Windows 7 build 7000 outperforms Vista and XP

**MilesAhead** · 17 Jan 2009, 01:32 PM

@dr_ml422 yeah, once it comes up on the dual core it's gonna' outperform the P4. Just seems to take a while to load up. Must be more hampster wheels in the AMD to get churnin'

I couldn't resist messin' around summore so I sliced off 100 GB of my Vista partition and stuck W7 on. If I could buy a taskbar that worked just like the W7 taskbar I'd be willin' to shell out maybe as much as $15!! I like how it works.

**dr_ml422** · 17 Jan 2009, 01:54 PM

So this is a new trial setup huh? You had 7 by itself on another computer correct? Or were you always sharing it as a dual boot w/your vista? I don't think so though. If you were then they coexisted w/out any issues?

**MilesAhead** · 17 Jan 2009, 02:35 PM

Initially I put it on the P4. It ran smoothly enough that I wanted to try it out on the AMD machine. At first I "custom" installed into the Vista partition. Now I have triple boot on the AMD machine. Vista and W7 both come up as C: so that it doesn't change the boot setup for XP which is at the end of the drive. All 3 boot up fine. The nice thing was I sliced off some partition using the Vista disk management, set it as an NTFS partition, then deleted it. Then I just let W7 installer go into the free space. It set up the boot manager so that everything worked. I'm not sure if W7 insists on being C: or not. Maybe someone else multibooting can say if it ever installs showing another letter once it's done.

Unfortunately on PCs we're stuck with the drive letter legacy that won't go away. Should have had aliases for the drives with serial numbers from the start so that there wouldn't be this stupid stuff with alphabetical order and drives changing assigned letters.
Should be name my drive "Joe" if "Joe" isn't already taken!

**Abuilder** · 17 Jan 2009, 07:39 PM

Miles
I run on a dual boot system. I had win2k installed first on a primary boot partition with a secondary partition (D

for data storage. I installed XP on D: and when I boot to it explorer shows XP running on D:.

edited to ad:
This is my boot.ini from c:
[boot loader]
timeout=4
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Micro soft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect

**MilesAhead** · 18 Jan 2009, 02:25 AM

@Abuilder thanks for the reply. I'm not fully up on the new booting mechanism with Vista/W7 but at least afa the W7 installer goes it set itself up so that I couldn't see the Vista partition while I was booted to 7. I could see 7 when in Vista. Weird. Must be in the registry settings. Anyway I don't like that type of setup as I've had others in the past where you can't see one version of Windows C: while running the other. It's a pita. Plus it always seems like you come to a reboot where stuff gets mixed up and it gets hosed. Just a matter of time.

I laid the Vista/XP back on. I had W7 on, tested the booting. Every OS could be booted. Then after messing around with installing more apps etc. I go to boot to XP and it doesn't work. Hangs at black screen. I don't need that aggravation. Another reason I took it of is, after I messed with it for awhile it felt just like using the Vista I already have. It still has defrag in the scheduler but it doesn't go as crazy with the HD. It takes less space on install. But other than the neat Taskbar, I couldn't really feel any difference. It's Ultimate edition so it has file versioning that Home Premium doesn't have. But afa using it when it's loaded up it feels the same as my current system.

If I could find a third party taskbar replacement that did the grouping the way W7 does pinning apps to the bar etc. that would be cool with me.

I think the reason it loaded on and ran so well on the P4 machine is it's a leaner install but also it does a better job of analyzing your hw. If you are on crippled video like that system, it turns on Accessible Themes(no Aero) and other stuff so that it doesn't bog it down.

The other stuff such as caching seems like it may have been done in response to criticism where people want to see more free memory. But in practice the stuff runs the same. QuEnc is gonna' convert video at the same fps as it did before. I don't notice it snapping up any faster or slower. With it being less stable(updates killing stuff off) and printer drivers not working well for me I see no reason to keep it on the AMD machine. I'll leave it on the P4 as long as there's no hassles.

But anyway, what I was getting at with the drive letters is that the stuff wasn't really designed by computer engineers. More hobbyist. You were lucky to get a HD at all so why would anybody need more than A: B: C: ??
They sort of came into running as real computer systems through the back door. Got guys from DEC to do NT etc.. But by then we're stuck with it. There should've been some other mechanism like static memory or whatever, when you install a drive or make a partition it's uniquely identified. Then you allow the user to assign a friendly alias that propagates through the system. Then say if you had a C: partition(or "Joe" alias) with all kinds of programs installed and wanted to move it to partition "Harry" the database would be updated because it would just associate the unique id of the partition with the alias and make all the substitutions through the lookup table in the memory. You wouldn't be stuck with a Registry with all kinds of G:\ and H:\ hard-wired into the program locations. Something like that where the entry for the partition name is just used to get the "real" name from the lookup table.

But we're stuck so we make the best of it.

**Abuilder** · 18 Jan 2009, 03:36 AM

Miles
It kind of sounds like 7â€™s boot manager is a little buggy. If you want to run 7 on your AMD, I would install another physical HD. IE: SATA2, EIDE Primary/slave, ETC and let 7 have the whole drive. If 7 is the last to be installed and overwrites the MBR/boot.ini on the primary drive It should be easy enough to fix. With 7 on a different drive you could have the bios control the boot sequence or maybe the F12 key even. Itâ€™s a pain in the butt, but at least 7 shouldnâ€™t mess with the settings on the other HD with XP/vista on it.
............................

How much is MS paying you for testing their software using your hardware that you paid good money for? Are they giving you a full version of 7 after itâ€™s release?
Oh wait I can answer that! The beta will cripple itself in short term and if you are registered with MS as a vender, etc they will start spamming your email box with special offers. A free 7, not a chance.

**MilesAhead** · 18 Jan 2009, 04:32 AM

@Abuilder turns out my criticism of the booting may have been unfair. Due to trying stuff with the USB printer I shifted around connections. Looks like one of my USB ports in the back is flaky. I plugged into it for the first time I guess and that was hanging the boot intermittently. Switched back to the other open port and hopefully that's that. Anyway, right now I don't feel so bad if I get a PC with Vista since by then mabye somebody will have a toolbar that does the taskbar grouping. Really, on my AMD machine it feels just like Vista that I have now except the old Vista has a larger install footprint. No big deal since most of my HD is free space anyway.

**PurpleDemon** · 18 Jan 2009, 12:40 PM

Looks like the standard freeware "favorites" do well.

Just for fun tried Nero 6 and still no go like Vista.

Adobe Reader 9 Vista version locks up on in browser paged, but Foxit Reader no issues.

Avast AV No problems.

This is fast. I wish I would of not installed my Vista HP. Be nice if they had a 30 day try it period.

**MilesAhead** · 18 Jan 2009, 03:35 PM

For W7 go/nogo lists there's a few threads in W7 forums:

Software - Windows 7 Forums

http://www.sevenforums.com/software/

General software help and support.

I wish I could just import the Superbar into Vista. I took a look around for a freeware launchbar but the ones I've tried seem to hose things more than anything. Seems if you hook stuff into the desktop you have problems. Maybe the paid versions work?

At least I don't feel so bad now. After messing with this system for over a year it's good to feel like it runs as good as the improved OS out of the box.

**dr_ml422** · 18 Jan 2009, 03:38 PM

Originally Posted by burrell84601

Looks like the standard freeware "favorites" do well.

Just for fun tried Nero 6 and still no go like Vista.

Adobe Reader 9 Vista version locks up on in browser paged, but Foxit Reader no issues.

Avast AV No problems.

This is fast. I wish I would of not installed my Vista HP. Be nice if they had a 30 day try it period.

Standard freeware favorites do well? On 7 or Vista? Can you elaborate a lil more. Thnx.

**PurpleDemon** · 18 Jan 2009, 07:13 PM

I am referring to Windows 7. I am even trying 64 bit.

**MilesAhead** · 19 Jan 2009, 03:45 AM

Still no file comment tab in W7

I was disappointed to note that there still seems to be no file "comment" tab in the context menu Property Page for a file in W7. I just tried my "comment config" hack that I first wrote for Win98 and it seems to work in 32 bit W7.

This is the description for CommentConfig

If you want to try it you can then download from the downloads page.

MS has something about launching the 32 bit shell in 64 bit Windows with this command: Drive_Letter:\windows\syswow64\explorer.exe /separate

If it works I don't have 64 bit to try. I'm assuming it launches one explorer window in a separate process so you can do 32 bit only stuff.

Here's the MS article

If anyone tries it in 64 bit land please let me know if it works. It's just a hack. To do it right you have to be inside the file system or storage like how MS document files let you put comments in. They can do that because there's more than one stream in the storage. Obviously I can't do that without messing with the original file, so I just store a key and the comment in a flat file. It's good enough for commenting files in your download folder, which is why I wrote the thing in the first place.

**PurpleDemon** · 25 Jan 2009, 05:35 AM

I also like the Windows Picture Viewer is back.

I only can get the photo gallery to work in Vista and I did not like it. Now it's like XP

Main thing I have not figured out is I know they took off defaults of IE and Windows mail by default, but how in the heck do I set my default e-mail in IE8.

FF3 does let me set for their browser, but I want one for the OS.

I do like doing my burns better in Win7 because it is not always busy like Vista.

@Chewy--I am curious, Are you going to try it early or wait??