Microsoft Windows 7DRIVER ISSUES I ran the Microsoft Windows 7 compatable checker tool. It mentioned that I would to update my scanner driver and nero wouldn't work. I did a fresh install of Windows 7 64 bit. Well, there is a scanner driver for my epson 3200 scanner for Win7, but only for the 32 bit version. No driver at all for the 64 bit version. My HP LaserJet 2100 printer has a driver, but the link is broken at the HP web site. I manually selected HP 2200 for the PCL driver and HP 2300 for the PS driver. They work ok. I run my display through a KVM switch. It turns out that the KVM switch doesn't pass the 'display data channel', which is needed for plug-and-play. On the other OS's I have used, I could specify the display, but with Win7, there is no way to specify the display, and Dell has decided to not provide a driver for any displays before made before 2007. So, it looks like I will have to upgrade my KVM switch (the resolution is 1920*1200, but Win7 does 1600*1200 which makes everything wide). SOFTWARE ISSUES There is a bunch of software I used to use which doesn't work any more. I expected some of the issues, but not all of them.
I am sure there will be some more issues I will find. For the driver problem I mainly blame Microsoft. They could have updated existing drivers, if they have the source code for them, for Win7. I also blame HP, Dell, Epson, and anyone else who doesn't provide a driver for Win7, or for Win7-64. It is interesting that most apps are still 32 bit. I also run 64 bit Linux. All the programs are 64 bit. All the drivers work. If Linux can do that without any manufacturers support, than surely Microsoft with its billions should be able to do so also. Stability is reasonably good. I also installed Microsoft's 'WinXP mode' which is their VirtualPC software as well as Sun's VirtualBox. Both seem to work pretty well. I can run my scanner using either virtualization program. |
You can make a 'boot floppy' with windows XP. This is very useful for installing hardware flash updates for things like motherboards, disk controllers and the like. Just go to 'My Computer' and right click on the floppy drive. Under 'format' select 'Create an MS-DOS startup disk'. Doesn't sound very difficult, does it?
The first problem is if your floppy is write protected, you will not get an error message, and you won't get a startup disk either. Hey Microsoft, can you say 'Error Message' ? The second problem is the disk that is created is not a startup disk. First, it won't boot. What is worse, it does something nasty to the disk, and makes it think there is 4gb of data somewhere on the floppy. And you can't reformat the disk after that. Throw it out.
The solution is to get a different floppy, boot up windows 95/95/ME and type to a DOS prompt "format /s a:". Now you have a boot floppy.
I have a system that had Windows 98, and Windows NT 4 workstation on a fat16 partition, and Windows NT server on a different partition. I decided to install Windows 2000 server on yet another partition. The installation went smoothly. It installed the Win2k boot manager on the boot sector. I can now boot win98, winNT, and win2K fine. The problem is, there is something in the win2K boot manager that screws up the com ports for winNT. The event viewer showed some unnamed device driver got the resources of com1. I used to have com1 and com2 enabled. That somehow got switched to com2 and com3. What is worse, is the modem won't work, and can't be reinstalled. I had to restore the winNT boot manager (which won't boot win2k), in order to fix the problem. Say bye bye to win2k.
When installing NT 4.0 with an all SCSI-II system, the disk blocking size is set incorrectly when you have Three 2 gig disks. The way I found this was by installing Diskeeper which told me how big the blocking was on my disk (D:). Fix by installing another copy of NT, on another disk (E:), and formatting the disk (D:) you care about. Then install NT on disk (D:), and format (E:), and install NT 4.0 on (E:).
If you have a 4mm DAT formatted by some weird program, NT backup can't format the tape, and says the tape is bad. Fix by booting Windows 95, and use Adaptec Backup to format the tapes.
If you install a sound card (in my case on the motherboard) with Windows NT 4.0, and something goes wrong, you cannot simply re-install the software. It may act as if it is being installed, but it simply gets confused. Instead, you must install *a different version* of the software. Then it is possible to install correctly. I found this out when trying to get MIDI playing working with my crystal audio on my Providence motherboard.
If you install a Windows 95 program that doesn't like Windows NT, it hoses up the system, including the Registry. Partial Fix by using Emergency Recover Disk. Full Fix by reinstalling Windows NT from scratch. See below for more details...
I have a machine running Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT Server 4.0. Like a fool, I got a copy of Microsoft Personal Web server, and like an idiot, I tried to install it on Windows NT. This software is available from their web server. Remember kids, don't try this at home. Now this software is designed to run under Windows 95, and not under Windows NT. The web site said that it worked with Windows 95. I made a mistake in trying to install it on Windows NT.
Seems this program has some 16 bit code in it. When I ran the executable, it installed a buncha files, without asking me anything at all, or checking if I was running Windows 95. Somewhere in the install, it blew, saying something about not being able to deal with 16 bit applications. Did it un-install itself? No. So I tried to uninstall it, with the very nice Windows NT uninstall. But it gave me a similar error message about not being able to run some 16 bit application. I was able to disable it to the point where it would not pop up nasty error messages during boot. But there were still all those nasty files around. I deleted them manually, but then I got another nasty error message at startup, saying that it couldn't find a program. I couldn't find where the program was starting up. I am sure that I looked everywhere except where it was started up from.
After spending several hours with the nice folks at Microsoft technical support, I was able to repair my registry, and get rid of the nasty messages at boot. The %$%$!!@ icon for Personal Web Server is still in my Command Panel, and nobody knows how to get rid of it. I can click on it, and change various settings of the program. Looks like I will have to re-install Windows NT from scratch (again).
If you have 2 SCSI controllers, Windows 95 gets very confused unless you disable one. I found this out when I upgraded to my new motherboard (with onboard SCSI) and kept my disks on my PCI card SCSI controller. Fix by disabling one controller in the control panel.
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