My Issues with Windows 7

[Frostmourne]

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.

 

[BunBun]

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]

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

 

[BunBun]

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.

 

[Merlin2000]

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.

 

[BunBun]

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...

 

[Merlin2000]

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.

 

[BunBun]

I have a XP system here that doesnt even get past the first bar on the loading screen. Goes like half way and then on to the OS. It is so fast it is rediculous. On top of that it boots up with less then 400mb ram used and I havent done any tweaking to that machine.

The reason I uninstalled/cleaned the drivers that came with Win 7 was because the first time I updated the Nivida driver with the latest everything was super choppy. Wow would get burst FPS at about what I should get normally and then cut in half for most of the time. Windows in 7 were choppy and laggy. Right click menus would take a second or two to appear... it was horrible. After cleaning out the drivers and then reinstalling with the latest fixed these issues.

 

[RST101]

Xp will probably boot faster etc etc etc because it's dull and lifeless and only needs 1 meg of ram and a 200mhz cpu to run. how can you compare the two?

You just got an axe to grind my friend and all these suckers on here have fell for it..

 

[BunBun]

Formatted and installed 7 on raid array

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...

 

[Merlin2000]

So where's the XP vs Win 7 reboot time post? I love these Win 7 guys.. it's good entertainment whenever someone has something bad to say about Windows 7.

Do I wish it used less RAM on boot?

- Why does that matter? If the RAM is available, it shouldn't make a difference if it's being utilized or not. I think Win 7 tries to use as much ram as possible to increase speeds/responsiveness. It's a good thing isn't it?

 

[BunBun]

So where's the XP vs Win 7 reboot time post? I love these Win 7 guys.. it's good entertainment whenever someone has something bad to say about Windows 7.

Do I wish it used less RAM on boot?

- Why does that matter? If the RAM is available, it shouldn't make a difference if it's being utilized or not. I think Win 7 tries to use as much ram as possible to increase speeds/responsiveness. It's a good thing isn't it?

Yes it is quite entertaining. I will try and do the restart times tonight.

I am not talking about cache, I am talking about straight used ram by process's and services. It's better then vista but its still over 900mb on boot (less if you have the page file enabled as windows automatically puts lesser kernel things to page file). I will continue to tweak some more and find ways to get this down but I wish it was lower by default and easier to manage.

 

[Merlin2000]

Ah, I see what you mean. Well, Win 7 is definitely heavier than XP (let's pretend Vista didn't happen, because everything's better than that junk) - would be nice if people would just admit/understand that, rather than complain about that complaint.

Given that more and more computers are going to have better, faster hardware (ex: more ram), this doesn't really bother me too much.

Consider what the average amount of ram was when XP first shipped out, compared to the average we see these days. Almost doubled? Now we have crazy people like you and me with 8gb ram, trying to figure out how we can utilize even more of that ram.. haha - if only I could add more ram!

 

[zzz2496]

Wow... nice post, BunBun...

I must say that I agree with most of your "complaints", Windows 7 is just different... The way it manages open windows, how it manage open tasks, how the new superbar works. I've been through all of those, and after everything comes down on me, all I can say is that "Windows 7 is different". I have to "adjust" to use 7, there is no other way. The way Microsoft breaks "how things are done in XP/Vista" (that include taskbar, notification area, the "Move" command [I too was looking for that, found it in Task Manager]), I applaud them for that. Microsoft should have rebuilt taskbar long time ago. I had my own headache with taskbar area, most of the time I'd have a scrollbar on a double height taskbar on a dual 24" (spanned) display, that is 3840x1200px...

Here's what I think is better in 7:
1. IMHO SuperBar is a little better (not perfect) than the original taskbar, it can hold quite a lot before I got the up/down scrollbar on the taskbar. It groups each "task" to it's icon, and show it visually using Aero peek (though sometime the mini preview window went MIA for some unknown reason, no biggie). I need several days before I can optimally use it.

2. The new "notification pop-up" you argue for few pages (although in the end you said it's quite a bit better than the old one) is one of the feature I like. It does take me several days to adjust, usually it will expand to the left, slides open, now it pops up... no biggie, I can see/select much better, I just need to watch more carefully because it's arranged as a "grid".

3. The overall system performance is one of the feature I really like. If you read my system specs, my computer is inferior than yours. But for now, this workstation can do what I want to do up to "good enough" stage. When I use XP, it is true when first boot up, XP is plenty fast, memory usage very very low. But over time (my XP's uptime is above 1 month normally) it slows down. Not in snail slow, just slower. Many apps would start to behave weirdly (maybe then memory manager went south?). Windows 7 is somewhat more resilient then XP in that aspect (I totally skip Vista, so I don't really have anything to say about it).

I must say, I do feel "limited" when I use 7 for the first time... UAC notification takes time to show up, changing ANY settings that have shield icon next to it's text will take sometime before it responds, installing programs will invoke UAC warning, and so on... These small insignificant annoyance can build up and make a "Power User" blow up. But all in all, it's much much better of using my hardware to the limit than Windows XP. Now, running 2 virtual machines doesn't bring the whole system down to a crawl... And about Pagefile, if you completely disable Pagefile, maybe performance wise you might not feel anything, but when Windows crashed (BSOD), you won't be able to collect the dump if you completely disable pagefile. I personally set my pagefile to 1GB (of 4GB physical memory) just for the memory dump feature. So that I'd know what crashed in event of BSOD.

After reading several post in the first page, I can't hold the urge... For the record, eSATA is just as fast as internal SATA, there is no difference at all, I'm on schedule to move my Windows volume over to my homemade SAN. The SAN volume is faster on small file operations (RAID6). If I can save some more money, I'd change the SAN <--> PC interface to FC, that'll give me ~400MB/s to play with, a nice trade between volume expandability/speed...

Enterprise class hardware, the one that uses tens of gigabits of bandwidth in storage traffic uses external storage, ALL of them... If you want to boost your storage speed through the roof, the only way would be to move your storage to external device, it's a lot more manageable than internal storage and much more expandable.

zzz2496

 

[BunBun]

Thanks zzz.

1. I never said I disliked the new behavior of the taskbar or notification area. In fact I love them and think it is a great step forward. However what I do dislike is the lack in options to how the entire UI is visually presented. Other elements like the pin of applications and lack of quick launch can be changed by not pining things and creating your own quick launch toolbar. I just get this feeling from Microsoft and most of the computer market actually that the big drive of everything is home entertainment (like all laptops having useless glossy screens now) and it cuts into the workability of the system. Pretty is nice but if it impede's my work then something is wrong. And pretty things that waste my screen realestate and make me move my mouse further and do more clicks is wasting my time.

2. The only issue I have with the notification area is the fact it creats a new window. The icons are further away and more spaced apart. It is not nearly as quick to access my hidden icons (which I hide all of them) However I like the new functionality and behavior of the notification area. It keeps hidden icons seperated from the non-hidden and allows more control over what or what isnt hidden.

3. I never stated overall performance was worse in 7 then XP (nor implied it). Overall Windows 7 is superior in many ways. But so was XP vs 98 when it came out. Just because CPU and Memory resources go up doesn't give a excuse for the OS to hog more of it. what's the point of constantly upgrading if its always going to be the same speed? I also never experienced slow downs in XP as I kept my machine quite clean and knew it was never designed to be always on. Fast shut down and boot up times meant I could shut it off when not in use. However Vista was too slow for this and I had to use S3 standby and essentially have up time for weeks at a time (which proved to cause a lot of problems on its own...). I think my 7 boot time now on raid is fast enough that I dont need to use sleep all the time again though.


And yes I don't get what problem all these people have with the word "external" blows my mind...

 

[zzz2496]

<sarcasm>
Maybe they never "tasted" a speedy external storage?:sarc:
</sarcasm>

Anyway, though it's different in many ways, and the lack of options to restore the old behavior... All in all, Windows 7 is many times better than XP (my previous OS) and Vista, don't you agree?

zzz2496

 

[Frostmourne]

Comparing 7 to XP is idiotic - resources have to go up and technology has to move - what is the point of stagnation? Hardware is cheap too. XP should die permanently and stop being used as a point of reference.

 

[BunBun]

Comparing 7 to XP is idiotic - resources have to go up and technology has to move - what is the point of stagnation? Hardware is cheap too. XP should die permanently and stop being used as a point of reference.

Why is it idiotic? They are both OS'es based on the same platform with the same target audience.

Why do resources HAVE to go up for technology to move forward? When did efficiency get lost...

XP still has its place for now and Windows 7 fan boys need to accept that.

 

[Frostmourne]

Comparing 7 to XP is idiotic - resources have to go up and technology has to move - what is the point of stagnation? Hardware is cheap too. XP should die permanently and stop being used as a point of reference.

Why is it idiotic? They are both OS'es based on the same platform with the same target audience.

Why do resources HAVE to go up for technology to move forward? When did efficiency get lost...

XP still has its place for now and Windows 7 fan boys need to accept that.

Efficiency matches the hardware - I can easily put in a maximum of 16GB DDR3 for my motherboard right now - technology improves everything especially features and XP is virtually dead. No support for DirectX 10 or 11, poor security, and an ugly UI.

 

[Merlin2000]

Sorry.. but XP won't be dead anytime soon. XP is still used by over 60% of the people right now. From Jan 2008, to Jan 2010, Vista only gained 10% share in the browser wars.. It's going to be a long time before XP is phased out.

IE6 is still used by well over 10% of the people on the internet right now... and Microsoft is already up to IE8!

I still disagree with BunBun about keeping hardware requirements the same as new OSes are upgraded. I think the newer OSes/technology shouldn't drop features because they want to have the best minimum requirements. I think it's ok to raise the minimum requirements if you're adding features that can take advantage of 'em.

Sorry, XP has its' own role still. Win 7 does NOTHING for a lot of people, we'll be seeing XP for at least the next couple years.