Anyone gone back to w7?

Elevon · 9 May 2014 at 00:28

Draeger said:
Anyone on 8.1 having issues with cold boots being affected by having Avast AV installed? Seems to be an issue, there's discussion on it over on the avast forums.

No issues at all with Avast on my Win8.1 laptop(over a year with Avast on that) ,my other Win8.1 PC has AVG again no issues.

I'll say Avast program got updated recently (2018 version).

OspreyO · 9 May 2014 at 00:30

Same here. Avast on 8 and 8.1 no problem. Whats the cold boot issue?

Rroff · 9 May 2014 at 00:33

OspreyO said:
A few maybe, I can't see a lot. Are they things a regular user will use daily?

Can you be specific?

TBH its been a bit of a crash course over the last few days as I've not really done anything other than superficial interaction with the OS before now and I can't think of any one specific example.

Not saying stuff is exactly bad it just feels like often unnecessary changes from Windows 7 and then you get stuff that seems completely random like the quick access toolbar.

Elevon · 9 May 2014 at 00:33

Rroff said:
Some of the Linux distros can look nice but I've not seen any that can replace Windows 7 for general use and convenience - back in the day I built my own custom version of the x-window system (as in coded in major features, etc.) from the ground up on Debian and integrated fluxbox, etc. etc. while its nice if you've got a specific desktop use in mind I still find even the latest distros quite clunky as general OSes even if they look nice.

EDIT: Was nice for stuff like a super slim Debian install for specific application use with a minimalistic GUI and remote management via custom usermin/webmin control panels.

To be honest I only really use Windows for gaming,I can get by quite happily with Linux for virtually everything else,I like the way it installs all drivers including my wireless driver and even useful software like Libre Office,Firefox etc,with Windows you have to do it manually as you know.

I normally use LTS version(long term support which is normally 4 to 5 years minimum) before a new version is released,security is less of an issue on Linux as well.
Another great thing about a lot of Linux distros is try it on USB or CD without installation(you can still connect to the net for browsing etc) so you can try different distros to see what you like.

Getting back to Win8.1 all I can say is they (I've more then one) have been solid,no crashes,rock stable,fast etc,one was an upgrade from 8 to 8.1 and the other a clean 8.1 install(my HD died so did a clean 8.1 install).

Draeger · 9 May 2014 at 08:39

OspreyO said:
Same here. Avast on 8 and 8.1 no problem. Whats the cold boot issue?

Seems to be related to reseting power management settings to default, which was throwing an error up and not allowing you to do so. I believe that has been sorted now but lots of people are finding that when they boot their PC from cold, the Windows 8 blue logo appears and the little icon whirs around indicating the system is starting then just before the desktop should appear the screen goes black. Monitor is still on as is PC, fans spinning etc but the desktop either never comes up or takes between 5 and 20 mins to appear. A lot of folk have uninstalled Avast to find that this action completely cures the system of the issue.

However......I've just uninstalled Avast and I'm still having cold boot issues as above. Next step for me is to boot to safe mode and try fixmbr from a cmd prompt which appears to be a solution of the Microsoft website.

HazardO · 9 May 2014 at 09:30

I made the jump from win7 to 8.1 and won't be going back. I don't however use TIFKAM, and use Stardock's object desktop suite to make it more friendly.

Elevon · 9 May 2014 at 13:57

Draeger said:
Seems to be related to reseting power management settings to default, which was throwing an error up and not allowing you to do so. I believe that has been sorted now but lots of people are finding that when they boot their PC from cold, the Windows 8 blue logo appears and the little icon whirs around indicating the system is starting then just before the desktop should appear the screen goes black. Monitor is still on as is PC, fans spinning etc but the desktop either never comes up or takes between 5 and 20 mins to appear. A lot of folk have uninstalled Avast to find that this action completely cures the system of the issue.

However......I've just uninstalled Avast and I'm still having cold boot issues as above. Next step for me is to boot to safe mode and try fixmbr from a cmd prompt which appears to be a solution of the Microsoft website.

I've seen some report this issue back in Dec/Jan,however there has been a few updated versions of Avast since then so pretty sure it has been fixed by now.

I've never had that issue and I do cold boots every day or so.

linktoinsanity · 9 May 2014 at 15:40

I run avast on my Windows 7 Main PC, Windows 7 laptop and Windows 8.1 spare PC. All 3 run with no issues.

Adrianr · 9 May 2014 at 16:39

ocmanus said:
Even with the Win8 launcher I never saw what the problem was and why people were up in arms about it. Once I became used to it - plain sailing.

I've always launched anything in the same way - Hit the windows key and start typing. Works the same in both so as long as they're Desktop apps it's no different really. At the speed I type I genuinely don't think short of telepathy there is a faster way of opening programs, it seems to get to the one I want in 2 or 3 key strokes every time.

The only annoying thing is metro apps. I like to be able to cycle through things in the desktop space always with an idea of what else is going on. I don't like being fully detached from the OS with full screen apps. I haven't tried 8.1 yet but it sounds like there is/will be something in there regarding this?

Draeger · 9 May 2014 at 17:27

I can only assume the Avast issue has been fixed in that case. I've ran bootrec.exe /fixmbr to see if that does the trick.

Nasher · 9 May 2014 at 19:19

I'm on 8.1 using classic shell with a few other custom tweaks. It looks and feels like windows 7, but with the windows 8.1 core which does perform a bit better

I have to use server 2012 at work and hate the metro UI (along with the buggy pile of crap that is MS system center 2012, which I have to wrestle with every day). It's not nice to use at all, especially on a damn server! Oh well...Linux for the next tech refresh I think

Rroff · 9 May 2014 at 19:42

Elevon said:
Getting back to Win8.1 all I can say is they (I've more then one) have been solid,no crashes,rock stable,fast etc,one was an upgrade from 8 to 8.1 and the other a clean 8.1 install(my HD died so did a clean 8.1 install).

Only crash/BSOD I've had so far is due to some 3rd party camera software malfunctioning - seems even though it was designed for Windows 8 it doesn't work very well with the metro UI = BSOD but thats (mostly) due to 3rd party development problems not MS.

8 does seem fast and stable mostly, my experience of it on higher end hardware has shown very little difference between 7 and 8 but on lower end hardware 8 at times is miles ahead on performance.

PhysicsMan94 · 9 May 2014 at 19:51

Is it worth upgrading to Windows 8.1 on my desktop now or should I just wait for the next iteration (Windows 9 I guess)? I hear that 8.1 handles multi-threaded applications better than 7 and performance has been increased a fair amount across the whole OS.

Not sure whether to upgrade or not, I guess having high end components means that I probably wouldn't see much of an increase in performance...

Glaucus · 9 May 2014 at 20:08

I wish we knew more about win9, like when it's going to be out.
I need some more licenses but don't want to pay above £20 or what ever it was at launch.

We have no idea when it's out so it'll be a long wait, as it's generally a year after the developer preview is released, and no sign of that yet. Which is normally released at build and well there was nothing about it at this years build.

willhub · 10 May 2014 at 00:16

To me Windows 8.1 is a faster version of Windows 7 with improved start bar, I've got a start button and a full screen start menu, a start menu that is able to be well organised into what I find better than the old start menu.

I don't see the problem with Windows 8.

Windows 7 will be the new Windows XP, everyone will stick with it until Windows 10 or something and it'll just keep on happening.

Everyone dislikes change, or most people do anyway.

I've updated to Windows 8.1, all settle down it seems a bit faster, from a cold boot my laptop is booting up in about 5 seconds!!

Rroff · 10 May 2014 at 00:25

PhysicsMan94 said:
Is it worth upgrading to Windows 8.1 on my desktop now or should I just wait for the next iteration (Windows 9 I guess)? I hear that 8.1 handles multi-threaded applications better than 7 and performance has been increased a fair amount across the whole OS.

Not sure whether to upgrade or not, I guess having high end components means that I probably wouldn't see much of an increase in performance...

Performance wise not sure you'd see a huge difference on the 4770K - I had a play with dual booting on my 4820K and didn't really see any significant gains in general use or gaming - very slightly faster booting but I could probably gain that same reduction in time with a totally clean install of 7.

However on low to mid-range hardware (and I'd include i5s in there) there does seem to be some worthwhile performance gains playing around on an old core 2 duo laptop a blank install of 7 v 8 and 8 boots up in half the time and seems to have much less lag from the slow old HDD in there.

EDIT: That said the person I'm ressurecting the laptop for is adamant they don't want windows 8 so it'll end up with 7 on there anyhow.

D.P. · 10 May 2014 at 02:52

If I have to use windows I still use XP. Luckily I Farley have to go deon that path but XP sp2 was definitely the highlight of all MS OSs. Seriously, they should just give up

Draeger · 10 May 2014 at 18:45

Oh noes!!!!

Silly mistake made today. I tried bootrec.exe /fixmbr from an elevated cmd prompt this morning but it made no difference to my cold reboot issue with the desktop screen not appearing. Having Googled it, there could be a number of reasons for it happening so I decided to see if I could 'roll back' the installation and see if that worked. Fumbled around in the settings etc and found 'Refresh your PC'. I assumed that would leave all my programs and settings untouched. Didn't read the last line of a warning message telling me that anything I'd installed from a disc or web site would be removed. Doh!!!

Ended up rebooting to find MS Office 2013, Adobe CS6, Windows Live Mail etc had all been removed. After I had picked myself back up off the floor I bit the bullet and decided to use PartedMagic to secure erase the SSD and go for a fresh install. Thought I might as well since I'd only been running 8.1 for a couple of days so data loss wasn't really an issue as I'd made backups of everything previously. Lesson learned though - 'Refresh PC' isn't what it sounds like (to me at least) at first glance. Won't make that mistake again. :cool:

MatteH Oxford · 10 May 2014 at 19:09

willhub said:
To me Windows 8.1 is a faster version of Windows 7 with improved start bar, I've got a start button and a full screen start menu, a start menu that is able to be well organised into what I find better than the old start menu.

Basically my experience too, once I got used to it. I'll never go back to 7.

JediFragger · 11 May 2014 at 09:19

I needed a re-install so went back to Win7 (as I was only using the desktop parts of Win8 anyhow!!) and it's great, like a breath of fresh air :cool:

Just glad it's got support til 2020, we might need it!!!