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My elderly mother will continue to run win7 with excellent security software, a malware detector and a limited user account. She does no financial transactions. If she’s infected by something, I’ll restore a backup. In event of real calamity, I’ll move her to a spare laptop running linux, where her Firefox and Thunderbird profiles are backed up in an xfce desktop environment, the closest thing to the windows she’s used to. Closer, in fact, than win 10 would be.

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Mr. Austin, Charlie, Cybertooth

Actually, no. I’ve been running SUSE since 2003, and I have never had any problems with a kernel update. I haven’t heard of hordes of others who have, either.

I appreciate the information on this subject available here. I maintain a win7 laptop for an elderly parent, but don’t use windows OS myself and need a good source of info. Reason I stopped using windows 15 years ago relates to the beginnings of the issues being debated here. I moved to another OS after win2K.

Of course, you’re entitled to your own feelings about MS behavior. However, I can state that this is the kind of thing that drove me away from windows 15 years ago; I refused to move to winxp. I am only here because I maintain a win7 system for a very elderly parent.

It boils down to the fact that I don’t trust MS, particularly with the lack of transparency about the telemetry. YMMV.

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HiFlyer

While I, too, have always admired Mr. Langa’s work, I would like to point out that the last time I attempted to Clean Up System Files on Win7, on reboot the machine would no longer start windows. It hung interminably with a message to the effect that it was applying windows updates. Very luckily, I had a recent backup and was able to restore the system. I’d advise anyone who’s going to try to clean up system files to have a backup handy.

FYI, FF still refuses to connect. Chromium warns but does let me connect if I override. I’ll keep trying FF.

I’ve observed this behavior in win7 pro.  Not surprised it has persisted through next 2 iterations of windows.

I want to thank PKCano again for the easy links to the security-only patches. Greatly appreciated by those of us in Group B!

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Jan K., Sessh, SueW, HiFlyer

Check your linux distro’s repositories for Chromium, open-source version of Chrome. It’s still Google though.

Should also have said that machine runs ESET Security. Win Defender appeared to be active (not disabled) but still had not received the automatic update. I have WU set not to look for updates, but in update history I have seen Win Defender updates come down anyway.

Thanks very much for this info. My elderly parent’s win machine had not updated, so I was able to update manually. Help I get here is invaluable.

Your continuing advice for those of us in Group B will be greatly appreciated. As a former techie who is now too busy with an elderly parent to be able to spend a lot of time on such things, the help I’ve found here has been invaluable. Thanks!

Hear, hear! Great post.

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HiFlyer

Group B has not been difficult for me due to the support I’ve been able to get here (very appreciative). My previous post doesn’t seem to be showing, so if this is a duplicate, I apologize.

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Lori, HiFlyer, SueW

I’m trying hard to continue in Group B for elderly parent’s win7 machine. With the info I’ve been able to get here at AskWoody (very grateful), I’ve not had too much trouble so far. Will continue as long as possible out of sheer cussedness and not wanting MS to manipulate me. I’ve personally been running OpenSuSE linux for years on older hardware inherited from parent after it won’t support win any longer.

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Northwest Rick