racketboy.com

So like a few others here I believe, I fought against the Windows 10 update. I'll go for it when I build my next PC, but for this one I just simply wanted to stick with Windows 7. I used GWX and also made sure Windows automatic updates were off. Now that several months have passed after 10 being out and the "free" upgrade being eliminated, I wonder if it's safe to fully update again? I was really irked when the "free" update offer planted a 10GB folder/file on my SSD when I barely have that much space available for it.

Just had a weird scare while trying to access one of my externals, Windows Explorer crashed and then COM Surrogate popped up needed to end its process. Tried to reset but got impatient and went for a hard reset. Sounds like this is a legit Windows file but I'm doing some scans now and looking around. MWB found nothing though.

Booted up fine, scanned again and nothing, and the drive that triggered it seems fine while I access folders and files. Maybe I should check the health of it though.

That was just really weird and I guess sometimes it happens, but it's been very rare that I've needed to shutdown like that. I have my PC running 24/7 so maybe it was just clogged up.

I have 6 HDD's running on this thing, is that taxing? lol 1 SSD for the OS, 2 externals, and 3 internal.

To update Windows 7 efficiently, I recommend this tool:

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

It will give you full control over components downloaded and installed.

As far as I know, in all the machines I've encountered since the free upgrade period ended, you should be safe to update again. I haven't seen any more of the GWX reminders since the end of the summer. This also happened on people's computers I didn't put GWX Control Panel on. However, all Win 7 and 8 systems are getting the "rollup" update packages, which basically means all or nothing, everything you get every month during Patch Tuesday is in one update, so if there's an update that causes machines to brick, that's just great!

Exhuminator wrote:To update Windows 7 efficiently, I recommend this tool:

http://download.wsusoffline.net/

It will give you full control over components downloaded and installed.

yeah, i think this is what i started using when they were trying to creep windows 10 or whatever a few months back - i'm prolly gonna leave 7 kicking & screaming one day, haha

Ya, Windows 7 on nearly all the PCs here. Older ones running XP PE + some specific updates to keep IE6 running smoothly. Still a couple older ones running 98se and Windows 3.11 even. Some are not fully updated, but for their purposes they do not need to be.
One underpowered windows tablet with windows 8.1 on because it's too hard to get all that tablet-type hardware running right on an older OS.

The only taxing thing running many hard drives is if you are not running a powered hub and your PSU cannot handle all the USB power drain over the ports. I'm running ~9 hard drives on my main tower, A couple internal, the rest through a couple of USB3 powered hubs. I've had my bro's tower complain of power surges while plugging most of both mine and his external drives into his tower all at once, tho he's running a Mini-ATX motherboard and it has so few USB ports for having so many devices drawing power off them. We might've been going past 40tb at that point. If you're talking about external mobile (laptop-sized) drives that run completely off USB that would be a different thing entirely.

FWIW, my Win7 machine has always been up to date. That GWX crap has been MIA since the summer though, so you're good.