Linux Format forums

Re: windows 7.....urgh

wyliecoyoteuk — Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:57 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 4:57 pm

Just spent a day doing a bare metal restore of our Windows DC.
Ironically, it is being temporarily resurrected on the hardware intended for our new main Linux server, prior to migration to 2008.
We took delivery of 2 new servers yesterday am, and the 2003 DC fell over with a disk failure this morning.
The Linux people are working fine, most people are accessing our remote mail server using web mail, but the restore to the windows box has been running for nearly 4 hours now, (finally got the new box up and running with 2003 installed just after lunch) and is only half way.

We can do a bare metal restore on our RedHat box in a fraction of that time.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

RedWillow — Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:55 pm

Author: RedWillow

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 3:55 pm

Marrea wrote:

I believe it's caused by update KB971033 - see article at http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/arun-kumar-m/articles/85449.aspx

Thanks for the link, Marrea. Control Panel tells me I have installed KB971033 but so far (touch wood) I haven't been accused of running a pirated copy of Windows. But it took nearly 5 minutes for Control Panel > Programs and Features to find and list my installed updates. This is on a quad-core machine, for Heavens sake! Bored of waiting, I tried to do a bit of web-surfing but Firefox froze on me while Control Panel was doing its glacial stuff.

I realise that Microsoft have the right to do something about rampant piracy, but do they really want to drive all their users towards Linux or MacOS?

Hmm. Would that be a bad thing, though?

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:36 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 2:36 pm

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

Our Windows 7 clients are OK most of the time, apart from the occasional blip, like last week after an update they all announced that they were "illegal copies" on boot up, then after a few minutes, announced that they were now activated!

Yes, I had the self-same thing happen earlier this month on my desktop copy of Windows 7. I received a message telling me "Windows is not genuine. Your computer might be running a counterfeit copy of Windows�. I thought to myself "Don't talk such rot, of course it's genuine." !!

I believe it's caused by update KB971033 - see article at http://www.brighthub.com/hubfolio/arun-kumar-m/articles/85449.aspx

Re: windows 7.....urgh

wyliecoyoteuk — Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:24 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 11:24 pm

Marrea wrote:

I have a fair number of applications installed, photo editing, video editing, music, MS Office, Nero, for example, but I�m just a home user so my needs are fairly basic, nowhere near the amount of stuff you must have!

On the whole, I think Win 7 is a pretty good os.

Yes, I have network MFD utilities, management and network tools for 6 different Manufacturers (that adds up to about 40+ programs alone), Office 2007 (which often seems to be the problem), Database manipulation tools, reporting tools, network tools (such as LDAP and MIB browsers), Web tools, a Remote Telecomms manager, Several Image and DTP packages, Virtualbox and VirtualXPmode (which I'm planning to uninstall, its just too slow).
All in, around 100 applications, not counting any that I test in VMs.
I dread moving this lot to a new PC, but this lappy is nearly 4 years old, and I can't put it off much longer.

Our Windows 7 clients are OK most of the time, apart from the occasional blip, like last week after an update they all announced that they were "illegal copies" on boot up, then after a few minutes, announced that they were now activated!
The bulk of our PCs are still XP, and they tick over OK.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:16 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:16 pm

wyliecoyoteuk wrote:

Asus Terminators have a habit of locking up anyway. (at least the older models)

Mine dates from 2005 and I bought it as a spare machine specifically to use as a multiboot Linux test box. And, yes, it has had a tendency to lock up on occasion but usually with the same distros - SUSE and Fedora. Not had any real problems on that score with others such as Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Zenwalk, SimplyMepis to name but a few.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:07 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 10:07 pm

Dutch_Master wrote:

You need to kill X anyway, as the nVidia driver won't install when it's running

I just use the driver from the SUSE "download.nvidia.com" repo, installing via YaST, followed by a reboot.

But I think next time I do a new SUSE installation, I'll try and sort out the graphics via zypper rather than YaST.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:57 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:57 pm

wyliecoyoteuk

I am currently running Windows 7 on two laptops and one desktop and have not had any crashing problems. One thing I have noticed on the desktop though is that Win 7 can be a bit temperamental with USB devices. Every so often when I plug in an external hard drive or a card reader it fails to recognise them and I have to remove and reinsert the device, sometimes more than once, before it will work. I find this rather irritating. Never used to happen with XP.

I have standby turned off on my laptops too but then I never leave them unused for any length of time so can't say what would happen after a wakeup.

I have a fair number of applications installed, photo editing, video editing, music, MS Office, Nero, for example, but I�m just a home user so my needs are fairly basic, nowhere near the amount of stuff you must have!

On the whole, I think Win 7 is a pretty good os.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Dutch_Master — Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:49 pm

Author: Dutch_Master

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:49 pm

Marrea wrote:

I think the default nouveau driver is the culprit. As soon as I manage to get the nvidia driver installed it�s OK, but it�s a bit difficult to get it installed when the machine keeps freezing!

Boot in Single User Mode. You need to kill X anyway, as the nVidia driver won't install when it's running To get a proper working DE w/o the newvoo rubbish, try the VESA driver in your xorg.conf No 3D, but at least no freezes either

PS: I have the same FX5200 fanless videocard in another system, works a treat!

Re: windows 7.....urgh

wyliecoyoteuk — Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:45 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:45 pm

Asus Terminators have a habit of locking up anyway. (at least the older models)
We have 2 of them, sitting in the "spare parts/skip fodder" section of the IT office. They would often freeze in XP, one was fairly stable on Ubuntu then the PSU died.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:37 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 9:37 pm

Rhakios wrote:

Crumbs! Looks like a rough ride.

No, not really.

I�ve already installed openSUSE 11.4 onto my old HP ze4505ea laptop with no problems (apart from it running slightly slowly at times - to be expected I suppose on a laptop of that age).

The installation I refer to above was today onto my multiboot Asus Terminator TR-2 desktop with a GeForce FX 5200 graphics card. I�ve had problems before with Fedora locking up on the Asus too. I think the default nouveau driver is the culprit. As soon as I manage to get the nvidia driver installed it�s OK, but it�s a bit difficult to get it installed when the machine keeps freezing!

Re: windows 7.....urgh

wyliecoyoteuk — Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:32 pm

Author: wyliecoyoteuk

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 8:32 pm

Win7 regularly crashes on my Dell Latitude Laptop.
For example, if it goes into standby (even though I have turned that off, it still does it after 30 minutes or so without use) It always crashes after wakeup.
It sometimes crashes when I plug the power lead in, and sometimes when I plug an extra monitor in.

And yes it always has the latest patches installed, it is just buggy.

I must admit that I do have a LOT of applications installed, but they are all required for my job.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Rhakios — Wed Mar 30, 2011 7:39 pm

Author: Rhakios

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 7:39 pm

Marrea wrote:

os? not win 7 (never had that crash on me yet), but openSUSE 11.4

Crumbs! Looks like a rough ride. Considering I've done one upgrade from 11.3 on real hardware and two installs (32-bit and 64-bit) on VMWare without any problems, I can only offer sympathy, rather than commiseration.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

Marrea — Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:30 pm

Author: Marrea

Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:30 pm

Robert109 wrote:

update,crash,crash,update,restart open itunes,freezes force shut down, update, install game, update,restart,freeze

Hmm, yes, I know what you mean...

Installation fails before completion, freezes, force reboot, installation completes, wrong resolution, can't see bottom of screen as a result, need to get nvidia driver, three more freezes while trying to do this, three more forced reboots, eventually get nvidia driver installed, everything now hunky dory.

os? not win 7 (never had that crash on me yet), but openSUSE 11.4

Re: windows 7.....urgh

caf4926 — Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:33 am

Author: caf4926

Posted: Mon Mar 28, 2011 6:33 am

Really folks. It should be possible to multiboot Ubuntu and Win7 without too much trouble. Installing Winders can be problematic and certainly time consuming. I don't use WInders myself, but I have to work with all OS's and many multiboot situations. It's really not as bad as you make out.

Re: windows 7.....urgh

bobthebob1234 — Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:38 am

Author: bobthebob1234

Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2011 2:38 am

I found that if you install anti virus before going on the internet or plugging in any external media (quite a feat...) then it is usable for about 2-3hrs (the time it takes for me to get bored playing the game I am playing).

However steam seems to work only on full moons.

Oh and side rant:
Win 7 corrupted my user file a while back so I had to make a new user and I tried to copy over my save games but it didn't work