Windows 7 - why did I bother?

[Smurfin]

I've had windows 7 installed for a couple of weeks now, and right now I'm wishing I hadn't bothered. My self-built PC has run like a dream for the last 15 months on Vista, as soon as I've installed windows 7 I'm just getting increasingly frustrated.

Right from day one under win7 internet is slow. I can't understand why, but for example I can't even stream a 320p embedded YouTube video on the forums without it pausing every 10 seconds. I'm on 10mb Virgin broadband and this simply shouldn't be the case. I'm also finding YouTube videos freezing, they get to a certain point and then nothing

Not only that, but in the last few days my HD-DVD/BluRay drive has been giving me problems, with AnyDVD taking up to 3 minutes to recognise a disc, tsmuxer crashing, my computer crashing when I right click on the BD drive. The list goes on and on, and it's getting to the point where I'm thinking of re-installing Vista

If anything windows 7 is slower than Vista. With 8GB of RAM, vista speed has never really been an issue...I swear boot up time is longer on win7

Is it just me?

[Blotch]

You shouldn't be having these problems, if Vista ran well, then Win 7 should run better! I'm also on Virgin 10MB connection and youtube runs fine here even at 720p - running on Acer 5920G laptop with 8600GS graphics card. Perhaps some drivers need changing, have you checked device manager for yellow triangles, if none present then maybe change your graphics driver anyway...have you de-fragged after installing all the Win 7 updates and programs on your PC?

Also it may help others to answer better if you can you provide the spec of your PC - processor, memory, graphics....

[Coop995]

Just a question, are you running Internet Explorer 8 by any chance?

Take a look at this comparison; it's not perfect but may throw some light on the performance issues seen in IE8:

Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked : Introduction

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by Blotch

You shouldn't be having these problems, if Vista ran well, then Win 7 should run better! I'm also on Virgin 10MB connection and youtube runs fine here even at 720p - running on Acer 5920G laptop with 8600GS graphics card. Perhaps some drivers need changing, have you checked device manager for yellow triangles, if none present then maybe change your graphics driver anyway...have you de-fragged after installing all the Win 7 updates and programs on your PC?

Also it may help others to answer better if you can you provide the spec of your PC - processor, memory, graphics....

I'm running a Quad Core 6600 with 8GB RAM, with a Radeon HD 4670 GFX card, can't see how it's a GFX issue though? Just opened device manager, right clicked on the BD drive, and instantly device manager says "not responding"...2 minutes later it finally brings up the details but there's a massive delay? The issue seems to be linked to this drive (LG GGC-H20L).

I've not defragged but then I've not actually installed hardly anything on this drive since I installed (windows is installed on its own partition, and it was a clean install).

I'm a wee bit stumped.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by Coop995

Just a question, are you running Internet Explorer 8 by any chance?

Take a look at this comparison; it's not perfect but may throw some light on the performance issues seen in IE8:

Web Browser Grand Prix: The Top Five, Tested And Ranked : Introduction

I use firefox

[Blotch]

Looks like a few folk have had issues with that drive and Windows 7...

Google

Worth reading some of the links, there's mention of various drivers and different motherboard drivers etc....there's also mention of setting up IDE Enhanced Mode for the drive.

...but according to MS that drive is supported under Win 7...

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/com...H20L&os=32-bit

[Smurfin]

Well it gets worse BD drive not working at all now - tried reinstalling Win7 and the drive won't even recognise the disc to reinstall. I've gone into the BIOS to set it to boot from the BD drive but it just ignores it. I've no idea what I'm going to do but I'm severely hacked off about this

If I right click on the BD drive icon in my computer, it automatically goes to "not responding".....my PC is pretty screwed without a working optical drive!

Any ideas?

[Smurfin]

Any help would be appreciated here folks - as of this morning, my computer doesn't even show an optical drive I'm at a loss what to do...

[jmbrailsford]

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Any help would be appreciated here folks - as of this morning, my computer doesn't even show an optical drive I'm at a loss what to do...

Hi,

wipe and start again?

I am now running Win7 Ultimate up from MCE 2005 and it's miles better with no issues at all so far. Did you install over Vista or format first then clean install?

Mike.

[Stiggy]

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Any help would be appreciated here folks - as of this morning, my computer doesn't even show an optical drive I'm at a loss what to do...

Are you using the internal Windows 7 drivers, or have you downloaded drivers for your components? Something is very screwed up.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by jmbrailsford

Hi,

wipe and start again?

I am now running Win7 Ultimate up from MCE 2005 and it's miles better with no issues at all so far. Did you install over Vista or format first then clean install?

Mike.

Stupid question but how do you wipe and start again on the partition where the OS is installed? I installed over Vista, but it was a clean install i.e. the partition was wiped.

[mrbobc]

are there no firmware updates you can try to apply?

ive just had the issue of discs not being recognised and it solved the problem updating the firmware, albeit this was a dvdrw drive.

just out of interest, is your pc oc'ed? installing windows on an oc'ed pc thats stable for most everything else is not advisable for installing an OS. if you are i'd set everything back to stock and reinstall W7. not likely but tohught i should ask.

must admit though im having problems i didnt have with vista or even W7rc that im now having with W7 hp.

[Smurfin]

Hi

No, my machine is running on stock settings, no overclocking.

I was running the latest firmware until it all stopped working. Just been through a process of uninstalling the drive but on the third attempt windows has failed to load the driver

This is driving me up the wall....

[MarkE19]

Is the BD drive set in BIOS to run in AHCI or IDE mode? If it is AHCI then try setting it (and all HDD's etc) to IDE and see if that resolves the issue of the drive not be seen by Win7.

Mark.

[Smurfin]

Thanks Mark, I think they're set to AHCI - will setting the HDDs etc to IDE cause any problems with the drives? I don't want to lose any content...

[MarkE19]

You wont loose any data, the drives will just be (very slightly) slower. I went from IDE to AHCI recently and my Windows Experience score for the HDD went from 5.7 to 5.8, so would assume the drop for you would be similar. In reality though it has made no difference to how my PC performs overall.

Once you are on IDE you can see if the BD drive is more reliable and then you can see if there is a better AHCI driver for your motherboard. Although AHCI should be native within Vista & Win7 I couldn't set it in BIOS (option not available) until I installed a driver for it which I only recently found as no Win7 driver are listed for my mobo (Asus P5KC).

Mark.

[Smurfin]

Scratch that...just changed it and it hasn't affected content. However, Windows7 automatic driver install has just failed for the CD-Rom

Going to try and install it manually...

Edit: which hasn't worked.

Does anyone know of ANY way I can somehow delete my windows partition for me to boot from the DVD?

[mrbobc]

you could uninstall it in device manager and reboot.

see if that works

has worked for me in the past with troublesome hardware. also give ccleaner a run after you uninstall it, before you reboot.

[Smurfin]

Originally Posted by mrbobc

you could uninstall it in device manager and reboot.

see if that works

has worked for me in the past with troublesome hardware. also give ccleaner a run after you uninstall it, before you reboot.

Gave up after my 8th attempt Although I didn't use ccleaner...

[Blotch]

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Gave up after my 8th attempt Although I didn't use ccleaner...

If its an IDE drive, try unplugging from motherboard (MB) and connecting to another IDE connector on the MB (also try another IDE cable) - sometimes you can get an IDE controller fail on the MB!

....or if SATA, do the same - different MB connector and lead.

[Smurfin]

I'm wondering if there's more to this than I thought. Now the PC isn't even recognising a USB drive in the front ports...nothing shows up in my computer at all. And sytem restore has just failed on me twice

Anyone got any bright ideas, as I'm now completely in the dark

[conan]

Wow, sounds like its going from bad to worse

I would be worried about my drives being corrupted if this was my setup and things were deteriorating like that.

My suggestion, though a little extreme, take out your drives and plug them into another PC if you can to back up your data/files.

After that start a rebuild of the PC with the base components in and a clean install of windows (7 or vista). Then add your other components one at a time checking they are fully working before switching off and adding the next.

If you want to try and check your PC more before going to that extreme how about downloading and burning a copy of Ubuntu or other Linux that boots from CD? At least you could take a look at your drives and USB ports knowing that its not windows that is causing errors.

[Blotch]

Yep I second Conan's thoughts - I would check out the hard drive; its sounding more like a hardware problem - if you have a spare hard drive to try out first and if you still have the same problems, then maybe the motherboard!

Difficult to say, but you need to rule out each component as the cause of the problems....

[Smurfin]

Update: USB drive works fine, it's just sometimes the CD-Rom drive disappears completely from my computer (and device manager), and when this happens no removal storage works.

Pretty sure it's the BD drive and Win7....still can't sort it though

Managed to get to the UAC "run" question with vista tonight...but it doesn't go anywhere from there. The drive simply isn't working properly. I have an old CD-rw drive in a PC in the loft, pretty sure it's IDE but I might be able to dig it out to try running windows again? Just not sure such an old drive will work. Other than that the only thing I can think of is to go and buy an external drive in order to reinstall vista?

[mrbobc]

no reason why you shouldnt get an old ide drive to work aslong as your mobo has an ide port.

i'd go along with the other guys and re install windows and then try and install your BD drive after a successful installation.

no reason why you cant have a dvd rom drive installed along with your BD drive.

looks like the BD with W7 is the problm to me. cant you dual boot with vista and W7?

[MarkE19]

I would suggest giving all your hardware a good workout to stress test it all. I have often used BurnInTest in the past to do this. The free trial will run a test for up to 15 minutes, but the paid version will run it for as long as required.
If you find the OS is unstable then it may be worth creating a bootable OS CD (details on how to create this can be found on their website Here).

Mark.

[conan]

Just had a thought Smurf, is your PSU working OK, and is it big enough to power all your components in the PC? Going back a few years I had a similar problem with a PC at work, it turned out the PSU was starting to fail, not putting out enough stable voltage to power all the components in the PC.

[Smurfin]

Interesting, I pulled an old IDE drive out of a pc which was in the loft, hooked it up and managed to reinstall win7 (for some reason booting from the vista DVD didn't work). I installed the 32 bit version of win7 as I understand this drive only has issues with the 64bit version. Trouble is, the drive still isn't working, so I'm wondering if the drive itself is knackered. Any thoughts? If I change the drive, any recommendations? Thinking of ordeing one today

No idea o the psu or how I even chek this - the components are all about 15 months old

[conan]

Testing the PSU is a bit out my expertise, but basically getting a meter and checking the voltages. If you bought the PC as a unit (as opposed to building it), may be worth taking a look at the PSU inside. Quite often box shifters put in a cheap PSU as good units are expensive. At the end of the day its the most important part of your PC, if that fails or goes pop then it can take everything else out with it.

Can you test your dodgy drive in another PC? If not at home, then maybe a friend or at work?

As for a replacement, I bought one of these Laptop USB Blue-Ray Disc Burner Writer player Drive BD on eBay (end time 19-Mar-10 16:50:27 GMT) from this seller. I am replacing all my rigs with Acer Revo's at the moment so wanted an external drive I could move between PC's. Have to say its a lovely bit of kit, maybe not what you are looking for though.

[Smurfin]

All sorted. I went back into the BIOS after installing win7 32bit, changed the drives to IDE and rebooted. When it tried to install all the drivers the BD drive came up with a fail, but with a different error message - said it wasn't connected. Not quite sure why, because it had to be connected for the PC to recognise it in the first place. Anyway, I changed SATA cables and plugged it into a different port on the motherboard....and it worked.

I've just reinstalled Vista (not impressed with win7 and can't see what the fuss is about, and I prefer Vista for the toolbar etc), just installing drivers and different bits, but the main thing is.....IT WORKS

Thanks all for your help...lucky I didn't press the "buy" button on ebuyer for a new drive..."just one more go to get it working" Result!