Retiring Windows 7 Anyone Else?

I remember the transition from 98 to 2000Pro then to XPPro and I did so willingly and despite some minor problems I was glad to get rid of 98. Driver issues, BSOD's, then eventually stability, 2000 and XP were different from 98 in ways that aren't as evident between XP and 7.

Back when the pinnacle of gaming was AVP2 or Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, games and other programs weren't so tightly interwoven with dependencies on the OS.

I titled the thread "Retiring Win 7..." because for most people that have given up on 7 are doing that; putting it on the shelve and waiting for a service pack, or just taking a break for a while. I haven't shelved the OS. I simply removed it from my desktop and put it on my testbed that I use frequently. My testbed is no slouch although it's no i7. My testbed consists of:

• Pentium D 3.4Ghz
• 4 Gig Crucial DDR2 800
• Gigabyte MOBO (can't quote the model)
• ATI HD4650
• WD SATA 500Gig HD
• 20" Sony CRT

So to say that I have retired the OS is a bit of a misnomer, but I am not your usual end user. Nor am I as knowledgeable as most of the Senior members here. But I am sticking with 7 and using it most every day, just not on my computer that I use for sensative work. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of documents, spreadsheets... On my computer. Although everything is backed up I'm just leary of 7 right now, especially since the boot sector thing. Try it. If you have a hd hooked up to your computer that you just use for storage, disconnect all other HD's and try to boot from the storage drive and you'll see the 7 error screen when you turn on your computer, even though you've never installed 7 on that drive.

I would like to hear from the end user that has gotten so frustrated that they have the box on a shelve and are not using it at all. I also want to hear from the guru's and what problems they have experienced with 7. I get a kick out of the run of the mill "I have upgraded to 7 on three computers with not one problem" or something like that. Define "no problem". It's no problem for me to search up drivers for a eight year old laptop and install these drivers and get someone's LAN port working. But the person that brought me the laptop was at their wits end trying to get the issue resolved.

I think this information would be helpful in determining the pulse of the average end user, and how best to help them.

I too have the Hybrid sleep problem but with a little different twist. About 30sec after it wakes up 7 freezes. Hibernation works great though.

As far as booting, I may not have been clear. Disconnect the primary HD that 7 is installed on then try booting from a drive that you have used for storage and not for an OS. You'll see that despite 7 never having been installed to that drive you should get a 7 error screen asking you to insert the DVD and repair the problem. When you connect a drive to a computer running 7, 7 then writes indexing files to the boot sector of that drive. Not a big deal unless you later try to use that HD for another OS independently. Like I did with XP.

I expect an error also, but not from the hd. I expect an error from the BIOS. And I never expected a Windows 7 error screen from the MBR of a disk that has never had 7 installed on it.

The expectations I had for windows 7 were not met by the OS, I thought MS were going to release something brilliant.
It works o.k. on my laptop and I got 7 very cheap, so I won't put Xp back on.

However, I would be very disapointed had I paid the £45 preorder price let alone any more!!
Stick with XP until you need a new computer!

Hi

I hope my post wasn't too negative it certainly wasn't meant to be. I have no doubt W7 is the way forward and that as the weeks go by I will be able to solve my problems either via here or other searches on the internet.

I suppose what I was saying is that I had a modern spec laptop, with XP working rock-solid. I bought a copy of W7 and did a clean install and basically my laptop is unusable. No ATI driver so no screen, no AC97 driver so no audio, no sleep function just hibernate, no internet etc etc

To me this is unacceptable. I don't have a home-build laptop or one from mars, it is a HP Pavilion for goodness sake, 4 years old there must be hundreds of thousands of them out there. Why should I have to basically research the web to get it going? W7 should run out of the box. Yes I expect a bit of learning curve and a few tweaks here and there but not this mess. If my gran or sister was installing this op system they would be totally unable to fix the problems.

Just my thoughts really

Installed Windows 7 on my two year old Dell 1520, i did not have to look for any drivers, windows 7 installed all needed drivers, works like a charm.