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

Zweiblumen, as you stated, your only real "problem" there is the vid card. My system runs just fine with all of the eye candy, and I guess I have just gotten used to it all being on. For years with XP I would always set everything to "Windows Classic" (Win 2000) mode, because I didn't like the eye-candy. With 7, I don't find it as distracting as I did with Vista, or even XP default. Also, Zwei, even though the official RC1 of 7 will be out soon, if you upgrade your Build 7000 to 7057 your OS will be fine until Apr of 2010.

Sys Specs:
Core 2 Duo E6420, 2.13 GHz, 4 MB L2
nVidia 8600 GTS 256 MB
2 GB DDR2
320 GB, 120 GB, 80 GB, HDDs
etc

Going to build a new computer as soon as possible and make this box a hobby box.

I'm really thinking of blowing up my 32bit Vista partition. I am tired of 64bit windows 7 not being on my raptor drive. So, does build 7057 work until April 2010 with the real beta cd key that you get from microsoft?

YaWhateva, it does. At least it says it does. That could always be changed by MS. I originally downloaded Build 7000 32 bit from MS, with a key. Since then I have upgraded to 7048, then 7057, using the same key. 64 bit upgrade path and longevity shouldn't be any different.

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply, I might just nuke Vista tonight.

YaWhateva, you are welcome. Just keep in mind that just because I had no probs doesn't mean that you won't! Everything involving 7 has been very smooth for me. YMMV.

well yeah I have 64bit windows 7 installed since microsoft released the beta. I just had to install it on a non-raptor drive since Vista was filling that drive. I am just going to free up that hard drive so I can put 7 on it. 7 has been working perfectly for me and I love it. Rebooting into Vista sucks every single time I do it haha.

edit: unless you can do an 'upgrade' from vista 32bit to windows 7 64bit but I haven't heard anything like that being possible.

YaWhateva, figured you knew what you were doing. But, if booting to Vista sucked for you, imagine booting to XP Pro! After using 7 for a couple of months the difference is like night and day. Any idea as to how to change the boot prompt to get away from XP being a choice?

Speaking of specs, I was just admiring on the Gateway site a system with an incredible qaud-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM for only $800. Egad! Makes my machines sound like dinosaurs - they have a combined RAM limit of 4.5 GB (3/1.5).
My main machine runs XP Pro now and win2k previously wonderfully without a problem. I strongly suspect Windoze 7 would install but not fare well at all on an Athlon 1.6 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM. The video card is an Geforce 7600 GS that should last me at least two more years unless something changes to rush an upgrade; that would likely be system/MB failure.

The 1.3 Ghz secondary system/crash box has been feeling increasingly slower over time but still runs win2k sharply (the same installation for years now), the one game my wife plays on it, and the whatever other tasks asked of it. Win2k is by far my favourite OS still from MS.

At the time, I loved Win2k. Was just awesome. Now, I have to admit something; I bought and used Win ME. I have a cheap MS watch that came with it to prove it. What a turd of an OS.

ah yes, the look of win2k with the stability and security of the win95 first release. Never used it personally but had more than enough dealings with it doing inbound tech support.
edit: just thought again of the irony of using a song with "You make a grown man cry" in it for the grand release of a brand new OS. Perhaps they should have used that for Vista as well.

I think I will be buying a new system piecemeal starting with the case, etc. Components are so much faster and cheaper than when I built these two. Still not used to 1 GB of RAM costing less than $200-$300, and the new SATA drives are dirt cheap and huge compared to the much smaller capacity IDE drives I use now.

you can buy 4GB of ddr2 ram for $45 on newegg. haha.

Edit: oops, I just saw your question, Wyodiver.

You mean after you nuked that install? It should just go away itself, right? I have no idea how to get rid of it if it's still there after you got rid of that install, sorry.

Sweet.

According to tech site Ars Technica, the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available to the public starting in May 2009, will be available through June 2009, and will expire June 1, 2010. We'll keep our eyes open for a specific date in May, and keep our fingers crossed that Microsoft doesn't underestimate the web like they did with the beta release. Check out Ars for more details.



Windows 7: Windows 7 Release Candidate Coming to Public May 2009

Well, here we go again. Build 7068 is out, in both 32 and 64 bit. Downloading now. I will probably do a clean install this time as I think I'm pushing my luck with all the upgrades. (Did upgrades from 7000 --> 7048 --> 7057.) I know I should just wait for the RC in May but I can't help myself. I'm helping the economy by going through so many DVDs. :thumbsup:

Here's a good Windows 7 site: Windows 7 Center

Aero (the graphics component) of Windows 7 should be much more responsive than Windows Vista. Speaking with a friend at Microsoft who works on Vista he said that they have removed the "Global Lock" on graphics, so that the UI should see more responsive. Now instead of having to wait for each UI action to take place in serial, actions can happen in parallel.

I've been using Windows 7 for a while now and I definitely notice that it's more responsive. It just seems much more polished than Vista, which is why I never switched to vista from XP.

Windows 7 RC1 7100 x86 and x64 leaked. Go to the usual torrent sites if interested.

Ok. Nobody cares. Done.

What are the usual torrent sites?

I care! ;) I haven't had the chance to install it yet but I do have it. My problem is I can't find my Beta key. Is there any way in Windows to find my key?

Ya, just Google keys. They all work. And it's legal.

32 bit:
RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
J7PYM-6X6FJ-QRKYT-TW4KF-BY7H9
D67PP-QBKVV-6FWDJ-4K2XB-D4684

64 bit:
7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3

---------- Post added at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:29 PM ----------

RickB:

Download music, movies, games, software! The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker
Mininova : The ultimate BitTorrent source!

Pvt me if you need help.

---------- Post added at 01:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:36 PM ----------

Win 7 RC News: You CAN upgrade from Build 7077 to the RC. You CAN'T upgrade from previous builds unless you do the following:

Microsoft urges testers to upgrade to Windows 7 RC from Vista | Windows 7 Center

How-To:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).Microsoft urges testers to upgrade to Windows 7 RC from Vista
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

The same process will be required for an RC to RTM upgrade installation.

A clean install is always the best bet, IMO.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to just wipe vista and run windows 7. So you can just upgrade from Vista to windows 7 RC, right? someone said that you would be able to upgrade from a 32bit install of vista to a 64bit install of windows 7. I've never heard of you being able to do that, do you know anything about that?

YaWhateva, you can't upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit. And even though you Can go from 32 bit Vista to 32 bit 7, or 64 bit to 64 bit, I always recommend a clean install. The MigWiz app makes it very easy to restore most of your Vista stuff after a clean install of 7. MigWiz, or Migration Wizard, will be located on the DVD you burn. Pretty painless. Let me if you have questions.

Awesome. I will look into the Migration Wizard. Thanks! I was just hoping not to have to reinstall everything because I have so much stuff on my Vista drive. But if I can save most of it that will work too

My other concern was virtual drives like Daemon Tools not working yet in windows 7. Do you have any info on that?

YaWhateva, Daemon Tools had problems, for me, on earlier builds of Win 7. I don't know if that's been fixed or not. I switched to Power ISO and have no problems.

Thanks!

Important news for those who downloaded Build 7100 32/64 bit from Torrents:

Leaked Windows 7 Build 7100 image was infected with trojan | Windows 7 Center

I checked mine and I'm fine. Got mine from Demonoid.

So when running the program I assume that when it shows up highlighted in green that the hash has been confirmed.

That probably works, but I manually confirmed the hash number.

In case anyone was wondering, the leaked 7100 is exactly the same as the RC 7100, already released to Technet and MSDN subscribers, and available to public on May 5th. Hash for both 32 bit and 64 bit match perfectly. So there will be absolutely no need for any of us to fight the MS servers on the 5th. That's good!

Intel CPU's that can do VT for XP Mode in Win 7:

Desktop CPUS
Core 2 Duo
E4300/4400/4500/4600/4700 NO
E6300/6320/6400/6420/6540/6550 YES
E6600/6700/6750/6850 YES
E7200/7300/7400/7500 NO
E8190 NO
E8200/8300/8400/8500/8600 YES
Core 2 Extreme
QX6700/6800/6850 YES
QX9650/9770/9775 YES
X6800 YES
Core 2 Quad
Q6600/6700 YES
Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S NO
Q9300/9400/9400S YES
Q9450/9550/9550S/9650 YES
Core i7/Core i7 Extreme
I7-920/940 YES
I7-965 YES
Pentium D/Pentium EE
805/820/830/840 NO
915/925/935/945 NO
920/930/940/950/960 YES
955/965 YES
Pentium for Desktop
E2140/2160/2180/2200/2220 NO
E5200/5300/5400 NO

Link: How many Intel CPUs will fail the XP Mode test in Windows 7? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 PM ----------

Nice write-up of Win 7 from Anandtech:

Welcome to AnandTech.com [ Article: Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview]

---------- Post added at 05:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 PM ----------

Anybody using Win 7 RC 7100 probably knows this, but just in case:

Watch the calendar. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours.

Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010.

You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.

Little late, but used to just edit boot.ini file.

tooth, thanks. After a clean install of Win 7 that problem, of course, went away.

I was searching for info on Virtual PC 2007 today but everything on M$ site pointed to the new Windows Virtual PC and the XP mode for Win7. It looked very nice (as most M$ products do on paper) but this limitation (cpu list) will not go down well.

Yours
ZB

ZB, I agree. But we can't really blame MS here. It's all Intel, and their stupid marketing.

Don't bother with Virtual PC.

Virtual Box from Sun is a much better application.

Everything Default will work fine for Win 7 RC, just change the network adapter to the Intel Desktop.

Thanks for suggestion. What I was looking for has nothing to do with Win7 (hence I was searching for info on Virtual PC 2007) and I prefer VMware when I have a choice of virtual enviroment.

And back to the topic (Win7).
Has anyone tried to install Win7 so that the system drive isn't C: ?
I once installed XP on hardware were the number of removable drives (floppies etc) were so great that the first HD was labeled F: . The install completed ok but that was more or less end of use of that installion since most applications failed install and changing the drive letter for the system drive caused series of problems. I had to reinstall XP again, this time with all the removable drives disconnected during install.

Yours
ZB

ZB, never have had to do that kind of install, and I think I would really try to avoid it. Just not worth the stress.

Have the RC. It was kind of a risky thing, since it's unfinished and all, but I just installed this OS as my only OS on this fresh build. Built the beast yesterday, and figured I might as well try a free OS.
It's great. All my games run perfectly, and it's gorgeous.

biznatch, Win 7 might have been a risk back in January with Build 7000. I had some weird issues for the first couple of months. But the RC is pretty safe. Barring any last minute major problems, the RC is the build that will become the final product, or RTM. I started with Win 7 in a dual-boot environment with XP Pro SP3, but soon realized that I wasn't using XP at all so nuked it. After using Win 7 for a few months playing with XP feels awkward at best. I'm very happy with Win 7. Were you running XP before?

I downloaded this on the 5th but have yet to have time to install it. can't wait though. XP needs a refresh anyway and I might as well replace it.

shakran, you might want to try "migwiz," or Migration Wizard to transfer your XP stuff to Win 7. It will be on the Win 7 DVD that you burn. Worked pretty well. A little clunky, because it thinks you are replacing a whole computer, but it works fine.

yeah, i know about it. But I always install 100% fresh. Keeps the crap I don't use anymore from cluttering the system.

How to install Win 7 from a USB drive:

Guide: Install Vista/Windows 7 from a flash drive - [H]ard|Forum

I was running Vista on a 1.5 year old cheap laptop that came with it, only had 1 GB of ram (shared with onboard video card). It was a horrible experience, ended up losing wireless entirely, so I had it sent for repair (free thank god) and added a 2nd gig on there. The improvement wasn't that significan't.
I don't think it's Vista alone, but that PC was crap.

Windows 7 is a huge step forward, super stable, incredibly efficient even during heavy use. I'd recommend it to anyone moderately "advanced" who wants a free OS for a year that's better than anything Microsoft currently sells.

Win 7 Build 7127 32 bit has been leaked, 64 bit very soon.

Make sure whatever you download matches one of these:

The full ISO information for 32 and 64-bit is as follows:

0xF691687F 7127.0.090507-1820_x86fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULFRER_EN_DVD.iso

MD5 Hash : 4045CB2A8E50B65ED9E1C2B8D6026B2F
SHA1 Hash : F2D615E674B64053D299CFA5E80B777269F0DFF2
CRC-32 : F691687F

0×460FAD4E 7127.0.090507-1820_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso

MD5 Hash : F805A6595DDC6D12956588BB0F1B9B83
SHA1 Hash : 9BEB69BE3C2D113ECEB944145951A2123FBBBBF8
CRC-32 : 460FAD4E

If I've gotten the RC directly from MS, will it update itself?

tooth, no, it won't. You would have to do an upgrade or clean install.

I installed W7 last night and so far I like it. I don't see a lot that is all that different than Vista but I didn't have any problems with Vista (other than the annoying UAC).

One thing that is going to take some getting used to is the change to the new taskbar. The preview thing is cute and all but I kind of miss the quick launch toolbar.

kutulu, just pin whatever apps that you want to quick launch to the taskbar. Works pretty well.

A good website to check: Windows 7 Forums

Put me down as wanting the old quick launch bar as well. Here is my current quick launch setup:

Attachment 18965

My wife and I use the same computer and the upper icons are her programs and the lower ones are mine. How can I recreate this in Windows 7?

RickB, this may help: Windows Seven 7: Restore Quick Launch Toolbar | Windows 7 News & Development | Windows Tools, Help & Guides

Not sure if you will be able to separate the icons with a lower, and upper line of them like you want, though. Hope this helps. I kind of missed quick-launch at first, but as I'm the only one allowed on this computer, I got used to pinning items to the taskbar.

Call me OCD but I kind of like my "inactive" icons on one side and my "active" icons (programs) on the other. I don't like the dock on the Mac for the same reason.

And I have tried the ways to restore the quicklaunch bar but it's not the same.

Guess I'll have to learn to live with it.

so I got an email saying that the Windows 7 Beta will be expiring in August and that I should install the RC. I have the RC but I used my beta cd-key to install it, will I be okay?

I think it was an email sent out to all Betatesters. I got one of these too and I used the "RC" key, can't find the "Beta" key atm. to check if they are the same.
So you should be ok,

Yours
ZB

Is there an icon that gets you back to the desktop?

kutulu, there is a small rectangle on the bottom right. Click that. Is that what you mean?

I'm not at home so I can't check but based on some screenshots I think I see what you are talking about. I don't get the point of that change.

Another annoyance is that when you get the preview of your open program windows there doesn't appear to be an option to view all of them. I need to screw around with it more but it seems as if you can only choose one.

Win 7 Build 7137 has leaked, two weeks or so after 7127 leaked.

Info: Windows 7 Build 7137 Download Leaked | Windows 7 Center

Just upgraded to Build 7201 x64. Works great!

Just upgraded, gotta chase down a sound card driver I think.