Installing And Setting Up Windows 7

Photo Source: Clipart.com

There are certain things in Windows 7 that annoy me. First I must say that it looks great, but I was having a lot of trouble with it, getting it to run correctly, as I am sure many of you are, who are installing it as an upgrade from Windows XP. When you upgrade to Windows 7, it doesn't format your hard drive, but only deletes your operating system and installs the new one, leaving everything else on your drive. You must reinstall all your programs again, if you want them to run and there is the rub. I tested my computer with Windows 7 upgrade advisor and found that my machine was more than ready for Windows 7. It was running Windows XP, but has a powerful AMD quad processor running at over 3 mhz, 4 gigs of ram, a pretty good built in graphics card, 2 external hard drives, 2 internal hard drives, a dual monitor setup and a fairly new all in one printer and scanner.

I decided that I could not fall behind two operating systems, since I never went to Vista, so I took the plunge and installed Windows 7 Ultimate. The installation was fairly simple and the part where you connected to the internet was the easiest, it was automatic. I knew that since no problems were detected with any hardware or computer I should have a smooth transition The very first thing that I did before installing anything, was to copy the names of all the software I used that I didn't have disks for. I keep a software library of every program I ever downloaded and the list would enable me to install them again. The ones that are on disks would be easy to install since I also keep a case with all the disks of what I had installed on the computer.

While the computer and devices passed all the tests for being ready for installation of the new operating system, two pieces of software were said to be the cause of minor problems in the future. They were Photoshop Elements 4 and Lotis Smart Suite V9.8. When I installed the new operating system I also downloaded and installed Virtual PC and everything necessary to run Windows XP in the Virtual PC. That is an option with the higher editions of Windows 7. After the installation of the operating system I tried to install the two programs that the advisor said might give me minor problems, but they would not even install. I decided not to reinstall Photoshop Elements since I had other programs that I could use, but I needed Lotus Smart Suite because my database is Approach and I have been using if for years, so I installed it into the Windows XP Virtual Machine and it worked very well. Some older programs do not work well in Windows XP Virtual machine however.

Now my problems began. Windows was running very slow and crashing. It is important not to run more than one or two polling programs and none is even better, except that you need a virus checker going. Polling software keeps checking your computer thus causing the workbench and software to run more slowly. I could see this happening with my installation of Windows 7 as it ran. Things were so bad that the loading symbol seemed to be on the screen all the time and if I pressed a mouse button while it appeared, everything would go white and the computer would freeze. Now it was time to see what was causing all these problems.

Before I start, I would like to say that you would think that by now, there would be something in windows that would let you know if private software was slowing you down. It certainly would not be that hard for something to check your speed and if a piece of software drops you down too far, it could alert you. Anyway I found that a clipboard extender that I was using, was slowing me down greatly and messing up the memory. That had to go. Things got a little better, but I still had some crashes and the icons on the desktop would all get out of order. I had a program that would put them back in place, but found that this program was also contributing to the instability of my machine, so away it went.

At this point I decided to take some steps by altering settings in the operating system to get the most speed out it. Those steps are listed at the end of this article. After all that work and realizing that the machine should now be flying, but wasn't, I knew there was still something wrong. I could see that every few seconds something was stalling the machine and then allowing it to resume. It had to be a polling program that was checking the memory. I only had one left and that was my brand new version of my virus checker that I had used for years. I turned it off and found that I had a very fast machine. A fast machine with no virus checker is not worth much these days, so I looked at a few virus checkers and decided to try Avast, which is not only a virus checker but anti-spyware program that has been getting some great write ups lately and it works fine and has a free edition.

All was not roses however, my machine was fast, but the operating system was causing some of my software to change its privileges This means that I was not allowed to do certain things like re-save a file with the same name when using Dreamweaver, the program that I use to create web pages. I went online and spent hours trying to figure out the problem and all the advice I got was wrong. I was told to check this and that and it was all nonsense. I finally fixed that problem by left clicking on the Dreamweaver Icon, going to the second tab and ticking the box to give me administrative privileges with the program.

One of the things that I found annoying about Windows 7 was that many programs that I installed now required a reboot of the system. They never had when I installed them on Windows XP. This made the installation process more time consuming. Another annoying thing that I still don't know how to fix, that I think is a bug, has to do with burning files to a CD or DVD disk. I burned two files to test the procedure and ever since, every time I reboot, I get a message that there are two files waiting to be burned, but when I open the information balloon it wants me to insert a disk to show me the files. Crazy! Then there is the fiasco with the media center. It won't let me connect my cable box to it because it says that the cable box doesn't have an IR connection, but of course it does, so I had to use different software to watch television. Why would it care if I had a IR connection or not, since you can change channels manually also?

Here are the changes I made to speed up my computer under the Windows 7 operating system:

I went to the start menu, clicked it and when it opened I typed msconfig into the search box at the bottom. This brings up a program that allows you to change some settings. When the program came up I went to the "Startup" tab and unchecked those programs that I didn't want to start right away. An example of this was a dictionary program I have. This way it would only start it if I needed it. The next thing that I did was limit the boot time for the operating system since I only have a single boot system. I did this by clicking the "Boot" tab in the "System Configuration" window in msconfig and setting the “Time Out Box” to 3 seconds. Now I have a fast booting machine.

The next thing that I did, while still in msconfig and in the Boot tab, was press the “Advance Options” button. Then I checked the" Number Of Processors" box and set it to 4, since I have a 4 core processor. Going back to the "Boot" tab I then checked the “No GUI Boot”. For these changes to take place you have to click the “Apply” button. By the way if you have a dual core or triple core processor you would enter the correct amounts into the "Numbers Of Processors" box.

There is a neat feature in Windows 7 called “Aero Theme” and this is all to do with beautiful backgrounds and other features that are nice, but takes a lot of speed away and those with only small graphics capabilities will be stressed to the limit, so this is a good thing to turn off. I hated to lose this and it is probably one of the things that attract many Windows 7 buyers, buy hey, getting a slow pretty machine is not worth as much to me as a faster simpler one. To turn off this feature right click on the desktop while selecting “Personalize” and then click on the “Window Color” tab. Uncheck the Box “Enable Transparency”. The transparency is really nice, but again it is taking up resources. Next click “Open Classic Appearance” properties for more color options. When the window opens just pick a “Standard”, or “Basic Theme” which is just an old type desktop. You can even use a picture.

Windows 7 is just chuck full of visual effects and to speed up the computer we have to get rid of the ones that hog resources and slow us down. Click on “Computer” in the Start Side Menu and select “Properties”. Next click on “Advanced System Settings” and the System Properties Window will open. Select the tab marked “Advanced”. Under “Performance” select “Settings” then “Custom”. Uncheck and only select the last four options. Log off. Reset the computer and log on. The operating system has many different services and most of us do not use all of them. I recommend that any changes made to them be jotted down, just in case you would like to change them again in the future. I have changed them on my machine. Search indexing takes cpu function and there just isn't many of us that search our home computers much, I know that I don't and I have a lot of stuff on mine. Here is how to disable the search indexing. Go to” Computer” in the side start menu and and right click on it. Select “Manage”. Click on “Services and Applications” in the Computer Management window. Next click on “Services”. There is an awful lot of services listed, but if I were you I would only stop the ones that are listed here. When the Windows Search Properties Window opens up, click disabled in “Startup Type”. Next click “Apply” and don't forget to click it after any changes where it appears.

We have to look at features in Windows 7, that we do not need and turn them off. Why run stuff that will hurt our computing experience? Go to the “Control Panel” in the right pane in the start menu. Click on it and go to “Programs and Features”. Proceed to “Turn Windows Features On Or Off” and click on it. A window will open and uncheck anything that you don't use. I unchecked some of the games after expanding the games menu. If you are using a browser other than Internet Explorer, you can uncheck it if you want and so on. Lastly we want the most power we can get for computing and to do this go to the “Control Panel” in the side start menu. Next select “Hardware and Sound”. When the Window opens up select “Power Options”. Select “High Performance”. Reboot your system.

If you have trouble with Windows slowing down after this, look at your virus checker and spyware software, they are probably not ready yet for Windows 7 and you may have to look for an update or different software. Also check any software that uses computer memory such as clip board extenders. Once you get Windows 7 running correctly, it should be a satisfying experience and you might even be able to turn some of that pretty stuff back on and still have enough speed. This depends on what private software you put on the machine.