Server/Networking Possibilities - Can it be done?

[antus]

Yeah, they've bundled so many updates in windows 7, and duration / cpu use is exponential, so they've almost broken new installs completely. You need to leave it, probably on a fast connection, for maybe more than 24 hours now. I havnt let a 7 machine catch up for nearly 2 years and it was ridiculous back then even. I dont have any windows 7 machines left (other than VMs) and those ones do suck 100% cpu as soon as I run them. Please do provide us some feedback if you find a solution.

[MAGP]

I have Win 7 on my Toughbook, dual boot with FreeDOS on an hdd, and updates are still being released. The initial series of update after install does take a very very long time. After that it is just the occasional update for security fixes. If my 1.5 GHz (1GB RAM) Toughbook can deal with Win 7 much newer machines should be able to deal with it as well. I'd install 7, your programs, get the updates done over a couple of days and then see how it goes.

[vlad01]

+1 for win7.

I run it on everything, even on PCs that were designed for 2K and XP and they actually run faster on 7.


All I do it install a fresh copy and then run a mounted SP1 iso to install SP1 and then manually install any VCredist x64 and x86 and netframe as needed.

Yesterday I got it to work on my nephews 6700K with a new samsung evo 960 M.2 NVMe SSD. Complete pita to get working but I eventually found a tool from gigabyte that grabs the iso from the install dvd, unpacks it and integrates USB3 and NVMe drivers and offline update packs, repacks it and then builds a bootable install USB drive.

You plug the ubs drive in and it install win 7 on to any modern system, mainly aimed for NVMe drives and does in mins.

After that is done you have a system that boots to desktop in 2-3 sec after the win logo comes up lol.

[slewinson]

Have a read of this:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/529386

It sounds like its a common windows problem and people like us see it in vms because we use them rarely and try and sometimes try and avoid updates because they break things. Its quite common for the update processes to draw 100% cpu for ages. This is worse on the older OS because there are so many individual fixes available and Microsoft seem keen not to roll them in to a service pack. One might suspect they do this intentionally to bork older windows installs... If you can diagnose this is the problem you might be able to disable the update process that sucks all the cpu, and run it on a local VM without the high cpu usage (vmware, or not).

Yep, been bitten by that one. Windows update neees to bite the dust.

Simon

[The1]

If you do want to keep it simple turn on rdesktop and use mstsc client, but think hard about security, straight on net very much not recommended.

use vnc with a connect password ontop is better, can also do ssl

[The1]

Sounds like a plan Antus.
Im going to do another fresh install of Win7. Completely disable any updates and access to microsoft.. and install a couple car apps and see what happens.

I believe I had done that on the last fresh install, but for all I know, microsoft could still be rolling out silent updates or something could have be done before it was disabled.

Also exclude your hard drives from the realtime scanner in windows defender. There's a loop bug in the wild still it seems that will max out your disk when programs repeatedly access the same file. i had this on win10/VM machines.

[Tazzi]

Alright, second laptop it is. Drop in a 500Gb SDD, partition couple times and 12Gb ram, should be all sorted.
I do love how quickly SSD's boot..

But at the price of some of those ex servers.... about tempted to see what happens.

[antus]

You can test with vmware workstation without the extra hardware. Its essentially the same product. Actually Ive seen the server and storage guys at work use vmware workstation to manage the vmware blade servers because for simple stuff the UI is nicer and they could avoid the overhead of the vsphere interface they otherwise use. Note that RDesktop is shitloads faster then VNC, but the VNC SSL tunnel and password is a benefit when its an old OS. But rdesktop protocol over VPN would take the cake as you get the graphics acceleration support even over the net and the extra layer of security while keeping your VM off the net.

[The1]

we need thumbs up or thumbs down button on the forum posts

[HQ355]

we need thumbs up or thumbs down button on the forum posts

Hell yeah, I just went to hit the thumbs up button on your suggestion lol