Windows 7: Excellent except for 3 "issues"

[Ed Bradford]

I have been running Windows 7 for almost a year now. I like it, but have three complaints that really need attention.

1. If you leave your computer over night, when you come back it
can take as long as 10 minutes to become fully functional
again. VISTA had this problem but it was not as severe.

2. Like other versions of Windows, over time, Windows 7
"matures". Maturation requires a reboot to restore youthful
vigor. With XP and VISTA it was about a month. Basically, the
network would curdle. With Windows 7, it seems shorter. I
experienced starting a cmd.exe that did not pick up the
PATH variable. I closed a number of applications and tried
again, but got the same results. I believe this is a side
effect of the memory allocation problems described in #1.

3. Scrollable pages jump. This is especially noticeable in
Windows explorer. If you try to navigate in the left pane of
Windows explorer and you push the '+' to open a folder. The
left pane doesn't move for a bit then jumps to the bottom of
the list of items in the folder. This also shows up in
browsers where pages will jump around until fully loaded.

Has anyone else seen these problems? Have they been reported and
is Microsoft going to fix them?

 

[seekermeister]

I don't think that I have experienced any of the problems listed. I'm certain about #1, but not quite as sure about #2, because I generally reboot more often than that. #3 isn't happening here.

 

[richc46]

This may solve problem 1. It is not normal.

How to troubleshoot a problem by performing a clean boot in Windows Vista or in Windows 7

 

[richc46]

The Radio star host, computer guru, Kim Komano, has alway advised, to shut down computer once a week.

 

[noobvious]

The Radio star host, computer guru, Kim Komano, has alway advised, to shut down computer once a week.

That's good to know.....I have been doing that once or twice a week, and using "sleep" the rest of the time. It just seemed like a good idea.
Thanks for sharing!

 

[CorrsFan]

I KNOW what you mean about #3. It is incredibly annoying to be navigating a directory on left Explorer pane using the "+" symbols, only to have the blooming pane display adjust itself and by "jumping" the newly opened directory to the bottom of the pane. It, of course, doesn't happen all the time...but it does happen.

I think closing all open Explorer windows occasionally is a good idea. I've experienced other issues when having multiple (>4) Explorer windows open, such as delayed or No view updates, and new files being added to the end of the file list instead of being placed in the proper sorted order (like in XP).

 

[satchmo]

When I leave the computer on overnight, it takes less than five seconds to return full functionality.

What's your power settings? Did you set it to hibernate?

I never hibernate my computer. It goes to a suspend mode only.

 

[Ollie89]

Issue #1 : Very strange dude i don't no but i have left my laptop on overnight so i might try it tonight and have a look but i have never had that issue with any other windows OS. :sarc:

 

[richc46]

The Radio star host, computer guru, Kim Komano, has alway advised, to shut down computer once a week.

That's good to know.....I have been doing that once or twice a week, and using "sleep" the rest of the time. It just seemed like a good idea.
Thanks for sharing!

I also shut down the modem, when the compter is down.

 

[WindowsStar]

I have been running Windows 7 for almost a year now. I like it, but have three complaints that really need attention.

1. If you leave your computer over night, when you come back it
can take as long as 10 minutes to become fully functional
again. VISTA had this problem but it was not as severe.

2. Like other versions of Windows, over time, Windows 7
"matures". Maturation requires a reboot to restore youthful
vigor. With XP and VISTA it was about a month. Basically, the
network would curdle. With Windows 7, it seems shorter. I
experienced starting a cmd.exe that did not pick up the
PATH variable. I closed a number of applications and tried
again, but got the same results. I believe this is a side
effect of the memory allocation problems described in #1.

3. Scrollable pages jump. This is especially noticeable in
Windows explorer. If you try to navigate in the left pane of
Windows explorer and you push the '+' to open a folder. The
left pane doesn't move for a bit then jumps to the bottom of
the list of items in the folder. This also shows up in
browsers where pages will jump around until fully loaded.

Has anyone else seen these problems? Have they been reported and
is Microsoft going to fix them?

Issue #1. I have never had this happen
Issue #2. I have run Windows XP for 1 year without rebooting (no updates) and never had a problem. Typically I run my machines 24 hours a day with no reboots (exception of Windows Updates). Never seen this problem on Windows 7.
Issue #3. Make sure your video driver is completely updated. I have seen this happen with a bad video driver. Next make sure all the helper services for your driver are disabled. You don't need them and they always cause a lot of problems.

Question: Is your machine a CLEAN install??? If not that may be why you are having problems. Windows 7 works best installed on a wiped clean hard drive. I wiped my machines through all the Windows 7 Betas, and RC to make sure. When I bought Windows 7 final I wiped the drive and installed fresh. No problems here.

 

[DocBrown]

Issue #1

I don't let my computer sleep or hibernate

I just turn off my monitor with the power button & everything else keeps running just fine

" Doc "

 

[gregrocker]

I would not stop troubleshooting until I fixed #1 as this is not how Win7 is supposed to act. Nor is #2.

#3 is my own one major annoyance with Win7. When you are ready to drop a file you've dragged to explorer tree, it decides to unfold and causes you to incorrectly drop the file.

It takes some training, but the solution is to not let the file go until the explorer tree unfolds first. It is showing you subfiles because it lamely thinks you might want to drop in them. Let it do its thang and then (and only then) drop the file.

I think I understand why MS did this, since there is no other way to tell it to expand fully the explorer tree to the sub-files, other than dragging there. What if you actually want to put the file in a subfile?

 

[Ed Bradford]

3 Issues - more information.

This is Windows 7 on a brand new 320GB 7200 disk drive -- a clean install.

I should explain #1 in more detail. I take the multiprogramming environment of Windows seriously. I typically have 20 to 25 applications running. [e.g. Opera,FireFox,Chrome,IE8,PowerShell(3),cmd.exe(2),RandomHouseWebstersDictionary, bash.exe(3), Windows Live Messenger, Notes,AT&T VPN,SyncToy,Adobe Digitial Editions, and procexp.exe] System has 3GB of memory and is running 64-bit Windows 7 Ultimate. During day when system is completely aware of itself, it is responsive for all applications. I switch between them and suffer minimal delays. If I add to that GoogleEarth -- a known memory hog - then the system still works well. I walk away from it over night. When I come back even exiting programs is painful. It can take 10 minutes before system is fully responsive.

Remember, now, before I left for the night, it was fully respsonsive. What did Windows do while I was gone? Whatever it did was not helpful at all. Even hibernation with XP and VISTA was faster.

On the reboot question I don't view "scheduled reboots" as a workable solution. There is something broken
in Windows 7 that rebooting simply hides. All users world wide (100's of millions) suffer when such bugs are not fixed. I cannot see the economic benefits of not fixing this. Clearnly 100 Windows deverlopers working for a month to fix this is cheaper than forcing all users world wide to reboot once or twice a week. A reboot is about 5 minutes (remember my "sessions" are not empty). 100 million times 5 minutes times 26 times/year dwarfts the 100 developers for one month. Productivity world wide is lost on a monmental scale if totaled.

Other than those 3 issues, I'm quite happy with Windows 7.

 

[seekermeister]

I seriously doubt that there are 100 million users that are keeping as many apps running as you are. I don't know your needs, but I can see no reason to keep as many browsers running as you are. It is very simple to initialize a browser, if the one that you have running doesn't serve the purpose at hand. Why don't you try paring down the load some and see what happens?

 

[Ed Bradford]

Re: Windows 3 issues

I know how to make Windows work well -- any version of Windows or indeed any product. Don't stress it. I can do that by rebooting every day, not using sessions in browsers, closing one browser before opening another, and lots of things. However, for a $300 product, I thought Windows 7 was a multi-programming, multi-tasking work environment. For the most part, Windows 7 works quite well. It's just these three areas, which I believe Microsoft should spare no effort to fix. Doing that would make Windows 7 clearly superior to any other Windows product in my mind.

Avoiding bugs in products reduces my productivity but escapes the negative side effects of the problems. I am interesting in improving everyone's productivty by making Windows 7 work correctly in the areas I describe.

 

[s0c9]

I have not seen #1 or #2. Running 7 Ultimate x64.
I do have #3 and it is a PITA.

my other pet peeve.... FF [3.5.*] will nor run on my system for long. Memory use continues to climb until machine grinds to a halt. Yes, tried compatibility modes, even tried running in XP mode. Didn't do squat.
I now run Chrome pretty much exclusively.

ED, or Anyone got any thoughts on the FF issue ? [apologies for the hijack]

 

[Impulse Fire911]

Really? with windows 7 ive left it on for about 3 days stragiht and it worked stunningly, vista completely bugged down after one day. i agree with no. 3 and slighty n0.2

 

[noobvious]

I left mine running overnight last night, as opposed to closing programs and putting it into sleep or doing a shutdown, because Exact Audio Copy was locked in mortal combat with an old, very scratched, CD. Within two seconds of my grabbing the mouse this morning, everything was functioning properly.

 

[valtonray]

the biggest issue it seems you are having is that your computer is bloated and possibly underpowered. thats not a windows problem

 

[valtonray]

I have not seen #1 or #2. Running 7 Ultimate x64.
I do have #3 and it is a PITA.

my other pet peeve.... FF [3.5.*] will nor run on my system for long. Memory use continues to climb until machine grinds to a halt. Yes, tried compatibility modes, even tried running in XP mode. Didn't do squat.
I now run Chrome pretty much exclusively.

ED, or Anyone got any thoughts on the FF issue ? [apologies for the hijack]

firefox has always had memory problems although for most users not as severe as yours seem, there are plug ins that can help, as well as keeping the number of tabs open to a minimal. also you may want to use the 32 bit version if your not.