Retiring Windows 7 Anyone Else?

[Xzaviar]

I remember

I remember the transition from 98 to 2000Pro then to XPPro and I did so willingly and despite some minor problems I was glad to get rid of 98. Driver issues, BSOD's, then eventually stability, 2000 and XP were different from 98 in ways that aren't as evident between XP and 7.

Back when the pinnacle of gaming was AVP2 or Star Trek Voyager Elite Force, games and other programs weren't so tightly interwoven with dependencies on the OS.

I titled the thread "Retiring Win 7..." because for most people that have given up on 7 are doing that; putting it on the shelve and waiting for a service pack, or just taking a break for a while. I haven't shelved the OS. I simply removed it from my desktop and put it on my testbed that I use frequently. My testbed is no slouch although it's no i7. My testbed consists of:

• Pentium D 3.4Ghz
• 4 Gig Crucial DDR2 800
• Gigabyte MOBO (can't quote the model)
• ATI HD4650
• WD SATA 500Gig HD
• 20" Sony CRT

So to say that I have retired the OS is a bit of a misnomer, but I am not your usual end user. Nor am I as knowledgeable as most of the Senior members here. But I am sticking with 7 and using it most every day, just not on my computer that I use for sensative work. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of documents, spreadsheets... On my computer. Although everything is backed up I'm just leary of 7 right now, especially since the boot sector thing. Try it. If you have a hd hooked up to your computer that you just use for storage, disconnect all other HD's and try to boot from the storage drive and you'll see the 7 error screen when you turn on your computer, even though you've never installed 7 on that drive.

I would like to hear from the end user that has gotten so frustrated that they have the box on a shelve and are not using it at all. I also want to hear from the guru's and what problems they have experienced with 7. I get a kick out of the run of the mill "I have upgraded to 7 on three computers with not one problem" or something like that. Define "no problem". It's no problem for me to search up drivers for a eight year old laptop and install these drivers and get someone's LAN port working. But the person that brought me the laptop was at their wits end trying to get the issue resolved.

I think this information would be helpful in determining the pulse of the average end user, and how best to help them.

 

[Lordbob75]

So to say that I have retired the OS is a bit of a misnomer, but I am not your usual end user. Nor am I as knowledgeable as most of the Senior members here. But I am sticking with 7 and using it most every day, just not on my computer that I use for sensative work. I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of documents, spreadsheets... On my computer. Although everything is backed up I'm just leary of 7 right now, especially since the boot sector thing. Try it. If you have a hd hooked up to your computer that you just use for storage, disconnect all other HD's and try to boot from the storage drive and you'll see the 7 error screen when you turn on your computer, even though you've never installed 7 on that drive.

I would like to hear from the end user that has gotten so frustrated that they have the box on a shelve and are not using it at all. I also want to hear from the guru's and what problems they have experienced with 7. I get a kick out of the run of the mill "I have upgraded to 7 on three computers with not one problem" or something like that. Define "no problem". It's no problem for me to search up drivers for a eight year old laptop and install these drivers and get someone's LAN port working. But the person that brought me the laptop was at their wits end trying to get the issue resolved.

I think this information would be helpful in determining the pulse of the average end user, and how best to help them.

I have booted up without HDDs that were there when I installed. No issue. Not sure what you did.

I have had numerous problems with Seven, a few of which are not fixed and one that is not caused by the OS but I am too lazy to fix.
The one (annoying) problem is sleep and hibernation. It does not work quite right, and will not wake from sleep, though it will from hibernation. Oh well, too lazy to fix. Boot up is not that long.

Any other problems I originally had were fixed with drivers or something.

~Lordbob

 

[Xzaviar]

Hybrid Sleep

I too have the Hybrid sleep problem but with a little different twist. About 30sec after it wakes up 7 freezes. Hibernation works great though.

As far as booting, I may not have been clear. Disconnect the primary HD that 7 is installed on then try booting from a drive that you have used for storage and not for an OS. You'll see that despite 7 never having been installed to that drive you should get a 7 error screen asking you to insert the DVD and repair the problem. When you connect a drive to a computer running 7, 7 then writes indexing files to the boot sector of that drive. Not a big deal unless you later try to use that HD for another OS independently. Like I did with XP.

 

[Lordbob75]

I too have the Hybrid sleep problem but with a little different twist. About 30sec after it wakes up 7 freezes. Hibernation works great though.

As far as booting, I may not have been clear. Disconnect the primary HD that 7 is installed on then try booting from a drive that you have used for storage and not for an OS. You'll see that despite 7 never having been installed to that drive you should get a 7 error screen asking you to insert the DVD and repair the problem. When you connect a drive to a computer running 7, 7 then writes indexing files to the boot sector of that drive. Not a big deal unless you later try to use that HD for another OS independently. Like I did with XP.

I dont have an OS on the drive, so I would expect an error...

~Lordbob

 

[Xzaviar]

Me too

I expect an error also, but not from the hd. I expect an error from the BIOS. And I never expected a Windows 7 error screen from the MBR of a disk that has never had 7 installed on it.

 

[ggrrttdd]

The expectations I had for windows 7 were not met by the OS, I thought MS were going to release something brilliant.
It works o.k. on my laptop and I got 7 very cheap, so I won't put Xp back on.

However, I would be very disapointed had I paid the £45 preorder price let alone any more!!
Stick with XP until you need a new computer!

 

[mangotango]

My post

Hi

I hope my post wasn't too negative it certainly wasn't meant to be. I have no doubt W7 is the way forward and that as the weeks go by I will be able to solve my problems either via here or other searches on the internet.

I suppose what I was saying is that I had a modern spec laptop, with XP working rock-solid. I bought a copy of W7 and did a clean install and basically my laptop is unusable. No ATI driver so no screen, no AC97 driver so no audio, no sleep function just hibernate, no internet etc etc

To me this is unacceptable. I don't have a home-build laptop or one from mars, it is a HP Pavilion for goodness sake, 4 years old there must be hundreds of thousands of them out there. Why should I have to basically research the web to get it going? W7 should run out of the box. Yes I expect a bit of learning curve and a few tweaks here and there but not this mess. If my gran or sister was installing this op system they would be totally unable to fix the problems.

Just my thoughts really

 

[Dave76]

Can you imagine trying to make an OS that will run on thousands of different computers, with thousands of different hardware.

Looks like your issues are with HP and their lack of drivers.

Have you tried the HP users website?
Will likely be someone there that could give you some suggestions on what drivers you can try.

 

[Pantz]

Installed Windows 7 on my two year old Dell 1520, i did not have to look for any drivers, windows 7 installed all needed drivers, works like a charm.

 

[smarteyeball]

I've personally enjoyed trying and finally switching to each new MS OS I've used, warts and all.

However, for every improvement there is always a feature that you miss. That's just the nature of progress.

But I do understand wanting to stick with something you know that works over something that currently does not. There does come a time for all of us when familiarity and functionality override the need for the 'new and shiny'.

Seven is still not fully mature, but it certainly is a lot more 'ready out of the box' than most, if not all, previous MS releases.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi all
my take on all this is that YES there are 3 main probs that can easily be remedied - but you have to know ablut them first.

1) That annoying 100MB or so system partition -- this is a REAL nuisance to those that like to create an OS in a SINGLE partition only -- this can play havoc with Image backups and restores as you have to set THIS as the active partition and the "Main" OS partition as a prmary partition.

It's now a question of space -- 100MB on a 500GB drive is nothing -- it's just the spreading of the OS over more than 1 partition that's the problem.

OK this is fixed by ensuring ALL partitions exist BEFORE installing the OS -- even if the parttion is empty - use GPARTED or whatever to create a partition of the size you want BEFORE installing.

2) Drivers -- not MS's fault - but there is a LOT of perfectly serviceable hardware out there which doesn't yet need to be thrown away.

Run an XP virtual machine for these applications. I still have a scanner, a Minidisc recorder, an HP plotter etc -- all work fine on an XP virtual machine.

3) Old vs new menu / interface -- this can be a bugbear but can be got used to very quickly and the new quick search etc makes it well worth while the switch.

The only things IMO that probably could work better are legacy games - but not being a gamer this area has no interest for me.

Running an XP virtual machine and fixing the "Partition" problem gripe above should be sufficient in around 99% of the "reluctant users" category - so really there's no reason NOT to switch for most people - just take a little care first.

Cheers
jimbo

 

[musiclover7]

I use both XP and 7 side by side nearly every day. I run 7 on my office personal computer, and I run XP on my company laptop. I do not find myself missing anything on my 7 machine that I can do on my XP laptop, but I move a lot of files over to my 7 machine from XP, because I prefer working with them there (22 inch monitor vs 15.5 inch monitor could also be a factor). It is not perfect, and everyone has their preference, but for me, 7 trumps xp in ease of use, once you get all the 3rd party apps you are used to installed, and get it configured to your liking.. To each his/her own.. XP is a great OS, but I like 7 better. Small things, like being able to see the meta-data on an mp3 file when I highlight it in explorer, really add up over time.. I feel more efficient working on the 7 machine, but that is just me..

 

[go0gle]

My Asus f3jr runs much better with W7 compared to XP. I guess everything is about the drivers.. in my case they all work.

 

[netguysc]

Theway I see it you gave Windows 7 a very fair chance to win your heart and mind. You seem to have several reasons that are good enough for you to go back to XP and you explained them well.

I do not see your post as dissing Windows 7 just because it isn't XP, you presented a logical reason why you dislike 7.

It is refreshing to see a post such as yours, instead of the usual 'I hate 7..even though I haven't given it a chance" banter

 

[harpua]

I just installed 7 on a 5 year old T42p laptop which is just a back up machine for me now. It runs great, except there is an intermittent screen flicker that did not exist under XP. I suspect it is the video driver but there is no updated driver for the old ATI video adapter on this machine that I know of. I suspect if I put some time and effort into finding a solution for the screen flicker, I probably will eventually. Otherwise, 7 works great on it and the machine feels like a new laptop with 7, and quite snappy too.

 

[martytoo]

My system specs are remarkably similar to those listed in your posts. I have no Driver problems under W7 (Enterprise 64 Bit)at all no software compatibility issues either. you mentioned the lack of drivers for your scanner but unless I've overlooked it you don't say what scanner it is. have you tried Vista drivers they seem to work quite often under 7

 

[Sbrideau]

Quite fun to see someone that gives legit reasons to switch back without dissing the OS. I guess you will just try it later when it's matured (I think that's what you said).

I've personnally never had problems on my over 3 year old hp desktop when It was the Beta and RC that was installed on it in dual boot with vista, which is now the only OS on my desktop.

I personnally am never going back to XP, since Vista works very well on this machine (better than XP ever did) and also have 7 on my laptop which works like a charm.

I agree that XP was a good OS though, but as time goes by, you will eventually have to make the switch.

 

[sygnus21]

Based on this statement....

Sevenforums would not be so wildly popular or even exist if 7 were as perfect as the guru's claim it to be!

we wouldn't need teachers or education now, would we?

Windows 7 isn't perfect, nor was any other OS. And most of the issues described here can be fixed, maybe not all, but most.

I have no problem with people saying they'd rather stick with or downgrade to an older OS over Windows 7, there are some valid reasons for doing so, but some are just trivial drivel

And FYI, some Vista drivers will work in W7 – ATI’s TV tuner drivers for the TV Wonder Pro HD 650. So, if you can’t find a W7 driver, try Vista; it can’t hurt.

Just my two cents

P.S. Here's "perfect" XP's forums - windows xp forums - Google Search

 

[mushroomboy]

Based on this statement....

Sevenforums would not be so wildly popular or even exist if 7 were as perfect as the guru's claim it to be!

we wouldn't need teachers or education now, would we?

Windows 7 isn't perfect, nor was any other OS. And most of the issues described here can be fixed, maybe not all, but most.

I have no problem with people saying they'd rather stick with or downgrade to an older OS over Windows 7, there are some valid reasons for doing so, but some are just trivial drivel

And FYI, some Vista drivers will work in W7 – ATI’s TV tuner drivers for the TV Wonder Pro HD 650. So, if you can’t find a W7 driver, try Vista; it can’t hurt.

Just my two cents

P.S. Here's "perfect" XP's forums - windows xp forums - Google Search

Well with newer and newer hardware coming out I'm willing to bet XP will phase out soon, so it's probably good you posted those forums... hahaha

 

[whs]

Programs that run flawlessly on XP either won't run on 7 or take a "geek of the year finalist" to get them to run