Rift owners still running Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, beware. Oculus is changing both its recommended and minimum supported OS to Windows 10 on Rift, something the company says will come when Rift Core 2.0 is pushed out to the stable branch sometime later this year.

Oculus says in a blogpost that Windows 7 and 8.1 aren’t losing support entirely, but users “may not be able to use many new and upcoming features and apps. We encourage everyone who isn’t already running Windows 10 to upgrade now to avoid missing out on what’s next.”

There is some pretty salient reasoning behind this: the company reports that 95% of “most active Rift owners” currently run Windows 10. Not only that, Microsoft has phased out mainstream support for both Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 now, with 8.1 losing mainstream support as of January 9th, 2018.

Rift Core 2.0 is currently an opt-in beta which puts a few important quality-of-life issues at its core; a customizable Home experience with collectibles, app and window multitasking via Oculus Dash, and Oculus Desktop’s mirror monitors.

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Here’s the company’s general warning to users still running Windows 7 and 8.1:

Rift owners whose PCs aren’t running Windows 10 may find their systems are incompatible with some new apps and games. You’ll still be able to get the same VR features and functions you have today, including things like responding to platform notifications, interacting with friends on the platform, managing your device, and running VR apps that don’t require Windows 10. You can still use Windows 7 and Windows 8 with most of Rift Core 2.0’s core functionality, but things like Oculus Desktop require Windows 10, as does the ability to run Dash as an overlay.

Windows 10 has always been a minimum OS for the full functionality of Rift Core 2.0 while in beta, so it makes sense that Oculus would officially have to pull the band-aid off of Windows 7 and 8.1 users eventually.

Oculus hasn’t changed its minimum or recommended hardware specs, which you can see below. If you’re worried your system doesn’t reach the minimum, you can always use Oculus’ compatibility check tool for extra assurance.

Oculus Rift Recommended Specs

  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 1060 / AMD Radeon RX 480 or greater
  • Alternative Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD Radeon R9 290 or greater
  • CPU: Intel i5-4590 / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X or greater
  • Memory: 8GB+ RAM
  • Video Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
  • USB Ports: 3x USB 3.0 ports plus 1x USB 2.0 port
  • OS: Windows 10 operating system

Oculus Rift Minimum Specs

  • Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 1050Ti / AMD Radeon RX 470 or greater
  • Alternative Graphics Card: NVIDIA GTX 960 / AMD Radeon R9 290 or greater
  • CPU: Intel i3-6100 / AMD Ryzen 3 1200, FX4350 or greater
  • Memory: 8GB+ RAM
  • Video Output: Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
  • USB Ports: 1x USB 3.0 port, plus 2x USB 2.0 ports
  • OS: Windows 10 operating system
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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 4,000 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • flamaest

    obviously, most people should be on Windows 10 anyway. Even though the OS looks like crap.

    But I’m still not sure how I feel about this. Microsoft still supports Windows 7 on the books until Jan 2020.

    I believe as soon as Microsoft declares the operating system end of life, that is when other companies can safely start reducing support for that operating system.

    • Adrian Meredith

      windows 7 is already out of support, 2020 is just when they stop fixing serious security issues

      • Dr. Jeffcoat

        Paid support for W7 Professional and Enterprise editions
        January 2023

    • Andrew Jakobs

      Windows 10 in most cases visually is nothing more than Windows 7 with Aero turned off..
      I’m still using Windows 7 Ultimate at work, but that’s more due to me being lazy and not wanting to go through all the trouble of reinstalling/setting up all the tools I’m using right now (still even using visual basic 6 and I have no idea how the IDE handles itself in windows 10, it was already a hard time to get it up and running in Windows 7, the way we use it that is).

    • Dr. Jeffcoat

      Let’s take Microsoft’s most popular Windows to date:
      [Windows XP]

      Released to manufacturing
      August 24, 2001

      Mainstream support
      April 14, 2009

      Extended support
      April 8, 2014

      Windows Embedded POS Ready 2009
      Mainstream support ended
      April 8, 2014

      Extended support ends
      April 9, 2019

      XP total support from RTM
      From August 24th, 2001

      to EOL
      April 9th, 2019

      Technically XP can continue using the XP Embedded POS Ready 2009 Updates
      17 years 7 months is the longest duration by far of support.

      [Windows 7]
      Released to manufacturing
      July 22, 2009

      Windows Embedded Standard 7 RTM
      July 27, 2010

      W7 Mainstream support ended
      January 13, 2015

      W7 Extended support / Windows Server 2008 R2
      January 14, 2020

      Windows Embedded Standard 7
      October 13, 2020

      W7 Professional and Enterprise editions
      January 2023

      Windows Embedded Standard 7 RTM Product Distribution End
      July 27, 2025

      If we expect W7 to get the same amount of longevity as XP we are looking at this date
      July 22, 2009 + 17 Years 7 Months
      February 2026

      Now given XP got an additional 5 years with POS 2009, W7 could use Embedded Updates
      January 2023 + 5 years
      January 2028

      Now if Embedded Standard 7 RTM Sales end on
      July 27, 2025 + 5 years
      2030 is the Maximum Date officially I can see Windows 7 being officially unsupported for good from Microsoft.

      However I would guess not only will Windows 7 64-Bit surpass XP 32-Bit’s longevity despite being unsupported I could see Windows 7 running till 2040 with probably a 10% market share by then.

      Now given Windows 7 64-Bit’s popularity it should be on par with XP 32-Bit’s and in my estimation it will eventually exceed it.

      The fact it is a 64-Bit OS and it supports up to 192GB of RAM although technically could be ported to support up to 2TB of RAM.

      DX11 probably won’t be dead any time soon.

      Only thing Windows 10 has going for it is DX12 which is the only feature you can call an advantage vs Windows 7.

      Only gamers would consider DX12 a major feature but a non-gamer would not care as it doesn’t affect them at all and will simply stay with Windows 7 for all their needs. The 64-Bit barrier was simply the only real crutch for Windows 32-Bit that MS could really leverage people to jump on.

      The only tactic they can use now is the no security updates support scare tactic which they used trying get people off XP to Vista and Windows 7.

      They will try this to get people off Windows 7 in 2020 to Windows 10.

      Believe me.

      The Truth Is Out There.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Not really a problem. What this propably means is they just don’t give support on Windows 7 or 8.1 of there are any problems, if it still works, great, but if it isn’t, well you’re warned..

  • NooYawker

    If your computer is powerful enough to run a VR system you should be on Win10 anyway.

    • Ryan

      I believe some people don’t like Windows 10 in its current state

      Some of the things,

      User interface – It’s subjective, some like it, some don’t

      Forced updates – Well, there’s a way to limit updates for metered connections, and on Windows 10 Pro, you can defer and pause updates. Windows 10 Enterprise LTS versions exist, but only businesses and the licensing is expensive. Plus LTS is not intended for general purpose computers.

      Telemetry – You can turn down how much data it is allowed to collect but not all the way off unless you get Enterprise edition. You can block telemetry at the firewall, but it’s a very troublesome and time consuming process for even the advanced user to do.

      I personally like Windows 10 myself and recommend it, but those are the reasons I see that people hate it.

      • NooYawker

        I can see that, the forced updates and the opt in by default privacy issues can be a concern.. a real pain actually.

  • Sandy Wich

    Auhg… I have W10 but i fkn hate it. Was thinking of going back to W7 where I don’t need a classic shell just to enjoy a good windows experience.

    …W/e I guess.

    • Rise_of_Chaos

      Windows 10 is like Windows 7 with 500 ping. Absolute worst piece of garbage I have never seen anything like it w/ literally 100’s of processes running in the background bogging down your PC and yet not a single difference for the user accept to make your PC run like absolute crap. And being forced to endure their insidious and ridiculous ‘updates’ its like some creepy pedophile

      • Jistuce

        Funny, most of that is complaints I had about Windows XP next to 2000(Win2K is the Last Good Windows).

        • Rise_of_Chaos

          Windows XP was great until it forced an update that caused my $300 iriver 20GB Jukebox to no longer be able to connect. I mean c’mon….One day I was simply no longer able to use Windows Media Player to add songs to a $300 device purchase a year or two earlier? That is absolute garbage. I reluctantly upgraded to Windows 7 and I haven’t had any complaints with it. Windows 10 is an absolute clusterf*ck.. I have never seen so many processes going on in the background.. and how am I benefiting from it? Every single thing that happens instantaneously in Windows 7 it sits there and makes you wait while it records everything your doing and sends it back to Microsoft. I truly hope Steam comes out with its Operating System so that will be the last I ever have to deal with Microsoft again.

          • Gary

            I just find it messed up MS Windows is the only OS Supported. The company is way too big. Its reach is everywhere when it comes to software, and they are banding them all under Azure. Scary shit tbh. No business is safe from being bought out by MS these days.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Microsoft is its only downfall. Whomever is running it has gone downhill starting from after XP. This is Post Bill Gates. I think Gates actually made Windows better and had he remained in charge instead of going off and fighting Malaria in 3rd World countries we would have XP 128-Bit by now.

            Or they could have released XP SP4 that brought native AHCI support, Intel USB 3.0 support, added security patches, and ported the already existing 64GB memory PAE support from 2003 and XP 32-Bit would still be a great OS for another 10 years.

          • Gary

            The thing about MS Is yes the quality of their software have fallen by a lot, but yet more and more people today are using their products. Features first quality second, they release a gimped product and fix it later strategy works extremely well and it is something Google has been doing for years. It is fail proof strategy for a company as big as Microsoft. One look at Windows 10 and it’s update model and you can see, no amount of complaints can deter MS to get their crap together to roll out bug free updates. They are so dominant with their OS and Office space that it is almost a natural choice for corporates to pick Azure in doing future. And when you have these backup gold mines, they can just use the spare cash to work on consumer products till they succeed since no one can compete with their deep pockets. It’s anything but fair.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Not exactly a fool proof strategy. That’s why Windows 8 failed. They tried to push some half baked crap and charge you to upgrade to it. Didn’t sit well with most users and the Metro interface turned off a lot of people. That’s why they had to distance themselves from making the same mistake and skipped Windows 9.0 and went with Windows 10. But instead of making people pay for it they decided to trick users using Windows 7 into upgrading and when that didn’t work they tried to offer the Windows 10 upgrade for free. So if you eliminate Windows 10 as a free upgrade I’m sure the share for Windows 10 would be about half of what it is. Most sensible people will either install Windows 7 onto a new machine even if they have to purchase it off eBay or just move their old W7 drive over to the new machine.

            I think Windows 7 64-Bit will be very hard for Microsoft to kill compared to XP and that one is almost 20 years old. They have no real motivating factors to force W7 users to 10. The interface for Windows 10 is worse than 7. Windows 10 was filled with more phone home crap preinstalled than W7 so try setting a Windows 10 machine offline for an extended period it will start showing popups it wants to connect to the internet unendlessly. Not great for DVR systems or offline systems. Add the fact you’re on the guinea pig experiment train of new updates you are forced to install in order to stay “supported” which could make the system unstable or even corrupt the OS.

            Only one reason to even consider Windows 10 is DX 12.0. If you don’t need it or care for it then there’s no reason to upgrade and this applies to non gamers. What reason would say an English teacher at a university need to upgrade to Windows 10 and take a chance at screwing up his or her machine? They got important documents and if the system is running fine why take the risk?

            Now the typical gamer is probably fine with DX 11.0 or they’ll just grab an XBOX1 if they really want DX 12.0 titles as I’m sure some are XBOX1 exclusive that won’t be available for a Windows 10 PC. And even DX 12.0 titles will have DX 11.0 support so it’s not a game changing requirement to play a game on Windows 10.

            But their back up gold mines aren’t really that infinite or deep as they used to be since Gates left. And they can’t continuously throw money around with nothing in return. Windows as a service or the Office 365 they are trying to make a normality is a joke. Even some of their older versions like Office 2003 was pretty good.

            Once you have a pretty stable OS that’s worked out 90% of all the kinks you probably want to continue creating products for that OS and not force people to upgrade to new OS with less incentives. Windows 7 64-Bit has already gained that status. There was no real need for Windows 10. Think of how well Windows 10 would have done if it were not a free upgrade for Windows 7 users and did not include DX 12.0. I would say its upgrade marketshare would have been similar to Windows 8 but maybe slightly higher since they got rid of the Metro.

            They also could have continuously made Office as a stand alone product you purchased once and install and run offline like in the old days or the OS like Windows 2000 you buy it install it offline and run it and can reinstall as many times as you want without needing to phone home to MS even once.

            I predict Windows 7 64-Bit will still remain used even in 2030. It’s going to harder to kill off than XP by a huge margin.

          • Jistuce

            Windows Xp was never more than “2000, only worse”. The things it gets praised for are things 2k already did. The things it gets blamed for are things 2k didn’t do.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            It was worse at first only because it added more steps and the MS BOB GUI characters appeared. First activation requirement for a NT OS for consumers where Windows 2000 didn’t phone home. 2000 Had limitations with font sizes. Try using it on a small screen laptop and it was a nightmare. XP fixed that. The Internet Connection Sharing seemed better on XP and I don’t think it worked or was present in Windows 2000 or at least from what I could recall Internet Sharing didn’t work as easily as XP. Maybe you’ve tested this out.

            Where it did excel in my opinion was efficiency in getting to where you needed to go. XP added a bunch of unnecessary steps to get to the same icons giving the impression of a delay.

            Running XP on quad core, hexacore, or the i9-9900K octacore any neglible delay isn’t apparent really noticeable. And since I do revert back to the Windows Classic mode user interface the shit alreadys runs as fast as is possible.

            Find a way to port all XP dependencies to 2K then you resurrect 2K. Otherwise today 2K is basically a neutered form of XP when running its library of software today. I don’t think you can port FireFox 52 to run on 2K which still works today on pretty much almost every website.

            2K had it’s heyday maybe till 2005. I seem to recall around this time period the nagging incompatibilities requiring XP or be left behind unable to proceed just killed 2K slowly into obsolescence.

            2K is still great for whatever library of software that you can still find that can run on it. But for the internet it looks like you’ll be mostly gimping along.

          • Jistuce

            And a lot of the software that didn’t work on 2K seemed to have no real REASON not to. It was like people were making sure to use a single XP API call just so they could break 2K compatibility.

            I stand by my statement. XP was worse than 2K, everything XP gets praised for is something it inherited from 2K, and 2K was the last good Windows.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Well the software was programmed by the programmers who used the newer APIs. Perhaps they used it because the MS.NET functions are easier to build programs than coding it themselves saving them time. I know one programmer who insisted on using MS.NET v4.5 for his programs so XP cannot use it either. But that is life I suppose but you can find the programs that still worked in that time period and use those forever.

            But one thing you will not find a proper Blu-ray player for 2000 so sadly it’s not the best OS anymore for a HD multimedia experience. The best is only a DVD experience for 2K.

            When comparing 2K vs XP today I would say 2K is only about 25% of the usefulness as XP. So 2K is a poorer environment to be really useful. It also it lacks the Details tab for Hardware Ids and other hardware identifying tools for driver installations making it more user unfriendly.

            XP Pro is the clear winner today and still usable on the newest Intel octacore i9-9900K. 2K Professional seems to be capped to just dual cores making it not 100% efficient.

            There is only one feature that 2K can still cherish that you can probably agree on. No activation required with Microsoft similar to all older OSes before it. This makes it a suitable OS for use inside retro gaming equipment. Probably the best feature about it that all newer OSes should have had but didn’t or else everyone would be using Vista and Windows 7 everywhere for certain.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Forced update? There hasn’t been a forced update for XP since SP3 if you can call that forced. In fact you could disable any updates in XP from downloading. I think since it past the 2014 deadline the Update service no longer works anyhow so I doubt it tried to force update.

            Most people can just install SP2 and be fine. SP3 adds some security updates but nothing that would brick something.

            Now if this was some Jukebox update you might be more specific. Was it a firmware update? If so then it’s the fault of the Jukebox manufacturer. Now if playing the music on the device itself is fine and connecting to XP you can’t see it as a drive letter then you might want to uninstall any software and the driver for this device if you had to in order to use it. Reboot the system. Then reinstall the older version that worked on XP (software and old driver) and try reconnecting the jukebox device again. If it still doesn’t work it’s most likely caused by a firmware update. If you’re able to flash back to the older firmware that it came with it should fix it.

            I’m not familiar with your player but if all it does is store MP3 files on it and is accessible as a drive letter seen in XP and all you are doing is copying a .mp3 file onto a folder I see no reason why your device stopped working. It sounds to me more likely you did a firmware update on your Jukebox player or something that possibly made it incompatible with XP somehow probably the manufacturer slipped in some code to make it reject XP.

            But I don’t see why you are using Windows Media Player to play your music. There are probably tons of better alternative programs to play .mp3 playlists. If you’re able to see the music files on the USB device then I think VLC is a free one that could play almost every audio format. I’m sure even that program could make a playlist out of your .mp3s.

            But you’re right about Windows 10. The damn thing seeks home to Microsoft no matter what. Do a fresh install even after (unchecking every possible option to not give MS permission to access data from you). About a month of keeping the Windows 10 offline used as a DVR unit the damn pop ups start coming complaining it needs to phone home to MS for an update. What update? I didn’t connect the thing for a month and now it’s asking to update?

            And I even disabled auto updates so that shows you MS is watching you even if it’s an offline system it will nag you to death to go on the internet unrelentlessly to update when you don’t want or need to.

            Windows 7 isn’t as bad about it. But I hear the new updates beyond SP1 that came out since adds some of this back in ala Windows 10 spyware again.

            Vista SP2 on the other hand the update screen pops up about 1 year after being offline. Reinstall Vista SP2 and another year of no update nags.

        • Dr. Jeffcoat

          2000 is the last fastest Windows NT capable of running on a Coffee Lake non VM.

          But as for operational functionality XP takes the cake.

          If all dependencies of XP were ported back to 2K and that meant 2K could run all XP software than 2K wins hands down in speed.

          However running Windows 2000 on an octacore Coffee Lake CPU you probably won’t notice the speed difference vs XP than say on a Pentium 4 where the delays are more pronounced.

          I will say the Start Menu Pop up delay is much lower and snappier than XP as it was during the P4 days. So magnify that smoothness in 2018 you’ll only notice it slightly.

          Run Windows 9X on Coffee Lake it’s even snappier. Almost too jarring because the response is so instantaneous that it seems unreal.

          Run Windows 3.1 on Coffee Lake it just makes you laugh at how bad the GUI was before Quick Launch. But nothing like seeing a Coffee Lake CPU running on a early 1990s OS.

          Now DOS just boots up instantaneously as it always had. But this is what makes Intel CPUs so great. Backwards compatibility is its greatest strength.

          Try that on a MAC as see how compatible older MAC OSes are.

      • Dr. Jeffcoat

        Having installed all those OSes from DOS -> W10 into one system.

        Windows 10 is bad, but 8.X is worse.

        Windows 7 is better overall only to the extent that all dependencies are still favored for this OS.

        If Vista SP2 DX11 had all Windows 7 dependencies backported properly so it could run all W7 code then it would be superior and faster.

        If Vista SP2 had DX12.0 backported to it then it would be faster than W7, W8.X, and W10 and offer the best in user interface options and theme selection. Whomever thought limited themes and less options of out the box and the removal of Quick Launch was a good idea? They did it to W7 and didn’t get it. Windows 8 trying to make it into a smartphone interface? W8.1 no one cared anymore. Skip W9 name to avoid that disaster. W10 is just a bloated money grab and following the practices of Facebook and Google to steal your private information as a commodity. No thank you.

        Sadly people don’t get newer isn’t always better. The unfortunate thing is Vista RTM vanilla got a bad wrap. Too high CPU and memory requirements for its time and it wasn’t till SP2 with DX11 that it actually was a stable and superior OS ready for consumers on quad cores and 16GB of RAM or more.

        Had Vista SP2 DX11 gotten released at the same time as Windows 7 RTM it would have wiped the floor and W7 would have been dissed like Windows 8.X.

        We’d all still be using Vista SP2 and probably a DX12 patch would have been released and no sign of Windows 8.X or 10 further bloated garbage as a service would have been shoved in your face. Vista Ultimate supported up to 128GB. Most motherboards are capped at 64GB DDR4. Perhaps getting to 256GB motherboards they could have had a better reason to push people to Windows 7 and later.

        The truth is out there.

    • Pasi Ripari

      Honestly, I don’t actually mind win10. Forced updates and constant processing without my permission do suck, but it is somewhat well concealed. There’s not much clutter, like those godawful mobile tiles were.

      All in all, it’s okayish. One thing I won’t ever forgive though, is a default photo viewing program in which IF YOU ZOOM IN, YOU CAN’T USE ARROW KEYS TO CHANGE THE GODDAMN PHOTO TO THE NEXT ONE ANYMORE. HOW DRUNK DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO MESS UP LIKE THAT?

      Multi billion company everyone, can’t get a photo viewer work. (Was perfect in win 8.1 btw)

      • Sandy Wich

        Ive noticed several glitches that give me a headache on top of needing classic shell, “that’s by no means perfect btw”, that really turn me off of W10. I’ve also had several issues with photo viewer.

        Overall the only reason why I’m on this platform, “that I consider for my uses a serious downgrade”, is because I’m being forced to with my Rift/Future DX12, etc etc etc.

        Now that I think about it, it’s shit like this that’s beginning to turn me off being a PC power user. Every year Linux looks better for me.

  • Firestorm185

    Honestly, it’s not quite as nice an OS as 7 but I like it’s art direction and it’s usable, so it doesn’t matter that much for me. that and I’ve already been using it for ages.

  • Rise_of_Chaos

    So glad I did not choose Rift over VIVE and I will never support Oculus again.

    • care package

      Because of requiring W10? lol damn, at least you aren’t bratty dramatic. You’re probably running W10, too. Steam on W10 even!

      • Rise_of_Chaos

        Nope I spent 6 months w/ Windows 10 after I bought an Acer WMR Headset. Fried several of my components including my Hard drive and tried to knock out my USB 3.0 ports. I will fight off Windows 10 till the end. Windows 7 will be my last Microsoft OS. Windows 10 is hungry for parts and wants you to upgrade but it offers nothing in terms of user benefits. I actually have Windows 10 on a separate computer that I keep as a test…. haven’t used it at all, I just turn it on and let it update and do whatever it needs to every few days and it still managed to botch up its own auto updating.

        • care package

          Sorry man, I don’t believe W10 had anything to do with your HDD frying, or knocking out your USB ports. Electronics are made cheap. Windows 10 runs just fine on the same hardware as 7. I worked desktop support for a decade and toward the end upgraded many PCs to 10. You could always move to Mac. Great OS, but not great for gaming.

          • Rise_of_Chaos

            Yeah but when things works great for 5+ years without any issues whatsoever, and then when you connect those same things to Windows 10 and things start suddenly breaking and not working right, it is Windows 10. I have been building computers for 20 years…. most of my day is spent in front of em.

          • care package

            Building computers for 20 years, most of your day is spent in front of em, yet the only one I’ve heard claiming W10 destroyed your old ass PC. What OS should we all be using then to keep all our hardware safe?

          • Rise_of_Chaos

            Caused my hard drive to fail during one of its repair attempts after one of its “something went wrong” routines and “we couldn’t complete the update”. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            I’m not sure that hard drive actually failed. You could have just corrupted the OS and any file or file(s) either didn’t complete or got corrupted and froze the system. If you had imaged the OS partition and restored it before the update I’m sure it would be back to working order. If you are certain the hard drive failed then I would delete the entire partition hooking this to another system and repartitioning it and reformatting it. If you can’t even see the drive in Disk Management then I would check the connections to the drive and SATA data and power cables that they aren’t loose. Try another SATA port if you still can’t see it. Check in the BIOS the drive is detected and connected to a SATA port. If not recheck the SATA cables.

            Sometimes even the SATA ports can fail so switching to another one may fix the problem. I had a used motherboard had a defective SATA port which worked at first and eventually it started having issues reading and writing slowly and then corrupted the OS.

            Back your OS in a clean state before using it. It’s the best way to get your system back to a fast working order in just a few minutes than spending hours reinstalling from scratch everything.

            Personally this is still the Guinea Pig stage of Windows 10. All people using this OS are guinea pigs for MS. Any problem you experienced is data sent to MS to help fix and iron out the bugs. So know this when using a new OS that you are their guinea pig and this is the “cost” of being a Windows 10 user.

            This is why some OS that is stable say Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP2 DX11, or W7 SP1 before adding the post update patches since are probably the most stable forms of these OSes.

            I wouldn’t touch 8.0, 8.1, or 10.0 until 5 years after when they’ve released a SP1 or SP2. Even then most of the bugs have been ironed out and then I’d put the system in do not update automatically mode and test out all my hardware and software to make sure it’s stable and compatible and running smoothly.

            Do a complete image of that OS partition. And only update a patch if you really need to but since any patch could potentially corrupt the OS or make your software or hardware incompatible this is why having the OS image partitioned of the last working stable state is always a good thing to do.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            I have to agree here that no OS will fry computer hardware out of the blue. But if something were to fail it would usually fail as soon as you turned it on. Although care package has only done one decade of computer support I’ve done nearly 4 decades of computer generations and I have to say I have not once seen something fry simply by upgrading the OS. It’s most likely a component in that system was not of quality (cheap) in some cases or simply defective (which happens) due to bad QA.

            Some other possibilities are the wiring was reversed had one SATA power cable bought from overseas started melting the plastic around the cable and smoking. Thank God I was there and it was happening fast so I could unplug it. The hard drives weren’t damaged but losing a 16TB drive would have pissed me off. Always check your cables no matter the origin.

            Most components that fail is either the motherboard or the PSU as the cause. Hard drives used to have a much higher fail rate. MFM drives were notorious to fail. These days using a cheap SSD drive is not only energy efficient, faster, quiet, and not prone to damage during shipping like the behemoths we used to transport that only held 5 or 10 MBs of hard drive space inside these metal bricks that when turned on sounded like a car ignition next to your head.

          • care package

            “I’ve done” means what. 4 decades of official support, or we just talking tinkering on your own

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            What is your definition of “official support”? Babysitting the IT help lines? Even those corporate types are a joke. You are then confined to the rules of setting up systems in a way which will eventually fail instead of being smart and setting it up properly in a way you can restore your employee’s machine up and running in a minute or less instead of hours.

            Customers walk in with a machine and you fix it and you either go by the hour or a flat rate. You never heard of someone repairing and troubleshooting a computer before right in front of you? Guess that’s a shocker to you. Maybe your parents or grandparents are going to Geek Squad to get ripped off $300.

            Do you know what a MFM drive is? Or is that before your time? Have you ever used a 5 1/4″ Floppy Disk? Try owning a computer shop when 5MB Hard drives were not as cheap as 8TB drives that go for chump change.

            “Official support” in my case meant opening up hard drive platters in a sanitation environment to resurrect data and transplanting it to another drive platter to platter. Those were the good old days…

            Here’s a little trip down memory lane for you in case you’ve never seen one in action.
            http://www.redhill.net.au/d/2.php

          • care package

            It was just a question dude, a question you still didn’t REALLY answer. Instead I get this spill of how you should be respected because of all the old, now worthless computer knowledge you have.

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Again no definition of “support” from you? Interesting you are new then…? I suppose you think answering phone calls is “real” support? I’ve already done that kind of fake support probably before you were born.

            Hands on troubleshooting is the only “real” support. If you’ve been misguided then it’s time to step it up. But people like you can be replaced easily. They forward your kind of work to India or some other country. Cheaper tech support is always around the corner to cut costs.

            As for hard drives yes these are probably older then you if you’ve only been doing “support” for 10 years then nothing really significant has happened in the IT world as much as in the 80s to the 90s. Even going back as far as Sandy Bridge within this decade nothing much has changed technologically of importance. So anyone doing your kind of “support” within the last 2-4 years would be on the same level as you and replaceable. But your kind of support would be useless in real world situations. That job is more about personal communication skills than actual knowledge reading off some scripted bible. They’ll eventually take it over to Geek Squad or Fry’s then waste time on the phone with you. If you enjoy giving that kind of fake “support” then keep doing it until a turnover occurs. If you’ve been doing that for 10 years I’m surprised you haven’t burnt out.

          • care package

            I have an opinion what real support is, but I’m not going to define it. That’s webster’s job. I did hands on desktop support that involved about everything you can think of. The last company I worked for it was me and another guy that did it all, the network, telephones, servers, desktop supprt. The last year I was upped to sys admin. The bottom fell out of all that though I’m no longer in IT. I’m a failure at the Corp life

          • Dr. Jeffcoat

            Sometimes these pitfalls are turning points in life. People often find happiness doing other things in life once their time has freed up suddenly and this opens up the door to new experiences and other opportunities even unrelated to IT.

  • Rise_of_Chaos

    Windows 10 is nothing more than Microsoft shaking everyone down for a ‘tribute’. Upgrading Windows has been completely redundant since XP.. aside from making people have to buy new hardware. “Why do I need more RAM?” “Because Microsoft 10 needs it” “Why do I need Microsoft 10?” “Because its ‘better'” Uh huh. I am here to play games on my computer with my $2000 PC, not update Windows or have to be subjected to Windows updating and breaking everything on a daily basis. I truly wonder if I have *ever* benefited from a single Windows update. But I have had plenty of my things broken, or no longer work. We paid $100 for the operating system now lay off.

    • JJ

      lol well there have been various security updates over the years to deal with new methods used by hackers as well as flaws that needed to be fixed. if you”re not on windows 10, odds are I can get into your system and the older the OS you use the more holes and and back doors available. Even though these updates seem shitty and OS 10 seems shitty which i completely agree on, one of their main purposes is to implement new security protocols so that you cant get hacked.

      But if you want to be ignorant, stay on xp , 2000, or 8 and have fun getting hacked.

      • Dr. Jeffcoat

        I haven’t been hacked on XP using FireFox.

        The only time the system can be penetrated from what I’ve seen is using a browser such as Internet Explorer and traveling to porn sites which leads to these popups and hijacking infections of malware.

        the other time is the user download an email attachment and running it not knowing the .jpg.exe is not a picture but an executable which will run malicious code which will infect any system regardless if the user is on 9X, 2K, XP, Vista, W7, W8.X, or W10. User error is the oldest form of fu-king oneself.

        Now if you’re using your nogging and going only to safe sites and not downloading and running email attachments from strangers or a family member desperately needing a loan out of the blue I’m sure you’ll be safe 99% of the time.

        You can’t fix stupid.

        Now if you were to get infected and you haven’t imaged your OS in a clean state prior to this like all “intelligent” computer users do before pointing the finger then you shouldn’t be using a computer honestly nor think just because you are on the latest OS that 0 day infections can’t fu-k you up or an untested OS update that fu-ks up your OS from booting. Thank you MS.

    • Veron

      “Upgrading has been redundant since Windows XP”

      Yeah, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

      • Rise_of_Chaos

        Funny thing is I actually do know what I’m talking about. There have been no improvements in graphics or games since the Unreal 3 engine which came out in 2007. DX10, DX11, and now DX12 have added absolutely nothing. Unreal Tournament 2007 on the Unreal 3 engine still looks better than almost everything that comes out today. “Tesselation” is bullshit, use a sharpening filter with Reshade.

    • care package

      So you’d be cool if Windows was still XP?

  • If 95% of users run Win 10, this decision has sense