Real time to get Windows 7 functioning as XP install

[CommonTater]

I have never set up a workgroup. I wish that was the route I had taken instead of homegroup. Since everyting is now working for me, I don't feel inclined to change it. If it ain't broke...

If you fish around in the Network and Sharing section of the forum you will find lots of places where I've typed up what it takes to switch 7 from homegroup to workgroup... and there's rather a lot of it with no guarantee of success.

Yes, Microsoft severely ___ed up on that one.

 

[CarlTR6]

I have never set up a workgroup. I wish that was the route I had taken instead of homegroup. Since everyting is now working for me, I don't feel inclined to change it. If it ain't broke...

If you fish around in the Network and Sharing section of the forum you will find lots of places where I've typed up what it takes to switch 7 from homegroup to workgroup... and there's rather a lot of it with no guarantee of success.

Yes, Microsoft severely ___ed up on that one.

I have read those and that is why I am leaving well enough alone. MS definitely made networking needlessly complicated in Win 7. I cannot figure out what their objective was. It darn sure wasn't to make networking and groups user friendly.

 

[gregrocker]

MS definitely made networking needlessly complicated in Win 7. I cannot figure out what their objective was. It darn sure wasn't to make networking and groups user friendly.

Unless you have normal family use. It gives you a prompt on the desktop that "Dad" wants to know if you want to join a homegroup, you agree and insert "Dad's" password and you are networked according to the functions you tell it you want to share.

I can't see how it would be any simpler unless it did it all for you in the background, which would be unsecure.

 

[CommonTater]

I have read those and that is why I am leaving well enough alone. MS definitely made networking needlessly complicated in Win 7. I cannot figure out what their objective was. It darn sure wasn't to make networking and groups user friendly.

Oh that's pretty simple really... they're trying to kill XP which currently still holds the largest market share of any OS by a not exactly insignificant margin...


(As of last week)

I don't know why they want to kill XP... but they do.

By making Win7 nearly impossible to network with XP/2000 etc on their lans and discontinuing production of new XP discs, they are hoping people will elect to upgrade their other systems as well...

Unfortunately for them they made a couple of serious errors in judgement... First they made Win7 so restrictive that it's viewed as intrusive (like Vista was) and then they released it without thorough testing of crucial behaviors such as multimedia and USB access...

Now, the result is that people are beginning to return to XP *again*. BUT... with XP no longer in production that option is available only by piracy and, guess what... people don't care if it's stolen or not... they need their systems to work! When I visit various torrent sites, in the software collections, the most frequently downloaded torrents are almost always Windows XP or Linux.

Win7 is not gaining market share anywhere nearly as fast as they'd hoped and, given my own experiences, I'm just wondering where all this is going...

 

[gregrocker]

Tater, I dont' believe they want to kill XP any more than Dodge wants to kill the Dart. There are still many proud owners out there who like to take it out of the garage for a Sunday drive or to pick up the gang to go for bingo.

Sorry, but XPired. Welcome to the future with the greatest invention since the p.c.

 

[CarlTR6]

I don't thik MS is trying to kill XP. XP will die because it is not compatible with and/or does not take advantage of new hardware technologies.

I still use XP on a netbook and will do so until the netbook dies; but there is no way I will go back to XP on my desktop. XP had its share of problems, too. But you and I figured out how to solve them and we will eventually reach that level with Win 7. Granted, it was easier to solve them in XP; but that came at a price - less security.

 

[CommonTater]

I can't see how it would be any simpler unless it did it all for you in the background, which would be unsecure.

Tell you what... I installed XP on my better half's machine yesterday (mine's today's project). When the XP install finished, I re-created her file shares, then hit "My Network Places"... and there was our entire network, all ready to go. I didn't even have sound or video drivers installed at that point and hadn't "tweaked" a single thing...

Not secure? ... C'mon over, bring your laptop... I'd like to see you access anything we don't let you into...

 

[CommonTater]

Tater, I dont' believe they want to kill XP any more than Dodge wants to kill the Dart. There are still many proud owners out there who like to take it out of the garage for a Sunday drive or to pick up the gang to go for bingo.

Sorry, but XPired. Welcome to the future with the greatest invention since the p.c.

That's just is XP is NOT expired except by Microsoft's own efforts... They could have continued development on XP for another decade and still had market for it. They want to kill it because there are so many copies out there that revuenue is actually falling off because of market saturation... So, rather than introducing paid upgrades "Aero for XP", etc. they decided to kill the most stable OS they've ever produced.

They recently got derailed on one other matter as well. The new "Advanced Format" hard drives, the ones with the 4k sector size, were originally touted as uninstallable on XP. Well, the drive manufacturers (Western Digital, to be exact) must have looked at market share and decided to work out a way to get XP to work with their drives. Now there's a "reprocess" utility that will take a clean install of 2000 or XP and realign the partitions for the new sector size... letting it work on both.

"The greatest invention since the pc"... Naaaa.... It's just a bunch of 1s and 0s part of an overall system... a tool... nothing more.

 

[zzz2496]

Notion of Windows 7/Vista is more secure that XP is overly exaggerated... I've wrote in another thread, If only Microsoft would implement proper multi-user usage model for Windows, ANY Windows - Windows will reach another level of secure-ness, all without tacking more cr*p on to it (one of the cr*p = UAC)...

zzz2496

 

[CommonTater]

I don't thik MS is trying to kill XP. XP will die because it is not compatible with and/or does not take advantage of new hardware technologies.

That's not true. ANY operating system can take advantage of any new hardware technology... That's what the whole "drivers" thing is about. The drivers connect devices to the operating system, presenting a common interface the OS understands. New device, new driver... no problem.

I still use XP on a netbook and will do so until the netbook dies; but there is no way I will go back to XP on my desktop. XP had its share of problems, too. But you and I figured out how to solve them and we will eventually reach that level with Win 7. Granted, it was easier to solve them in XP; but that came at a price - less security.

Also not true Carl... There are problems with XP I've never been able to solve

Seriously though... XP is not less secure than Win7 ... it merely appears that way because it's less intrusive. Which is more "secure"... an operating system that gets me locked out of my own folders... or one that trusts me to manage my own folder content and backups? I almost had a serious data loss with Win7... never even came close to that on XP or 2000.


Again... let me clarify my postion... I am not suddenly against Win7 ... I still like it and would strongly perfer to use it... if it was stable. But I am not going to deny there are problems or try to struggle against incorrectable issues to the point of personal bankruptcy... I've got to get back to doing what I do and for now XP is the best way to do that.

 

[CarlTR6]

Again... let me clarify my postion... I am not suddenly against Win7 ... I still like it and would strongly perfer to use it... if it was stable. But I am not going to deny there are problems or try to struggle against incorrectable issues to the point of personal bankruptcy... I've got to get back to doing what I do and for now XP is the best way to do that.

I can certainly understand that!

 

[whs]

I don't know why they want to kill XP... but they do.

Simple reason - they want to make money (and lots of it) with Win7 after the dent in their revenue from Vista.

 

[CommonTater]

I don't know why they want to kill XP... but they do.

Simple reason - they want to make money (and lots of it) with Win7 after the dent in their revenue from Vista.

Well... that's pretty obvious.

But why not do it the smart way... Go back to XP and introduce paid upgrades such as Aero for XP, Speech Recognition etc.

Y'know what... I'd give them $50 for a version of Aero that would work on my XP system. What I won't do is give them any more money until I see a new Windows OS that is rock --and I do mean ROCK-- solid.

 

[whs]

Yeah, but who wants to work on this old stuff. And then the XP base is not up to the times. Just think of the security area.
It's like I would love to have the old VW Bug. But then the engine is outdated and uses too much gas and they cannot put an AC on it because of the rear engine design. Sometimes it is just better to move on and leave the old designs behind.

 

[zzz2496]

whs, there's nothing in the world of programming that "can't be done". Everything can be done, it's just the amount of effort as the deciding factor... NT5.x series kernel is very scalable by it self. It can support up to 64 processors IIRC. The one of primary difference between NT6.x and NT5.x is how aggressive the scheduler do, and how aggressive the caching subsystem... Other than that, I don't see it...

zzz2496

 

[whs]

whs, there's nothing in the world of programming that "can't be done". Everything can be done, it's just the amount of effort as the deciding factor... NT5.x series kernel is very scalable by it self. It can support up to 64 processors IIRC. The one of primary difference between NT6.x and NT5.x is how aggressive the scheduler do, and how aggressive the caching subsystem... Other than that, I don't see it...

zzz2496

I know. I have been in operating systems development for 35 years. But certain efforts are just not practical or do not make the business case. I have started a lot of projects in my life that were technical marvels, but the business case just did not add up.
As a technician or a programmer one often does not understand why projects and good ideas are being killed. But once you get to the higher echelons in the development hierarchy, you get more insights and figure it out.

 

[CommonTater]

Yeah, but who wants to work on this old stuff. And then the XP base is not up to the times. Just think of the security area.
It's like I would love to have the old VW Bug. But then the engine is outdated and uses too much gas and they cannot put an AC on it because of the rear engine design. Sometimes it is just better to move on and leave the old designs behind.

Well... if my brand new ferrari was spending half it's time in the shop, I think I would eventually prefer that old VW Bug to having to hoof it 20 miles to work...

The decision is not new vs old... In my case it is Works vs Broken.

 

[zzz2496]

Yeah, but who wants to work on this old stuff. And then the XP base is not up to the times. Just think of the security area.
It's like I would love to have the old VW Bug. But then the engine is outdated and uses too much gas and they cannot put an AC on it because of the rear engine design. Sometimes it is just better to move on and leave the old designs behind.

Well... if my brand new ferrari was spending half it's time in the shop, I think I would eventually prefer that old VW Bug to having to hoof it 20 miles to work...

The decision is not new vs old... In my case it is Works vs Broken.

+1 Very well said

 

[CommonTater]

whs, there's nothing in the world of programming that "can't be done". Everything can be done, it's just the amount of effort as the deciding factor... NT5.x series kernel is very scalable by it self. It can support up to 64 processors IIRC. The one of primary difference between NT6.x and NT5.x is how aggressive the scheduler do, and how aggressive the caching subsystem... Other than that, I don't see it...

zzz2496

I know. I have been in operating systems development for 35 years. But certain efforts are just not practical or do not make the business case. I have started a lot of projects in my life that were technical marvels, but the business case just did not add up.
As a technician or a programmer one often does not understand why projects and good ideas are being killed. But once you get to the higher echelons in the development hierarchy, you get more insights and figure it out.

Yep... because once you walk away from pounding code or connecting pins... it's all and only about money. Really... one has to wonder how many truly superior ideas have been trashcanned because the developer was unable to convince "management" of their value...

I used to manage a national service department, spent a long time watching stuff go stupid at management meetings... more than once products that would be an enormous benefit to customers were trashed because someone behind a big desk didn't personally like the guy with it in his hand... Stupid stupid decisions all over the place.
(and for quite a while they made money hand over fist...)

 

[whs]

You guys seem to have different experience than myself. I used Vista since day1 (Febr. 1, 2007) and Win7 since Beta. I never had a single BSOD and there was never anything that I wanted to do that could not get done. Granted, sometimes with workarounds, but that does not bother me.