Windows 7 a disaster!

[=CfC=Bounder]

This was the worst decision I have ever made!

None of my daily progs. work anymore including my accounts (Quicken) even after trying a re-install from disk.

My MS Office does not work either and I think because the disk has been used on three separate installs it won't allow another. Passwords file locked, drivers for X52 Pro, webcam and several other devices don't work properly even after repeated installs of Windows 7 drivers.

I'm seriously thinking of reverting to XP as to get anything working is going to take a long time and I don't really have the inclination to do it .

I did expect this and it was a mistake to even start the change.

I have got IL-2 working but with no execute file for my X52 I don't know quite what is going to happen.

Bounder

[Gizmo]

That's bad news Bounder.
I think I wrote on here once that XP would have to be pried from my cold dead fingers but after having W7 for 8 months I wouldn't go back now.
Installing my X52 was just a matter of plugging in and downloading the drivers. Why do you need an exe. if I may ask.
Webcam the same.

I can't suggest anything for Office or your accounts thingy, just the thought of those 2 makes me shudder.

The only mildly useful thing I can suggest is maybe going for a dual operating system setup.

[John Cartwright]

Had the same problem with an accounts package, graphics package and others. There were updates available or a work round; but can't remember how. Fitz I am sure would have the answer being a young cove up with tekky stuff.

[=CfC=Father Ted]

Really sorry to hear about this Bounder.  I'm guessing my painless transition was because I had 7 pre-loaded onto the new HDD and then installed all my stuff rather than updated in situ.

As Gizmo says, a dual OS is probably the way to go for those progs which won't cooperate - I know Fitz did that when he upgraded.

Just a thought - is your Win 7 32- or 64-bit, and have you installed the correct drivers?

I think you'll have to bite the bullet anyway at some point - as you said, the XP updates are getting problematic and soon there won't be any at all...

[=CfC=Bounder]

All my problems have been with older progs.

I trawled the net and discovered that the disk for my accounts prog would work if I accessed the  setup.exe file directly from the DVD. It did!

One fix.

Problem with the X52 is that the start-up profile is not remembered and unless you unplug and plugin again, the damn thing does not work! On my XP system the prog had an exe file that I had access to from the desktop and this enabled the unit to fire up and work. With the windows 7 system there appears no exe file and so you have the thing running all the time or have to unplug it. The line allowing you to set the start-up profile is also missing and so each time you re-boot, you have to unplug and plug in two USB's from the back which I don't have access to then load a profile....the new software is by the new owner of Saitek (Mad cats or something!) which is probably why it is so poor.

Several other things don't work and I still cannot understand why they keep asking me if it is OK to start a bloody prog like my battery back-up prog every time I re-boot!

And another thing.....my NVIDIA control panel does not remember my settings for IL-2 and loses the settings whenever I re-boot! What the hell is going on?

I hate it with a vengeance! and knobs on! I want my money back Gates!

Bounder

[=CfC=Father Ted]

As I understand it Win 7 likes to protect you from yourself and so doesn't let you change .ini files and the like (they get restored to default when you reboot).  The way around this is not to install programs in the default "programs (x86)" folder, but stick them somewhere else.

Sounds like you're slao running into the infamous User Account Control settings.  Again this is  a way to stop you altering/installing stuff that might harm your PC.  Go  "control panel>user accounts and family safety>user accounts>make changes to your user account>change UAC settings.  Lower the setting to "never tell me".  You may have to enter a password.

This should solve a lot of problems.  Fingers crossed!

[=CfC=Bounder]

Thanks Ted....
I was aware of the UAC thingme but was not brave enough to select it!
It has fixed that problem!

The X52 software has been the biggest issue so far. I read threads on the net and discovered that:-
- The X52 does not like being connected to USB3 slots so I changed it to USB2
- The disappearing icons (X52 and rudder pedals) unless you re-plug in after re-boot is fixed again by a thread I found suggesting you change the power management of the two USB slots you are using to "on all the time" in device manager.

Fitz....do your icons remain in the task bar all the time?

In my view the software for Windows XP was far better in that you had an exe icon to click on to activate the stick and rudder. No such thing in 7!

Bounder

PS I'm totally knackered after two days of just trying to get back to where I was with XP and still nowhere near as good!

[=CfC=Bounder]

Things much worse today!

After several hours, the bloody thing tried to boot from my old HDD into Windows XP and stuffed up the whole Windows 7 install!

This happened after flashing the BIOS due to continued USB compatability problems which after three BIOS updates last year were supposed to be fixed!

I'm on my second complete Windows 7 install now.....another 157 updates just finished!

I now have the new BIOS, a separate USB powered hub that I have not needed since Windows 3.1 days, no second hard drive that has all my progs. on it including IL-2, no working X52 or TR/IR due to USB problems.

I have to say that I will never give up a perfectly sound working system for a load of Gates old granny operating system rubbish again!

Unfortunately I have no idea now when I will be online again.

Bounder

[=CfC=Fitz]

I'm really suprised that you're having so many problems Bounder, upgrading from XP to 7 was completely effortless and painless for me. Everything worked straight away (including my X52).

It does sound like a lot of the problems are Mobo related rather than OS related though.....

[=CfC= Ax]

Sorry to hear your Win 7 install woes Bounder. Having previously been an XP die hard, you will be surprised how quickly you will adopt to the new OS, it's rather good and well supported.

Hopefully you have installed the x64 version which overcomes the memory limitations of it's 32bit counterpart?

To be honest, hardware support is pretty top notch given the relative maturity of Win 7. Most HW from the last decade should install and run without any issues other than updating drivers.

BIOS updates are a necessary evil unfortunately; just ensure you enable AHCI for SSDs and your boot priority is set to the correct hard drive within the BIOS.

As Ted correctly stated, try to avoid installing programs in the default "programs (x86)", 'ol Gatesy has ring marked that folder with a little bit of razor wire which can produce some unexpected results.

Persevere my friend, all will become good.

[=CfC=Woof]

Bounder, I feel your pain...but hang in there...

[=CfC=Bounder]

Much appreciate your concern chaps, but nothing, nothing will change my view of Microsoft and their handling of an upgrade from XP to 7.

Vista was a mess and many elderly folk here have been bombarded with severe warnings about the demise of support for XP in April this year.

I just cannot imagine what all these people are going to go through to try and keep all their daily use progs. records and so on.

In an effort to preserve my old stuff, I used Windows Easy Transfer and also installed my old hard disk as the No. 2 drive so as to access all my stuff.

Unfortunately, nobody said you should rename your old Windows XP files to "Old" Windows files!  The BIOS does not accept anything other that a UEFI drive as priority boot.

If you have a problem with your Windows 7 installation on a new drive (I had to flash the BIOS in an attempt to get better USB drivers), it then will boot from Drive 2 and try and boot XP. This completely destroys the 7 installation!

Not only that, but the Windows Boot Manager resets to XP and whatever I do I cannot remove the attempt to start XP if I connect my old drive. Have tried all the remedies including the DOS entries....no fix yet.

Additionally, manufacturers have made it so that many old items of hardware will not use USB 3 connections even though they are supposed to be backwards compatible. A powered USB hub connected to one of 2 USB 2 connectors has failed to help.

I cannot get TR/IR to work with TR/IR4 or 5 anymore. The camera will not switch on and nothing is recognised in the USB hardware table. The internet is full of posts about people having the same trouble when updating from XP to 7 and cameras not being recognised. There appears no cure from Natural Point as they have released their final versions.

All very depressing and I now need a complete break from it all. It was however all of my making. Should have completely ignored Microsoft warnings about the demise of XP and continued with a perfectly good machine.

Have fun.....will hopefully join you sometime when all of this settles down....no idea when that will be.

Bounder

[=CfC=Fitz]

I honestly can't understand why you are having so many problems.

I didn't rename any of my old files and when I accidentally booted from my old XP drive during install, it caused no problems at all with the Win7 install it just carried on on the next re-boot. I've installed on 3 systems now and have had no problems on any of them. I use multiple boots, with old os' older drives and older programs and all work fine.

You could always use 'EasyBCD' to set up a dual boot for your system, I did this on my gaming machine so I could go back to XP if needed but only had cause to for installing a remote access program for work as it was a 16bit installer. Once installed though, it worked fine in Win7. It allows you to boot from any partition on any drive as long as there is a bootable os present. It also allows you to select priority, default boot and can even hide a boot sector.

Also all progs installed on XP worked fine using Win7, just located .exe and launchers and went fine.

No problems with USB 3 on the Asus board, just scales down to USB2 speeds for older peripherals. It sounds more like you have a mobo/Bios issue here. Some manufacturers aren't too bothered about supporting older peripherals. (also note USB2 will run USB2 and USB1 peripherals and USB3 will run USB3 and USB2 peripherals so if you have a USB1 device you'll need a USB2 port)

I'm afraid I can't help with TIR, I have avoided spending any money with them due to their innovation and competition stifling business practices.

I'd also still recommend not sticking with XP unless you want your machine to be hosting a bot or for someone to have stolen all your private materials and credit card data within a few months of the security updates ending....

EDIT - Just checked on the TIR issue and it is because TIR do not (and apparently will not) support USB3, their suggestion is get a pcie usb2 card to carry on using it. So it's a TIR issue and not a windows problem.

Sorry to say it again Bounder but with Bios/boot and USB3 issues it sounds like it's all motherboard issues rather than windows.....

[CFC_Conky]

Sorry Bounder, couldn't help myself.

I feel your pain old bean. When I finally get my new rig I will load up the OS first, nothing else on the drive, then re-load my programs one by one.

Pip, pip,
Conky

[=CfC=Bounder]

Here is an update on what is happening and a reply to Badger who offered to help.

Fitz.......If the chaps had installed the new drive with my old drive and XP working first, I would probably not have had the boot issue. Installing Windows 7 first and then adding a second disk with Windows XP is what causes the problem and also the new UEFI BIOS has an issue with old IDE installs just to add to the problems.

it is all well outside my remit and in the hands of my computer shop who are truly baffled having never had this problem before.

Here is where I am currently:-

All my installation is being done professionally by my local computer shop. The problem occurred when I attached my old hard drive as the number two drive to get access to all my files on XP.
The Windows Boot Manager then tried to load XP as a priority from my second hard disk. It appears that the new MSI BIOS (UEFI) has something to do with it. Changing the boot order makes no difference.

Initially they tried to remove the Windows XP boot manager but the damn thing still tries to boot from XP.
They have now removed all my files onto another disk and will format my old drive and put back the essential files before connecting back in my machine.

Other problems have included USB connectivity. This was addressed in a BIOS update which I now have. However, my TR/IR will not sense through the camera since transferring to Windows 7. Last night the chaps at Natural Point spent 1 hr. on Teamviewer trying to fix it with no success. They even removed all instances of TR/IR from my registry but still cannot get the camera to work.

We have agreed that somehow it has a sensor fault and I need a new camera!
Other problems include losing all my DRM fro Microsoft Music that I bought some years ago. Even transferring the DRM files will not fix it.

I have to say that the transfer mechanism and procedures that Microsoft have in place for getting from XP to Windows 7 are really very poor and in the next six months when people are forced to make the change due to withdrawal of support the internet will be loaded with reports on their failure to provide a simple upgrade system.
In my case, just a simple addition to the Windows Boot Manager for XP to recognise a Windows 7 installation would have prevented most of my problems.

I see at least another week before I can get my machine behaving how it did with XP and even then I think it will be full of problems.

A bitter lesson learnt.....don't touch anything that works well!

Bounder