Microsoft looks into Windows 7 upgrade troubles

Microsoft is working on upgrade snags that some users have described when migrating from Vista to Windows 7. The complaints started late in the Microsoft Answers forum for Windows 7. Users seems to be experiencing two distinct problems. In one case, Windows 7 installation process burns short at 62 percent completion. The other problem involves an endless reboot, where the Windows 7 upgrade never finishes.

The company is recently working on the reboot issue. Microsoft is continuing to look into this issue, and it will post information on the existing threads in the Answers forum as it becomes available, a company spokesperson explained in an e-mail. Customers who had requested an alert when the answer is posted will be advised. The GCN Lab currently reported that upgrade could be made easier by using Mictosoft’s Windows Easy Transfer utility.

Disgruntled forum posters weren’t the only ones experiencing the problem. A Microsoft employee found the reboot when migrating to Windows 7 on a home PC, the spokesperson explained. Endless reboot is a phrase that may clip some memories. Last year, some Vista users faced a similar reboot cycle when migrating to Vista Service Pack 1. Microsoft has fixed that problem. With regard to the incomplete upgrade problem with Windows 7, Microsoft does provides a workaround. Apparently a service, possibly the Iphlpsvc service, interferes with the upgrade to Windows 7. The workaround involves executing a detailed set of steps that may take the joy out of the upgrade process, especially for home users. Possibly, Microsoft may launch an easier-to-apply solution.

Finally, users could face another problem that may occur after a successful new Windows 7 upgrade on machines that use solid-state drives (SSDs). The upgrade results in a storage system failure on certain machines using Intel SSD firmware, according to a report by Betanews. The storage failure looks to be linked with “Trim command” technology, which gives SSDs keep track of file additions and deletions. Trim technology is specifically supported in Windows 7, according to the Engineering Windows 7 blog. The Microsoft spokesperson indicated that the firm is recently investigating the SSD storage failure problem and will post to the Microsoft Answers forum should more information become available

In another development, some of the comments on the Windows 7 review and follow-up piece indicated when it was tried with the new OS on a netbook. However, the same performance lag we found impressing from Windows XP 7 on desktops was also evident with the netbooks, only to a much greater extent. A netbook with an Atom N270 processor running at 1.6 GHz got a respectable 246.4 on our Passmark Performance Test benchmarks version 7.0 with XP. But after the Windows 7 install, this dripped to 188.8. That’s a 58 point drop, meaning the poor netbook runs 24 percent slower than before. The second netbook had an Atom N280 processor executing at 1.66 GHz. With XP, it got 259.4 on the benchmark, which is not storming given that it’s a slightly faster processor than the N270. However, it also dropped big time once Windows 7 came on board, to 214.2. So you can expect an 18 percent drop in performance if you move that system from Windows XP 7.

Windows 7 is just Vista with small alterations

A new Microsoft Windows operating system is always big news, especially for the federal government, which irresistibly depends on Windows of one stripe or another to execute just about everything. The last really stable operating system to find widespread acceptance was Windows XP. Vista added a lot of user-friendly choices but was more or less branded as a consumer product that is not really suitable for business. And now we have Windows 7, which is examining to keep most of the shades of Vista while maintaining the businesslike status that XP enjoyed. The Windows 7 desktop seems suspiciously like Vista, but there are a few new things executing behind the scenes.

When loading of the install was done and were stormed that it could execute from the drive like a normal program and not need to be booted. Once it scanned the test computer, it asked if you want to upgrade your existing operating system or install a clean edition of Windows 7. Because you are migrating from Vista, you chose the upgrade option, which did keep all of the existing programs in place. A lot has been written about how XP users are out of luck in terms of holding their old programs. If you are moving to Windows 7 XP, you must select a clean install.

At this point, the program admonished that the install could take hours and that the system would reboot several times. On these points, it was correct. The time from when we clicked OK to the time Windows 7 was ready to go was 1 hour, 40 minutes on the tested system, which had a 1.6 GHz dual-core processor. There is a nice progress bar at the bottom of the install screen that shows how far along you are. It’s a guess at best given that the actual status percentages for each element seem to rush ahead and then stop for half an hour at an odd spot, such as 72 percent. But at least it gives some reading as to what’s going on.

Here’s the dirty little secret that Microsoft is definitely not telling anyone. If you hated Vista because of the interface, then you are going to hate Windows 7, too. Vista totally changed the look and feel of Windows from XP, but Windows 7 only marginally modifies the look and feel from Vista. In fact, 90 percent or more of the interface is exactly the same as identical. Going on just the look and general behavior, Windows 7 is little more than what Microsoft could have pitched in a free service pack to the Vista operating system.

On the bad side, most of Vista’s annoyances have remained intact, even if Windows 7 is executing an internal process. Performance is also unaltered overall on a system executing Vista compared with Windows 7. The systems executing Vista and then benchmarked them again once they changed to Windows 7. They were unchanged. Going from Windows XP 7 resulted in a little performance decrease, much like when going from XP to Vista.

Windows 7 starter versus Windows 7 home basic

Windows 7 home starter is specifically designed by Microsoft targeting the low end market especially netbooks and some other PC hardware which are sold for the cheapest possible price. In fact, the main reason behind Windows 7 home starter is to come up with a Windows edition that can be put cost effectively on various low end products.

The release of Windows 7 home Starter was followed by a lot of controversy. Its multi application and other advanced features add to the delight of many people. However, there was a lot of comparison between Windows 7 starter edition and other expensive Windows 7 edition. Some of the features that you can expect in a computer running on Windows 7 home starter includes:

• Windows Internet Explorer 8

• 32-bit only support
• Windows Media Player 12
• Home Group join only
• Concurrent Applications Unlimited

The main factor which was behind criticism for Windows 7 home starter edition was its limitation to just three concurrent applications. Although applications like anti virus, messengers etc were not included in deciding the limit, still it was said that users may find it difficult and disappointing if they reach the limit. Microsoft finally decided to remove the limit and much for the user’s pleasure there is no restriction on number of applications running on Windows 7 home starter edition.

The nest operating system following the Windows 7 starter edition is Windows7 Home Basic. It will be available only in some emerging markets. Most of the features of Windows 7 home basic is similar to Starter edition with some advancements like both 32 bit and 64 bit support. It also comes up with partial Aero support and desktop Windows manager. Some of the main features that come along with Windows 7 home basic includes:

• 32-bit and 64-bit mode support
• Concurrent Applications Unlimited
• Windows Internet Explorer 8
• Desktop Window Manager
• Home Group (Create & Join) Join Only
• Windows Mobility Center
• Windows Media Player 12
• Windows Aero Partial

Limited availability of Windows 7 home basic has kept Windows 7 starter as more popular in spite of advanced features in Windows 7 home basic.

Windows 7 with Windows Media Center

What was originally devised as an interface for what was once called the Windows 7 Media Center PC it is basically a computer operating on Windows XP that’s solely configured for working out multi-timedia solutions and is often loaded with a TV tuner card and add to that a special wireless remote; one can now use the Windows version of this attractive application to play music, view digital pictures, play movies, and also get the option to watch and record TV (provided your computer comes loaded with a TV tuner card).

Remember, that a user can only connect a computer that is running the Windows 7 Media Center for Windows directly to a home entertainment center by buying the Media Center Extender. Connecting directly to an Xbox 360 by buying the Media Center Extender for Xbox is also a viable option. When Windows 7 Media Center is launched , the Welcome to the Media Center Wizard will be directly visible , which guides one through the steps of setting up the center of a screen display, then configuring it to get a TV signal and downloading the TV guide which is available online. If a computer comes with a TV tuner card, that is. Thereafter, each time the Media Center is launched, the program reveals a full screen in a largely dark-blue window.

Since the Media Center options have been crafted to be accessed by enabling the use of a special Media Center remote control along with a standard mouse, its interface is a lot times fluid than what can be usually found in other conventional Windows application. The first thing that will come in sight in the Media Center interface is the amount of audio and visual feedback it emits.

When a program is launched like the new Windows 7 and one selects the menu option thereafter, Windows gives you distinct tones and clicks as well as visual answers to enable people to know which menu option to opt for and when the selection is completed.

Once the preferred option is selected, the user can select and display its sub menu options by clicking on the mouse button. With the Media Center remote control, move up and down through the main menu options by pressing on the device’s up and down arrowheads. Click the OK button which is located around the middle of the remote from the one which separates the arrowheads and choose the main option accordingly.
You can play Media files in Windows 7 using Windows Media Player. On computers, the term media refers to something other than text: Audio and video are examples of media. Audio is a term that has wide variety of items for music and other sound files, such as books on CD. Music is often entirely digital nowadays. You can use Media Player to play the sample music included with Windows 7. You can play your audio CD on your computer using Media Player. If you want to make that CD playing more convenient then you can copy the audio files to your computer. You can create your own CDs with a library of music copied from your CD collection and you can also combine tracks. You can also copy audio files to an MP3 player.

Listening to Music and Watching DVDs in Windows 7

You can play Media files in new windows 7 using Windows Media Player. On computers, the term media refers to something other than text: Audio and video are examples of media. Audio is a term that has wide variety of items for music and other sound files, such as books on CD. Music is often entirely digital nowadays. You can use Media Player to play the sample music included with Windows 7. You can play your audio CD on your computer using Media Player. If you want to make that CD playing more convenient then you can copy the audio files to your computer. You can create your own CDs with a library of music copied from your CD collection and you can also combine tracks. You can also copy audio files to an MP3 player.

Play Music with Windows Media Player

1. To start Windows Media Player, click its icon which appears as a white triangle on an orange circle on a blue square in the taskbar. The initial settings screen will appear the first time you start Media Player. Now click Recommended Settings and then click Finish.

2. Now, the Media Player Library shows music that comes with Windows 7 and any other music that you have already copied to your computer. The toolbar at the bottom of Media Player’s window provides the following controls:

• Shuffle: To turn on shuffle, click this button. This option randomly mixes the tracks you play. A second click on shuffle turns it off and the tracks play in the order in which they appear onscreen.

• Loop: Click this button to turn on loop which means repeat. This option will continuously play all the tracks again after all have played.

• Stop: Click to stop a track.

• Previous: This button jumps to the previous track.

• Play/Pause: To pause play mid-track, click the button with two vertical lines. To resume playing from the point you paused, click the same button which is now with a triangle pointing to the right.

• Next: This button jumps to the next track.

• Mute/Unmute: To silence the player, click this button. Although the track will continue to play but you won’t hear it. A red circle and slash appear next to the speaker icon when mute is on. You need to click the button again to hear the track.

• Volume: To decrease or increase the volume of track, click or drag the slider to left or right respectively. Your speakers may also have manual volume control. Windows 7 also has a separate volume control in the taskbar.

• Now Playing: It is located far to the right of the toolbar, to reduce the player to a small size, click this button.

3. You can use these controls to play the music. You can adjust the volume with the slider. Mute and unmute the music. You can also pause the music and resume playing. To stop music use Stop button.

4. To shrink Media Player to a smaller window, click the Switch to Now Playing button to the right of the toolbar. Click the Switch to Library button to return to the larger window.

You can also buy music online and download the tracks directly to your computer using this media player.

Why Prefer Windows 7 Over Vista

Many of my relatives and friends completely denied to make the switch to Windows Vista when it was released. Some who purchased new machines with Vista installed immediately downgraded the OS. A few said that they would give up XP only when you pried it from their cold, dead hands. But even in the last category, many of them are impressed with what they’ve seen in the Windows 7.

Reasons why to choose windows 7 over windows vista

While some tech professionals are saying Windows 7 isn’t really all that different from Vista and indeed, one of the plus point for Vista users is that Windows 7 can generally use the same drivers and run the same applications as Vista.

Microsoft redesigned the UAC in Windows 7. Most of the people feel this on-going effort has been successful.

Microsoft has reduced the actions that prompt you making it less annoying for the users. The software giant has made several changes, but the biggest change is the User Account Control “slider” setting which results in less annoyance and more security.

User Account Control safeguards your computer against hackers and protects it against malicious software. The tool prompts the user for the permission, if any application wants to make any changes to your computer. UAC is more flexible in Windows 7 than in Windows Vista. Now, every task doesn’t require your consent in Windows 7, and if you have administrator privileges, you can easily fine tune to UAC’s notification settings from the control panel.

Vista made the left navigation pane in Windows Explorer a constantly moving target. As you navigate your mouse, it will automatically scroll back and forth.

You can avoid the auto-scrolling by dragging the pane to make it wide enough to accommodate the entire tree.In Windows 7, the navigation pane stays still, so you no longer risk getting seasick from all the swaying back and forth.

In Windows XP, you could use pretty much whatever graphics cards you wanted for multiple monitors. According to reports, that to use multiple graphics cards, you would have to all use the same driver. That meant I couldn’t use cards from different vendors together. I had to shell out a few bucks to get more ATI cards before I could use all my monitors again.

According to reports, Windows 7 has added support for multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors. Now this probably doesn’t mean you can combine ATI and NVIDIA cards in an SLI-configuration, but it sounds as if we can have our multi-vendor multi-monitor setups back.

Another common issue about Vista has been the inordinate amount of time it can take to boot up. This might not be a problem for those who leave their systems on all the time, but if you shut down your system every night, waiting around forever for it to get started in the morning can turn into a major annoyance.

A Microsoft official indicated that the company’s goal for Windows 7 is a 15-second boot time, whereas three quarters of Vista users report boot times of more than 30 seconds.

Personalize Windows 7 with a Theme & Change Icons

You can personalize Windows 7 with a theme and change icons by follow these easy steps:

1. Firstly, you need to right-click on the desktop and then select personalize from the shortcut menu. Now the Personalization window will appear.

Note: In many cases, the window stays open as you make choices. If you need to open this window again, repeat Step 1.

2. Now navigate down through the themes displayed in the window. These themes are Windows 7 settings collection, such as desktop background, color, sounds and many more. You may need to explore the themes under these headings:

• My Themes: These are the themes that you can customize and save. If you have not saved a theme then you can see Unsaved Theme, which is your current setup.

• Aero Themes: These themes show beautiful photos as a changing desktop background and set
clear colors for windows. Specially the Landscapes and Nature themes are lovely. The Characters theme is freak.

• Basic and High Contrast Themes: These are easier, plainer themes which mostly have solid-color desktop backgrounds. For someone with a vision disability the high contrast may be useful or it may be handy in low light.

3. Click the Landscapes theme. If you can’t see the desktop, you may not notice a change. You can click the Minimize button or press Q+D on your keyboard to see the new desktop background. Other Personalization settings change with this theme, as well.

4. Now to return to the Personalization window you need to click its icon on the taskbar. Try various themes by clicking on it. Click the Unsaved Theme under My Themes to restore your original settings.

Change Desktop Icons

1. Icons on the desktop are the easy way to access certain files or programs. The Recycle Bin is the only icon on the Windows 7 desktop which is by default. The computer manufacturer may add other icons. The installation process may also add icons to the desktop. You can select a few Windows 7 icons to show on the desktop.

Now click the Change Desktop Icons link in the Navigation pane on the left in the Personalization window. Now the Desktop Icon Settings dialog box will appear.

2. Choose the check boxes next to the icons you want to add or deselect icons you want to remove and then click 'OK' to keep your changes or Cancel to discard changes.

To make it easy to find when you need to undelete files, leave the Recycle Bin check box selected. All the other icons are already displayed on the Start menu and in Windows Explorer also, so you may not need them on the desktop.

3. Now minimize the Personalization window and right-click the desktop to change the size of icons on the desktop. Choose View>Large Icons and repeat for Medium or Small Icons, whichever you prefer.

Some people consider desktop icons to be muddle that obstruct the desktop background. To solve this issue, you can hide all desktop icons by right-clicking the desktop and choosing View>Show Desktop Icons, which deselects and hides those icons. Repeat to bring the icons back.

Windows 7 – A Featured Story

The latest version of Microsoft Windows, Windows 7 OS slated to be released on October 22, 2009 is designed to be more focused on incremental upgrade thereby providing full compatibility with devices and applications with which Windows Vista is already compatible.
Windows 7 includes a stream of new features like advancement in touchscreen, speech, and handwriting recognition, support for virtual hard disks, support for additional file formats, improved boot performance and kernel improvements. This explains Windows 7’s superiority over Windows XP, Windows Vista.

Features

Windows 7 includes a number of new features, such as advances in touch and handwriting recognition support for virtual hard disks, improved performance on multi-core processors, improved boot performance, Direct Access. Windows 7 has inbuilt mechanism which adds up as support for systems using multiple heterogeneous graphics cards from different vendors.

The operating system also includes a new version of Windows Media Center with a Gadget for Windows Media Center, improved media features, the XPS Essentials Pack and redesigned Calculator with multi-line capabilities including programmer and statistics modes along with unit conversion.

Introduction of new features presents an all new Control Panel. The list includes Clear Type Text Tuner, Display Color Calibration Wizard, Gadget Recovery, Troubleshooting, Workspaces Center, Location and Other Sensors, Credential Manager, Biometric Devices, System Icons, and Display.

Renaming of Windows Security Center to Windows Action Center as part of Windows 7 streamlining process encompasses both security and maintenance of the computer.

A new improved visual appearance to taskbar includes, the Quick Launch toolbar's replacement with pinned up applications to the taskbar. These pinned applications are integrated with the task buttons, thereby enabling the Jump Lists feature to allow easy access to common tasks. This feature enables effective reordering of taskbar buttons. Show Desktop icon present on the far right of the system clock in form of a small rectangular button is part of a new feature called Aero Peek introduced in Windows 7. Hovering over this button makes all visible windows transparent for a quick look at the desktop. In touch-enabled displays, such as touch screens, tablet PCs, etc., this button is slightly wider to accommodate being pressed with a finger. Clicking this button minimizes all windows, and clicking it a second time restores them.

Additionally, another feature named Aero Snap has been added, that automatically maximizes a window when it is dragged to either the top or left/right edges of the screen. This allows users to snap documents or files on either side of the screen to compare them. When a user moves windows that are maximized, the system restores their previous state automatically. This functionality is also accomplished with keyboard shortcuts. Unlike in Windows Vista, window borders and the taskbar do not turn opaque when a window is maximized with Windows Aero applied. Instead, they remain transparent.