot W7 and W10
Total fresh install of W10 for everything
Whole new PC (NOT AN OPTION)

Would people recommend and why, I'm mostly stuck between the duel boot option and fresh install of W10

Buzzkillington said:
Like if you have no problems with your current hardware why would you do a compeltely new build? :/
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I mentioned I'd rather NOT do a new build....

Buzzkillington said:
Also what you using that won't work with W10?
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I'm not sure how well older programs run on W10, there were a few games that wouldn;t run on 7 even using the "Run in Windows XP Mode", along with things like Printers what I had issues with getting drivers for when I went from XP -> 7
 
Given some of the issues I've had win Win 10 (updates screwing things up and needing to revert to previous versions, things as fundamental as file explorer regularly breaking to the point I sometimes can't even browse through folders without it locking up, unwanted and unknown background programmes and behaviours MS has made it harder to disable, as well as some potential privacy dodginess*) if I could go back and stay with Win 7 I would, but I got the free upgrade from 7 to 10. I'm not sure there's any point dual-booting 7 and 10, I'm not personally aware of any newer software that doesn't work on Win 7 but there is older software that won't work on Win 10, and whether compatibility mode actually works or not seems hit and miss.

What you could do if and when you do feel the need to upgrade hardware is just gradually swap out the internals. That's what I did over the last couple of years, started with a new graphics card and then replaced the mobo, CPU and RAM all at once. It can work out quite a bit cheaper if you can keep your old PSU, case and drives. Also I'd totally go AMD these days, in price for performance they can't be beaten - I am more than happy with my 2700x.

unknownfate said:
Last version of Windows I used was XP. Seriously.
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Still the best version of Windows. I feel the same about software as I do about cars - Give me something I can understand and tinker with to my heart's content to make it work the way I want over something the manufacturer has made to work the way they want.

"Something Happened" indeed.

*Although we do live in Auntie Theresa's Police State, so pretty much all our privacy went out the window with the Snoopers' Charter anyway.
 
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Do you want to Pull my devil trigger? 🤣 by the sounds of it it doesn't sound like you care much about newer/AAA games, if it can still run skyrim and you're happy with how that runs, you don't need to buy anything, so this is an OS question

I'd say daul boot, at least for the rest of this year then switch everything over to W10 even if it's only to make sure everything is kept up to date.

If you suddenly care about newer games, all you'd really need is a new GPU, 10 series is the best option to play most games decent, possibly look for a ti as they are often worth paying more for, maybe bump up that 4690k abit so it doesn't choke the performance from the gpu, the last thing you might need to consider would be the power supply as the 10 series got thirsty, if you do end up looking for a Ti don't fret over EVA, strixx etc, the 10xxti's are all virtually the same (that is, the 60s are the same as each other, the 70s are the same and the most tested 80s shown virtually no difference in any of the aftermarket cards)
 
Privacy and the somewhat (not really broken, just teething problems) state of W10 when it first came out was the reason I didn't do the free upgrade from 7.

Also those stupid Upgrade to W10 Now promps Microsoft kept pushing out to 7 users made me want to NOT upgrade -_-

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Games / Visual Novels are the main reason I like to keep access to a 7 machine. Some were a pain to get running on 7 so 10 sounds like hell. Not even getting started with DRM keys that I've had for 10+ years now that have 1 or 2 uses left. (Though Last time I checked with one company, I couldn't reuse keys but there might be a chance to get a few more issued)

Thats my reasoning for duel boot.

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Both of you mentioned about upgrades, and yeh this was my plan 5 years ago, 750W PSU and water cooled CPU meant I could just chuck another GPU in and Overclock the 4690k.

PC was made with "This needs to play AAA games in 5 years" in mind. Now I'm thinking "This needs to be my Casual PC for another 5 years". W10 supports m.2 nvme drives and more than 16gb ram (I only have 7 Premium atm). Both would speed up casual use.

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I'll re-read this thread after work. Might stick with 7 until I get money for a new build in 3 years time. Or one of the qbove options :/
 
I think dual-booting is a perfectly fine option, but it's an unusual thing to do these days and not really that well supported by Microsoft – you very well encounter strangeness and have to spend a lot of extra time mucking about with the system to make it work properly.

My advice would be to clean install Windows 10 – if you have the ability to do so on a fresh hard drive, it's a great idea to do so and you might get to dual boot 'for free', but I wouldn't rely on that being an option. As @Just Passing Through mentioned, you can spin up a virtual machine with Windows 7 or Windows XP if you want to play older games – although in my experience, I've never found anything that worked on 7 but not on 10. (Actually, a couple of old games I've tried didn't work in Windows 7 but now work properly in Windows 10!)

As for where to store programs – I've got an internal SSD for my boot drive and programs I want to be fast, but a lot of my programs are installed to a separate internal hard drive. It works fine, and there shouldn't be any issues repurposing your Windows.7 drive for this, even without wiping it. (A lot of programs won't like losing their registry entries or local settings, though, so I recommend installing them fresh on Windows 10, even if you install them to the existing hard drive.)

As for hardware, I don't really think there's much reason to u upgrade – the 4690K is a great little chip, and unless you're really pushing your system to the bleeding edge, you're not really going to notice the extra performance... but it's going to cost an awful lot of money. If you do compelled to do a system upgrade down the line, spend the money on a new GPU instead – a 1070 or 1660Ti will serve you well, or (moving up the price ranks!) a 2070 or 2080 will have you sorted to run everything at max settings for years to come.
 
As I have a internet facing server and see misbehaving bots trying to look for phpMyAdmin installations that don't exist I'm not really a fan of running operating systems past their end of life. I came a bit close to it with moving away from Debian 7 (as that was a month before the end of it's long term support in May last year) and the fun of going to Debian 8 and then Debian 9 in one afternoon wondering if my server is going to come back up when I typed in reboot*. :eek:

I do have a Windows 7 installation as a virtual machine that I use for testing my personal programming projects with but I'm going to need to migrate off from that. As my user base is one user on Windows 10 at the moment this shouldn't be an issue. ;)

I had my previous PC for 9 and a half years (1st generation Core i7 920) until the system board decided to start giving out and randomly freeze on me on increasingly regular intervals. With the changes in my life since my previous PC and most of my gaming done on my PS4 nowadays (I even dropped playing Final Fantasy XIV on the PC for the PS4) I went towards workstation** features (Xeon) rather then gaming. If I do want to play games on Mageia then I have Steam with Proton.

Dual booting should be fine as you can migrate off whenever as I did about a decade ago with CentOS and Windows XP/7. Only issue I kept having was the rare times I had to reinstall Windows and it just spat all over the disk's master boot record without any consideration. Otherwise, booting between Windows 7 and Windows 10 should be a bit better coordinated than that.

Storage wise I have a SSD for Mageia/Steam Library, two SSDs for my own data configured as RAID-1 (mirroring) and a large spinny disk for music and virtual machine data. I can accept the SSD with Mageia/Steam or the large spinny disk dying but not for my own data.

Graphics wise I have a GeForce GTX 1060 and a Quadro P600 on standby (up to 40W max for four 4K extra screens) as another GeForce seems a bit excessive.

* I had a bit more confidence in the reboot coming back up from the several practice runs I did locally but there was always a sense of terror when it was rebooting.
** Wanted an Epyc system but the system boards left a lot to be desired. :/

/umiko
 
Gone for a fresh install of W10

I've read that a 7 key MIGHT work on 10... So I've borrowed my brothers install drive and I'll use my 2011 key on it (Current W7 is using an OEM key that came with the system so I'll keep that license)

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ayase said:
Given some of the issues I've had win Win 10 (updates screwing things up and needing to revert to previous versions, things as fundamental as file explorer regularly breaking to the point I sometimes can't even browse through folders without it locking up
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I am about ready to murder somebody over this issue (disclaimer: I will not actually murder somebody over this issue) effing Windows 10 Pro should be able to handle folders with many large images, it's kinda necessary for high quality rendering work. But no, 292 images in a folder and it locks up after loading thumbnails for less than half of them, and I'm stuck with a never-ending green loading bar and can't even open any of the images - 96 people have reported this issue to MS since 2015 and, considering I'm running the latest version (against my best judgement) it seems like they've done nothing to fix it. The way the thumbnail cache is handled and seemingly deletes itself regularly is driving me mental as well, using Icaros seems to do nothing and now half the icons on my desktop have disappeared except for their names. If I didn't need Windows for some of my programmes and games I'd have switched to Linux by now, this is throw-the-monitor-out-the-window level maddening.
 
ayase said:
I am about ready to murder somebody over this issue (disclaimer: I will not actually murder somebody over this issue) effing Windows 10 Pro should be able to handle folders with many large images, it's kinda necessary for high quality rendering work. But no, 292 images in a folder and it locks up after loading thumbnails for less than half of them, and I'm stuck with a never-ending green loading bar and can't even open any of the images - 96 people have reported this issue to MS since 2015 and, considering I'm running the latest version (against my best judgement) it seems like they've done nothing to fix it. The way the thumbnail cache is handled and seemingly deletes itself regularly is driving me mental as well, using Icaros seems to do nothing and now half the icons on my desktop have disappeared except for their names. If I didn't need Windows for some of my programmes and games I'd have switched to Linux by now, this is throw-the-monitor-out-the-window level maddening.
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I can’t remember what I did to speed Explorer enough to be workable, but I did get it working smoothly. I think there is a preview pane at the top that shows recently or most used documents that if you turn off fixes Explorer. I had to Google a bit before finding out how to fix it.

I can tell you how to temp fix the missing icons problem. Go to Task Manager, show all processes, shut any Explorer Windows, scroll down until you find Windows Explorer in Task Manager processes, and click the Restart button. Your icons should be back. They’ll probably disappear again in a couple of days, but rinse and repeat.
 
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