Windows 7 story

[mac]

I've been reading Fred Langa's newsletters since back in the late 90's and followed him to Windows Secrets. I also read his daily blog posts. The post he made Tuesday morning is hilarious!

It's me.I'm writing this Monday night on my backup laptop. My main PC is down. My main laptop is down. My three old experimental/sacrificial systems are down. Worse, so is my brand new one.Oh, and I cooked a 1TB external drive along the way, too.The Tech Gods must be angry.It's the outcome of a series of separate simultaneous experiments--- a hardware upgrade and cannibalization, moving from aging XP-based hardware to new Vista-based hardware; a quiet-cooling experiment with a new "bare bones" experimental system; and a test of the Windows 7 beta.Windows 7 was the worst of it. It ate a hard drive. Mangled the boot sector so badly--- but subtly!--- that I couldn't reinstall Vista or XP: their setup disks alarmingly reported "No hard drive found" even though the BIOS and other OSes *could* see the hard drive.Lots of manual tweaking; lots of pointy-head, pocket-protector excursions (including having to a do a full-disk Linux format and install---Kubuntu 8.10, if you're interested--- as part of the recovery process).

You can read the rest, and his followup post from this morning here.Funny stuff!

[Tushman]

I gave up on his newsletters several years ago. He seldom wrote anything of interest or substance that really interested me and at that time, I was paying more attention to Scot's newsletters. I didn't feel compelled to keep up with both newsletters; obviously the latter won.

Edited January 14, 2009 by Tushman

[Guest LilBambi]

Fred Langa is now part of Brian Livingston's WindowsSecrets newsletter.I sacrificed my computer to the Win7 Beta. See the other thread on Windows 7 for the details. I think I will wait to see it when the bugs are worked out.

[zlim]

Thanks for posting. I've followed Fred from his newsletter, to WindowsSecrets to his motorcycle trip during his divorce and now out of retirement and writing for WindowsSecrets again.I was going to partition my 120GB hd on my main/newest destop and try windows 7 on it BUT if it got the better of Fred, I'm not going to try it because he knows oceans more than me.

[striker]

Thanks for posting Mac!Something to read.

[Guitar Man]

A beta OS is just a test bed for guinea pigs like us plebes. But when I guy like Fred Langa manages to munge all his systems, I begin to wonder if it's time he unplugged his computer, resumed his "retirement" and got back on that motorcycle to continue his tour around the States...

[Robert]

I installed W7 three days ago with no major problems. I like it well enough that last night I formatted the drive again and installed the 64 bit version. It detected and installed the video card on it's own. I have an add on Soundblaster card that refused to install because their software detected a pre-XP computer and stopped. I found some sort of compatibility mode in the W7 menu and told it to treat it like it was a Vista program and then it installed fine.I think they made it insanely complicated for casual home users or even business users, but it looks like it will be a fine OS for power users. I don't plan on buying it until gaming computers require Directx 10 and more than 2 gigs ram. I think Fred was just having a bad day.

[goretsky]

Hello,I wonder if the 1TB hard disk drive that failed was a Seagate ST31000340AS with the SD15 firmware. If so, it might not have been a software problem.Regards,Aryeh Goretsky

[Gary]

I installed W7 three days ago with no major problems. I like it well enough that last night I formatted the drive again and installed the 64 bit version. It detected and installed the video card on it's own. I have an add on Soundblaster card that refused to install because their software detected a pre-XP computer and stopped. I found some sort of compatibility mode in the W7 menu and told it to treat it like it was a Vista program and then it installed fine.I think they made it insanely complicated for casual home users or even business users, but it looks like it will be a fine OS for power users. I don't plan on buying it until gaming computers require Directx 10 and more than 2 gigs ram. I think Fred was just having a bad day.

I used to like Fred Langa but he has changed.

[jolphil]

I wonder if the 1TB hard disk drive that failed was a Seagate ST31000340AS with the SD15 firmware. If so, it might not have been a software problem.

I was thinking the same thing when I read his post..I looked on the New Egg reviews for that drive and there was 23% unsatisfactory comments..Thats compared to 2 to 5% for most other drives..Thats a lot...jolphil

[Guest LilBambi]

Likely have to open the external drive enclosure to be sure if it's not posted on the enclosure, but definitely a possibility.

[b2cm]

Looks like a bad or unsupported hard drive or a controller/cabling issue. Definitely not a boot sector problem. If the problem was the MBR, the partitioning was probably non-standard (ie more than 4 primary partitions) that Windows 7 mishandled. But that would not result to a 'no hard drive found' error.

[patio]

I begin to wonder if it's time he unplugged his computer, resumed his "retirement" and got back on that motorcycle to continue his tour around the States...

[Guest LilBambi]

OK, I think we have had enough bashing on Fred Langa, don't you think?I hope none of you run into hardware that causes your system to crash when testing the Win7 Beta. I really do.Here's a bit more from Fred on that Tuesday posting:

OK, OK. A brief moment of seriousness:Win7 *is* a beta--- unfinished software. Bugs are normal in betas; that's why it's unfinished software. A beta test is designed to see what needs fixing before the final "gold" code is delivered.And I was trying it not in a careful lab setting but on an daily-use machine (yes, the data was all backed up and safe). I knew the risks, especially of tossing beta software into the maelstrom of full-bore daily use, with third party software and all the bells and whistles going.My use also included a third-party boot manager; I suspect that the unfinished Win7 installation code fought with the boot manager, or vice versa, and flipped some key and hard-to-unflip bit in a boot or disk ID record. This is an interesting factoid, but not a condemnation of the Win7 software. It's beta!Still, it qualifies as a self-inflicted injury. My use of the beta verged on abuse; and having three major experiments going at once was, well, tempting fate. Look Ma! No hands! Urk.....I know it's de rigeur to parrot the same old tired jokes about Microsoft, but Win7 really does look pretty good. The UI, based on Vista, is very polished and slick. Even in beta, parts of the OS were noticeably faster, too.

[Guest LilBambi]

Here's the posting I just put on Fred Langa's blog:

You aren't the only one who had a boot sector fried Fred. Join the party.But as you say, it's only beta. I was able to get all my data back when I reinstalled my old Win2K on a different hard drive and used the old drive as a slave. If it were a real invalid partition, like it claimed, I would have had to use some read only/partition recovery tool to get to the data. But I didn't. The data was all there and fine as long as I wasn't trying to boot from that drive.I am not at all happy that MS didn't make sure about something as basic as the boot sector was right before sending it out the door as a Beta. And why did they have to much with it that badly in the first place?!Otherwise at least according to my Jim, who went in with a critical eye (being a Linux user), and successfully installed it in Virtual Box, Parallels and twice natively on two machines.His only complaint was hardware detection for his very standard Intel network card and SoundBlaster Live sound card. However, at least in Virtual Box he was able to use the Addons and then Microsoft had a driver for his Sound Card using an updated AC'97 driver.

[zlim]

Add that to his getting older.Personally, I've discovered since I turned 60, my memory is worse and I can't multi-task like I used to. I make very sure that if I'm doing something important, I concentrate on that thing only; otherwise I lose my train of thought and who knows what stupid thing I'll do.

[Gary]

Add that to his getting older.Personally, I've discovered since I turned 60, my memory is worse and I can't multi-task like I used to. I make very sure that if I'm doing something important, I concentrate on that thing only; otherwise I lose my train of thought and who knows what stupid thing I'll do.

I thought I was the only one like that.

[FuzzButt]

Moving back on the Windows 7 topic. I can say that it seems to run great in VMware once you install the VMware tools after you have 7 up and running. Even my Audigy 2 sound card is working. Looks for now like it might be a decent upgrade from XP as long as they don't mess it up from here.

[Guest LilBambi]

Moving back on the Windows 7 topic. I can say that it seems to run great in VMware once you install the VMware tools after you have 7 up and running. Even my Audigy 2 sound card is working. Looks for now like it might be a decent upgrade from XP as long as they don't mess it up from here.

Last night Jim said he got Parallels working with the network card and sound card through an addon -- the addon gave Win7 what it needed to see the sound and network cards. He still doesn't have the sound working natively though.

[FuzzButt]

My sound and network were both "yellow" in device manager until I installed the VMware tools. I don't know how Parallels will work though. Either way my experience with it so far has found a little bit of a bug. I found the network adapter "disabled" after I installed Kaperski's AV and firewall. I had to figure out where to go to re-enable it. I have very limited Vista experience since I have been avoiding it like the plague. I did run the Beta version of Vista a few years ago and can say that I like 7 quite a bit better. I setup the virtual partition for 25GB and am allotting 1500MB of system memory to it along with 2 of my 4 processor cores. If things go well I might allocate a spare PC I have sitting out in my shed for use running 7. It's a Prescott P4 and should be able to handle it with out issue. I might even run it out in my garage and use my KVM extender to bring the peripherals to my desktop.

[Urmas]

I setup the virtual partition for 25GB and am allotting 1500MB of system memory to it along with 2 of my 4 processor cores.

Good for you. I've given it 20GB & 1GB in VBox; host machine is a 2.2 Athlon 3000+ (IDE disk), and it's struggling quite a bit; the machine is running 3-4°C hotter than with any Linux virtual machine. It's "shaving" the disk all the time. Bear that in mind with your "Prescott install".With VBox (2.0.6), the default [PCnet] network adapter doesn't work, Intel PRO/1000 MT Desktop works. Additions need to be installed in "Vista compatibility mode". Sound works, but quality sucks. VirtualBox 2.1.2 is out, though... will investigate. EDIT: VBox 2.1.2 installed. Upgraded the guest additions [no need for "Vista compatibility mode" any more] and had a "Windows Moment" after the reboot; display was garbled. 2nd reboot scared the gremlins away, though. PCnet adapter is working now.

[Guest LilBambi]

I let my Jim know about that. :thumbsup:Although don't know if he will upgrade it. He said he got it all working in previous VB (sound is definitely choppy as you noted earlier) ... All but his printers (parallel printers which apparently still no support for parallel ports in Win7).I might try new VB on my WinXP Pro box and install there if I have enough memory to make it worthwhile ... have to check on that. But too many other things are having to take priority right now.

[striker]

Here's what Scot thinks about it:http://blog.scotsnewsletter.com/2009/01/18...-not-impressed/

Add that to his getting older.Personally, I've discovered since I turned 60, my memory is worse and I can't multi-task like I used to. I make very sure that if I'm doing something important, I concentrate on that thing only; otherwise I lose my train of thought and who knows what stupid thing I'll do.

I know, putting the kettle with cooked water in the fridge! (I've got this copylefted and unregistered ) Welcome in the family!

[Urmas]

All but his printers (parallel printers which apparently still no support for parallel ports in Win7).

Host OS? Linux, Windows? Are the printers connected to the host puter? No matter, really... the BIG question is: are there drivers available for those printers in Win7?Goes like this:Make sure that the "designated printer" is open for sharing. The info you'll need is 1. the ip addy of the puter it's connected to and 2. its name.In Win7 [guest OS]: Control panel --> Devices and printers --> Add a printer --> Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printerIt'll search for available printers... in vain. Choose "The printer I want isn't listed". Fill in the addy/name info... hit "Next":If there are no drivers for Win7 available (as is the case here with HP psc 750), you'll hit the wall:Bummer. The 750 was connected to the host puter (Ubuntu)... but no worries: You can try your luck with a generic driver (in fact, in my case it works C+/B- sorta way), but luckily I have a more recent all-in-one connected to another puter (also Ubuntu). The right driver is available, and whaddayaknow:And here we are:

[Guest LilBambi]

Thanks Urmas. I don't know if that's how my Jim did it or not. Will definitely pass on the info just in case. :' />

[FuzzButt]

7 found my printer just fine. Of course it is a network printer not attached to any PC. Even in XP I have to make a port for it before it will work. 7 however found its IP address just about instantly and then even found the correct driver for it.

[FuzzButt]

I think my only complaint so far is I use a MX700 mouse from Logitech and the way VMware emulates it is as a 2 button wheel mouse. I keep finding my self using the 5th button to go back all the time.

[Guest LilBambi]

My Jim said he knew about using it as network printer, but he doesn't want to use samba. He says he doesn't need the printer in Win7.

[FuzzButt]

I've spent just about every free moment and about 5 blank DVD's trying to get 7 installed directly on may spare PC. I even tried it on a 8GB USB Flash Drive. Nothing I could do would get the PC be able to boot off the DVD. The ISO worked fine using VMware but no amount of trying could get it to work off of the DVD. And you cannot install from a live windows XP pc. So now I'm back to pounding my favorite Linux distro back on to that PC.

[Catmoves]

Fred Langa is now part of Brian Livingston's WindowsSecrets newsletter.I sacrificed my computer to the Win7 Beta. See the other thread on Windows 7 for the details. I think I will wait to see it when the bugs are worked out.

Brian Livingston's newsletter is nothing like Fred's old publication. It is full, full, full of advertising (I pay for it, why should I have to read ads?) I'm waiting for Mr. Langa to start up again.