Windows 7: Excellent except for 3 "issues"

Mellon Head · 15 Feb 2010

I often leave my machine asleep overnight to wake up and record TV shows on cable, and shut it off before work in the morning.

It's never taken more than 5 seconds to resume in the morning, except when Windows is doing a backup, or my A/V is doing a scan. Then it's less than 10 seconds.

I don't understand why the OP's machine is taking that long to come back to life, but I don't get why he has 25 programs open. I'm not sure I'd leave a browser open overnight while the machine is sleeping either. I mean, I kill my modem while it sleeps. Firewalls can't stop everything.

Just sayin...

seekermeister · 15 Feb 2010

Anyway, why did this come up?

I just go with the flow. Actually, I don't have to worry about the power savings (bills paid), and I have become so accustomed to being met with a lit computer screen and whirring of fans, that if I started turning the machine off, the quietness would be disturbing, and the black screen would not assure me that something didn't go thump in the night.

Ed Bradford · 16 Feb 2010

I must say my 25 programs open seems to surprise a number of people. I noticed that my Microsoft friends only use their systems casually also. I seldom saw more that 3 or 4 applications installed on their systems. I typically, with XP would fill my entire screen with the Start menu fan-out. Is Windows not meant for such use? I generally stop most services that aren't useful, but having 3 different browsers open at the same time is frequent. IE - I avoid entirely. Firefox is default because it's what sites expect. Chrome because it seems better than the others. Opera because it is still the only browser that handles tabs correctly (according to me), gestures, bookmarks.

I write a newsletter so I also need open documents. that means Word, Adobe reader and sometime MrSid. I have corporate email which means the AT&T VPN and the Notes client. My newsletter is about Windows so I have cmd.exe and PowerShell running and use a text editor to write scripts to include in my newsletter. Since I can't spell and neither can Adobe or Microsoft (Opera has a good interactive real-time spell checker) and I need definitions, I use Random House Websters dictionary [which is so much faster than going onto the Internet]. Add to that procexp.exe from Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources, stickynotes and a side bar (I abandoned the Windows side bar for Google), and the cygwin utilties [because they have "less.exe" among other things] and my system has more software than most people I know. I need all that just for work.
There's more, but you get the point. This same load runs faster on XP. I have an XP system with it running and I don't experience the 2 minute disk-busy delays. They, I think are a side effect of a design change Microsoft did for VISTA that claimed to fix the "going out to lunch" problem, but in my experience created a much worse problem.

Anyway, that's how a system on which I "live" gets to have a lot of applications and a lot running. My original background is Unix. When I developed Unix operating systems. when a system crashed development stopped and the problem was found. Typically, Unix systems remained booted and busy for a year or more. That was before all the viruses were circulating, but demonstrates in your face quality -- that the system would stay up running correctly for a year as a significant achievement.

I get the same type of quality from Linux systems today. Windows, as Kim Komando suggests, needs to be rebooted at least once a week. Kim is not suggesting that the reboot is a good design by Microsoft; she is telling us how to get the best possible experience from Windows. On that I agree.

Day24 · 16 Feb 2010

Ok, I get why you run all those programs. I run quite a few at the same time myself. I'm a graphic designer (part time), so I generally have a couple more power (and RAM) hungry processes running than you do (photoshop CS4, Illustrator, indesign - usually all three at the same time - usually at the same time as a couple dozen firefox tabs, three or more explorer windows, either an mp3 playing program or windows mediaplayer [I have a tendency to watch a lot of downloaded TV series while working, usually in HD], I have a couple word documents open, my torrent program, and then the regulars like live messenger, my virus scanner, and those kinds of things... and I'm sure I'm forgetting quite a few). And to be honest.... I hardly ever notice the problem you are describing.

Then again, I do always close down the programs I don't need anymore when I am about to leave my computer overnight. I save all my work and close things down. I do this mostly because the electricity in my home is kind of wonky, and I don't want my work to get lost. But still.... I usually leave about 15 tot 20 programs up and running.

When I get back in the morning, it usually takes between 5 and 10 seconds for windows to get back to its usual self. Maybe that's because of my hardware, or it's because I don't have any weird things in my set up.... but windows 7 is really good like that for me. I even think that the 5 to 10 seconds it takes are due to my hardware cycling up from energy saving mode to regular mode....

I do have to say though.... I have an SSD.... and that has made all the difference. Especially in combination with Win7.

By the way.... I hardly ever restart my machine.... I'd say I only restart when windows update requires me to. Other than that, the computer is always on. I never have crashes or slowdowns.....

WindowsStar · 17 Feb 2010

@Day24
I completely agree. I run about the same as Ed and Day24 sometimes I have 30 iexplorer.exe’s running and 30 firefox.exe’s running, plus all the other stuff just like the both of you. I run my Windows 7 machine 24 hours and never reboot. I take the windows updates manually and only take them when I really need them, so the only reboot is for Windows Update. In fact I have many Windows 2003 Servers that have been running since the day I set them up without a reboot. They are on a closed system no access to the internet so they don't get updates or really need them. They just run mission critical stuff that has to be running 24 hours. I also have Windows XP machines that have run 6 months or more and then only needed to be rebooted for updates.

The rule of thumb for this type of performance is: WIPE the drive when you receive it. Load it yourself so you know what has been done to it. Install all updates, Windows Updates, patches etc. Then ONLY load the software that is needed. I typically get close to 99.99% uptime doing this. (Note: Windows Updates or scheduled down time is NOT included in that number)

Ed Bradford · 17 Feb 2010

OK, now we're getting to one upsmanship. I run, .....

Recall I only mentioned my work loads. I am also have Photoshop CS2, Google Earth, Delorme Topo 8.0, Virtual PC, WAMP, and SyncToy. My system is a t60p with 4G of memory and core 2 duo processor running 64bit Windows 7 installed fresh on a new 320GB 7200 RPM disk drive. You mention that you close everything down at night; I think that helps a lot. I don't do that. It's like cleaning off your desk at work. I never did that either.

I typically have 20 or 30 tabs open in Opera and FF. [Yesterday, I found FF running horribly. I started closing tabs and noticed new ones kept shifting in from the right. I kept on closing them and after about 60 or so, I finally found the end of the tab train. Horrible human interface. FF is so much faster now. (duh)]

As I said, I mostly like W7, it's just the little annoyances that people will talk about, including me.

hdmi · 17 Feb 2010

stangbat said:

Since the project is open source, anyone who is proficient with code should be able to find out what the author did to fix this (I'm not one of those people).

You could also just ask him right here on sevenforums.

ANN: Classic Shell 1.0.0 -first official release is out