My Issues with Windows 7

BunBun said:

Tepid said:

Re-read my first post,, I added stuff.

Thank you for the move command help! I will have to check this out when I get 7 installed on my raid array (as I have removed it off my external for room to back up stuff). I agree that it would be a bit cumbersome but the fact is its there! I know a few people personally who will be very grateful for this.

This is what the community is for

And the notification area thing... what I mean is in XP and Vista when you click on the arrow to show hidden icons it moved to the left revealing the hidden icons. However in Windows 7 it creats a new window above which involves moving your eye and mouse further to access hidden icons (which I do frequently I just hide them all to clean up my screen). It is just a major annoyance for me and others I have discuess it with. I love the new bahaviour and functionality of the notification area... I just wish there was an option or a way to have it expand to the left to show hidden icons like it used to.

That box can customize what icons you want or all of them. You can also drag icons around into the box and around each other in the notification tray.

Frostmourne said:

BunBun said:

Tepid said:

Re-read my first post,, I added stuff.

Thank you for the move command help! I will have to check this out when I get 7 installed on my raid array (as I have removed it off my external for room to back up stuff). I agree that it would be a bit cumbersome but the fact is its there! I know a few people personally who will be very grateful for this.

This is what the community is for

And the notification area thing... what I mean is in XP and Vista when you click on the arrow to show hidden icons it moved to the left revealing the hidden icons. However in Windows 7 it creats a new window above which involves moving your eye and mouse further to access hidden icons (which I do frequently I just hide them all to clean up my screen). It is just a major annoyance for me and others I have discuess it with. I love the new bahaviour and functionality of the notification area... I just wish there was an option or a way to have it expand to the left to show hidden icons like it used to.

That box can customize what icons you want or all of them. You can also drag icons around into the box and around each other in the notification tray.

no no no... I dont mean how to choose which icons are hidden or not. I mean temporarily showing what is hidden. I hide all my icons to clean up my screen and then I click the arrow to access them. In XP and Vista it just showed them to the left and I could quickly access them. In windows 7 it opens this new window that is bigger and involves me to hunt for my icons a bit as they are spaced further apart and are further away from the notification area.

Tepid said:

Personally, I like the way it handles the hidden icons. Much nicer in my opinion.

I like the new bahaviour. However I would like to see an option (or hack) to visually present the hidden icons to the left instead of above but still keeping them seperated like the new method.

BunBun,

You may like the unlocker program too - lets you unlock a file that is claimed to be in use: LockHunter

Also, I removed the popup delay for when you mouseover the taskbar: How to Speed Up Taskbar Thumbnails Preview in Windows 7 My Digital Life

I agree with you on a lot of the problems you bring up - in fact, half the tweaks you did, I did myself. Some of the biggest initial problems deal with changes that people don't want to make (such as your issue with the notification area).

It's a shame Win 7 is not running faster than your XP install. Win 7 definitely responds better when you toss in some more ram. From personal experience, XP still seems faster for lower end systems than Win 7.

With the proper hardware, you should see some decent increases in speed.

Would be nice if you ran some benchmarks on your old system and see how it responds, post the results of that compared to the same benchmarks on your new system w/ Win 7.

A lot of times people will compare XP (that has been running for over a year, getting clogged up, loaded up with a bunch of programs/junk, etc) to a fresh install of Win 7, and automatically assume Win 7 is somehow faster. This is NOT a fair comparison at all.

I was lucky and able to skip Vista by going straight from XP to Win 7. The downfalls of Vista are mostly accounted for in Win 7.

Thanks Merlin for the app suggestion and the tweaking link. Not sure its exactly what I was refering to but it may help... ill check it out tonight.

See my system specs. That is what I am currently running and until last night I had XP SP3, Vista SP1 x64, and Windows 7 x64 all installed. XP was just the OS and a couple apps. I dual booted it with vista mainly because I had a few apps that I did not have 64 bit versions for. So it was close to a fresh install. The ironic thing is I also left it dual boot as I was sure I was going to have problems with Vista... everytime I had a problem I thought was OS related... it did the same thing in XP... go figure.

In this scenario XP still booted faster and was more responsive. I am sure gaming would be faster in 7 as it is definitly faster then vista already and I know vista was on par or better then XP in most of the games I play (once I upgraded my ram of course...).

However that is comparing XP on raid to 7 on single hard drive. To be fair I will hold off until after tonight when I have 7 installed on my raid array.

Also... 7 is much faster at booting (and esspecially shutting down) then Vista. And thats even with Vista on the raid...

When I first installed Win 7 (the first time, yes.. I ended up having to reinstall it a second time lol), I had a 25 second boot to logon screen, and 40 second boot into a fully loaded desktop.

This is with a Q6600 and a 74gb raptor. My XP boot time was definitely slower when it was first installed fresh, compared to a fresh Win 7 install.

I never uninstalled the default drivers that Win 7 put on, I simply installed the new drivers that I needed. I wonder if that step may have caused some of your problems? Normally, I'll uninstall the old drivers and then run a cleaner (like you did), but I didn't do that with Win 7. Not sure if what I did was the right or wrong way to do it, but it did work.

Looking forward to seeing those benchmarks! Like you said, it's better to wait until you can fully compare the two instances (raid vs non-raid). The nice thing about showing off a benchmark to prove some of your comments, is none of the Win 7 fanboys can really come back to say anything against it. But then again, we are on a Win 7 forum, so maybe it's just something that you gotta put up with.

Alright I sorted out my robocopy issues and got my Raid backed up. Formatted and this morning before work installed 7 and drivers. Boot is definitly faster on my raid and ironically enough it got faster after every driver I installed. Haven't installed audio drivers yet as thats usually the one that slows things down... I will run that restart timer once I am done installing drivers tonight. I ran it last night on Vista x64 from my raid and got 155s restart time.

Responsiveness is no better. Don't get me wrong its not bad (and it's definitly better then Vista) but I dont get what all the rave is about when my XP build is still more responsive and boots faster.

Also I had the graphics issues again... really laggy and screen corruption right from the get go (has to do with Aero... if I turn it off its fine). But a driver clean of the graphics drivers that came with Win 7 and installation of latest from Nvidia corrected the issues again. So there is something funky going on with the driver that comes with Win 7 and my graphics card and aero.

And for anyone else who feels they need to come crap in this thread... If you read my first post carefully it lays out my personal issues/quirks with Windows 7. I have fixed some of the issues (all of the performance issues) and simply comment that the OS is not perfect or the greatest thing since sliced bread that a lot of people claim. XP still boots faster and uses less resources. Am I reccomending that XP be used or suggesting that it is superior? No. I am simply stating that Win 7 did not completely address the resource use and boot time issues that many complained about in Vista. Am I disatisfied with my now Windows 7 on raid boot time? No. Do I wish it used less RAM on boot? Yes. But I have 8gb so its not a deal breaker. Also I am not reccomending that my tweaks be suitable or should be used by everyone. They worked for me and I am sharing my experience with others so those who are in my position may benefit from it. Through the course of this thread there have been those that have found some of my info helpful and have also provided me with info and tips and for that I thank those of you who have made constructive posts.

A new issue has arose in my new installation. Last time the language bar was no where to be seen. Now it is on my taskbar and windows log on screen. How do I permently get rid of it? I have it hidden from my taskbar but it still shows in the welcome screen. It did not show anywhere on my other install. XP and Vista I would just go to advance and turn off advanced text services but I cant seem to find that option in Windows 7.

EDIT: forgot to mention that the windows performance index went from 5.9 - 7.2 from vista to 7 and then 7.2-7.3 from single drive to raid. However this is for everything except the hard drive benchmark which is still stuck at 5.9 for some reason... (i get twice the throughput and about 70% faster response time out of my raid then single drive yet still stuck at 5.9) Microsoft must have something aginst those not useing SSD's...