Windows 7

[RossRoy]

Is it possible the fact it is emulating IDE instead of running in native AHCI is slowing it down?

[Najemikon]

Could be, though I wouldn't have expected it to make a huge difference. Not worked with Windows 7 much yet though.

[Touti]

Emulating IDE ?  Never heard of that............why does a sata drive/bus/controller emulates IDE ?

[RossRoy]

Emulating IDE ?  Never heard of that............why does a sata drive/bus/controller emulates IDE ?

Mostly for compatibility with older OS.. Try installing Windows XP if you don't have a SATA floppy disk driver or your motherboard doesn't support IDE-mode

[Touti]

Do you mean that your mobo doesn't have an IDE controller ?  And can you disable the emulation in the bios to see if you get a better score ?

[RossRoy]

Do you mean that your mobo doesn't have an IDE controller ?  And can you disable the emulation in the bios to see if you get a better score ?

I do have an IDE controller, but it's sort of an add-on card, without a card.

I tried switching to AHCI mode.. but I'd have to reinstall Windows, and I'm not ready to do that at this time. (also, it won't boot the DVD somehow to allow me to do a repair while in AHCI mode)

[RossRoy]

Who the heck schedules a backup to run at 19h00 on Sunday evening? I do use my computer at that time!

(it is the defauulWin7 does its backups that I did configure, but never noticed the actual time of the backup)

[Touti]

Was it 7 PM when you installed your windows ?  I've had that problem with my CA Antivirus.  On installation it schedules a scan to take place at the same time once a week.

[RossRoy]

Can't remember but I don't think so.. I installed first thing in the morning, so I doubt it would've taken me until 7PM to find the backup function

Scratch that! It would seem my recollection of the events is flawed! I installed on a Friday evening. Install probably completed around 11PM. Still a far away from 7PM on a Sunday!

[Touti]

Good thinking! Unfortunately, it didn't work..

BUT!

I had an accidental Eureka moment! "Made for Windows 7" applications have that little menu on the tasbar you r can access by right-clicking? Guess what I found in that menu? Yes! A "Manage USB Device" entry! But at that moment, the application already scanned for a scanner and didn't find any.. so no help.. Right?

Wrong! Once you've run a XP-mode application, the virtual machine keeps running in the background, even after you close the app (I don't know for how long though).. that makes it remember the USB attachement setting!  

+1 Microsoft

Seb I think I got something related to that just a minute ago.  This morning I ran an application in XP Mode.  The last time I had used XP mode I had it shut down and this morning I had just turned on my computer so I know there was no older XP Mode session left opened.

Did what I had to do and close the app at around 9:00-9:30 this morning.  Just a few minutes ago I got a popup with the following message.

Virtual environment for launching applications has been closed
Start a new application to restart the virtual environment.

It looks like you had it right, some kind of "Launching environment" is initialized when starting an app in XP mode and remains for future executions.  I've never seen that message before so I don't know if it timed out or if it was stopped due to a crash or maybe to free up resources.

[Touti]

As I posted a few weeks ago this was my Windows index.  Now I'm an old programmer and far from being a hardware expert so maybe the more tech savvy people here can explain this.

That 4.7 performance index was with a 2-3 year old nVidia Geforce 7600GS graphics card, as you can see it was the slowest component in my machine.

Last night I replaced it with a much more powerful ASUS EAH4350 with 512 Megs, native HDMI and 1080p support and more.  The specs on this card make it look like it would really beat my nVidia by light years.

Except that it doesn't look like it does.............................my performance index on the graphics card went from 4.7 to 3.8......................

How can this be ?

[lyonsden5]

I FAR from an expert but I do see something that may be the cause. The "memoryu interface" on the old one was 128-bit. On the new one it's 64-bit. 

I'm having my own hardware issues with Win& (just got a new machine this week). If I can't fine the answer I may be cak here for input as well. 

[RossRoy]

Eric, did you install the latest drivers? Or the ones that came on CD with the card? Or let Windows install its own?

There may also be a conflict with leftover bits and pieces of nVidia drivers..

[Touti]

Seb I had some problems with the drivers and no, I didn't uninstall the nVidia drivers first.  After booting windows installed some drivers which I tried to replace with those from the CD but during the process I got a BSOD and windows went to memory dump mode.

Once it rebooted everything seemed fined and I had the ATI control panel so I ran the performance index check and it went down to 3.7.  Then I installed the lastest drivers from ATI (released only 3 days ago), ran the check again it went up to 3.8.  Strangely, Windows Update wants to install a driver update which was released 9/30/2009 and is 2 months older than the one I have now.

To say the truth, I'm not really concerned by the number itself and the fact it went down. What worries me is that I ordered a HD-DVD drive on eBay for only 50$.  At that price I figured it's worth it since I get buy quite a few HD-DVD movies a 3$ and 4$ a piece but now I wonder if I'll be able to watch them.

[Tom]

I am a year late to the party. A week ago I got a new work PC (Intel Core i7) with Windows 7. Until now I only had experience with it on a test PC.
I feared that I would very much miss WinXP (and the Windows classic look), which I am very much accustomed to. But I must admit, that already one week working with the new system, I'm very much liking it. The new taskbar was the thing I had the most reservation about, but it quickly grew on me.

The comic panel I had posted in this thread is a big understatement. I wouldn't hesitate now to also use it on my private PC, if I had a faster one (I am still using a single-core notebook).