Real time to get Windows 7 functioning as XP install

[mpcrsc562]

Setting up the UI to look like XP is impossible, because it is NOT XP! Every person I have seen that hates Seven so far is because they want it to work like XP, and they bitch that it is too hard (read: you). It is not XP, it is Seven, get over it or don't use it. ~Lordbob

Yes, I am trying to hang on to interfaces from XP and OSX and any other OS that works better than Win7 for me. Some parts of Win7 are just poorly done, we need to discuss these, help others and get the word back to manufacturers.

I suppose I'm prolonging a fruitless endeavor...
The new Beetle pays homage to the classic Beetle. Why would I buy a new Beetle to strip its parts and put classic Beetle parts on it?
Don't make no sense!

If anything is broken in Windows 7 it is the people who [un]intentionally break it by trying to make it into Windows XP.

(Besides, you got the best of both worlds in having XP within 7... It's not the greatest, but it beats having to support two different PCs)

 

[Lordbob75]

Lordbob, Perfectly posted. times, opinion and humor.

Yes, this is a troll. I am trying to get more to post like you did. The system spec in my info here is what I am installing on, hardly old or slow. I never thought to not use homegroup or workgroup DOH!

Yes, I am trying to hang on to interfaces from XP and OSX and any other OS that works better than Win7 for me. Some parts of Win7 are just poorly done, we need to discuss these, help others and get the word back to manufacturers.

In the early days of XP I set up a Raid 0 with the OS. I reinstalled weekly and thought it was me. Nope, turns out Microsoft never allowed for the file flush in the Raid and could corrupt itself by shutting down early. Tech support finally admitted it and said "Install on an IDE drive".

WHS - something like -
I am an IT pro so training time is difficult to measure. Win 7 beta times probably do not count but now it takes me an hour or so to set up a customer's computer unless they want networking with Macs and XP machines. Workgroups and permissions on a small setup of 5 or so takes another hour. I always leave the default UI in Win7.

Rofl, not a bad job then. Glad I posted what you were looking for. Sometimes the hardest things are solved by not using them at all (in this case, using a network drive instead).

I like most of the features of Windows 7. There are still a few flaws, but most of them are easy to work around, or are just different, no necessarily a flaw.

~Lordbob

 

[Duke of Alinor]

mpcrsc562,
Since you use analogies...
People still buy Harleys - even though for utility they are far from the best for the price.
The M1 Garand is still a more accurate rifle than present standard military issue.
Understanding the why of those two facts leads to:
Sometimes you have different criteria for what you want and newer is not always better.

If you think Win7 is in all ways better I am happy for you. I do not and can prove my points. Try hiding a Win7 machine on a network, this was simple on XP and everything continued to function on your end.
Hide/Unhide XP Computer from Network Neighborhood | Windows Reference
but a problem with 7
net config server /hidden:yes command does not hide Windows 7 machines from being visible with network browser
Task Manager /services /services Disabled the "Function Discovery Resource Publication" service works but causes other problems.

For all the trolls out there - yes, I did a bad thing. I started to head to a site with the wrong software, dashed back to the office, downloaded the files and still made my flight. Fortunately I was running stealthily with XP so there was no residual presence. With 7 the whole office sees me pop online. I would like to avoid the embarrassment.

 

[whs]

People still buy Harleys - even though for utility they are far from the best for the price
Sometimes you have different criteria for what you want and newer is not always better.

Those 2 statements are hard to argue. A Harley is just a big pile of metal that makes a lot of noise. Try to drive that on the windy roads of the Black Forest - I bet you end up wrapped around a pine tree. Compare that to a Ducati, BMW or Moto Guzzi which are real motorcyles.
And newer is certainly not always better. Example are modern cars stuffed with all those electronics. Not only do the electronics fail a lot more than the mechanics, but they require fancy equipment for diagnostics and are difficult and expensive to repair.

 

[mpcrsc562]

mpcrsc562,
Since you use analogies...
People still buy Harleys - even though for utility they are far from the best for the price.
The M1 Garand is still a more accurate rifle than present standard military issue.
Understanding the why of those two facts leads to:
Sometimes you have different criteria for what you want and newer is not always better.

But I think you misunderstood my point and to use your Harley example in return: I wouldn't get a new Harley just to tear it down and put 1972 parts on it -- what's the point of getting something new then? Should I get a new Harley to loosen nuts and bolts so that it leaks like the old Harleys?

I never stated nor implied that Windows 7 was better than Windows XP -- merely stating that as a new operating system, it makes no sense to hack it, slice it, and try to transform it into something that it is not. And I do not think that anyone who has posted to your OP has tried to say that Windows 7 is better than Windows XP ... But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

The release of anything new is always going to come with some give-and-take: some things get added for the sake of ease and usability, while others get removed due to the fact that technology is evolving and old standards get replaced with newer ones. In any case, not everyone is going to be happy and elated with the additions or removals. That's how it is.

But I betcha that we make due with what we have or stop using it to go back to what was old and familiar.

Paraphrasing another post: No one is forcing you to use and keep Windows 7 -- but don't try to make the problems you've had seem as if they're the norm ... because they're not.

 

[whs]

But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

 

[chev65]

Amount of time the OP spent researching the networking do's and don'ts of Windows 7 = 0.

Lost time because of lack of research = countless hours wasted because the Op did not spend five seconds learning about the Op system before it was installed.

As for the drivers, I defy the Op to find on another Op system that has as many good and fully functional drivers as Windows 7. In fact Msoft spent millions on this and even paid the manufacture's to make drivers that would work with Windows 7.

I recently installed Windows 7 to a 10 year old P4 compaq. I was able to join my Homegroup just by typing in the Homegroup password. This occured before I even got to the desktop for the first time. Every file was shared perfectly without me having to do a single thing. Every single driver was installed automatically and without any problems what so ever.

Installation time on older machine = 1 hour. Nearly every Windows update was installed the very first time I visited the update center without incident. Amount of time wasted = 0.

 

[CarlTR6]

mpcrsc562,
Since you use analogies...
People still buy Harleys - even though for utility they are far from the best for the price.
The M1 Garand is still a more accurate rifle than present standard military issue.
Understanding the why of those two facts leads to:
Sometimes you have different criteria for what you want and newer is not always better.

Again, that depends on your use. If I were to set out cross country in the US, I would strongly consider an HD Road King for comfort and a good service net work. But I wouldn't chooose a 1070's HD for the trip.

A sporterized Garand makes an excellent hunting rifle and a modified Gahand is still a fine sniper rifle. But I would rather have an AK-47 in a close quarters fire fight or the new generation M-16 family.

If you think Win7 is in all ways better I am happy for you. I do not and can prove my points. Try hiding a Win7 machine on a network, this was simple on XP and everything continued to function on your end.
Hide/Unhide XP Computer from Network Neighborhood | Windows Reference
but a problem with 7
net config server /hidden:yes command does not hide Windows 7 machines from being visible with network browser
Task Manager /services /services Disabled the "Function Discovery Resource Publication" service works but causes other problems.

I don't think every single thing in Win 7 is better. But overall it is far, far superior to XP. Hardware has evolved and Win 7 takes advantage of the new generation hardware.

People still buy Harleys - even though for utility they are far from the best for the price
Sometimes you have different criteria for what you want and newer is not always better.

Those 2 statements are hard to argue. A Harley is just a big pile of metal that makes a lot of noise. Try to drive that on the windy roads of the Black Forest - I bet you end up wrapped around a pine tree. Compare that to a Ducati, BMW or Moto Guzzi which are real motorcyles.
And newer is certainly not always better. Example are modern cars stuffed with all those electronics. Not only do the electronics fail a lot more than the mechanics, but they require fancy equipment for diagnostics and are difficult and expensive to repair.

You forgot Triumph! I would choose to ride European roads on my Bonneville or on a Speed Triple.

But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

Make that four votes!!!

 

[CommonTater]

Somehow I did not expect many of you to give a real answer.
But none of you?

OK... here's a real answer...

In the first week of March I installed Win7 on my desktop machine. The goal was to create a "pop tart" install (as my youngest calls it) that would just drop into the other machines and be more or less ready to go... Now I expected this to take a week of messing around figuring out what I needed and what I didn't, pounding VLite to death stripping it down to lean and mean proportions and I didn't even object when that week stretched into two... Win7 is VERY different than XP, even though there's a lot of XP still in it.

Probably the first thing I realized is that you cannot turn W7 into XP... you can't tweak, disable and configure it to look or act like XP... the differences are too great. So my first big revelation, day one, was that I had a pretty steep learning curve and I took that as a challenge...

My point is that you can't expect your first install to simply fall into place without some screwiness. There are some large scale issues here...

1) Win7 multimedia performance pretty much sucks. I took it out of my HTPC machine at threat of a family rebellion... It can probably be fixed but your not going to do it in an hour.

2) Win7 networking is a flaming nightmare. I eventually got mine tamed down but I had to kill almost all scheduled events, alter something like a dozen services, and tweak dozens of settings to do it. If you look at my recent posting history here you will see me repeatedly typing out long pages of instructions for people relating what I did and why...

3) I don't know what Microsoft was thinking when they loaded up the task scheduler with so much crap the machines end up constantly thrashing the disk drives. My first post here was begging for help quieting it down... The guys came through and amongst us we worked it out, but that took most of a week.

4) Since the day I installed Win7 I've had problems with usb devices locking it up when coming out of standby... unplug the device and away goes Win7... never did figure out what thats about.

5) The new stricter permissions are going to give even the most profficient of XP setup wizards fits... It's constantly telling me what I can't do and tonight it told me I had no more access to my backup drive... Not good.

BUT... all that in mind, Win7 needs some slack... It is a new operating system, created to get Microsoft's neck out of the noose with Vista. As software development at this level goes this is a rush job... I'll revist at the SP2 level and see what happens but for now I gotta be honest with you and say flat out that it's got excellent potential --I really like the Aero UI-- but the guts of it need a lot of work. For a homeowner who uses the machine casually, these problems are acceptable and can be worked around... but in the professional and corporate relms, Win 7 is clearly not ready for prime time... way to many incompatibilities and too many hours debugging for any IT guy to take it seriously.

Of course, the others will argue with this... but my experience is just as souring as your own.

 

[Dave76]

But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

Make that four votes!!!

Make that six votes

 

[hubris]

But I would bet that the general consensus is that most of the people like Windows 7 better than Windows XP.

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

Make that four votes!!!

Make that six votes

Make that 8 votes....- Vista.

 

[Lordbob75]

Did you guys forget this was intended as a troll post?

But so far, I have to say I have had a great experience with W7. Very few errors and such.

~Lordbob

 

[zzz2496]

Wow, funny discussion...

Duke of Alinor, I used Windows since Windows 3.1, 3.11, NT 3, 95, NT 4 (Client/Server), 98/SE, ME, NT5 (Windows 2000 Client/Server) <-- Got MS Certifications on both 2K server and client and Windows networking certification, XP, Windows 2003 Server, Vista (for a very brief moment, then back to XP), 2008 Server, and now 7. I haven't tried 2008 R2, I assume it doesn't differ that much from 2008.

Back then whenever I move from one Windows version to another, I'd need around 2 days worth of time to settle things down. After several years of computing (and few intense months of Linux usage), I finally got the "idea" of moving my "Home" folder to a separate partition in Linux, then I tried the same trick in XP, didn't work quite well, but that leads me to another big "OH I SEE" moment when preparing for a re-install.

I installed 7 in around January, took around 30 minutes to install. Then I imported my user profile from my old XP to the new 7 install, took about 15 minutes or so. Another an hour (or so) to install all my basic apps/server apps. Drivers took me no less than 15 minutes to install for all of my devices (I got all of them in advance, and store them on another data store). Networking, that was the easiest part, it just works in no time, though I never bothered Homegroups (I still believe in SMB/CIFS classic authentication scheme). As for network browser (the one in "Network" part of Explorer), I never used them, so I don't know much about it (it never work reliably for me). The time for me to finally settle down on Windows 7: almost 3 months. That means the little bits, tweaks and quirks here and there, but 99% of the system is up and running. I'm talking about my primary rig, a fully functional production system.

I cursed a lot when I found out that Apache/PHP/MySQL doesn't quite like Win x64 <-- that went to a VM. Some of my old games can't run in x64, that went to VM also. Other than that none consumed my time over re-installs. Heck, my XP was running solidly for 3-4 years for each installations. A reinstall was mandatory for new hardware, gotta do the spring cleaning anyways, but then back in XP I have my custom install DVD with all of my software setup. It's like those DVD you got from Dell/Toshiba/Acer laptops, auto install ALL APP I need along with Windows installation process, VERY HANDY.

So... I dropped my jaw when I read your post, 3 re-installs in 61 hours...? That's just WOW... Kudos to have such extreme patience and perseverance.

CommonTater: I'm curious on your point 2 comment, the " Win7 networking is a flaming nightmare" one... What/why/how? And for point 4, I had several issues with my own USB storage device too. It hinders boot up/wake up, it's a Vantec USB to IDE/SATA adapter connected to a DVD ROM drive. I finally found out, for whatever reason, my BIOS can't enumerate it, so - off it goes whenever I shutdown/sleep, problem partly solved.

zzz2496

 

[si8mon]

I vote for that - twice if neccessary. (Btw: I also take Vista any day over XP).

Make that four votes!!!

Make that six votes

Make that 8 votes....- Vista.

Make that 10 votes I would also take Vista over XP any day. I think Vista is the second best OS out there (Windows 7 for me is the best OS).

 

[CarlTR6]

Wow, funny discussion...
Networking, that was the easiest part, it just works in no time, though I never bothered Homegroups (I still believe in SMB/CIFS classic authentication scheme). As for network browser (the one in "Network" part of Explorer), I never used them, so I don't know much about it (it never work reliably for me).

CommonTater: I'm curious on your point 2 comment, the " Win7 networking is a flaming nightmare" one... What/why/how?

In late November 2009 my hard drive died and with it my XP died. Fortunately I had about 80% of my data, photos, and music backed up. I installed a new hard drive and received Win 7 Ultimate and Office 2007 as a gift.

I installed Win 7 32 bit as my hardware will not support 64 bit. In retrospect, I'm glad I have 32 bit. Then I started encountering freezes - no BSOD's, just freezes. Sometimes every 10 minutes, I could run for 8 hours without a freeze. All diagnostics pointed to the graphics card. This was not Win 7's fault; but it was a result of installing Win 7.

I bought a new graphics card and had it installed. I could have easily done it myself; but I am glad I took this route. With the new graphics card, I couldn't run more than five minutes without a freeze. I could only run in the safe mode. I tried every driver Nvidia had for the 7600 GS unstalling each drive, rebooting, and installing the next driver. Nothing worked.

I took my computer back to the shop that installed the card. After week of testing all of the hardware and two overnight memory tests plus trying a new power supply, the techs concluded it was the card (which I had told them from the get go). They replaced the card with another 7600 and, bingo, no more freezes. I did have to try three drivers to get the video working as it should. It is rock solid now. Of course none of this can be blamed on Win 7.

Next I encountered the nightmare of setting up a net work. I had both my Win 7 desktop and my wife's XP netbook connected to the internet via wi-fi. So I decided to group these together so that my wife could use the printer connected to my machine.

Due to my ignorance of groups, I tried to set up a homegroup. What a freaking nightmare! I did not understand that homegroup was designed for all Win 7 machines. Setting up groups is needlessly complicated in Win 7. Things are not made clear in the help series. And homegroups was devised by some engineer working in a lab with all state of the art hardware and running Win 7 Ultimate 64 bit on all the computers he was grouping. It appears MS did not try homegroup in a real world environment of varying machines running varying peripherals.

This is my only real criticism of Win 7; networking is needlessly complicated for the average user. And I am not alone in this judging from others who post here with the same problems. MS could have at least written some decent guides geared toward network neophytes. Fortunately, we have some great folks here that helped me and showed me how to get the XP computer into the homegroup.

 

[Duke of Alinor]

thanks ZZZ and Carl,
Hopefully my time spent will be the most you ever see for an install.
And hopefully MS will get the hint to put a warning in Homegroups setup.

 

[zzz2496]

Wow, to know that the one that saved my arse was my ignorance about Homegroup, and the fact that I never even tried it... a part of me cried a little... (GOD BLESS LINUX FOR THIS decision !!!).

zzz2496

 

[CommonTater]

CommonTater: I'm curious on your point 2 comment, the " Win7 networking is a flaming nightmare" one... What/why/how?

There are two distinct networking setups in Win7 ... Home Networking and Work Networking. We call them Homegroup and Workgroup... These two entities are almost totally incompatible with one another. You can't have some of one and some of the other... I tried, it just doesn't work. Moreover; if your LAN has mixed operating systems --XP, Linux, 2008, 2003, etc.-- Home Networking is simply not going to work and noplace in any of Microsoft's documentation, that I've seen, do they even remotely hint at it's predestined failure... noplace.

It took me nearly a week to get my own machine set up so that my XP machines could even see it on the network... another day before it could see the Linux and Mac laptops my kids use... Then there were a mess of really stupid problems, like clicking locally on a folder that happens to be shared and every machine in the house spins up... and, the last straw, being locked out of my NAS...

Two Weeks to get 7 to do something XP did last night, right out of the box qualifies as a flaming disaster in my books.

And for point 4, I had several issues with my own USB storage device too. It hinders boot up/wake up, it's a Vantec USB to IDE/SATA adapter connected to a DVD ROM drive. I finally found out, for whatever reason, my BIOS can't enumerate it, so - off it goes whenever I shutdown/sleep, problem partly solved.

Actually no... problem avoided... not solved or even partially solved.

My BIOS enumerates all my USB devices perfectly, so that's not the problem. It's not that my machine can't find the gadget... it's that Win7 is not reinitializing USB correctly after sleep.

 

[CommonTater]

thanks ZZZ and Carl,
Hopefully my time spent will be the most you ever see for an install.
And hopefully MS will get the hint to put a warning in Homegroups setup.

They could fix this Soooo easily and they could do it during install.

All they have to do is embed a trademark response in Win7... Enumerate the machines on the local network... if even one of them does not respond with the TMResponse, disable homegroups entirely.

This should not be user torture... it should be an automatic function of either installation or early setup.

 

[CarlTR6]

thanks ZZZ and Carl,
Hopefully my time spent will be the most you ever see for an install.
And hopefully MS will get the hint to put a warning in Homegroups setup.

They could fix this Soooo easily and they could do it during install.

All they have to do is embed a trademark response in Win7... Enumerate the machines on the local network... if even one of them does not respond with the TMResponse, disable homegroups entirely.

This should not be user torture... it should be an automatic function of either installation or early setup.

It is certainly frustrating and torture to a network group neophyte!!