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End support of Win 7


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@Super Hayes.6890 said:3 of the 4 GW2 accounts in my house are on Windows 7. The fourth is on Windows 8. Windows 10 will not see my hard drives until it is stable which could mean never. Soooo glad I didn't take the free upgrade back in the day. As far as support ending in January, there will be no change to GW2 running on it.

Stable, as in never crashing stable or what? Define what stable means to you, because I've had zero instability(no crashes or other glitches) issues with mine.

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@"Zaklex.6308" said:Stable, as in never crashing stable or what? Define what stable means to you, because I've had zero instability(no crashes or other glitches) issues with mine.Being completed instead of being a permanent paid beta can be one interpretation.Or maybe simply Windows 10 being a proper OS instead of the "Windows as a service" that MS is striving for.

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@Zaklex.6308 said:

@Super Hayes.6890 said:3 of the 4 GW2 accounts in my house are on Windows 7. The fourth is on Windows 8. Windows 10 will not see my hard drives until it is stable which could mean never. Soooo glad I didn't take the free upgrade back in the day. As far as support ending in January, there will be no change to GW2 running on it.

Stable, as in never crashing stable or what? Define what stable means to you, because I've had zero instability(no crashes or other glitches) issues with mine.

I built a rig for my friend with Windows 10 and after replacing every brand new component one by one and re-installing around 20 times over the course of a year GW2 remains unstable while his other games run flawlessly. It's a long story but Windows 10 is the only constant left. The rig cannot run on older versions of windows and I'm not versed in Linux. My Windows 8 rig isn't compatable with Windows 8 and runs GW2 with no issues despite five not-installed motherboard components because there are no Windows 8 drivers for them.

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Windows 10 isn't as bad as what people make it out to be.

Interface wise, Windows 7 > Windows 10 but system itself, Windows 7 < Windows 10 which is indeed more important.

Do not touch windows 8 or 8.1 lol.

GW2 will not suddenly stop working on Windows 7 but incoming month just be careful and do not use internet explorer! Switch to chrome or firefox for example.

Don't bother paying for windows 10 if your planning on replacing the computer in next year if your only play GW2 or current games.

You could see issues on newer games incoming though.

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So much misinformation and incorrect assumptions in here it's well....ok, I worked in IT before, it's not really surprising.

Win7 is going on 11 years old now, what people don't understand is if you already have Win7 there are still many ways to upgrade to Win10 for free. If not, there are many places you can get legit OEM keys for $15-20.

As for performance, Win7 and Win10 have been compared so much, and just about any review you pull up shows Win10 almost totally across the board not only using less resources but better performance while using less. While some privacy issues do exist, any advanced user (or someone who can use Google) can turn all those settings off and login with a local account rather than a MS one, there are even programs some people made that automates/walks you through all of them. Win10 is actually more stable than Win7, and will only become more so as time goes on as newer and newer software stops testing on a 11 year old OS.

Part of the reason some computers break with updates with Win10 is that Home version of Win10 can only delay updates for a short time, while the Pro version of windows you can control everything. You might think this is a bad thing, however for the ecosystem as a whole it is FAR better. Reason being is you have less unpatched machines in the wild, because your parents who don't understand computers and click on anything that pops up and never patched their computer since the first day they unboxed it 5 years ago. Before these changes huge sweeping infections and viruses used to be far more common and would spread like wild fire because of unpatched OSes. Something MS used to get tons of flack for, however unless they forced updates on everyone but the advanced users who bought Pro windows, they were never going to mitigate these gaping security holes in unpatched machines.

Often times the PCs that break with the updates have some sort of configuration that is not right, or are running unsupported HW, be it because it's very old and doesn't work with Win10 because of the new security features and driver requirements, or because the driver from the HW mfg has a bug. This happened all the time with XP, Vista and Win7, just less so for many people because they just never installed the updates. It's like Vista, that had lots of hate as a horrible OS, when it's really just Win7, the main problem was that Vista changed the whole driver frame work for security reasons and many vendors and HW mfgs were NOT ready for it's release, so people built new rigs and installed Vista only to have the system really buggy or crash, which was the fault of the HW mfg not having completed supported drivers ready. However people don't think about that and just blamed Vista.

If you are not an advanced enough user to figure these things out on your own, building a PC might not be the best idea if you depend on that one PC. The better option would be to buy a prebuilt and get a warranty with it.

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@Fueki.4753 said:

@"Zaklex.6308" said:Stable, as in never crashing stable or what? Define what stable means to you, because I've had zero instability(no crashes or other glitches) issues with mine.Being completed instead of being a permanent paid beta can be one interpretation.Or maybe simply Windows 10 being a proper OS instead of the "Windows as a service" that MS is striving for.

They're not striving for it, they're doing it...Win10 is not he last version of Windows as people claimed, they have a 10 year support cycle for it with subsequent versions moving towards a 5 year support calendar...it's also probably because my machine came with Win10 Pro and not the home version(which I haven't used in the last 3 versions of the OS).

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@"TinkTinkPOOF.9201" said:Part of the reason some computers break with updates with Win10 is that Home version of Win10 can only delay updates for a short time, while the Pro version of windows you can control everything.

By this do you mean Win10 Pro never has any forced updates ever? I hear this every couple of years and have to do a bunch of research only to find out there's a caveat about "security updates" or something. Do you have complete absolute control over Win10 Pro as the PC owner?

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The biggest issue to me with MS ending support for Win 7 is that hardware manufactures will also drop support in the form of drivers, it's not as big a deal with legacy hardware (because the drivers already exist) but if you want to build or buy a new PC on the latest hardware and run Win 7 as your OS your going to have a big problem very shortly with driver support for those nice new features you upgraded your hardware to get. Win X is of course a option and will have all the hardware driver support you would need but.... no version of Win X including Enterprise or LTSB give 100% total control over your PC OS, you can put off updates for awhile but sooner or later MS is going to force them onto your PC, it's just a fact of life.

For me, with the help of others here on this forum I made the switch to Linux and have been happily running GW2 through Wine/Lutris on Linux for months, like anything it has had its moments but no worse than running GW2 on Win X IMHO..... but this too isn't a solution for everyone running Win 7 and needing compatibility with other Windows based software.

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@YMIHere.9580 said:

@"TinkTinkPOOF.9201" said:Part of the reason some computers break with updates with Win10 is that Home version of Win10 can only delay updates for a short time, while the Pro version of windows you can control everything.

By this do you mean Win10 Pro never has any forced updates ever? I hear this every couple of years and have to do a bunch of research only to find out there's a caveat about "security updates" or something. Do you have complete absolute control over Win10 Pro as the PC owner?

Yes, you can disable updates through Local Group Policy, and a few other ways as well, but this is the most simple. However turning these off means you will lose all updates until it is reactivated.

I have no idea why people would do that, and why people are so scared of updates, in most cases it's because of pure ignorance or something someone told them that is just incorrect. The option is built into pro and enterprise Windows because many use custom in house software or other devices that need high compatibility without constantly having to maintain the code/drivers. I worked somewhere that had some really old HW (DOE) that they could not replace, as it was no longer made or supported (mfg didn't exist anymore) and was based on some old 8bit software.

However those are HIGHLY specific cases that just does not apply to 99.99% of consumers.

You can also stop it on Home as well, by blocking the services and IP's for updates in a firewall or router. This can be done for other services as well, with a dsnmasq that wont allow a LAN client to resolve the domain name into an IP, or it resolves into a local dead end IP. There are probably a hundred other ways to do this on non-Pro Window installs as well.

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Regarding Windows updates:Instead of disabling updates (which is dumb idea anyway) you can always make download them much later so you avoid "first month" issues. Updates in W10 are not like W7 updates that take millions of years to download and install, nor require you to download a million patches for the same thing. W10 updates are optimized to be much faster to both download and install, of course they have issues, but Microsoft is quick to solve them.

In short: W10 updates are much better than W7 updates, make sure you don't get updates on the first month.

As for performance, I don't know why anyone would stay with W7 if they know what the word "performance" means and actually care about it. W10 boots much faster (nearly triple speed on the same hardware), shuts down much faster, makes file transfers much faster (ever tried to move a folder with lots of files in W7? Nightmare), installation/uninstallation of applications is much faster. Even browsing the UI is faster. In terms of speed, it feels like W10 with an HDD is comparable to W7 with an SSD, that's how slow W7 feels to me (even with an SSD) after using W10 for some time. W7 performance is absolute garbage and people need to take off those rose tinted glasses, or stop bashing W10 without actually trying them, I can't think of another explanation.

Not to mention W10 reset makes "formatting" a breeze. It takes half a day to format W7 because you have to download the million updates after the installation, something not required in W10 as updates there are bundled properly.

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@mercury ranique.2170 said:As soon as Microsoft stops supporting windows 7, Arenanet stops as well. It is cause they can't guarantee it works as the supplier doesn't guarantee this as well. However, this doesn't mean you will run into issues. They will still put in effort to keep it running on windows 7 and they likely will do so for a long time.Thats a whole lot of contradiction.

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@Blanger.3162 said:The biggest issue to me with MS ending support for Win 7 is that hardware manufactures will also drop support in the form of drivers, it's not as big a deal with legacy hardware (because the drivers already exist) but if you want to build or buy a new PC on the latest hardware and run Win 7 as your OS your going to have a big problem very shortly with driver support for those nice new features you upgraded your hardware to get. Win X is of course a option and will have all the hardware driver support you would need but.... no version of Win X including Enterprise or LTSB give 100% total control over your PC OS, you can put off updates for awhile but sooner or later MS is going to force them onto your PC, it's just a fact of life.

For me, with the help of others here on this forum I made the switch to Linux and have been happily running GW2 through Wine/Lutris on Linux for months, like anything it has had its moments but no worse than running GW2 on Win X IMHO..... but this too isn't a solution for everyone running Win 7 and needing compatibility with other Windows based software.

Do you have a post somewhere that I could reference?

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@Dawdler.8521 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:As soon as Microsoft stops supporting windows 7, Arenanet stops as well. It is cause they can't guarantee it works as the supplier doesn't guarantee this as well. However, this doesn't mean you will run into issues. They will still put in effort to keep it running on windows 7 and they likely will do so for a long time.Thats a whole lot of contradiction.

No it is not.Supporting something means you guarantee it will work. That is no longer possible due to a lack of support by the supplier (Microsoft).But putting in best effort is still very much possible. This will likely mean it will keep on running for a long time.

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@Healix.5819 said:

@"YMIHere.9580" said:By this do you mean Win10 Pro never has any forced updates ever?

You can entirely disable updates in either Home or Pro, though obviously not recommended. Pro just has a few more options.

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-will-no-longer-force-windows-10-feature-updates-users"That last part is key. Users can't remain on an old version of Windows 10 forever. Microsoft says that it will automatically install the latest feature update when the version of Windows 10 the user is currently running reaches end of support."

https://www.howtogeek.com/410183/microsoft-abandons-windows-10s-forced-updates/"When you click “Check for Updates” in Windows 10, you can choose whether you want to install the resulting updates or pause updates for up to 35 days. This pause feature is new to Windows 10 Home, and was previously only available in Windows 10 Professional. Previously, Windows automatically installed updates right after checking. And yes, this applies to smaller security, stability, and driver updates, too. (You can only pause seven days at a time, but you can pause up to five times in a row.)""Windows 10 will still automatically install a feature update when your current version reaches “end of service.” This happens about every 18 months—see the Windows lifecycle fact sheet. That means, if you were using Windows 10’s Fall Creators Update (1709), your PC would be about to install a feature update—but you wouldn’t have had to install the last few feature updates. (So yes, some forced feature updates remain—but only once every 18 months or so, after a lot of testing.)"

Got a source?

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@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:

@TinkTinkPOOF.9201 said:Part of the reason some computers break with updates with Win10 is that Home version of Win10 can only delay updates for a short time, while the Pro version of windows you can control everything.

By this do you mean Win10 Pro never has any forced updates ever? I hear this every couple of years and have to do a bunch of research only to find out there's a caveat about "security updates" or something. Do you have complete absolute control over Win10 Pro as the PC owner?

Yes, you can disable updates through Local Group Policy, and a few other ways as well, but this is the most simple. However turning these off means you will lose all updates until it is reactivated.

I have no idea why people would do that, and why people are so scared of updates, in most cases it's because of pure ignorance or something someone told them that is just incorrect. The option is built into pro and enterprise Windows because many use custom in house software or other devices that need high compatibility without constantly having to maintain the code/drivers. I worked somewhere that had some really old HW (DOE) that they could not replace, as it was no longer made or supported (mfg didn't exist anymore) and was based on some old 8bit software.

However those are HIGHLY specific cases that just does not apply to 99.99% of consumers.

You can also stop it on Home as well, by blocking the services and IP's for updates in a firewall or router. This can be done for other services as well, with a dsnmasq that wont allow a LAN client to resolve the domain name into an IP, or it resolves into a local dead end IP. There are probably a hundred other ways to do this on non-Pro Window installs as well.

This is helpful, adding Local Group Policy to my search shows different articles, but there are still caveats.https://www.windowscentral.com/how-stop-updates-installing-automatically-windows-10"Also, this guide only stops monthly updates, which usually fix security vulnerabilities and improves the stability of Windows 10. If you want to avoid automatic installs of feature updates, such as the Windows 10 May 2019 Update, when the current installation is nearing the end of service, you need to modify the settings to defer major releases."

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@mercury ranique.2170 said:

@mercury ranique.2170 said:As soon as Microsoft stops supporting windows 7, Arenanet stops as well. It is cause they can't guarantee it works as the supplier doesn't guarantee this as well. However, this doesn't mean you will run into issues. They will still put in effort to keep it running on windows 7 and they likely will do so for a long time.Thats a whole lot of contradiction.

No it is not.Supporting something means you guarantee it will work. That is no longer possible due to a lack of support by the supplier (Microsoft).But putting in best effort is still very much possible. This will likely mean it will keep on running for a long time.Game developers cant even guarantee it works with supported OS, so no thats not how it works.Just look at RDR2.
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@"YMIHere.9580" said:Got a source?

It can't update if it can't connect - firewall it.

To be clear, there isn't a simple "check this to disable it" option. Additionally, Microsoft has been "improving" how they handle updates, so what works now may not work in a future update. For example, last year they added a service that "fixes" windows updates, which undoes the older methods to disable it. You can find a collection of various ways to disable updates here.

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@Healix.5819 said:

@"YMIHere.9580" said:Got a source?

It can't update if it can't connect - firewall it.

To be clear, there isn't a simple "check this to disable it" option. Additionally, Microsoft has been "improving" how they handle updates, so what works now may not work in a future update. For example, last year they added a service that "fixes" windows updates, which undoes the older methods to disable it. You can find a collection of various ways to disable updates
.

Relying on another device only works so long as that device does. Thanks for the article, but I'm going to have to look more thoroughly through it because the first method is one I've already seen a caveat for in another article (though it's not mentioned here).

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While I'm running Win 7 on two of my boxes; one of which I play GW2 on, my laptop is Win 10. I'm in the planning stages of my new gaming PC and I'm hoping to run Linux on it. Fusion 360 is going to be the determining factor if I need to run a dual boot so I can run it. If they dropped Win 7 support I'd hope they added direct Linux support given how much gaming on it has changed in the last few years.

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