Windows 7 - Big performance difference between beta and RC

Hey guys,

I've been using these forums for some time to keep up with any tips and tricks during the beta. Which in general I had very little problems with aside from not being able to play COD4 with Punkbuster. Anyways.... I did a fresh install to try out the RC and now suffering from the following and wondering if anyone has similar or knows how to improve/fix this:

1) Right clicking on the desktop takes about 5 seconds to display the menu
2) Menu items like "New>" also take over 5 seconds then to display it's menu tree
3) Jerky performance when running a range of games and low framerates when during beta all ran really well. Using latest gfx driver version for Nvdia 185.81 Notebook
4) Running a game in windowed mode gives terrible performance compared to fullscreen, when in beta used to run as well if not better. I've only tested this with World of Warcraft though.
5) When closing down programes I often get a message telling me the programe I was using didn't close properly (although it seems it did) but seems to be happening for a large number of programes such as Outlook, Games, PDF viewers etc. Apps that in the beta had no issues and I'd only see that message if something did actually crash.
6) Firefox seems to stall whenever trying to download something. App goes to not responding but if left for about minute it comes to live and you can see the download had started.

I've had a number of lockups when playing games and apps like firefox crashing. To me it seems less stable than the beta and takes longer to load up apps, games etc. Or there is some sort of delay before it suddenly kicks in and wakes back up. Anyone got any ideas? I had been debating the idea of doing another fresh install of it but I'd rather not :P

Cheers

Alter

Clean install or upgrade?

Clean, as the upgrade didn't allow Windows 7 beta > Windows 7 RC

1) no
2) no
3) Did not really notice any difference in Counterstrike Source from Vista to 7. I also played GRID with good performance.
4) did not try
5) I also sometimes get this message. I think it is because 7 have drop some library that was in Vista and used by some program. This is the case of mIRC at least.
6) It may be related to your anti-virus, maybe it is not fully compatible with 7? AV always create a little delay when downloading a file.

I did not notice any abnormal crash, games and firefox are working fine. Maybe that some driver still need to be updated by manufacturers.

Bare in mind I'm not going from Vista to 7 but I was on 7 beta and have simply moved to the RC. So I'm using the exact same drivers i was using on the beta for the RC. These issues didn't exist on the beta.

For point 6) you could be right on AV but this is a good example of not just for dowloading. I just opened a new tab in Firefox and started typing an url when i looked up nothing was there but then in a few seconds the text appeared. Seems to be a wierd lag occuring.

Yes indeed! Have you installed manufacturer/custom driver over those 7 proposed (generic)? I think that generic driver is prefered for now, maybe exept for graphic one.

Mostly all generic aside from the graphics and i had to use the one from Nvidia's website due to one offered in windows update was 32bit only (for notebooks). But I don't think that's it as it ran well on the 7 beta, unless they massively changed something in the RC around graphics

185.81 is a beta driver 185.85 is the current driver, it is probably the same thing just with WHQL certification but you might want to try it. Have you tried reinstalling windows 7? sometimes things just don't go according to plan the first time.

I'm currently using the Nvidia Windows 7 driver with no problem with the RC.

If you can reproduce the problem (lag, etc) easily, the best thing would be to do a fresh install and then try it to see if the problem happen at this stage (with no update at all). Only install Firefox if you can only see if it lag easily with Firefox. If it is not lagging, install driver update one at a time and test at each step. It will be easy to find what's the cause if he hopefully don't lag at the very begining.

I'll give those new drivers a shot but to me the jerking in the OS and odd lag that happens seems like CPU lag to me. If the gfx drivers fail then yea to be sure I'll do a reformat and start again to see if it rears it's ugly head again

Edited for Pom. The right click lag on dekstop was there after i did the install without any updates, so I think perhaps a new install will be best to determine if it is the RC or just a bad install.