Windows 7 nightmare

Is anyone else hating Windows 7? Why do I hate it?

I can't right-click on folders and files at least half the time without crashing Explorer. I hardly have anything installed as I intended to mostly operate in a VM. Actually, running an older version of Windows in a VM has been a much better experience, even though it's much slower.

I can't access many files. Because of some programming stupidity over at Plustek, I had to go searching for files that it lost because I turned off my scanner before I told it to save my files...because it won't automatically save them. Anyway, Win7 has security settings to hide most files and folders, even from me, the Administrator. I changed some security settings, which allowed me to find my files, but somehow Windows 7 decided that it should also get rid of my quick launch bar, along with any way to launch IE. Because of my minimal settings, I didn't have another browser installed. Ugh. So I rolled back the settings to earlier that day.

In an attempt to fix the right-click problem, I uninstalled Kaspersky and installed Microsoft Security Essentials. Now I can't even open up its main screen after performing the rollback, although MSE is installed, even after being uninstalled and reinstalled.

After the rollback I could access my Hotmail email account, and it's also corrupted my search provider settings. I'm not sure what's happened since the rollback, but now I can't seem to fix it. As of a few hours ago, I can't even log into my Google toolbar.

The Microsoft Keyboard driver seems to disappear occasionally, and the computer can't find it again, which forces a reboot. The NVidia driver was crashing frequently, although I don't believe this has happend for a few days.

Windows 7 says there's a problem with one of my hard drives. I installed Everest to confirm, but don't see a problem, although it's not like I really know what to look for unless it's obvious.

I'd probably have more complaints, but I can barely get past the problems I'm already facing. I had done a clean install, but hopefully this was somehow a bad install. I'll try another clean install and hope for better luck.

As far as what's installed....

Windows 7 64-bit
Kaspersky 2010 Internet Suite (since uninstalled)
Microsoft Security Essentials
Better File Rename
Batch File Rename (since uninstalled)
Plustek Opticbook Win7 software/drivers
Microsoft Mouse & Keyboard software/drivers
VMWare
Lavalys Everest

Nothing else has been installed since I mostly work in a VM.

Oh, and this has been on my desktop, which needed a clean install. With this experience, I don't think I'll ever put this OS on my tabletpc. In over 15 years of working on and with Microsoft operating systems on hundreds of computers, along with a little Unix and Linux, I've never had such a bad experience.

 

yeah...i highly suspect you did an upgrade. None of what you mentioned is normal.

 

I did a clean install onto an empty partition on my desktop. Absolutely no problems.

 

Nope, not an upgrade, clean install from formatted drive. I'm about to do another clean install. Like right now.

 

I've clean installed Win7 on five computers (2 64bit and 3 32bit). I know it doesn't make me an expert but I haven't had the problems you're describing. Have you tried running a surface scan of your drive?

 

I've seen a fair amount of issues with Win7 64 bit, but none as bad as yours.

I've had a problem which is almost as bad though. After using the computer for about 20 minutes, the processor will start maxing out due to "System Processes and Interrupts". Confirmed not a driver or bad installation problem, but it seems to happen no matter what disk I use to install.

I'm personally not going back to 7 64 bit until SP1.

 

Strange, I run Win 7 x64 bit since several months now without any major issues.
It runs fast, it is stable as hell (I never had a bluescreen yet) and almost all programs run just fine on it. And they run fast!
Some older special programs or devices are a bit tricky, but that's all.

Also the Plustek scanner runs nicely on x64.

Win 7 does not have a quicklaunch bar any longer which you really don't need because of the pin to taskbar option and the pin to startmenu features.

HDD: Maybe Win 7 automaitcally checks the SMART values. So run Speedfan or HDTune and take a look at the SMART values of your hard drives. Maybe one reports bad values. Or just run a complete checkdsk.

 

Oh yeah, I had plenty of bluescreens in the old install too.

Well, I did the clean install and it seems to work well now. All I've reinstalled is the updates, MSE and Adobe Flash plugin for IE. I guess it was a bad install somehow. The only thing I can think of that changed is that I joined my home domain immediately this time instead of setting up a local account and then joining the home domain like I did last time.

Frank, the thing I don't like about the new Plustek software is that you have to explicitely click the transfer button to get your files when you're scanning in FILE mode. This totally sucks. I just want it to give me my files as soon as I scan so that I don't lose them if something happens. I know you can dig for the files, but then you have to convert them from .bmp to whatever you wanted the Plustek software to save them in. Anyway, I'm going to try to install the software in a VM this time to leave the main install as clean as possible. I also dislike that I can't save my scan settings. It always returns to the default settings. It feels a lot like the programmer started expanding the flexibility of the program, but had it published before he finished adding the bits to make it work nicely together again. If it didn't lose my files when the scanner or software was prematurely turned off, and had a way to save my scan settings, I'd actually like the changes.

I did checkdsk as soon as the errors popped up, but it didn't any problems. I need to take the time to learn what the SMART values mean before I reinstall a diagnostic program. Everest looks like it'd say something if it spotted something bad though.

 

First of all, none of what you mention are typical experiences with Win7. It appears that you have a very unstable system and the best you can do is to reformat your drive and reinstall Win7. I am actually surprised with some of your experiences. Don't you know that there are two levels of administrators in Win7? In fact, the higher level of administrator is disabled and can be enabled by a simple command. Check the Internet for this solution. This is just for your own good!!

In any case, your system appears to be f*ked beyond recovery. If you did an upgrade of a Vista 64-bit installation, it was the wrong move. Start from the beginning. Why have two antivirus programs running??? Do you need VMware? (you can get Virtual PC for free from Microsoft). If you have Win7 professional, you can use XP mode to access older software.

Win7 is a fantastic OS, probably the best OS right now for personal and enterprise computing. But one needs to install the system properly.

 

Wow, this appears like a malware is taking control of your machine. Have you checked for one.

I have Win7 64-bit running on an ASUS P5 board with a Quad-core chip and 6GB of memory and it is exceedingly stable and remarkably fast. Even though I am running lots of programs at any given time, the system is hardly taxed and remains stable even when it goes to sleep and wakes up multiple times per day. On the other hand, I make sure that I install all updates, clean the system frequently, keep drivers up to snuff, make frequent images of the drivers (in case I need to restore the drive), check drive integrity and health frequently, and run malware and antivirus checks.