Windows 7
 

Hi all. Just installed Windows 7 today. I have it dual booting with XP Pro SP3. 7 seems fine so far. It really doesn't "feel" that much like a Beta. I've had zero driver issues, compatibility issues, etc. Anybody else tried it so far? If so, what are your thoughts?

Can you post some screenshots and go a bit in depth?

I had no idea they had a beta Windows 7 out right now. What are the limitations of the OS? Would I be able to use all the programs I currently use or is the beta limited to only core features?

LoganSnake, here's a great link for you, or others wondering about Windows 7 Beta:

What You Should Expect from the Windows 7 Beta :: the How-To Geek

I've been using it for only one day but I am quite impressed. Firefox 3, Chrome, work just fine. McAfee AV, which I use in XP Pro does Not work. So I am using AVG Free AV for now. The Beta will expire Aug, 09. If it wasn't for that I would probably just replace XP Pro with 7 now. But it is a Beta so I will keep Dual-booting for a while, at least. Let me know if you have any questions.

I'm trying it now too. So far, so good, my system isn't top notch (1.8 Ghz Core 2 Duo, 1280 MB RAM, AGP video card) but it runs fine on my system.

2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo
2 GB DDR2 RAM
PCIe nVidia 8600 GTS vid, 256 MB
etc.

Win 7 is very snappy on my system. I would say en par with XP Pro, although I haven't tried any games yet.

I have it running in a VM on my quad. 1GB out of 4GB total host ram allocated to it. It's very snappy even with that much ram. ~32 processes on a clean install, much better than vista.

As someone said on another board I frequent, it's vista lite :)

Microsoft Windows 7 Forum:

Windows 7 Beta : Microsoft TechNet Forums
-----Added 12/1/2009 at 11 : 06 : 55-----
More Windows 7 info. Interesting.

http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/win7_simple.asp

after 5 hours of clawing my eyes out, I got Windows 7 installed on my MSI Wind with no optical drive whatsoever. it sucked but it works great.

1. download Windows 7
2. mount the Windows .ISO onto a virtual drive
3. Use command prompt to create a master boot record from the Win 7 .ISO on a USB hard drive/flash drive (must be 4 GB or larger, I used a 120 GB ;p )
4. Use extracting program (WinRAR) to extract contents of ISO from virtual drive onto your USB drive
5. Profit

the main problems I kept running into were: you CANNOT create a master boot record of the 64-bit Win 7 using a 32-bit OS - you gotta be using Windows 7 or Vista in order to do it. I had to install Windows 7 on my main PC (with optical drive) and boot Win 7 to create the boot record for....Windows 7. if that makes sense. fucking 3 hours wasted time trying to get it to work and I stumbled upon that piece of shit info.

Also, another key element - you cannot create a master boot record from a burned DVD of Windows 7, you HAVE to mount the .ISO file in a virtual drive to pull the MBR. Stupid, but at least I know now.

So now I can tell my coworkers I have Windows 7 on my netbook without a DVD drive!

Windows 7 is nice so far.

I've had Win 7 running for a while now (since the first public leaks). Being biased (I'll be working on the Windows team next summer as an intern at Microsoft) I think its a vast improvement over Vista. In short... Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been. I consider it an "evolutionary" release versus a "revolutionary" release.

Though I will say the task bar in Windows 7 is a superior task bar to what Apple offers in Mac OS X. It would be the primary feature I might consider revolutionary. All in all, its a good stable beta, have been running it full time for the last couple months, no problems.

-Z

Redjake, damn. That sounds like a lot of hassle! But good work.

I use my computer every day, haven't booted into XP Pro for over two weeks. 7 works very well. I've had just one BSoD. There are bugs, and I have stumbled into a few. But it's a Beta. A very stable Beta.

I might consider actually buying it if I have a post 2001 system to run it - which I am planning on getting this year. :crazy: (USB 1.1 takes a looooong time to transfer files from a thumb drive compared to a laptop with USB 2)
never have payed for win2k or XP but it might be worth it for this to dual boot with Ubuntu. The brief review I read earlier tonight said it was Vista with many of the bugs ironed out, and questioned why someone who already bought Vista should have to pay for this in final release form.

I'm running Windows7 in VMPlayer enviroment but I have network problems there as the adapter isn't recognized. First I tried MS VPC but that was slow. Has anyone got some tips on the network issue. And the host OS is XP Pro (32bit).

Yours
Zweiblumen

Few things I would like to share...First of all, I'm not someone who hates Vista...I thought XP was just OK, I preferred Windows 2000 Professional instead...Once I got my hands on Vista Ultimate, I have been hooked...Windows 7 feels like Vista with a perm...I love it...

First off all, you may run into some issues trying to set up a a dual boot within Vista, I don't know about XP...Various errors trying to make free space, etc...Paragon Partition Manager is your friend...And trust me, you want to dual boot, as you can have that fresh, new OS feel and speed without having to install all the shit on your new OS...Many of my old programs run just fine without being installed in W7....

I ran W7 in a virutal machine for a couple weeks or so I guess, before deciding it was well worth it to see what it could do to utilize all of my hardware's resources...So far so good...It is fast, it shuts down, several things have been streamlined and aren't clumsy...I still don't like IE8, but that's hardly a knock...Once you have Firefox, there simply isn't enough to go around...However, IE8 is good enough that I won't be installing Chrome, K-Mel, or anything else I use when I don't want to unleash Firefox...This feels fast, I can live with the clumsy way pages are displayed...

If this is the BETA, then the final version should kick ass...I have yet to see if there are fixes to notorious Windows problems like SUPER slow file move operations in Explorer and things like that, but I'm willing to give this a legit shot...

How much RAM is it taking up?
Vista uses a whole gig just to boot up... is 7 any better?

Glad you mentioned that, I forgot to make note of it...Vista, like you said, will easily consume 45-50% of my 2GB of RAM on boot...I have a tweaked services set and a few programs running on boot...

W7 uses about half that much...I am seeing 24-36%...I've been on for a few hours now, running the RAM hungry FF3, and this is my TM screenshot:

http://fs2.ayhja.name/files/W7_RAM_TFP.JPG

Clearly, you can see they've really tried to improve the memory management issues...And with so many small improvements, I don't have to install so many little 'handler' programs...

Readyboost in Windows 7:

Vista was able to use USB drives as basically a disk cache. But you could only use one. In Windows 7 you can use multiple drives. I've set up 2 X 1GB drives. From what I've read, Readyboost really isn't that big of a deal as long as you have at least 1 GB RAM. (I have 2) But it's something to tinker with.

How much RAM is taken up in memory is not a good measure of how much RAM is used by the OS. For example linux uses any unused ram as a disk cache, if more RAM is needed then the cache is released. Vista and Windows 7 might also do this.

Vista I know for a fact isn't using as much RAM as it says it is. It puts unused ram into certain processes for quicker use though it is still available.

I found a soulution that works for me to get network connection in Windows 7 inside a VMware virtual machine.
It's rather simple add the following line to the .vmx file
ethernet0.virtualDev = "e1000"
This adds an Intel (R) Pro /1000 MT network adapter to the virtual machine.
The connection type has to be "bridged" but VM will warn and change it if the type is anything but "bridged".

Hope this helps someone.
Yours
Zweiblumen

Pretty good Win 7 guide:


Windows 7: The Complete Guide

50 Useful Windows 7 Tips:

50 seriously useful Windows 7 tips | News | TechRadar UK

I wonder if the same problems will happen with Windows 7 6-12 months from now. Will it get infected by bots, scripts, or other programs and make it slow down 50%?

It will be an interesting year for operating systems this year. With Apple releasing 10.6 and Windows 7 both coming out.

(And Firefox has to get better memory management. I need to start looking for a replacement to this)

I have found a reason to like Win7. If you change the theme to "landscape" then landscape pictures from around the globel will be used for diffrent things (background etc) and some of these pictures are from "home" :-)

Yours
Zweiblumen

Just upgraded from Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 32bit to Build 7048 32bit. (Took a while but seems to have worked well.

how do you upgrade?

So this is an OS that comes AFTER Vista? Hm. I haven't even used Vista to its full capacity yet.

If you have Windows 7 Beta Build 7000 or 7022, download the ISO for Build 7048. Then burn the image to a DVD or open it a virtual drive, whatever. From inside Windows 7, launch the install, choose "Upgrade," etc. Note, if you start with 32 bit, you have to upgrade to 32 bit. 64 bit to 64 bit.

well yeah, but is the 7048 build readily available off of microsoft's site or do I have to go through...other... means of acquiring it?

i wonder what they'll charge for the release version.

IMO if you're upgrading from Vista it should be damn near free. They already made money selling a broken operating system. Time to give us what we paid for in the first place.

You can't download Build 7048 directly from MS. But it's no big deal. I really think that MS has been leaking other Builds on purpose. Keys from Beta Build 7000 work fine on 7022 and 7048.

---------- Post added at 05:42 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:29 PM ----------

I agree that people who bought Vista should get a big discount on Windows 7. Especially anyone who bought Vista in the last 8 months or so. I didn't like Vista at all so stuck with XP Pro. I'm glad I did. It's the first time I've ever skipped an OS from MS, going back to Windows 3.1. Hell, I even bought Windows ME! But Vista was a turd. Windows 7, on the other hand, runs quite well and is very impressive, IMHO. But I believe that 7 is what Vista could/should have been.

Side by side: UI changes from Windows 7 beta to build 7048


Side by side: UI changes from Windows 7 beta to build 7048 - Ars Technica

Here is something "nice" I found in Win7
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/members...5-detected.png

ZB

Haven't messed with that yet, Zweiblumen. Build 7057 just leaked a couple of days ago. About to install it over Build 7022. 7057 is supposedly the RC.

Well, 7057 seems to work fine. A few cosmetic changes. Some UAC changes.

That screenshot (in post #32) is from 7000 (hence the Send Feedback).

This message reminds me of the old "Keyboard error or no keyboard found. Press F1 to continue".

Yours
ZB

ZB, screenshot didn't show.

Well, booted into XP Pro today for a while, first time for weeks. After using 7 since January, XP just seemed too odd to use. So I nuked my XP partition to free up space. Never thought I would be happy with a Beta as my only OS, but I am. I really don't miss a thing about XP. (And I was a big fan of XP.)

Anyone know how to change the 7 boot menu so that there's not "Other OS" choice any more?

Would this windows 7 run smoothly on a "older" machine fully capable of handling XP that would be choking on Vista? Dualbooting with Ubuntu/whatever other of *nix sounds tempting.

Speed Gibson, post your system specs and I will give you my opinion. To me, RAM and video are the two most critical things. A good CPU helps, of course. I find 7 to be between XP Pro and Vista when it comes to resources needed.

I'm running Win7 (7000) on P4 2.4Ghz 1.5 Gb ram and GeForce 7800 (AGP). It would run alot smoother if I turned off all the visual effects but it's still usable. That said I will have to admit to that I used XP Pro on P3 500Mhz with 512 Mb ram for a very long time.

Yours
ZB