New Virus Scanner for FSX on Windows 7

[christiaan]

Have over many years bought several products from FSDT.

Have the MSE virus scanner but in January Microsoft is stopping support for Windows 7 .

Thinking of getting a free scanner or the paid Norton 360 virus scanner.

It will be for my FSX ( I am not planning for the moment to update to Windows 10)

I want to keep my Flight Simulation, and of course my complete computer safe.

I have read that some scanners (free & Paid) see a file i.e. Coutl as a virus which is then deleted.

Any advice from FSDT or other forum members would be most welcome.

[virtuali]

In January, we'll drop support for Windows 7 as well.

Sorry guys, but it's impossible for us to support something that Microsoft doesn't support anymore.

We cannot be stuck not being able to use the latest compilers and tools from Microsoft, or not being able to use newer/better/easier to use Windows API calls, just because they are not there on Windows 7, so we are forced to use old/worse/difficult to use OS functions and risk to make OUR software less reliable because of that.

I want to keep my Flight Simulation, and of course my complete computer safe.

And you think it's safe using an OS for which Microsoft won't publish any security updates anymore after January ?

[christiaan]

Update to W10 is at the moment not an option.
My first airport way back was Amsterdam from Cloud 9, that is a reason I bought your product.

I know that we cannot stand still but not everyone can afford to keep up the quick pace.

I am 99% certain that I will install Norton to replace MSE.

Will I be able to use my FSX, which includes a lot of your airports be affected, continue as I have now without getting issues.

Will the Coulti, Addon manager, bglman etc stay the same.

Should I make a back up of these and other FSX files, I do not what to loose any airport & other sceneries.

Also concerning Norton, previously there was an issue with bglman file being seen as a virus, is Norton now "compatible" with FSDT.

[virtuali]

I know that we cannot stand still but not everyone can afford to keep up the quick pace.

"Quick pace" ? Are you aware Windows 7 support ended 5 YEARS AGO ? That was the mainstream support, basically Microsoft support stopped answering to user support questions in 2015, but they kept releasing security updates for it.

What will stop in 2020, will be the extended support, so even security updates will stop.

I cannot possibly answer what will happen by that date. We won't do anything specific in OUR code to *prevent* it to work under Windows 7 but, it's very well possible one of the updates to the MS compiler we use might, and we really have no way to tell this for sure.

This means, from January 2020, you'll be on your own. It might work or not, we won't test for it. It might work for a while, and then might stop to work but, after January 2020, we won't offer any support or do any fixes, just to adapt our software to run under Windows 7, assuming a fix would even be possible, which we won't investigate any further either.

So, basically, you might get lucky, and still be able to use our products in Windows 7 after Jan. 2020, but they might stop working at any time and we cannot offer any guarantee they will after that date.

Even if you make a backup of all the installers and stop updating them with the Live Update ( and be forever cutoff from updates ), sooner or later you might change some hardware, or update the BIOS, or reinstall Windows, and in that case we cannot guaranteed a reactivation will be possible, since the activation server itself might have been updated, and it might not support your old Windows 7-compatible software.

As I've said, the only way to be SURE you can keep using our products in the future, is to update to Windows 10.

And, before you say we don't cater to old customers, I have to remind you we just updated THE FS9 ADDON MANAGER to work with the new activation system. That one was even older than Windows 7 itself ( FS9 came out in 2003, Windows 7 in 2009 ), yet we updated it as well, because we do what we CAN to allow even very old customers using product bought 10 years ago, that's how FSDT works.

But there's not much we can do about the OS itself being obsolete and, in fact, even the FS9 version of the Addon Manager will likely require Windows 10 at some point.