My Windows 7 Hell

I have been using win7 for many months with no problems. However, I had a couple of months where I had very frequent power surges which caused the pc to restart. I found that after one of these power surges my windows 7 started acting very wonky and ultimately i had to reformat and reinstall, after which, no problems. Its very possible you had a power surge and something was running/open at the time which screwed something in the OS. Very hard to track down or trouble shoot. Sometimes all you can do is reformat and reinstall. Other than the 1 incident it has been great. Im using the x64 version as well.

Hi! I can only second what Jason said. I lived through Beta, RC, and installed the RTM when it was available on MSDN. It runs rock solid on my rig.

Dude I’ve been running win7 for a little bit now and I’m experiencing much betting computing compared to windows vista. I love win7!

have u dloaded the real version yet? the reasons u might be having troubles is because its the beta version.

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But of course your gonna get this response from MAC Freaks HATERS

Throughout your story everytime you had a problem it always pointed to a piece of software or hardware you were trying to use. Everything except the BSOD you pointed out was due to 3rd party apps being incompatible with Win7. Even the BSOD could have been caused by an incompatible driver or software. Microsoft does not write the 3rd party software or the drivers. When Vista came out people were having those kinds of trouble and that’s why Vista got such a bad rep. You can’t blame Microsoft or Windows for other companies not updating their drivers or software. Just like with Vista, the manufacturers had an insane amount of time to get their software updated, but failed to do it. Windows 7 IS the most stable version and even in your story you point out that it wasn’t windows at all but apps.

sounds like my testing of the 64 bit Win 7 .. the USB video thing yep .. bad news for some if you have older system and your PCI slots are full you will need to do some checking into hardware .
BSOD yep it matter of age and build of your system I am feeling on this I am feeling. I have gone from legacy type to near as current as I can and i am seeing some very interesting .

I can not say win 7 it perfect and it may get better as they patch it(yes there will be has been patching going on even before today) as MS does this it seems with any of there wonderful products (yes I said that will hip waders on) Calls will be coming in as I seem to feel many of the store offing free transfers of system to win 7 will be backed up and many will crash badly if moving from XP to win 7 . if done in a rush. backing data and restoring it isn’t some thing that happens on lunch break and its going to be fun to see how many small business people bit the apple on this and movie to Win 7.. mass change outs are not going to be easy at all if their IT isn’t up on things.

GC

I’ve been running the 64-bit RC on my triple-cored AMD Phenom box with 8GB DDR2 800MHz RAM since the RC was released, and never had one blue screen yet. It’s very strange that your installation is causing you so much grief when mine has always been rock-steady since day 1.

It seem’s like ur a pretty isolated case buddy, and i feel bad for you, and truly hope this problem is solved, should you be reading these comments on the story, i hope you will take the advice given and re-format and reinstall the operating system, as it seems the problem is in your computer and not the operating system, i could be wrong but as the buzz goes this is an extremely good operating system and very few people our having problems with it. Were happy..or at least most of us our i’d like to think, and so is microsoft. I have ran windows 7 on a Pentium 4 with 1GB of ram, witch previously had vista on it, it had a hell of problems with vista, eventually it got better, but when i put windows 7 on it, I LOVED IT, didnt have to install any drivers either it was all backwards compatible. However i wish you luck, perhaps you are just under bad luck, and who knows one day you might purchase a new computer with windows 7 on it and find that it really runs well. The best of luck to you! i really hope your not a fanboy who is trying to make up a story to promote a different brand over the other.

Have a nice day.

Sorry to hear that Chris, but I think your a somewhat isolated case. I have been using Windows 7 since the beta came out and, yes had a few problems during the beta, such as random BSODs, but since RC1….0 problems whatsoever. I’m using the x64 version, haven’t had any problems running any programs, even old programs. Oh, except maybe frets on fire…but that was fixed with compatibility mode. Anyway, I love windows 7 so far, I hope it continues that way, I even like it better than XP.

There are bound to be some hiccups, with millions upgrading, you just happen to be one of them. So sorry.

Did something go wrong between the RC and the final release of Windows?

I have run Windows 7 (final release of Ultimate 64bit) since 12th Oct and I have had atleast 10 crashes since (BSODs and lockups). Before that, I had Windows 7 RC (64bit version of Ultimate RC) for 4 months and only had 1 crash. Every installation has been new (not upgrade) and tried various versions of drivers.

Windows 7 (final release 64bit Ultimate) also crashed on me not long after a new installation.

I haven’t changed my system hardware.

So looking from that, I think the RC version was better than the final version.

Ive used all the RC’s and RTMs in the last year and had various issues, notably Media centre not finding any media files!.

Got my Retail version on the 19th Install went flawlessly in under an hour.

Now my only issue is Firefox crashing. MEdia centre works like a dream.

I use a Quad Boot, WinXP, Vista, Ubuntu and Win 7. I should say that Even though I assigned the drive as “G” for Win7 it still overrode that and made it “C” and deleted my orginal “C” Win XP drive, making it invisble. However that was easily rectified using drive manager in Windows 7.

My PC is a Q9450 OC’d to 3.8Ghz with 3TB of RAID0+1 and 4 GB RAM and 2 8800GT 512mb O’C'd to 750Mhz all sitting on a Asus Striker 2 Formula.

So its working fine.. you then do a dual boot….. and then things went wrong…

Maybe I have no problems with Vista or Windows 7 as I alway shave a spare machine and hard dives around to play with and would never dream of dual booting. The chances for a disaster to happen is too much, and I think you have proved this.

This is the problem, people who just USE the operating system as is with applications don’t seem to have issues… wow sort of like a mac user as well!

Get a test rig and play with stuff on that and leave your main system working, guaranteed you will have a less stressful life but less to write about

Dan i know you have had a few probs with it but to be honest i have had none.
Isolated case maybe? No problems here either from the RC or anything else it has just worked

You’ve just cemented my already ironclad decision to stay with XP. No “Ultra double mega groovy coolio newfangled…” crapola OS for me. – It ain’t broke, so I an’t fixin’ it. Long live XP!

Wish I had some insight to those problems but windows 7 has been running solid for months on my machine as well.

What was the cause of the BSOD? If it starts happening again, then go into your System –> Advanced and disable the automatic startup, so you can find out what the culprit is.

As for the dual-boot, I can say that I’m triple-booting Windows XP, Windows 7 RTM, and Kubuntu without any issues. The only problem I had was that Windows overwrote the bootsector when I installed the RTM, so I had to run a GRUB repair tool to get back into Linux.

The only issues that I’ve had with dual-booting Vista and Windows 7 (beta) was when I installed the early version of Vista SP2. It wiped out my USB drivers on both Windows Vista and Windows 7 (since they are on the same codebase). You may be running into a similar issue if you’ve been updating Vista.

Have a great day:)
Patrick.

A run of bad luck. I’ve replaced many PCs with XP/Vista to Windows7 with <1% problems. No drivers needed either, pretty amazing.

BSOD is usually a driver conflict as the only 2 times I’ve seen it are from bad drivers.

Dual boot changed with RTM. Windows will wipe your boot sector. Use BCD to get it back working like Vista has again. If you have a good system, run VMWare. I have XP, Ubuntu, Fedora opened and running apps with no issues or slowdown ( Q6600 at 3.3GHz, 8Gig). 2gig dedicated to each OS.

Drag and drop still works, maybe the application isn’t supported under Wndows 7. Drag works for me in VMWare as well as copy/paste. Let me this this now, my work PC…yep works great. Make sure you have Tools installed. I’m on 6.5.1

Video capture from my Canon camera works flawlessy with the default scanner/fax import. Audio is there. Capture’s are, of course, connected via USB as I don’t use firewire at all. I do quite a bit of video stuff on Windows 7 and have not seem what you’ve seen. Then again, I don’t have all the devices or drivers to say it won’t happen.

Firefox is not supported yet so problems differ from user to user. Mine works but lags gmail like a mofo. I use IE for gmail now.

Your problems are not because of Windows 7, granted it is a new OS. Your problems like what I’ve found when I find issues are because of lack of support from 3rd parties or just not being inform, as in the case of the dual boot problem you had. A simple google search and couple of links below would have saved you from reformatting your drives.

I’ve expected more technical insight into your issues than coming to the conclusion that “Maybe I was being unfair expecting an OS to be stable long before its official public release date.” Your experience is a 90% isolated case. My experience includes hundreds of PCs (laptops, notebooks, tablets, desktops, workstations….all old and new) and I’ve had less than 1% problems. Most are used for engineering and testing/drawing.

For others having BSOD, try different drivers and try not to use the drivers Windows update give you. Drivers I’ve seen give BSOD, even though they show now signs of fault at all, include..

1. Bluetooth via update gives BSOD because it’s doesn’t like my logitech wireless bluetooth keyboard/mouse. I disable it and use the very buggy logitech driver instead.

2. HD Audio via update does not like the HD audio on my 4870 1gb video card enable. HD audio on the video card is disable to prevent this. I don’t use it anyway.

3. One of the drivers for the Intel chipset…sorry I forgot which.

4. If you’re using a driver update program…I can’t remember the name off the top of my head, be sure to avoid steps 1-3 above O.o

Again, you can’t tell which driver it is by device manager and what not with detail testing and looking at logs. Everything will show up as functionally normally but in reality they’re fighting against something and will eventually BSOD. Terrible behavior, yes but can be avoided if found.

I guess the wholes for windows 7 are not coming from the open source work done. Its again the same dll and registry problem if you really go deep into the problem. Time will tell which the new whole is going to be; and where is it going to come from…

Let me start by saying Amen to Rob “Throughout your story everytime you had a problem it always pointed to a piece of software or hardware you were trying to use. Everything except the BSOD you pointed out was due to 3rd party apps being incompatible with Win7. Even the BSOD could have been caused by an incompatible driver or software. Microsoft does not write the 3rd party software or the drivers.”

Next… why are you crying about a problems you encounterd during a testing beta stage of development. Did you slap your babies because they couldn’t talk yet?

Now…. if you turn off your Scheduled Tasks you’ll probably solve all your woes… especially RAC. Also, if you don’t have a wireless network… turn it off.. it looks for a better connection every 60 seconds… sometimes causing delays… if you are a gamer you would be dead.

Windows 7 is VERY good… there are only a couple problems… vendors aren’t caught up with solid drivers… remember this final version of windows was out July 22… there are a lot of better drivers available now …than the ones that were included. Second… Win 7 is heavy on the diagnostic gathering and reporting. Take back your system and turn all this off… there will be enough tech suports to Microsoft for them to “gather reports’ about what needs to be fixed.

Just to clean any confusion, a few commenters are assuming I’m using a beta or the RC, like it says in my article I am using the RTM which is the full release version, build 7600.

Dan,

I’m just concern that because you were so quick to point the finger at Windows 7 (the OS) you didn’t bother to do much research or dive into the problem to find a fix. And although you did do the later it’s not conclusive that it’s the OS’s fault, as I have already pointed out that some devices/software does not exhibit the same behavior as what you’ve seen (vidoe and VM).

To that extent, people who rely on you for their decision making will obviously avoid Windows 7 without really knowing why. This is where my concern is at. It’s the blind following the leader no matter what and we need to make certain that we provide the most accurate result even if we’re just blogging away.

That’s all I have to say I only caught this because I visit Amigaworld.net from time to time hahaha and was surprise to see a topic about Windows 7 and why one fellow Amiga user would use the word “hell” for it.

@ The One, I think I did make it clear in the article that I was probably a rare exception, and that I was presuming drivers could have been a factor (for the BSODs at least). Other aspects such as the change in Video Edit Device, and drag and drop into apps has been widely reported elsewhere.

While I did employ a bit of an attention grabbing headline, it did sum up how I felt, this is simply an account of the problems I’ve had with Windows 7 over the last few months.

Oh and yes, AmigaOS 4.1 has its problems, but at least I know how to fix them 99% of the time

Not to prolong this any further but…

You didn’t mention the problems might be rare but the tone and summary of the entire blog is vastly a blame on Windows 7, the OS.

The video edit device is not a problem of Windows and I can say that “almost” 100% because there are devices that will capture video/sound as I have already proven. If it was the OS that was broken none of the devices would have worked.

The drag and drop issues is the same. I’ve verified it worked on VMWare as I was replying. Some apps will lose the function in Windows 7 if they are not properly supported in the first place. Aside form that one application you are using there are numerous applications that still make good use of the drag and drop feature, without any issues. Again, if it was the OS the function would cease to work for any application.

MS does have a compatibility list going and at the developers seminar we were told MS is actually working pretty hard to make sure apps on the list will work on Windows 7 in the future.

Your last paragraph kinda sums up how and why you’re created the blog. Since you are not as familiar with the windows environment (hardware and software) one would always assume it be the software, in this case Windows 7, without further research. This is just my opinion mind you. But as some of us that do know a bit about the environment we know that when this problem comes up it might be because of this driver, device, or what have you and not necessarily the OS itself; as is the case with the Amiga OS which you are much more familiar with than I am.

I hope users reading this doesn’t get the wrong idea from your blog and that they at least give Windows 7 a try. I’m by no means a Windows fanboy but the OS is due credit when it has been stable since RC. Vista can rot in hell for all I care

Since the release there are reputable websites such as Anandtech that have released reviews for the OS. I highly advise readers to do more research before making their decision whether or not to go with Windows 7, as with any OS.

I think the sentence “I hope I am an isolated case. ” proves I was hoping/assuming my experiences were rare.

I have been a Windows user since Windows 3.1 as well as AmigaOS, so I know my way around the system rather well, I’m far from a new-comer to the OS, I have been using it for at least 15 years.

It seems in some instances your experiences differ to others, VMWare have actually confirmed this problem with Windows 7 and have released a new version to support drag and drop.

I think you assume too much, I have been an AmigaOS user for 20 years, and a Windows user for 15 years, I am more than competent in both operating systems, as I am in OS X which I’ve also used since 2002.

I don’t class my experiences as any less “reputable” than Anandtech’s, and certainly I have no alternative agenda to try and belittle or put down Windows. Despite your comment that “Vista should rot in hell”, I actually found Vista the most stable version of Windows I’ve used since 1994, so you must understand experiences differ. I only hope Windows 7 can match the high standards set by Vista. I don’t believe the media hype and others opinions to form my own, I base my views on extensive and daily use of an operating system, so far, with regards to Windows, Vista was rock solid from late 2006-July 2009 for me, 7 has still to prove itself.

danwood,
I also found Vista without flaw and very stable. Though I did choose to upgrade to W-7 Ultimate, it was not because of a dislike for Vista.

Being a TechNet subscriber has the benefit of receiving the latest software. So the computer Gods kept screaming at me that I needed the latest and greatest. LOL

I also wish you well with your W-7 adventure. As others have stated, W-7 on 3 systems I own run perfectly.

I have used Windows 7 on my laptop, if you think back to Microsoft Windows 95 then windows 98 Your think there did look the same, I think this is the same thing with Microsoft Windows Vista and Windows 7,

I think Microsoft just put Windows 7 in the shop’s just in time to stop you all from thing or saying bad things about Microsoft,

I love Microsoft for Windows XP, its a Window on it’s own,
you can not say it’s like Windows Vista/7, But you can say Windows 7 is like Vista,

I just stumbled across this page after over a week’s worth of Googling various Win 7 problems I’ve been having. If you’re an isolated case then consider me another. Vista ran without problem for me. I installed Windows 7 Ultimate a week ago (beginning of Nov ‘09) and although I LOVE 90% of it, I’m having problems with DVD drives not burning/playing/allowing drag & drop when burning CD’s. Not a big deal to many but I’m a working musician and need these features to work flawlessly (oh and yes, I’ve made sure firmware is up to date AND the drives work fine on another Vista machine in my home). Ironically, I backed up my whole system with Migo PC Backup Pro and can’t get that to run now I’ve upgraded to 7!

Like I said, I love Windows 7. I want it to be my fave OS ever. But it’s giving me more headaches than smiles right now.

Thanks for an interesting article

Over a few months crashed the RC a couple times, once so hard I had to reinstall entire OS. Deja every previous windows version. Can’t get Dan Patrick to play on my windows 7 machine so I listen on my Ubuntu laptop, As soon as I add software or hardware to Windows 7 it acts up. I like the interface but do not trust it one bit. Feels like it’s spying on me to thwart third party apps like Quicktime Google and Open Office. With alternative OS deployment and the bizarro pricing scheme why bother? I bought both Professional and Home Premium but… really. If you can’t trust an OS what’s the point? I can sell my virgin copies and move to the future.

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