Back To Windows 7 in 2020. Whoohoo !

[aleste81]

Hi guys, after a few years of Windows 10, I decided to go back to Windows 7.

After a clean install, all updates, Office 2016, Microsoft Edge, Firefox, 7-Zip, MPC-HC and IrfanView, the result is here :

IT IS FAST

Oh boy Windows 7 is fast, so much faster than the bloatware that Windows 10 has become.

The Start button, browsing the Internet, launching apps, everything is faster. (The PC is an old HP Prodesk 400 G1 MT with i5-4570, 8GB RAM and SDD)

I am happy, happier than ever.

ALTHOUGH two functionalities I am missing from Windows 10.

1/ Pressing Start+; open the Emoji keyboard. Emoji in Windows 10 are superbs, not so much in Windows 7.
This is a big big big big big problem. I use emoji daily.

2/ The Windows 10 Explorer Copy/Move is wonderful. The Windows 7 counterpart tend to halt in the middle of an operation, and no freeware/shareware has the same look and feel of the Windows 10 one, with the green histogram transfer rate. I miss it sooo much.

3/ Pressing Start+Shift+S open the Windows 10 snipping tool, I use this daily. Windows 7 has a Snipping Tool so I assigned the shortcut to Ctrl-Shift-S. Problem solved, even though I wish the shortcut would be the same.

Any solutions ?

 

[flavallee]

I've been using Windows 7 since it was released in October 2009.

I've been using Windows 10 since it was released in July 2015.

I like Windows 7 more than I like Windows 10 because it's easier to set up and use and navigate through, and it doesn't come with the massive amount of bloatware that Windows 10 does.

Because of this and because Windows 10 is the operating system we need to accept and get used to, all my full-time computers have 2 internal storage drives and are set up to dual boot both operating systems.

I don't have any issues with copy-and-paste or drag-and-drop or snipping tool in either operating system.

 

[aleste81]

I don't have any issues with copy-and-paste

Surely you don't do big file moves.
Typically with Windows 7, a 10 hours file move operation would halt after 20 minutes because some file is in use or file name too long. You would discover the failure when you come back home, and have to do it all over again. No problem with Windows 10.

Plus the 255 bytes file path length limit is a VERY big issue with Windows 7, that was supposedly fiexed by a hotfix (KB2891362), but this hotfix refuses to install on a fully updated Windows 7. Big big big problem if you have big storage with long tree and paths longer than 255.

 

[flavallee]

I have a 1.29 GB size folder containing several files that I copied-and-pasted today from a USB thumb drive to a desktop folder in both Windows 7 and Windows 10.

The copy-and-paste process in both operating systems took about 2 minutes.

I almost always rename my folders and files to shorten the names and make them easy to identify.

 

[aleste81]

in 2020, 1GB of files is not much. I routinely move Terabytes for maintenance.

You will find difficult to identify files when they have short names.
In a complex tree you will need long path names.

Windows 7 is clearly not suited for that purpose. It could be with the hoxfix mentionned above, and with a replacement for Copy/Paste/Move. Exist a lot of shareware, but none looks like Windows 8/10 Explorer Move.

 

[gobbetto]

About the hotfix you mentioned.
didi you try this?:

Error installing hotfix (KB2891362) for long path names


I finally got this hotfix installed. I had to do it manually though, by extracting the files from the hotfix and then installing the cab file.
1. Extract the hotfix.msu file
Run the following command:
Expand -F:* "path and file name to msu file" "path to extract file"

2. Manually install the extracted cab file package
Run following command:
DISM.exe /Online /Add-Package /PackagePath:"path and file name to cab file"
If Microsoft could actually make their Hotfixes work, I wouldn't have had to waste so much time.

 

[Megahertz07]

For Win 7 Updates, please read
Simplix

 

[Mike8615]

Not had that problem with Win 7 and files move very fast

 

[aleste81]

Not had that problem with Win 7

Because you don't do lot of moves of big trees of million files. There is always a hiccup right in the middle.