Windows 7 Home Premium upgrade to Pro

beardiedog

WAYT wrote: »

Did you bother to peruse the content to which I linked?

Apart from that, your CPU is already twelve years old. The time is coming when you'll need to "reinstall everything" anyway. Better to do it on your own terms.

Perhaps time to invest in a new PC. £50 will get you something that will do the job properly. Unless you can't afford it, it seems ridiculous struggling along with half measures that barely work.
Then you can put your old drive in as a secondary drive. Even better, fit a solid state drive as the boot drive.
At the very least, upgrade your CPU to one capable of virtualisation.

Erm, I did, yes, after I'd replied - I was going off my admittedly poor memory of what I thought I'd read there in the past!

You're right. The thing is, I'm retiring in 18 months time so I'm just trying to eek out the last dregs from this setup until then

WAYT

beardiedog wrote: »

Erm, I did, yes, after I'd replied - I was going off my admittedly poor memory of what I thought I'd read there in the past!

You're right. The thing is, I'm retiring in 18 months time so I'm just trying to eek out the last dregs from this setup until then

Does that mean that you won't be using a PC once you have retired?? Spend the £50. Don't be a cheapskate.
I can imagine how painfully slow your current setup. You are just testing your nerves for the sake of a few pounds.

Example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-OPTIPLEX-780-MT-Core2Duo-E8400-3-0GHz-4GB-320GB-DVDRW-Windows-7-Pro-/322665622378

Though I would try to get it for £50.

Current CPU benchmark:



Optiplex 780 MT CPU:

WAYT

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

I checked a random P4 processor on Intel ark and they have no VT-x support (I wouldn't expect it of a 15 year old CPU), which means virtualization is going to be tortuously slow.

It's possible:

https://ark.intel.com/products/27488/Intel-Pentium-4-Processor-672-supporting-HT-Technology-2M-Cache-3_80-GHz-800-MHz-FSB

But will still be painfully slow.

beardiedog

WAYT wrote: »

Does that mean that you won't be using a PC once you have retired?? Spend the £50. Don't be a cheapskate.
I can imagine how painfully slow your current setup. You are just testing your nerves for the sake of a few pounds.

Example: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DELL-OPTIPLEX-780-MT-Core2Duo-E8400-3-0GHz-4GB-320GB-DVDRW-Windows-7-Pro-/322665622378

Though I would try to get it for £50.

It's not a case of the money TBH, it's just a case of is it worth the effort at this late stage and for what I use it for it's actually quite fast. I've cranked up the CPU a bit so it's running at more than 2.93 GHz. I was planning on getting a laptop when I retire and turn the office back into a bedroom again.

Thanks for the link ... looks good and it has a parallel port too for my old and trusty LJ4.

Frozen_up_north

justaquestion wrote: »

What are the chances that old 98, XP pc games will run on Virtualbox, I have tried them before on VMware player without any success?
Thanks a lot.

I don't play computer games, but timing critical legacy communication software operating over RS232 via a Prolific USB/RS232 adapter (which won't run under Win 10) worked perfectly, as do "ordinary" legacy programs.

As Virtual Box is free, it's worth a try.

esuhl

beardiedog wrote: »

Thanks WAYT, I thought about dual booting but I didn't want to reinstall everything again as I believe you have to install XP before 7 if I'm right?

It doesn't matter which order you install the operating systems, but if you install XP then 7 the bootloader will be set up automatically.

If you install XP onto a machine that already has 7, XP will replace the bootloader and you'll only be able to boot into XP. To fix this, you just need to install the 7 bootloader again (which will detect XP and give you the option to select an OS each time you boot).

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee851681.aspx

WAYT

beardiedog wrote: »

It's not a case of the money TBH, it's just a case of is it worth the effort at this late stage and for what I use it for it's actually quite fast. I've cranked up the CPU a bit so it's running at more than 2.93 GHz. I was planning on getting a laptop when I retire and turn the office back into a bedroom again.

Thanks for the link ... looks good and it has a parallel port too for my old and trusty LJ4.

You can decide as to whether it's worth the effort. A day's work against eighteen months of sloth like performance.

Up to you

beardiedog

WAYT wrote: »

You can decide as to whether it's worth the effort. A day's work against eighteen months of sloth like performance.

Up to you

It's not a sloth, though, for what I use it for anyway - office work and basic Internet stuff and emails. The speed isn't the problem, only if I was to run an OS under virtualisation it seems, which we've established isn't advisable and has answered my original question.

Thank you for your help and advice, it is very much appreciated.

esuhl

beardiedog wrote: »

The speed isn't the problem, only if I was to run an OS under virtualisation it seems, which we've established isn't advisable...

It's got to be worth a go. MS-DOS has pretty low system requirements.

I'd install VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

And then try the MS-DOS 6.22 ISO here:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

Not sure I'd trust some random Dropbox file (rather than an ISO from the link above), but otherwise, these instructions seem pretty decent:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Install-DOS-622-Under-VirtualBox/

beardiedog

esuhl wrote: »

It's got to be worth a go. MS-DOS has pretty low system requirements.

I'd install VirtualBox:
https://www.virtualbox.org/

And then try the MS-DOS 6.22 ISO here:
http://www.allbootdisks.com/download/iso.html

Not sure I'd trust some random Dropbox file (rather than an ISO from the link above), but otherwise, these instructions seem pretty decent:
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-To-Install-DOS-622-Under-VirtualBox/

Thanks, I might just do that, and there's nothing lost if it doesn't resolve the issue.