The Official PC building thread - 4th Edition

XP doesn't really work very well with SSDs, it's not recommended.

What's wrong with winRAR? There is nothing wrong with WinRAR and Windows 7 at all.

 

Absolutely nothing wrong with WinRAR, it works fine on either x86 or x64 OS's.

Also I've had way more problems with XP x64, which I've run for years, then either or any version of Windows 7 and I have ton's of old programs from DOS and Windows 3.1 up. On Windows 7 x86 I can run most programs, I don't have most of my issues until I go to x64 then the list of programs that won't run native increases substantially. The down side of course to running x86 is the 4GB RAM limitation.

I personally don't prefer GIF's and convert them to JPG's so GIF's don't cause me issue the only ones I have to contend with are the motion GIF's and I can use IE or other programs for those the rare times I need to play with them.

 

Sam & Mr-Movies,

About a month ago, I downloaded Win RAR 4.11, which was supposed to be for Win7 64 Bit. It wouldn't install. It gave an error message about an incompatibility issue. I just tried to install it again, and now it works. I've had a number of issues with Programs that worked when I installed them, only to have them not work after Win7 installed upgrades I didn't ask for. I have Win7 updates set to ask me before it downloads them. It never asks, it just installs them! I see no point in upgrading things like IE, because I won't ever use it, and don't even get me started with the F'n control Panel! The least they could have done was to put the icons in Alphabetical Order, which is not an option! I have 57 icons, and half of them are totally unnecessary and make absolutely no sense at all. What's the point of having a fast computer, when you spend more time than necessary to do simple and mundane things. Here's my WE Index.



The other day, I used my printer for only the second time since Win7 was installed. It didn't work! It's a Brother HL series, for God's sake! It seems that Brother didn't want to spend the money on new drivers for older printers. I have an HL-1240, 12 ppm Laser Printer that continues to work perfectly, after 10 years of use. I bought it used about 10 years ago. I also have an HL-5140 21 ppm Laser Printer, hooked up to Oxi. Russell does a lot of printing, while I rarely use mine at all. I'm still using the same Toner cartridge that was in it when I moved here in early 06! I do give MS credit, it did provide me with a driver and notification, a couple of days later. It was the same thing with my Netgear WG111T 108G wireless. When I first installed it, it worked fine. The next time I went to use it, it no longer worked. Once again, MS provided a fix, and it now works fine again.


Don't get me wrong, I like 7, and the programmers may well have been geniuses, but 7 still suffers because of their equal amount of stupidity! For all the bitching people did about learning to use XP, Win7 starts out at least twice as hard to do simple things.

Still, I will now pass on installing XP on my SSD, after reading what you guys wrote about doing it. I still have to re-install win7 so I can finally get into AHCI mode, and finally get the true performance of my SSD. It only gives me a 7.1 score in my primary disk performance, which will be at least a 7.4 when in AHCI mode, as Win7 doesn't read the speeds properly in IDE mode.

I was talking about Motion GIFs. I have a ton of vacation programs that include slides, video and Motion GIFs, that I can't play with the crappy win7 media player. It just shows the first frame like a jpg. Now I need to find a Professional looking program that will let me play everything. Time should march on, but it shouldn't trample on older tech in the process!

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ, you may take a look at this for your Gif viewing pleasure. I may check it out myself.
http://www.irfanview.com/
Why MS decided to discontinue animation in the Photo viewer is anybodies guess. Pretty dumb if you ask me. They have pretty much everyone upset about this. What's funny is, 7 seems to come prepared for almost any task. It even has Voice command built in(only takes a few minutes to set up). I think Sam says that those softwares have problems with some languages though My guess is so that not as many applications need be installed. Because as most people know, the more applications that are installed, the slower the hard drive becomes. As well as the windows experience becoming unstable. I recall XP having all sorts of problems...

Wow, windows 8 is certainly different! Gonna take some getting used to.

By the way, windows 8 picture viewer suffers the same ill effect

 

Compared to windows 7, Windows 8 is the devil incarnate.
Make it go away please.

 

Indeed. I don't see myself buying it any time soon(even if it were released). If I had a touchscreen, I might view it differently. I honestly wouldn't call it windows anymore. I suppose one doesn't need the metro style "start" option though? In any case, I'll be with windows 7 for some time!

Sam, the "Devil" is an understatement! LOL!

 

Russ you have to have something else going on as Windows 7 truly shouldn't give you all of those headaches. You may have a virus or some faulty hardware or it could even be issues with software as I can get similar problems from Acrobat when I have updates to it, my shadow partition corrupts.

There definitely is something else going on. It could even be a corrupted install of Windows 7 or installing Seven as an upgrade to XP which has caused many problems for others.

I get 7.4 for the primary drive using AHCI on an SSD but I've run it in IDE mode and got the same rating so you must just have a slow SSD. LOL

Stevo

 

Stevo,

Nope on all counts! LOL!! No corrupted install of Win7, and I wouldn't dream of installing Win7 as an upgrade to XP. as it is "not recommended". I doubt that I have a slow SSD, with the numbers it puts up, both reading and writing. I've read in the reviews on Newegg, where the vast majority runs 7.1 in IDE and 7.4 in AHCI.

Love the GTX550. It's quieter than the single fan on the HD-4670, and idles about 20C cooler. It does a few things differently than the HD-4670 did. If I play a DVD with 1080i, PDVD-7 can reduce the picture size on the screen slightly, to give a clear, jaggle free image. Much better than I can get PotPlayer to do! Plays older movies, much better than the HD-4670 did, again with PDVD-7. I'm glad I bought the GigaByte 990XA and the DDR3 memory and upgraded to AM3+. The GTX550 was just icing on the cake, and so much more powerful!

BTW, I will be getting out the Sceptre monitor, as soon as possible. We Just got served papers that the property we just rented has been forclosed on, so we stick the rent money in a savings account, until the property management signs us a new lease for a year. After that we will have to move again, so we should be good for the next 15 months or so.

Best Regards,
Russ

 

Russ

After selecting the Start botton, and then placing the mouse pointer on the Control Panel, it lists all the control panel's options, alphabetically, and it came that way when I installed it, at least on my computer. IMHO, it is one of the best features of Win 7, and it is so fast compared to XP and Vista.

 

I don't think Windows 7 is that much faster then XP, and I guess I missed the Control Panel order as it is Alphabetically ordered and you have no choice about it either. They did change some of the naming for things which screws you up going from one to the other and they did hide some stuff that was easily found before but is buried now.

Russ's Windows 7 is in the Twilight Zone I think or he got a version no one else has?

 

If you recall the name of the window(eg. power options), you can type it in the run/start bar and hit enter. Brings you right there. I LOVE this feature. Or if you remember only one word, you'll see a list of results immediately.

Windows 8 is gonna be hard pressed to impress me!

 

Problem: Windows user experience ratings are lower than expected.
Solution: Ignore windows user experience, it's notorious for under-rating good components and over-rating bad ones.

Problem: Control panel in windows 7 is impossible to understand.
Solution: View by: "Small icons". They automatically sort by A-Z, and actually make sense,

Problem: Windows picture viewer doesn't display GIFs.
Solution: Start using a proper GIF editor, otherwise just open GIFs in a web browser like everyone else does.

 

My keyboard is quicker than my mouse Though they're close.

 

If you sort by Large or Small Icons you get the old Advanced Control Panel in XP which turns out to be "All Control Panel Items". If you view in "Category" you get the limited XP Classic view. In either OS I always use Advanced view CP, not Basic, that hasn't changed in function at all the results are the same.

Control Panel is far from impossible to understand.

 

Wasn't stating it as fact, was stating it as an opinion, which I know lots of people hold. We just don't.

 

If you know different then why would you state it as fact? Please.... Nice try though.

 

Not responding to flamebait.

 

LOL, you're too funny....

You could do that in XP too. They have changed some of the commands just like naming in the CP but otherwise the same.

 

I meant to say the Control Panel is much faster than XP and Vista. Overall, Win 7 is has fast as XP, although on some things it is a bit slower, at least the way I use it.

 

I thought on XP, it was limited to the exact .exe name? It could only "Run" the exact process name. Not sure how to explain, but windows 7 seems more intelligent about this ability. Certainly bringing up a list of options while typing is useful

I don't miss XP. I'm a gamer, and I don't seem to be missing any abilities, or functionality So XP must not have been too good...

Heck, I've forgotten much about XP. That alone says something LOL!