Dual boot ... XP and 7 ... XP as primary

I am sorry but your doomsaying completely flummoxes me.

After over 100 installs, what is experienced here is a flawless, effortless, almost weightless OS that is never less than instantaneous if it is set up right.

Last night I installed on a Dell C430, an older machine. The clean install took 20 minutes, after which every driver was in place while optional Updates handed us 4 new ones.

Installing AOL, Meebo, OFc, ITunes, MSE, CCleaner and Auslogics defraggers, wired and wireless printers, config'ing IE8, updating, cleaning and defragging afterwards all took about an hour.

The Dell runs perfectly, just another day with Win7.

gregrocker said:

I am sorry but your doomsaying completely flummoxes me.

After over 100 installs, what is experienced here is a flawless, effortless, almost weightless OS that is never less than instantaneous if it is set up right.

Last night I installed on a Dell C430, an older machine. The clean install took 20 minutes, after which every driver was in place while optional Updates handed us 4 new ones.

Installing AOL, Meebo, OFc, ITunes, MSE, CCleaner and Auslogics defraggers, wired and wireless printers, config'ing IE8, updating, cleaning and defragging afterwards all took about an hour.

The Dell runs perfectly, just another day with Win7.

Yep... mine started out that way too. Then things got messy.

There's a catch in all this... OK, you're the computer guy in your area and you're building Win7 machines hand over fist... BUT... these machines leave your possession and probably most of them are never heard from again. You really have no way of tracking whatever problems your clients run into. For all you know, every single one of your clients has had problems and solved them using forums like these, rather than "bother" you with them.

(No I'm not assuming you are THAT guy... merely setting the stage to make my point.)

In my case I am selling these setups with a year of included FREE in home service and I do get to see these machines several times over that first year and I do keep a data base of what went wrong and why.

I'm just real happy these problems cropped up on my own systems instead of in some $50,000 home theatre setup where I'm the go-to guy....

Living with these machines over time is a whole lot different than getting real quick at doing a mostly "out of the box" installation, my friend.

CommonTater said:

Living with these machines over time is a whole lot different than getting real quick at doing a mostly "out of the box" installation, my friend.

Have several dozen friend's/family's Windows 7 machines all over the world which I installed and keep up, mainly via Remote Desktop.

There are almost no issues with any of them, ever.

Even with the ones where I removed XP/Vista from dual boot and up/downgraded RC to final retail version via Remote Desktop, Users are so happy most don't even want the clean install promised when I get around to visiting them.

gregrocker said:

CommonTater said:

Living with these machines over time is a whole lot different than getting real quick at doing a mostly "out of the box" installation, my friend.

Have several dozen friend's/family's Windows 7 machines all over the world which I installed and keep up, mainly via Remote Desktop.

There are almost no issues with any of them, ever.

Even with the ones where I removed XP/Vista from dual boot and up/downgraded RC to final retail version via Remote Desktop, Users are so happy most don't even want the clean install promised when I get around to visiting them.

I'm really really happy for you... and that's not sarcasm.

However, my experience is that in stand alone system Win7 is, as you say, nearly flawless... but when you start networking them into 10 and 20 machine workgroups (as some of mine are) you rapidly discover the problems with networking. I've got one company testing win7 Professional for installation on their entire LAN and, right now, they aren't impressed... it seems like every few days they lose server access (Win2k Server) and are constantly having to reboot the system... Their XP systems would stay on without reboots for months at a time... as did mine.

The multimedia problems are starting to show up as well. Win7 on an AMD 64x2 2800 system, 2 gigs of ram, 1tb SATA and asked to do nothing but run Media Player Classic, is stuttering and dropping frames like crazy... it can't even play MP3s correctly... I had to take it out of my ASRock ION 330 for the same reasons... Put XP back in and all is perfect, on both these machines.

Yes this is all probably drivers and codecs... I get that... but when you're sitting in someone's fully appointed basement home theatre --complete with popcorn machine-- looking at a 10 foot screen with the kids saying "Daddy when can I watch a movie?"... you don't spend three days fussing over drivers... you get it working and let the family get on with their lives. AND... even more true when this is pre-paid service predicated on a number hours you passed long ago...

Now don't get me wrong here... I'm not saying I don't like Win7... there are things about it I think are just marvelous... Especially I like the Aero UI... but it would be dishonest of me to claim perfection, when I'm staring down the barrel of a large financial loss because of it's flaws.

With XP I'd install these setups and about the only time I saw them was to clean the cases out twice a year. With Win7 I've got people offering me a cot in the spare bedroom...

Hmmm. Daunting. Good luck, bro, and let us know how it evolves.

zzz2496 said:

CommonTater, I'm currious... what do you mean by this statement "...it seems like every few days they lose server access (Win2k Server)...". Does it, like lose connection entirely? I mean like client (Win7) can't ping server (Win2kServer)? Or the server just got lost on the "network" pane? I'm curious because there's another user here I've helped that got the same problem, and I solved his problem...

That particular network is 11 machines (or is it 12?) in an accounting office and it's a mix of OSs... He's got mostly XP, a Linux box and a couple of Macbooks that access it. The W2K server is visible to all except the 3 Win7 machines he's trying to get stabilized. As you can see from some of my other postings, I've been putting a lot of effort into solving this one as I had the same problem... So I was doubly motivated.

I did find a rather complex maze of settings that did the trick and they worked on his and mine for a few days, then out of the blue he no longer has permission to access the Server and two days after that I lost access to my backup NAS drives... In both cases the permissions reverted to read only... we couldn't move files into the machines and could not move files out... but we could access them, even display contents, but it would not let us change the folder contents ... we couldn't even save files after accessing them.

The non Win7 machines were ok on the W2K box but on my NAS the entire network lost access... My son in law was copying some files off the NAS from my machine. My machine locked up after coming out of sleep, USB wasn't working, I rebooted and that was it... everything was all screwed up. The same thing happened to the Win7 machines on the other network... it went into sleep mode (no hibernation, S3 sleep) and when they woke it up the USB wasn't working so they rebooted and then they couldn't access the server.... just like on mine.

I'm going to have to debug this one somehow... I've put my own system back on XP and all is good... but I'm out a few hundred bucks. I don't know what my friend's decision is going to be but I suspect he's going to persevere...

zzz2496 said:

Oh crap... I got confused... urgh... I posted somewhat long post for you here, CommonTater. Here's what you can do to access the missing "servers", if you're in a Domain, access the FQDN of the server, say like this --> \\windows7.corporate.net => windows7 = hostname of the said client, corporate.net = the domain. It should resolve and connect normally, unless the network interface is down... In a home network, if you forgot the hostname, just use the IP address like so --> \\10.0.0.5, it should connect in an instant, unless the network interface is down... To fix the missing computer browser, usually you can restart "Computer Browser" service, but since I personally had bad nightmares with this service, I suggest you ignore it - I never had the ability to make it work reliably since Windows 2000 days... As for the rest, read my post...

zzz2496

Thank goodness none of these are on domains... So far it's all workgroups, mostly at the in-home level, with a couple of corporate ones tossed in for good measure. But I do follow what your saying. I know about the IP access and have used it on both workgroups and domains in the past...

For the computer browser... One of those things they don't document anywhere near well enough is that the Computer Browser service works in concert with Network Location Awareness. NLA responds to CB and CB builds the share list in Network Places... This I found out the hard way by shutting down NLA on one of my machines and watching it disappear from Network Places, all across the LAN... Shutting down the Computer Browser makes everything disappear on the local machine, since it's what fills the folder with icons... If both are enabled, it actually works quite well.

On Win7 it's CB and SSDP that work together... and they don't tell us this... because???