Keep Win7 w/o MS support w/Norton & Malwarebytes?

[markg2]

My wife's Lenovo desktop, (new) SSD, 8GB RAM & Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz


Home machine running ancient Quicken she will not upgrade for involved reason. That Quicken will not run on Win10 (I tried on an older, backup Lenovo T61 before I upgraded to Win10).


We've always kept a Norton version current on our machines. In addition, she and I have the paid version of Malwarebytes running.


Does she have much of a downside continuing with Win7 apart from possibly a new printer at some point not being backward compatible?


I confirmed her cpu is slat compatible with coreinfo.exe but really don't want to get into a dual boot or virtual drive if not absolutely needed for safety and security.


Mark

 

[Golden]

The downside your wife faces in sticking with Windows 7 are:

1. Manufacturers no longer supporting the Windows 7 drivers for the hardware,
2. Increased security risk due to Windows 7 no longer being updated (AV software does not necessarily mitigate this risk)

You will be able to run Quicken in a Windows 7 virtual machine hosted on Windows 10 - we have many tutorials on that topic over at our sister site Windows 10 Help Forums

 

[markg2]

I was afraid you'd be saying that...


I've read if you run Win7 as a virtual machine 'under' Win10 vs. side by side as a dual boot, the Win7 install gives up a significant amount of hardware control.



Her only application that would be running under Win7 being Quicken and Quicken would only need access to her current year old HP, I don't think that concern is applicable in her case, no?


In either case, will Macrium Reflect handle imaging the setup or will we need a more advanced version of the imaging software?


The benefit of Win7 'under' Win10 is that you don't have to keep rebooting the machine to switch between OS'?

P.S. If you don't mind my asking (if you do, just don't answer), what ~% of the awful fire destruction would you guess is attributable to climate vs. less climate and more a perfect storm comprised of multiple bad things occurring at the same time vs. a gross lack of preparation and early mobilization as a function of extreme political partisanship (which we here know something about)?
​

Thanks,


Mark

 

[SIW2]

Her quicken doesn't work on win10. Not sure how long Norton will keep supporting win7 - most likely for a few years. In any case, you could switch to microsoft's own MSE which continues win7 support till 2023.

Best to use another browser- firefox and variants or some other chrome variant which will likely also be supported for several years.

Many plan to keep using only win7 for quite a while and avoid win10. No need to panic about security.

A good computer security practice comes in layers.
1.You need a reasonable network solution, which means a robust and reliable firewall, and this is often solved by using a router that isn't set to lax defaults.
2. Then, you have the Internet-facing element, and here, you need robust and up-to-date browsers. Firefox and Chrome will do.
3. Lastly, you have the foobar element - which is what happens when things go wrong. Indeed, when that does occur, you need to: a) minimize damage b) ensure the integrity of your data - in other words make backup images - which everybody should do anyway.


If you are desperate to have win10, you could have win7 on another partition in dual boot.

My wife's Lenovo desktop, (new) SSD, 8GB RAM & Intel Core i5-3470 @ 3.2GHz


Home machine running ancient Quicken she will not upgrade for involved reason. That Quicken will not run on Win10 (I tried on an older, backup Lenovo T61 before I upgraded to Win10).


We've always kept a Norton version current on our machines. In addition, she and I have the paid version of Malwarebytes running.


Does she have much of a downside continuing with Win7 apart from possibly a new printer at some point not being backward compatible?


I confirmed her cpu is slat compatible with coreinfo.exe but really don't want to get into a dual boot or virtual drive if not absolutely needed for safety and security.


Mark

 

[NoN]

On top of that Microsoft is pushing slowly but surely to their new browser "Microsoft Edge" that will make Internet Explorer 11 obsolete soon enough.

 

[Golden]

I was afraid you'd be saying that...


I've read if you run Win7 as a virtual machine 'under' Win10 vs. side by side as a dual boot, the Win7 install gives up a significant amount of hardware control.



Her only application that would be running under Win7 being Quicken and Quicken would only need access to her current year old HP, I don't think that concern is applicable in her case, no?

Thats not been my experience, and in the case of Quicken I think its a moot point.

In either case, will Macrium Reflect handle imaging the setup or will we need a more advanced version of the imaging software?

Yes, Macrium will continue to work as normal. The virtual machine is just another file that is backed up.

The benefit of Win7 'under' Win10 is that you don't have to keep rebooting the machine to switch between OS'?

Correct.

P.S. If you don't mind my asking (if you do, just don't answer), what ~% of the awful fire destruction would you guess is attributable to climate vs. less climate and more a perfect storm comprised of multiple bad things occurring at the same time vs. a gross lack of preparation and early mobilization as a function of extreme political partisanship (which we here know something about)?
​

I think its a combination of issues, but in my own opinion its a lack of preparation in the form of not enough burn-off of floor level scrub over the preceeding winter.