[Closed] Who else has gone back to Windows 7?

Unintentional early adopter here (careful what 'update' you click on) and though it worked fine for a while, now it's a freezing mess. Wish I could go back to 7. Can't face rebuilding everything after a repair install at the moment either. It's a pain. 🙁

If I power down the PC but down switch the PSU off at the back then upon restart Windows claims it needs to do a repair as it can't load winload.exe. Recovery media doesn't work with it nor does it boot into safe mode or do anything other than a boot loop. This was after the last update. Obviously I can get around it by cutting of power to the PSU but it's a strange bug if ever I saw one.
Everything seems to have ground to a halt too. Upon first install it was pretty rapid but only after a few weeks it's slow. And the picture gallery, bloody hell it's awful. Slow and lots of crashes.

We now have 18 machines at work and home, from wheezing ancient Pentiums and Net books to i7 powerhouse for out landscape architect. Not a single problem or issue, bar a couple of drivers when installing that needed to be found. Old machines are also noticeably faster.

It hobbled our old desktop so badly it had to go.

The kids couldn't play Minecraft either which was a deal breaker for them.

Staying with 7 for the time being both at home and work. My clients are famously technophobic change terrifies them. Any upgrade at work will need to be done with extreme care.

I'm sticking with W7 on my work laptop as I updated my 'newer' laptop to W10 and since the microphone refuses to work in Skype (not an uncommon problem on Dell laptops but couple of suggestions have not resolved so far, tried new driver)

All our computers have been upgraded, then clean installed with Windows 10. No issues on any of them. Minecraft still working fine :-).

9 year old Dell Precision with Core2Duo & 4Gb RAM here - installed Win10 a couple of days ago fine, Nvidia driver updated. All very well, speed is great.

Couldn't get it working properly - some display issues I just couldn't seem to find a way to fix, and decided it wasn't worth the effort to carry on fettling, so just headed back.

It didn't like the fact I dual booted with Ubuntu when I tried to upgrade, so I thought meh to it. The machines we have at work with it see ok though.

We had techy(ish) chap in this morning for photocopier/network printer issue.

He said he installed, faffed for a couple of hours with it 'slow', so uninstalled. I suggested that if he had left it a day to finish updates, it would have been faster.

He then went on one of our machines, and was really frustrated by lack of 'start button' and 'menus'. I spent two minutes showing him how to search, and where the 'buttons' were...He was somewhat taken aback by how quickly I was using it to find obscure print drivers and network settings - but still dismissed windows 10 as 'slow, frustrating and clearly not fit for purpose'.

Change. Some folk can handle it. Some cant.

I haven't gone back to 8 but have spent a lot of time making things work in 10 and still can't find things in 10 via the start menu, even things as important as the "panneau de configuration" whatever that is in English. You have to hunt for things with the search bar which is a pain if you can't remember what they are called. It took me an afternoon to get Fender's Fuse software to work thanks to the help on Fender's site.

Edit: without an old W7 laptop to refer to I'd have failed as I went through the procedure in 7 and wrote down all the files I needed so I could find them with the search bar. W8 had a menu that popped up from the corners with all the classic W7 commands.

Stuck with 7 as I can't be arsed with all the hassle of changing plus it offers nothing of any added value (to me).

trialling win 10 at the moment for work, seems OK, however sharepoint loses some functionality with win10. IE doesn't work well with it and Edge is not great as there are some things, like the open with windows explorer function that are really useful when trying to upload folders to sharepoint.

bit clunky opening office 365 from sharepoint in edge too.

I'll stick with it for the time being until fixes come, then probably roll it out over the rest of the company to get everyone on the same OS.

or win 11.

Win10 on two PCs and a tablet. No issues once the drivers were found. W7 was fine but I certainly wouldn't make an effort to go back to it.

Stuck with 7 as I can't be arsed with all the hassle of changing plus it offers nothing of any added value (to me).

I went to 10 a few days ago just out of curiosity then spent a while switching off everything new about it which was of no interest to me and opted to "Defer upgrades". Now I've got it looking and behaving more or less like 7, except it slides a search box/tile thing in from the left from time to time for no apparent reason. Which all leads me to believe it's probably not for me and the sensible course would have been not to have bothered!

I'll give it another couple of weeks but since MS have said 7 will be in support until 2020 which will probably see this laptop out I might just end up rolling it back.

Fundamentally there's nothing missing from 7 that I need, so I don't see any point in changing.

Not so much gone back to 7 - just never left it.

Can't be bothered with all the fannying around for something that to all intents & purposes will make very little difference.

I might update to Win10 at some point, but will make damn sure I have suitable things done (restore points, perhaps? And other important computer sounding things) before I take the step.
Plus I'll probably need a whole free weekend.

W7? Pah! I'm still running Vista 🙄

Fundamentally there's nothing missing from 7 that I need, so I don't see any point in changing.

Me neither, I was just at a bit of a loose end. Still, at least I left my main machine alone!

I wouldn't have thought my computer was that old, it's maybe around a 3-4yr old Dell Inspiron 600. I upgraded not long after Win 10 came out and the upgrade seemed to work faultlessly, except I had no sound. Fixed that, then discovered that it was taking around 10 minutes to boot up. Tried loads of suggestions to lower the boot time and nothing worked. Then a week or so later Chrome and a couple of other programs just stopped working......and because I was still in the 1 one month grace period I clicked the "I want my computer to work like it used to" option and am now happily back with Win 7.

It didn't like the fact I dual booted with Ubuntu when I tried to upgrade, so I thought meh to it. The machines we have at work with it see ok though.

I thought that was a general fact of life with Linux, if you install Windows after GRUB you need to redo the GRUB configuration to get the dual boot back.

Not had any problems on my media PC barring the absolutely rubbish Netflix app which, although it now works without crashing at sign in, does so with no sound. Ditched Edge as default browser and now using IE which is better in every way.

FWIW we're still waiting to upgrade from XP at work. Think on...

Will put 10 on the main machine next week when I pick up a new SSD, 7 can lie dormant on the old HDD till I'm happy everything works as it should.

Came close to rolling back today :(. Outlook 2010 wouldn't send in W10 even though the account tested ok when setting up. It took a good couple of hours to find as I thought the problem was with how I was sending mail rather than the fact that it just didn't work. Rolling back would have fixed it but for those who care the solution is sfc /scannow

Never left it, PC-wise, but then I hardly use the PC at home any more since getting the Galaxy Note 4 running Android, don't y'know...

Upgraded ... can no long write to Samsung tablet. Read's fine from it, but won't write ... very annoying 🙁

I am sticking to Window 7 for a long time as I don't see any need to upgrade as I don't use IE.

I only use my Window 7 for Office Application.

W7? Pah! I'm still running Vista

Feeling thoroughly modern with my XP then!

I've updated an older laptop running 8gb ram and sdd to W10, and also updated then clean installed a brand new laptop, also running 8gb and ssd but with a much newer processor. Both are running fine, I've not really had any major issues, but I have found that I've been googling how to do things a lot since the switch. So rather than spend 5 minutes trying to find something, I spend 30 seconds trying to find something, 2 minutes on google and it's done.

I haven't gone back to 8 but have spent a lot of time making things work in 10 and still can't find things in 10 via the start menu, even things as important as the "panneau de configuration" whatever that is in English.

That's control panel, and although the start menu route is indeed horrible (start > all apps > windows system > control panel), if you right click on the start button it's one of the options. Right clicking the start button seems to just list all of the actually useful things you used to be able to do in windows very easily, like run, command prompt, control panel etc.

Me. Windows 10 just kept randomly locking my PC. Screen froze, mouse froze, only solution was power off and restart. I even changed my graphics card to see if that helped. It worked ok in safe mode but all my drivers are up to date so clearly some incompatibility.

Rather disappointed because I liked W10.

Thank you Jim.

I'm now a much happier W10 user. The right click is ace and includes all the stuff from the W8 corner menus. As for Windows system I was looking under "w" where all the other windows apps are but they've put it under "s" - Système Windows. Sometimes I dispair of Microsoft.

Just reverted back to Windows 7 & my PC is finally working again!!!
Windows 10 wouldn't recognise my NVIDIA graphics driver & after re-installing it 3 times I gave up!
The boot up times were painfully slow too...
Back to normal now and wish I'd never bothered!

Lol, NVIDIA, talk about being set up to fail... (No idea why, it seems to be a thing with Windows launches that it never works, personally I'd blame NVIDIA rather than Microsoft if they can't get their QC sorted). Try again in a couple of months when the dust has settled.

Nope, not a chance - I ditched Win7 2 years ago, pushed through the 48 hour learning curve for Win8, and 8.1.

I'm on 10 now, it's okay, it's 8 with some concessions for 7 fans in the main, but I'm used to it now - file explorer is s bit more fiddly than it needs to be, it priorities OneDrive which is a pain on s physical based server network, but that's probably due to me not taking the time to adjust default settings.

Like 8 though, I've dismissed the 'fripperies' the only App I use is Torex pro, I've binned 'Edge' and have a short-cut to file explorer, I only really use the Start Button / Metro screen for the type-to-search feature.

Well impressed with 10. Has tranformed my laptop from something I hateed to use on 8 because it kept doing weird shit without me having a clear idea of how I had accidentlaly made it happen, into a fast, streamlined beast that boots more quickly than my ipad. So, thumbs up from me.

Planned reversion to W7 here. I'm a firm believer in not fixing things which aren't broken, and whilst some things in W10 are nice I had driver problems with some of my standard stuff. Not sure I'm really missing anything (I still have it in a VM though)

I presume most of the fans have come from 8 or 8.1

The OP sounds a bit unlucky. I've upgraded 2 laptops and a desktop to W10 at home and it's brilliant. All my old software from the XP/7 days works fine on them. Best OS I've ever used - and I've had (got) them all....

Some default settings might annoy people, i.e. Edge browser, and the 'Metro' style photo/music/video apps. But it's easy to make everything go back to the proper desktop versions, and IE11 if you want. It's better than W8.1 and that was better than W7. No good reason to go back....

I presume most of the fans have come from 8 or 8.1

God no, I avoided those car crashes altogether, every other rule innit?

Yet Win 8.1 was as stable as win 7 for me.

It's amazing how reliable that rule has been - all out of the window now of course (I can almost visualise the meeting at MS "how do we avoid the perception that the next OS after this one is going to be shit?")

Upgraded my 7 after a full back up first.

Then after registering my key, did a complete format and installed Windows 10.

Works well.

Edge browser sucks and is a slug.

Rest of it is fine and all my drivers loaded up.

Still getting a Mac after using my GF's MacBook Pro laptop for 3 months for video editing.

Oh 8.1 was stable, the days of flakey nonsense went with ME, I just didn't think it was appropriate for a desktop environment. Clearly not enough people did or they wouldn't have brought back so much in 10 which seems to be the best bits of 7 combined with the improvements made in 8.

That said I am getting more into the 8 way of doing things wrt start menus and just using search, I think personally they did it in the wrong order and if it had went from 7 to 10 to 8 the transition would have caused less grief and more acceptance. But hey ho, this is where we are.

Thanks for all the feedback on this. At least I know there are some other people in the same boat. I was reasonably happy with 10 other than some graphics issues (NVIDIA) but when it locked me out of the Admin user, it just had to go. The big problems started for me with the 2 latest Cumulative Updates as I could not open my pictures with the Photos App and some other built in 10 Apps would not work either.

I don't think there was anything wrong with Windows 8, apart from it was set up appallingly badly out of the box for desktop PC's. If you spend a couple of hours tweaking it, it was OK.

I'm not defending Windows 8....I think MS were incredibly misguided in the way they delivered Windows 8 to desktop users, but IMHO, it's not like Windows 98 or Vista, where there were fundamental problems with the OS.

[i]God no, I avoided those car crashes altogether, every other rule innit? [/i]

I never upgrade the OS, just buy new hardware when the old one is kaput. On W7 with my laptop, in its 6th year and use it everyday at work plus home use (self-employed).

When it goes 'pop' I'll buy another one with whichever OS it comes with.

Thank you Jim.

I'm now a much happier W10 user. The right click is ace

+1. Although I was pretty happy with 10 anyway.

I had a funny issue with microsoft security/windows defender after doing the upgrade in the summer so have done a clean install to a new SSD this afternoon. It was pretty straightforward and my 8 year old laptop (originally on Vista, free upgrade to 7 when it came out, and now upgraded to 10) is still running well.

I think Windows 10 is OK and would love to use it more. If my effing machine wouldn't just stop crashing! Keeps dropping with BAD_POOL_CALLER and no drivers in the stack apart from MS ones - NTFS.SYS last time and NTOSKERN the time before. I've raised a ticket with the vendor (HP) but I don't hold high hopes. It may be the hardware, it was always freezing with Win8.1.

Apart from that this is the first Windows in absolutely ages I thought was OK. Still, I wish it was a Macbook Pro and I had bootcamp on there for my windows needs.

Works fine for me but I haven't really used it much yet. All my main software works the same as on 7 and everything looks a bit nicer so I can't complain.

it's not like Windows 98 or Vista, where there were fundamental problems with the OS.

What was wrong with Windows 98?

If my effing machine wouldn't just stop crashing!

I'd be running Memtest+ on that, matey.

[quote=Cougar ]

it's not like Windows 98 or Vista, where there were fundamental problems with the OS.

Or Vista?

My clients are famously technophobic change terrifies them

We're still on NT at work...

What was wrong with Windows 98?

Nothing from memory, in fact it was so good they decided to rewrite it and make a second edition to really blow peoples minds 😉

We're still on NT at work...

You win. Are you an engineering archeologist or digital forensics based? Bet you're not...

Vista wouldn't sleep without crashing, (ne répond pas) would appear just as you were about to save something you'd been working on for an hour. It wouldn't run any of my son's computer games as there was no backwards compatibility. It was a sieve for computer viruses, trojans etc. You could make coffee in the time it took to boot.

That's a tip I can add about 10. If a programme won't run at all or you get a black screen then manually select the edition of Windows it was designed for when you launch it.

You must've had a different version to me. I had Vista when it first came out, it survived six months on a faulty hard drive, being cloned to a replacement drive, and being upgraded in situ to W7. The last time I personally had a virus was in Windows 98 days. Oh, and it ran every game I threw at it, including ones designed for DOS.

In fact, there are currently two PCs, three laptops, three netbooks, an Android tablet and an iPad in this house, and I've not seen a virus on any of them in over 10 years. The last time I saw a non-fault infection (ie, not as a result of years-old unpatched apps or someone clicking on something stupid) was on XP pre-SP3.

Vista family edition. The McRae rally game was the one that annoyed as the Windows 98/Millenium was better than later editions.

Was running Vista up until less than a year ago here (when the laptop it was on finally died). Never had a virus (you need to check your son's browsing habits), never had any of the other problems described, played CMc rally.

http://www.mastertronic.com/supportfaq/colin-mcrae-rally-04

To be fair, it's hardly a damning criticism to say it wouldn't run a game designed for an OS four generations previous. I do take your point though, some games can be problematic, but that was really down to the Wild West approach that was a product of its time.

There will always be compatibility issues with any OS changes as it's impossible to cater for every app out there that might have relied on some odd quirk or other. It's the same on Macs, on iPhones, on Android devices, hell the 128K ZX Spectrum wouldn't play all of the 48K titles.

Incidentally,

That's a tip I can add about 10. If a programme won't run at all or you get a black screen then manually select the edition of Windows it was designed for when you launch it.

... this feature isn't new to W10, it's been around at least since Vista, and I'm pretty sure XP had it too.

My son picked up the "Gendarmerie Nationale" virus (which wasn't stopped by the antivirus as you had to execute a file to get it which required being really, really stupid). I got a panic stricken phone call telling me he needed my credit card number to pay a Gendarmerie fine or he'd get done for downloading whatever it was he was looking at. How we laughed! Happily there was downloadable fix.

I've still got the hard drive with Vista on it that I use for storage, I got weary of it's failings and bought a box with W8 in see if it was any good. I liked it from the start so "upgraded" to 8.1 when that arrived and now 10. The 8.1 upgrade went very smoothly but 10 has required some effort to get things working. So far so good, I might even try the old rally game.

Edit: thanks Cougar, I doubt that information was available a few months after the Vista launch.

Memtest86+ first thing run, for 14 hours without issue. Still crashing, no errors shown in memory.

The problem there, Edukator, is giving your son an Admin account rather than a user account.

Memtest86+ first thing run, for 14 hours without issue. Still crashing, no errors shown in memory.

It'll run indefinitely till you stop it; sorry, perhaps should've given you that important snippet of information earlier. (-:

A checkdisk and sfc /scannow from an elevated command prompt would be my next port of call.

You're right Cougar. We decided not to use any parental control and let him learn about the world of the Net at home. It took him ages to discover private browsing and he wasn't very good at tidying up so we could see roughly what he was doing until he was about 16. I backup stuff that's important to me and if he totals the box it's just too bad; it'll cost less than his phone consumption.

It's part of the learning process. I get home and ask what that horrible new tool bar is doing up top and why on opening the browser we get commercial rubbish. He then explains that he installed some new software and I ask why he didn't untick a few boxes. I then go through getting rid of all the junk with him watching and hopefully learning. Learning about computers and nasty business strategies at the same time.

Absolutely no issues here, one of the cleanest & quickest new OS to date.

Will not be going back to Win 7, ever.

Keeping main gaming PC on win 7 for now but upgraded my lenovo laptop and its all been fine and dandy. (now I've said that it will no doubt die a blue screen death tonight!)

[quote=Edukator ]My son picked up the "Gendarmerie Nationale" virus (which wasn't stopped by the antivirus as you had to execute a file to get it which required being really, really stupid).

How is that the fault of the OS?

That one wasn't, as I stated. Remember the virus that got almost every Microsoft user in the Vista years because of a hole in the OS? If not do some Googling. I remember USB keys being passed around schools with the fix on.

I've just checked some old posts on BM, the OS with the holes was XP not Vista. My first Vista box went back to the shop because I couldn't get drivers for my ADSL box without connecting to the Internet. The shop took the box back rather than help sort out the problem. One of the viruses that got through XP was from BM!

BM?

Which virus are you referring to that "almost every Microsoft user" had? I can think of a few notably prolific infections, but can't immediately think of any that hadn't been patched for months prior to the epidemic.

Bikemagic.

Googling "windows XP virus epidemic" will remind you, Cougar. The point was that people din't get the patches in time. Even [url= http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/12/international-space-station-virus-epidemics-malware ]NASA[/url]

Remember the virus that got almost every Microsoft user in the Vista years because of a hole in the OS?

No!

It didn't GET almost every Vista user, even though almost everyone might've been vulnerable to it. I'm not sure it'd be possible for almost every user of any OS to get a virus, because they'd all have to be doing the same thing in order to get it.

@cougar - yes I know. We are sort of in the same business, remember? My DL980 servers are basically PCs with a superiority complex 😀

I'm just not willing to run memtest86+ indefinitely so that in some point in the future (which may be years) bit rot takes effect and I can go 'aha!'. There has to be some point at which you say "enough is enough" and demand the manufacturer does something about it.

Just got the laptop back from the manufacturer. BIOS corruption apparently and they replaced the main board. Now much more stable, and am actually enjoying Windows 10. 🙂

I spun up a VM with Win10.....seemed OK....testing some of our software on it so will report back, but the odds seem to be stacked against it!