Windows 10 Hardware/Software Check

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Jim Frame, post: 334250, member: 10 wrote: I finally got the "ready" notice for Windows 10. Before I allow the upgrade to proceed, I'd like to hear from any who have experience -- good, bad or neutral -- with the following under Win10:

Trimble Business Center
Star*Net v6
Peachtree Complete Accounting 2010
Microsoft Office Pro 2010
BricsCAD v15
Google Earth
Parallel ports
Serial ports
Parallel port hardware locks (e.g. Sentinel)
HP-450C plotter
HP LaserJet 4

Thanks!

Hey Jim,
one of your fellow CA chain-bearers here, you are one of the guys on this site I truly admire for how you go about what you do. That flattery aside, I usually just read this terrific board only and have no input on Windows 10 except want to delete the Win10 advertisement that always comes up when I go on-line. All the stuff I see on-line is how to load Win10.

But more importantly; have to ask about your HP 450 plotter. I had a 430 that was terrific and wish I had chosen to repair it. Had a Canon iPF 610 plotter for a few years, it was color, I was disappointed the print head (cost $500) would go bad after just minimal amounts of printing over a year or two.

I have a chance to buy another old HP 400 series black & white plotter that has been re-furbished. But it looks from the background info I would have to find an old PC with Windows 95 or earlier like Win 3.0 to run it. Does your HP plotter run on Windows 7, or 8 or has it just been in storage ?

Thx Jim

celestialpawn11, post: 334266, member: 10351 wrote: Hey Jim,
one of your fellow CA chain-bearers here, you are one of the guys on this site I truly admire for how you go about what you do. That flattery aside, I usually just read this terrific board only and have no input on Windows 10 except want to delete the Win10 advertisement that always comes up when I go on-line. All the stuff I see on-line is how to load Win10.

But more importantly; have to ask about your HP 450 plotter. I had a 430 that was terrific and wish I had chosen to repair it. Had a Canon iPF 610 plotter for a few years, it was color, I was disappointed the print head (cost $500) would go bad after just minimal amounts of printing over a year or two.

I have a chance to buy another old HP 400 series black & white plotter that has been re-furbished. But it looks from the background info I would have to find an old PC with Windows 95 or earlier like Win 3.0 to run it. Does your HP plotter run on Windows 7, or 8 or has it just been in storage ?

Thx Jim

Sorry for confusion, Jim is your name, not mine !

celestialpawn11, post: 334266, member: 10351 wrote: Does your HP plotter run on Windows 7, or 8 or has it just been in storage ?

I'm running my 450C -- which is actually a 430 that's been upgraded to color, which technically makes it a different part number -- on Windows 7 64-bit, through an HP JetDirect 170LX print server. While I don't understand exactly what's happening under the hood, the plotter would only do B&W when connected directly to the Win7 computer, but when I ran it through the print server it plots color without issue.

Jim Frame, post: 334269, member: 10 wrote: I'm running my 450C -- which is actually a 430 that's been upgraded to color, which technically makes it a different part number -- on Windows 7 64-bit, through an HP JetDirect 170LX print server. While I don't understand exactly what's happening under the hood, the plotter would only do B&W when connected directly to the Win7 computer, but when I ran it through the print server it plots color without issue.

Windows 10 hardware compatibility check says NO to the Designjet 430 and 450c. I suppose the proof is in the testing so I'd be interested in hearing from someone who tries to load the Win7 drivers running Win10.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/Home?Language=en-US

I have the same plotter(s) so it's stay with Windows 7 or buy a new, or newer, plotter.

Tyler Parsons, post: 334274, member: 139 wrote: Windows 10 hardware compatibility check says NO to the Designjet 430 and 450c. I suppose the proof is in the testing so I'd be interested in hearing from someone who tries to load the Win7 drivers running Win10.

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/compatibility/CompatCenter/Home?Language=en-US

I have the same plotter(s) so it's stay with Windows 7 or buy a new, or newer, plotter.

You guys are terrific !!

Tyler Parsons, post: 334274, member: 139 wrote: Windows 10 hardware compatibility check says NO to the Designjet 430 and 450c.

Windows 7 said basically the same thing, but when running it through a print server it works fine. I guess I need to try that out on another computer before I upgrade mine.

This is encouraging:

This is the print server I use with my 450C under Win7. It's ancient, but it was cheap (around $30, as I recall, on ebay) and works great.

Hi Jim,

About 20 minutes after I started the update (the screen said "Do Not Turn off Your PC") I heard a transformer in the neighborhood blow and the lights went off. I figured it was going to be a while so I rushed my laptop down to the UPS in the basement (I have a big one on the CORS station on the chimney). When the lights came on 4 hours later, I went down and the upgrade had completed and the UPS still had about 4 hours left on it. Kind of scared me though.

I had to reauthorize all my Carlson desktop stuff. (You pick 'New Machine' to make it happy, I did not have to type in any serial numbers.)
I had to manually uninstall the sentinel driver for SPSO, then manually install the driver again.
I had to reload Google Earth Pro
Microsoft Expressions (I had one web site that was done with it) won't run and I have given up on it.

All our hardware, network, printers, monitors, USB to Serial convertors, cameras work great.
The old flatbed scanner that did not work in Windows 8, still does not work. But I got a new fancy one last year that is much nicer.

My desktop kept getting rearranged with updates, I finally installed DesktopOK and am kicking myself for not doing it years ago. I spend a lot of time moving the icons to where I want them and then when they move, I might as well have deleted them. (So the real gem in the update was finding a great tool to micromange my desktop.) I only wish that I would have installed it before updating because I could have returned to the desktop arrangement after the update. Would have saved me hours of screwing around.

Good Luck!

M

I'm running Peachtree 2012 with no problems on Win10 64bit. Seems like I had to upgrade when I went from Win XP 32bit to Win7 64bit. Sage has been dogging me to upgrade my 2012 with threats of no support ect. for the past couple of years so I know they won't be of any help with a 2010 version.

Stephen Ward, post: 334308, member: 1206 wrote: Sage has been dogging me to upgrade my 2012 with threats of no support ect. for the past couple of years so I know they won't be of any help with a 2010 version.

I think I finally directed Sage email to my spam filter -- I got tired of them bombarding me with "last chance" upgrade offers over the years. The 2010 version works fine for me. The newer versions don't offer any benefits that are of interest to me, so I just manually update the tax files every year -- it takes me maybe an hour, probably less.

P.S. to Mark: Thanks for sharing those details!

I would recommend that you install a utility called "http://www.startmenux.com/index.html&apos ;">StartMenuX." I first started using it with Win 8.1 to bypass the metro crap. Win10's start menu, even though they say "its' back," is no substitute for the old start menu. http://www.startmenux.com/index.html&apos ;">StartMenuX will truly restore the old-style start menu and provides access to all of your programs and "apps" from one menu. It's got a lot of flexibility (and you can still use the Win10 menu when/if you ever want/need it).

Oh, I haven't had any problems with Windows 10 upgrade or since. Just another GUI for the most part.

JBS

I'm partial to http://www.classicshell.net/&apos ;">Classic Shell.

I'm cheap frugal. It's free.

Besides the start menu, you can also tweak Windoze Explorer to your liking. Caveat: I have not upgraded to Win10 as yet, so can't say how it works there. Waiting for MS to green-light my non-essential (SWMBO's) laptop so I can see how Win10 plays with ACAD 2006/Carlson2012, [REDACTED], Office 2003, etc. before I commit the income producing computer.

Jim Frame, post: 334250, member: 10 wrote: I finally got the "ready" notice for Windows 10. Before I allow the upgrade to proceed, I'd like to hear from any who have experience -- good, bad or neutral -- with the following under Win10:

Trimble Business Center
Star*Net v6
Peachtree Complete Accounting 2010
Microsoft Office Pro 2010
BricsCAD v15
Google Earth
Parallel ports
Serial ports
Parallel port hardware locks (e.g. Sentinel)
HP-450C plotter
HP LaserJet 4

Thanks!

Our IT people say no to W10 for now due to security issues.

I've updated my home machine, office desktop and office conference room desktop in all cases I waited for the update ready notice.
TBC, Spectra Precision Office, GNSS Solution (Ashtech), and Trimble RINEX Converter all work fine, the only problem is with Bentley V8i in Autocad mode fonts are scrambled but not in dgn or V8 Autocad.
However a couple of the people have bricked their home machines.

Anyone running Windows 10 64 Pro with TGO 1.63? Tried it on 2 machines, installs will run existing projects in the projects list. But when you try and navigate to a new folder (File>Open Project>Folder) it errors with the "server busy, switch try again" thing. Locks then have to kill with Ctrl/Alt/Delete?

UAC set to Off, tried changing sharing/securtity permissions on all TGO folders (/386 &Common areas.). I've installed and run 1.63 on a bunch of Win7Pro64 machines.

Thanks...

Sergeant Schultz, post: 334340, member: 315 wrote: I'm partial to http://www.classicshell.net/&apos ;">Classic Shell.

I'm cheap frugal. It's free.

Besides the start menu, you can also tweak Windoze Explorer to your liking. Caveat: I have not upgraded to Win10 as yet, so can't say how it works there. Waiting for MS to green-light my non-essential (SWMBO's) laptop so I can see how Win10 plays with ACAD 2006/Carlson2012, [REDACTED], Office 2003, etc. before I commit the income producing computer.

I "upgraded" my primary desktop today. I will spend a chunk of this weekend getting it to behave like I want it to now.

I just installed Classic Shell on Win10. It works. Thanks for the suggestion for a fellow tightwad frugal person.

Well, my "upgrade" on my desktop (which had the notification for what seems like a month or more) went smoothly.

Many thanks to Wendel for providing the link on how to make my settings somewhat more private (in another thread which took me forever to find)

Thanks to Sergent Schultz for helping to improve my Win 10 experience so far at with no monetary outlay

Thanks to others for sharing their experiences as well!

I do enjoy being amongst fellow geeks who know more than I do and are willing to share.

I was away surveying and staying at a motel 850 K from Adelaide when I received the option to download W10 and chose to defer as I was about to commence a 9.5 hour return drive. Mr Microsoft thought different so I had to cool my heels while loading

Fortunately the Motel proprietor had a geek son in law and they advised to not choose automatic download and manually select options. I personally am not into being tracked or monitored on purchases and pages so that I am bombarded with pop up advertising, ( I also have Adblock ) so I made sure those options were all turned off .

Two glaring problems I have is that the memory for screen brightness at start up does not work when starting up laptop on battery I get in seconds a dark screen making navigation of cursor impossible . I also have to reboot to change sound system to or from earphones . So would love a solution as the other gripe is that W10 do not have a fix it page and i am not in the business of contacting the thousand and one make believes ready to plant a virus or drain your bank account.

BTW those who mistakenly believe W10 is free, think again as once W10 rolled out there will be an annual access fee.
Also here in OZ there are complaints from many with three gig mobile (cellphone) plans. Not only from the original download but from the constant patch update downloads.

For those coming from W7 have to say explorer is very familiar.
A recent discovery is that my traditional Liscad screen merge with white screen, making the white drop down commands from tool bar hard to view. I swear they were originally light grey.

I would wait for a few other hiccups to be fixed if you are on W7 as the can currently be much time lost in trying to find away of fixing your problem when in fact you find out it is a programming error‰Û?That means getting behind with work!
RADU