Installing Windows 7

[TonyV]

Well, tonight I began the tedious process of installing Windows 7.  I mean, not so tedious in the actual installation, but since I was running XP before, I'm going to have to reinstall all of my applications.  Even that's not so bad, a few hours can get me around 99% up and running, but getting all of my settings is always a pain.  But I digress...

So anyway, I've heard good reports of Windows 7 running City of Heroes so far.  I sure hope to hell that they're correct, because I loathe Windows Vista with a purple passion you cannot measure, and I always had problems with it even though I have really a really decent hardware setup.  (I haven't blown away my WinXP system partition yet, just in case!)

Still, I've never been one to turn down helpful hints and advice.  What's everyone else's experience with City of Heroes on Windows 7 so far?  Good, bad, neutral?  Have you run across any gotchas or figured out any clever tricks to make the experience better?  Probably sometime tomorrow I'll get my first taste of what it's like since I'm about to conk out for the night, but I thought I'd get a head start on any thoughts or ideas.

[St0n3y]

Been runnin Win7 for a while, and have had ZERO isues with it.  Runs everything I throw at it like a champ.

[SuckerPunch]

Been runnin Win7 for a while, and have had ZERO isues with it.  Runs everything I throw at it like a champ.

This.

[Catharctic]

I'm going to upgrade soon.

St0n3y & SP,

Do you leave the features on that carried over from Vista? (UAC, Aero, etc.)

I haven't had any major issues with Vista because I've had things like that turned off for a while. (A lot of people report issues with those features. I just said, "screw it" and turned them off.)

[SuckerPunch]

Aero is awesome, and UAC doesn't really bother me.  It's an annoyance when you first install because it needs to get everything set up, but after that it's not a big deal.

[Tazhyngarth]

A buddy of mine got Win7 already and it's awesome.  I'm looking to Upgrade from XP in time, but may just end up getting a whole new machine.

[Catharctic]

Aero is awesome, and UAC doesn't really bother me.  It's an annoyance when you first install because it needs to get everything set up, but after that it's not a big deal.

I really like Aero on Vista, but it seemed to be a meanie to COH for quite a while, so I turned it off a long time ago.

[SuckerPunch]

I really like Aero on Vista, but it seemed to be a meanie to COH for quite a while, so I turned it off a long time ago.

My desktop isn't anything special (Nvidia 8600 256mb RAM, 3GB RAM, etc), and it ran CoH exactly the same with Aero on or off.  Obviously results will vary, but all I'm saying is that my system wasn't some crazy beast and it was ok with Aero on.

When I get my desktop back next week (currently with the wife in GA), I'll install Windows 7 on it and I'll be able to give you a better opinion.  Right now I've just got it on my laptop and that thing can barely run CoH with everything turned down regardless.

[Catharctic]

Cool.

Let me know.

I don't think it was an issue with Aero & COH. I think it was a combination of things, including the graphics card I'm using at the moment. It may actually be resolved at this point. I might turn it back on cuz it's so pretty. 

[Tazhyngarth]

Dan, side note, but you just made me aware that your Graphics Card and RAM are exactly the same specs as my own.....that's awesome....

Sorry, just find that interesting...

[St0n3y]

I turn UAC off because it annoys the hell out of me.  Aero stays on.   I have Win7 Ultimate 64 running on both my desktops and my laptop, and CoH runs great on all of them (except for having to crank graphics down on the laptop due to the low graphics memory).

Desktop 1:
Intel Core I7 920 2.66 GHz
EVGA E758-A1 X58 MB
EVGA GTX285 1GB DDR3
12GB DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
150GB WD VelociRaptor 10000RPM
500GB WD 7200RPM

Desktop 2:
AMD Athalon 64 X2 4600+ 2.40HGz
BioStar TForce 550 MB
4GB DDR2
GeForce 8800GTS 640MB
1.6 TB drive space

Laptop:
Intel Core2Duo T7500 2.2GHz
4GB DDR2
GeForce  8600M GT 256MB

[TonyV]

When I had aero running on Vista, if I alt-tabbed out of CoH, it would have problems.  It's been so long now that I can't remember whether it would crash or just stop displaying anything, but I distinctly remember that I had to turn aero off for CoH to work, since I'm constantly tabbing out to check something on the Paragon Wiki or otherwise do stuff.

Also, CoH would periodically crash for no reason at all.  Here's what it would look like:



I was running the latest and greatest drivers and went through all of the troubleshooting steps to try to keep it from happening, all to no avail.  A bunch of people told me that it was overheating, or that it was a hardware problem, and I returned my video card and got a new one with the same result.  I also added a bunch of case fans, and the temperature inside the case was actually really cool.  After I blew away Vista and went back to Windows XP, everything worked fine, and that never happened again.  I haven't played enough under Windows 7 to determine if that will start happening again; obviously, I hope not.  The aero thing seems like a non-issue though, so far.  I could tab out without issue.

That's not the only reason I hated Vista, there were other really hum-dingers.  City of Heroes was but one application that I had problems with.  I'm still in the process of installing and testing stuff to see how it works.

[SuckerPunch]

I never had any issues with Vista ... at all. 


Also - I run CoH windowed.

[St0n3y]

I didn't have problems with Vista either.  Gaming rig would run full screen, other desktop I could run multiple windowed instances, and do a lot of other things and not have issues.

[Steiner]

I had an issue like that, it was the crappy support the 8000 series GForce cards had for Vista. Problems have been resolved for Win7 since Win7 can user relatively any driver.

[Fleeting Whisper]

I loathe Windows Vista with a purple passion you cannot measure

Then why are you getting W7? W7 is pretty much just a Vista service pack, in a new box. See Windows Mojave.

[Steiner]

This was Vista... not Win7

Though Win7 has a lot of the same features Vista... Win7 base code is completely different.

It supports almost ALL drivers, doesn't require Internet Explorer to be installed as the library that runs your file explorer (as vista did), handles Virtualization MUCH better... to the point where I can get Ubuntu running on VirtualPC for Win7, it handles system resources like XP does (meaning you don't need 2gigs of Ram to run it)... just to name a few.

Windows will always have its faults, no doubt about it... however saying that Win7 is Vista is an udder fabrication of the truth and quite hurtful  . lol

You're prolly running a linux distro, so your overall exposure to the hell Vista had and the beauty of Win7 in contrast, should be UNBELIEVABLY different if you haven't already experienced the difference.


..:kick:.. so there!

[Aggelakis]

doesn't require Internet Explorer to be installed as the library that runs your file explorer (as vista did)

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

[TonyV]

Then why are you getting W7? W7 is pretty much just a Vista service pack, in a new box. See Windows Mojave.

Yeah, they say that, but there really is a difference that I can tell.  By this time with Windows Vista, I had gotten to the point where I was almost ready to swear it off.  I had all sorts of problems running City of Heroes, problems that I'm not getting now.  Well, except that the UAC still dings me whenever I try to run it.    Still, so far it has been stable, and I can actually take screenshots now.

And other stuff has been working similarly well so far, not nearly the pain and anguish I experienced with Vista.  I suppose you could argue that developers have gotten used to the New Way of Doing Things by now, and by extension, Win 7 : Vista as Win XP : Win 2000, and maybe you're right.  Still, it doesn't change the fact that it is a much better experience.

Although, don't get me wrong.  I'm sure I'll still find fault with stuff.  So far, the UAC on CoH launch is irritating.  Also, my G15 keyboard LCD is pretty much useless; the LCD clock app that is supposed to come with it apparently just plain doesn't work.  And they kept that stupid filesystem layout with the Program Files (x64) stuff.  Those are minor annoyances, though, and mitigated by the fact that stuff actually works so far, something I couldn't say with Vista.

On the bright side, there have been a few surprises.  This morning when I went into my office, the machine was off.  At first, that irritated me because I don't like waiting for my machine to wake up out of sleep mode.  I hit the power button, and I swear to god within two seconds or so, it was on.  Bam!  Just like that.  A lot like my MacBook, in fact.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I think I'm going to leave the drop-into-sleep-mode setting on and save a few bucks on my power bill.  And the whole "pin my apps to the taskbar" thing is cool, too.  It's about time that PCs caught up to the Mac in that arena too, whose dock has been doing that for ages.  And I honestly don't remember if Vista does this (I don't think it does), but the ability to customize how system tray icons show up is actually pretty ingenious.  (And something, I daresay, the Mac--gasp!--doesn't do!)

[Tazhyngarth]

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

That right der

[Steiner]

You can turn the UAC off in your User Control Panel. It will most likely require a restart.

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

If you're running on a full-admin account have the UAC enabled at any would be advised, even if it was just set to the bottom (yea In Vista it was either on or off, in W7 you have levels MUAH HAHAHA). Only because if a nasty virus gets in there... they type that can manipulate files... the UAC stops it because it won't let it edit system files... but if you feel secure enough in your own settings that it's damn near impossible to get said viruses than there is no harm in disabling.

[TonyV]

It's f'n annoying and I turned it off within the first few seconds, I hated it on Vista as well. There is no good that comes of having it on that added security for something that does a bang up job on keeping itself secure.

I don't really want it off completely, I just wish I could whitelist applications.  I want an option that says, "Don't prompt me about this application and its loaded DLLs again."  I wouldn't even care if, upon a patch, it recognized that the application and/or DLLs changed and prompted again.

Ideally, there would also be an option to only prompt you with the UAC when an application attempts to modify stuff outside of its own directory and/or registry key.

[Fleeting Whisper]

it handles system resources like XP does (meaning you don't need 2gigs of Ram to run it)

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

[Lady Thanatos]

Also, my G15 keyboard LCD is pretty much useless; the LCD clock app that is supposed to come with it apparently just plain doesn't work.  And they kept that stupid filesystem layout with the Program Files (x64) stuff.

G15 problems? *looks at her G15 clock & date display* After Win7 installed, I just popped the driver disc in there and it works fine again.

I find the Win7 file organization to be HUGELY SUPERIOR to Vista. Let's just say that after eight months I finally moved files off my external and onto the internal HD. That's how much I hated Vista's asinine sort system ("Let me [Vista] sort things how I think you [the user] should do it, not how you want to organize them!"). The double Program Files is a minor thing for me; I just put my game directories (and anything else I thought would constantly update) into Program Files and Office 2003/Adobe Suite into Program Files (x86).

I disabled the UAC for now. I may re-enable it to a low level to give it a try again.

The pin-to-taskbar option didn't cut it with me. So I re-enabled the Quick Launch bar and ignore pining. It works.    I also disabled IE8 and installed Firefox.

The only minor problem I have is that the computer thinks the external HD is the boot drive -- I realize I have to tweak that in the BIOS. I must've had the external connected when I installed or something equally dumb.  

I <3 Win7. It automatically setup my wireless adapter! It saw the wireless printer on the network and configured itself to be able to use it! (My husband's Vista machine could never print to the wireless printer but mine could. It was strange.) <3 <3 <3

-- Lady T

[SuckerPunch]

Yeah, just about everyone I know that didn't like Vista loves 7.  I'd say so far it's a 100% conversion rate, anecdotally.

[Shades29A]

i like 7 ...
got me 3 keys from school
1 for the computer at school, 1 is 32bit, and the last is for my (yet-to-buy) 64bit PC

[Steiner]

I DON'T HAVE TO HAVE I.E. INSTALLED? REALLY?

*BRAIN ASPLODES IN GLEE AT THE POSSIBILITY* ?

I'm going to assume you don't think this is great thing and you're just being a smartass (which I loled at, so don't think I'm coming at you, lol).

The reason I listed the fact that IE doesn't have to be on your computer in Win7, is because:
1.) Gets viruses easier than most other mainstream browsers.
2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.
3.) The file explorer in Vista was driven (and required) IE to be installed on your computer... meaning if you had anything wrong with IE (say a virus), browsing your files could potentially give the virus access to your filesystem! That scares the hell out of me for multiple reasons, but I doubt I'd need to go into description.
4.) IE SUCKS, always has, always will... and to have the option to say "buh-bye" is a warming feeling to someone who knows what hell IE has cost and caused web devs world-wide.

My laptop has 2G RAM, total. On both Vista and W7, letting the OS sit there and do nothing takes up ~50% of my RAM (~1G), so I don't know what you're talking about.

And part of that RAM usage is precaching, which exists in both Vista and W7, so the OS isn't actually using that much, it's just reserving some space since it's expecting you to use one of your most commonly used applications.

My GF has a 4 year old Toshiba Satellite M115-S1061.
Has an Intel Celeron M Processor 420 (1.60GHz, 1MB L2, 533MHz FSB) & 512MB PC4200 DDR2 and IT runs at 20% on idle, XP had her running 75% on idle (granted assume 3 years of bad choices for the XP %).

She's flying on that computer, and it's an honest POS... two weeks ago we restarted it and it wouldn't turn back on until I opened it up and cleaned the connections from they PSU to the mobo... (Post win7 install).

Her computer would be crawling if it had Vista installed... which is why I state, it's running faster than XP so there in-lies my reasoning for stating it handles resources as well XP (in this case better).

(Experience May Vary, lol)

[SuckerPunch]

2.) Unlike 90% of all the mainstream tabbed browsers, In IE7-8 it creates new instances of explorer and puts them into the main MDI window. So 5 tabs is the same as having IE open 5 times... resource stupid if you ask me.

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

[SaintNicster]

Steiner, sometimes I really wish you'd think / research more before you post things.  The multiple-process thing is what Chrome does, and it's very much not a stupid thing.  If one tab crashed, you don't lose your entire browsing session.  You just lose that one tab, because you can kill it's single process without affecting anything else.

It's a very good thing and one of the more intelligent things the IE developers have added in.

And Firefox is in the process of doing this as well.

[TonyV]

Oh, but you're leaving out the massively huge advantage of having one process = one tab:  If some stupid javascript takes forever and a day to complete, you're not just sitting there helplessly unable to do anything else.  You can browse other tabs or whatever.

At work (and some of you know in excruciating detail how I feel about our internally developed sites), that's particularly prevalent.  Everything locks up for sometimes ten to fifteen seconds. while some poorly piece of @#$! javascript code does whatever it's doing, and you're just stuck. 

[Steiner]

Had this nice long explanation, but knew no one would read it...

It's not a knock on the idea Dan, it's a knock on IE. I don't care if the better browsers do it, because they know what the hell they're doing. Microsoft does not.

IE has always been the splinter in M$ side they're just too oblivious to notice it's infected and when they should have pulled it out.

The system of multiple processes for Moz and Chrome (naturally stable/light-weight browsere (stock)) is a dream come true, however IE's attempt at this method leaves me with 5 tabs at ~5,000k each... where as Chrome... you're lucky to break 20,000k with 20 tabs. If you get my drift.

I never took the fact that IE sucks out of the focus... just someone always has to generalize things and this is not one of them they should be taken out of context. It was directed ENTIRELY on IE's attempt at this method.

[TonyV]

Had this nice long explanation, but knew no one would read it...

...

IE has always been the splinter in M$ side they're just too oblivious to notice it's infected and when they should have pulled it out.

Hey now, I would have read it...

And to MS's credit, IE hasn't always been a splinter in their side.

I remember back when Netscape wasn't free.  I mean, most people downloaded it and used it for free, but technically, after something like a 30-day evaluation of it, you were supposed to shell out 30 bucks to Netscape in order to continue using it.  IE was kind of nice in that it wasn't as bloated as Netscape, and it really was free.  (Well, free as in beer, in FOSS-speak, anyway.)  If you were a company, IE was the way to go, plain and simple.

It really wasn't until Microsoft made the boneheaded decision that IE would be required to run Windows that it became evil.  (Of course, when Microsoft does evil boneheaded things, they really don't mess around.)