Yeah, I was probably talking out of my ass, at least I did the fault of generalizing personal and anecdotal experience, and for this I apologize to the OP and the board. Anyway, I’m doing support for an acquainted family, and they have one old desktop that still runs Win 7 with Firefox as their browser. This machine is very rarely used and then only to operate a printer. Firefox won’t update, and it’s frustrating to go online because in my experience, it won’t open every second website. I haven’t got around to update that machine to Win 10 or 11 because they use it so rarely and isn’t worth the effort, but if they operated it frequently, I I would have done it a long time ago.
The fact that you’re experienced with computers and know what you’re doing is crucial here, I believe that you responsibly and securely use that old setup. But I wouldn’t recommend it at all for the typical user with almost no or only superficial knowledge of security and the inner workings of their system, especially if it’s used for business as in the OP’s wife’s case.
When I was poking around, I saw that there was a new version of Firefox; but I didn’t download it because it’s not my computer and, since I hadn’t done the reboot yet, I didn’t know if it would work.
She only uses it to fill in forms in Word and email them. She can do that on her newer machine now, which I think is Windows 10. She won’t spend any money on her Window 7 machine.
I run Macs, so not updating is annoying because of all of the nagging. I do backups before updating the OSs. I learned by lesson years ago when I updated to whatever it was, and iTunes was replaced by Apple Music.
Speaking of which, I have a lot of music files on my G4 PowerBook, and probably more on my dead 2011 MacBook Pro. (2010-2011 was the year that one graphics component was prone to failure, and is impossible to replace. So my 17-inch is dead.) Which reminds me: I know that there are adapters that you can put your old internal drives into and use them as external drives; but I haven’t a clue which one to get, or if I would need different one for the drive in the 17-inch MacBook Pro and the PowerBook G4.
That’s weird. Like I said, Firefox should update just fine on Windows 7. It’s still supported until September 2024, albeit on the ESR branch. It makes me wonder how old your Firefox version is. Maybe it’s so old that the update servers have moved.
That said, if you ever need to, you can still download Firefox manually. Any version up to 115 should automatically update you to the right version on that machine, albeit possibly with multiple stops in between. Version 115.13.0esr is the one you want
And I still recommend Supermium, whose website should load just fine even in Internet Explorer. Typing “supermium” into Bing is enough to find it. (But not in Google, for some reason.)
That’s most probably true, I haven’t looked into finding a way to update Firefox on that machine because as I mentioned, it’s normally only used for print jobs and never for browsing. I only noticed the issue when I tried to download current drivers for the printer and several websites including hp.com didn’t load. But thanks for your tips, I’ll probably fix this issue when I’m visiting the family next.
One easy solution is to buy a monitor. Not all that expensive, and makes the experience much better than trying to see things on a small screen. Plus you can use it for other computers if you get them.
Most SATA to USB adapters would work for the Macbook Pro’s drive. It would probably be best to get one with an external power supply as the power draw from your MBP’s drive is unknown, and might be too much for your USB connection. Definitely avoid any adapters that say they are “optimized for SSD” - they almost certainly can’t supply enough power to the drive. Your drive is 2.5" form factor, so get an adapter that can accomodate that size.
The G4 Powerbook I believe predates the use of SATA by Apple, so you would probably need a Parallel ATA to USB adapter - different from your other adapter. I am trying to remember what the drive on my G4 Mini was like - also Parallel ATA - and I think it may have used a non-standard connector, so an off the rack PATA to USB adapter may not work. If you have a local who can take a look at the drive, that might be your best bet.
No, the old (2011) 17-inch MacBook Pro. There’s some component on the motherboard that I recall having something to do with graphics. It’s like a diode or something. (Really, I haven’t a clue.) Whatever the component is, the ones in MacBook Pros from 2010 and some from 2011 are prone to failure and the parts are no longer available. I contacted a business years ago who said they could fix any Mac… except the ones like I have.
When I worked in the computer biz (not at Apple) that was called the machine being well past End of Life. We figured that in general the customer with a really old and slow computer would be happy to be forced to get a new one. However, we didn’t sell to consumers.
Anyhow, get a monitor for the working one and you’re golden.
Sounds stupid, I saw advice on the internet that the solution to a failed camera in my Tesla was to get out of the car, open and close all the doors, then get back in again and try going. Theory was that a firmware bug was responsible, would not do Autopilot because it thought there was an open door. I wonder if they were pulling my leg.
(That didn’t work. The camera started working again an hour later… and it never did not work, as the screen showed it could see vehicles ahead of and beside me even as the Autopilot warned it was not available because the camera was not working. And it did this 3 times in the course of a 2-day road trip. Ah, computers… But for the rest of 4,000km it was nice to have the car driving for me, a lot less stressful.)
For diagnosing problems -
Open a DOS command prompt (CMD.exe) try this: Ping 8.8.8.8 - that will tell you if it can reach the internet. (That’s google’s DNS server) Ping yahoo.com that will tell you if DNS works, if the computer can talk to a DNS server which will tell it the IP address of yahoo.com.
For each ping, you should get a response saying the ping succeeded.
The short answer, decades ago when I studied for the Microsoft certification was:
“The answer to any question is NOT reboot to fix, unless MS documentation says explicitly reboot.
However, in real life, reboot is the first thing you should try.”
The thing about reboots is that they have moved from computers to everywhere. Rebooting our PDP-11 in 1974 was expected. But I was shocked when I was in a hotel with a non-working TV and the guy came to reboot it. (Now that’s common.) I then found someone who said that she had to reboot her digital picture frame all the time. Dish Network moved reboot to the top of their recorded advice while waiting for a person, a good move.
So rebooting a car is not surprising, though I did hear a talk about someone who specializes in automotive reliability who said that they realize having to reboot in the middle of traffic is a bad thing.
