Current XP User Going To Win-7 | Please Comment-Advise Where Needed

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings .....

I am a current user of Windows XP who will soon be upgrading to Windows 7. Follow along with me as I first describe the basics of my custom-built desktop (purchased in 2011), and then as I outline my intentions for upgrading. What is asked from you the reader is to advise me--where appropriate--about certain items.

OS ... Windows XP Home (build 2600, SP3)

Main Circuit Board ... Biostar Group TA790GXE (version 6.0)

BIOS ... American Megatrends 080014 -- June 9th, 2010

CPU ... 2.50 GHZ AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 64-bit ready

Memory .... 3,328 Megabytes usable

Memory Slots 'DIMM0' (1st) and 'DIMM2' (3rd): 2,048 MB each
Memory Slots 'DIMM1' (2nd) and 'DIMM3' (4th): each empty

Hard Drive: Seagate st3500418as 500-gb

Optical Drive: Lite-on ATAPI iHAS424B -- Reads/Burns DVDs and CDs

6 USB slots (2 front, 4 back) -- also using AC-powered 10-port USB hub

Display-Graphics Card .... ATI Radeon HD 3300

Unit also has Wired Ethernet port, as well as mic-in, line-in and line-out jacks



Now regarding my upgrade plans, they are as follows ....

(1) Obtain an appropriate edition of Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit

(2) Purchase a 2nd hard drive (at least 500gb, max size of 1,000gb)

(3) Install WIN-7 on the 2nd hard drive, along with all necessary Microsoft and 3rd party support-ware.

(4) Re-configure BIOS so that the WIN-7 drive is the main boot-to drive, with the WIN XP drive acting as a 2nd drive.

(5) When needing/desiring to use XP apps, I would go to BIOS and change the boot order so that the XP drive is in play. When done with XP, I'd re-program BIOS to boot up with the Win-7 drive. I am aware that a dual XP/7 boot on one drive is possible, but I want to keep both OS's completely separate mainly to preserve all aspects of my current XP set-up. If by chance a way exists to boot with either drive without having to re-configure BIOS, please advise.

(6) Mindful that XP support ends in April, and that XP may very well be vulnerable to malicious bugs thereafter, all software on the XP drive would be adjusted so that no update calls to the WWW of any kind can be made when operating in XP mode.

(7) Future Option is to expand on-board memory from 4 to 8 gigs (8 is the max for Win-7 Home Premium). QUESTION: If this is done, and if I continue to use XP every so often, will adjustments have to be made to XP, or will XP just ignore the extra memory and operate as it always has??

All right, that is the story as it stands now. Your comments, suggestions and advice about everything posted herein are most welcome and greatly appreciated.

Thanx-A-Lot and Happy New Year,
Frank

[loster]

When I used to use two hard drives I would physically swap them with a hard drive caddy or similar. It's not worth my time to go into the bios every time I want to switch. If your machine is fast enough which I'm not sure about you could migrate the old hard drive into a Virtual
Machine. Finally what about just using windows xp mode in windows 7.

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings ....

To operate in XP Mode under Windows-7, I'd need the Win-7 Professional version rather than Home Premium. That's an extra investment I do not wish to make. Plus I am concerned that I may not have full operational use of some of my XP-Compatible apps in the Virtual Machine enviroment.

I'm researching caddies as per your suggestion, but so far I can't find anything stating that they would support dual-booting. I would obviously welcome advice from someone well experienced with HDD caddies.

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video

[usually_quiet]

Finally what about just using windows xp mode in windows 7.

Yes, that can be helpful even though it won't address all incompatibility issues.

Applying Windows 7 Home Premium's XP compatibility mode will allow some programs to work with Windows 7 that would not work otherwise.

Windows 7 Professional's XP mode virtualization will run most software that runs using XP, but won't address hardware incompatibility, because it doesn't allow the use of Windows XP drivers. Also, some hardware and devices that work in Windows 7 might not be detected or work in Windows XP Mode.

[Arnold_Layne]

Shouldn't need to use the BIOS to switch between boot drives. When you install windows 7 to it's own drive, the installer will detect windows xp and offer you the option to dual boot. Every time you start or restart the PC you will get the option to boot to XP or Win7.

A_L

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings ....

Yo, Arnold_Layne - you are saying that a dual-boot with two distinctly different drives w/o changing the BIOS is possible, correct??

[Arnold_Layne]

Greetings ....

Yo, Arnold_Layne - you are saying that a dual-boot with two distinctly different drives w/o changing the BIOS is possible, correct??

It should. However if after installing windows 7 to the second drive, you cannot boot to xp, there is a program called EasyBCD that will fix the MBR to include the xp OS drive.


A_L

Edit: this tutorial should help http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings Once More ....

Thank you Arthur -- I'm bookmarking this discussion thread, and will remember your suggestions. I plan to do the upgrades in either February or March.

[nic2k4]

CPU ... 2.50 GHZ AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 64-bit ready

I take it this is the actual frequency not the CPU rating; this is more than enough to run Win 7.

(1) Obtain an appropriate edition of Windows 7 Home Premium, 64-bit

(2) Purchase a 2nd hard drive (at least 500gb, max size of 1,000gb)

(3) Install WIN-7 on the 2nd hard drive, along with all necessary Microsoft and 3rd party support-ware.

(4) Re-configure BIOS so that the WIN-7 drive is the main boot-to drive, with the WIN XP drive acting as a 2nd drive

(5) When needing/desiring to use XP apps, I would go to BIOS and change the boot order so that the XP drive is in play. When done with XP, I'd re-program BIOS to boot up with the Win-7 drive. I am aware that a dual XP/7 boot on one drive is possible, but I want to keep both OS's completely separate mainly to preserve all aspects of my current XP set-up. If by chance a way exists to boot with either drive without having to re-configure BIOS, please advise.

The biggest problem with going to a 64 bit OS using older hardware is drivers. Your stuff is circa 2011, I wouldn't expect you'd have much trouble there. FYI, the serial number you get with your Win 7 DVD is valid for both the 32 and 64 bit version; you can download the ISO's from Digital River (the MS webstore for Win 7). Why does this matter, CODEC's. Like drivers, CODEC's have to be for the correct bit depth. If you can't get a 64 bit version of the CODEC you need, you're better off using a 32 bit Win 7.

Every PC should have 2 HDD for better performance; move the swap file and temp folder to the 2nd drive.

There's more than one way to skin a cat, but I have to say your way seems overly complicated. Since XP, Windows has had the capability to dual boot an OS. You just install XP as usual, then you reboot to the Win 7 DVD and follow the wizard. Even easier, just run XP inside 7 with Virtualbox, you can even pass data between the two OS. But, so far it's been my experience that most of the software I used with XP works fine under 7 and the ones that didn't were easily replaced by newer versions or equivalent freeware. My personal preference would be to simply build a new machine, keep the old one and connect both to a monitor with a KVM.

(6) Mindful that XP support ends in April, and that XP may very well be vulnerable to malicious bugs thereafter, all software on the XP drive would be adjusted so that no update calls to the WWW of any kind can be made when operating in XP mode.

Good luck with that, lots of software make undocumented home calls through TCP/IP ports other than the usual suspects. The only way to stop that is to have a firewall block all ports, but there's no guaranty a malicious program won't go right through it. The only sure way is to disconnect the network.

(7) Future Option is to expand on-board memory from 4 to 8 gigs (8 is the max for Win-7 Home Premium). QUESTION: If this is done, and if I continue to use XP every so often, will adjustments have to be made to XP, or will XP just ignore the extra memory and operate as it always has??

Not an issue, the extra memory doesn't get recognized by the OS.

[usually_quiet]

FYI, the serial number you get with your Win 7 DVD is valid for both the 32 and 64 bit version; you can download the ISO's from Digital River (the MS webstore for Win 7).

As of October 30, 2013, retail Windows 7 licenses that offer the option of installing either 32-bit and 64-bit are no longer available from Microsoft. Once those are gone from store shelves, they won't be restocked. It appears that Microsoft is still selling the OEM versions, but 32-bit and 64-bit are separate purchases.

[bevills1]

Greetings ....

Yo, Arnold_Layne - you are saying that a dual-boot with two distinctly different drives w/o changing the BIOS is possible, correct??

It should. However if after installing windows 7 to the second drive, you cannot boot to xp, there is a program called EasyBCD that will fix the MBR to include the xp OS drive.


A_L

Edit: this tutorial should help http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/8057-dual-boot-installation-windows-7-xp.html

I don't think just installing Win7 on a separate drive will create dual boot, at least it doesn't work that way up through WinXP. I've run multi-boot systems with Win98, Win2k and WinXP for a long time, and the correct way to create dual boot is to boot to latest OS currently running, insert the newer version (Win7 in your case) CD or DVD in the drive. Windows setup should give option to upgrade current Windows or perform a fresh install of the newer Windows. Select the fresh install option should create dual boot while the upgrade option will create a new Win7 only system. This works up through WinXP and should work with Win7, but maybe someone that's tried it could correct me if I'm wrong.

Edit: Looks like I might be mistaken about creating dual boot procedure if the nic2k4 post is correct. I missed that part of his post when I first read it.

[deadmeow]

Newer versions of Windows 7 make dual boot much easier. All you need to do is install Windows 7 alongside your XP installation. You can use a new hard drive, or you can even partition a part of your old drive into a "new drive". However it never hurts to add 2nd drive for more space.

Once you install Windows 7 alongside XP, every time you boot, you will get a Windows boot screen that asks you if you want to run Windows 7 or "an previous version of windows", or something similar.

I triple boot between Windows7/XP/Linux Mint and have no problems. As mentioned earlier by beveills1, you can also use EasyBCD (free for personal use) to edit your dual boot setup if somehow it does not detect both versions of Windows.

When you install Windows7, you get its boot manager which usually detects other windows installations at boot, and lets you choose which version to start.

[Calidore]

(6) Mindful that XP support ends in April, and that XP may very well be vulnerable to malicious bugs thereafter, all software on the XP drive would be adjusted so that no update calls to the WWW of any kind can be made when operating in XP mode.

Your software updating itself won't be the problem; an available internet connection will be the problem. If you must keep running Windows XP (and are you sure you must?), then you'll want to disable your network hardware entirely within XP.

[Nelson37]

I despise dual-boot systems with a passion. I see them when they are broken, dual-boot makes repair more difficult and many problems more severe.

Caddy systems can work, however I have used and installed many of these, ALL have failed and many caused severe data problems. Will not put one in my box.

The BIOS switching is no more complex or complicated than the Windows boot menu many suggest, the clear and massive difference is that the SEPARATE operating systems are kept apart. Two different softwares that are not compatible, kept apart. This is a good thing.

The one advantage the caddy system has is that the unused drive is physically disabled and cannot be contacted by the other OS. This accessability by the foreign OS is the source of much problem.

What is going to happen is that sooner or later, an XP prog will update itself to a Win 7 version, or a driver will update to 64-bit. Or something will modify your boot sector, a utility will make incompatible changes, or some friend will "help" you by deleting a bunch of files they don't think you need.

Dual-boot for most casual users almost always ends badly. My recommendation is for two different PC's and a KVM switch.

[ranchhand]

Hey Frank.... I have been running XP Pro and Windows 7/64 bit Ultimate for years, and I just added Windows 8 all on the same machine. Each OS is on its own hard drive, so I use three separate drives all mounted in my box. Most BIOS' give you a menu for various boot options by pressing the appropriate F-key as you start the computer. On my Asrock (and my previous Asus) mobo, I tap F8 on start and an option menu pops up listing all connected hard and optical drives. I just arrow down to either W7, XP, or Windows 8, hit return, and I boot into that system. This gives me a lot of flexibility and total independence from a dedicated dual-boot setup. As a side thought, I tried a drive with Windows 98 on it, but my hardware was too advanced and W98 couldn't recognize anything.
Anyway, this gives you a lot more freedom than a dedicated dual boot setup (which I have also done). This setup will allow you to update either Windows installation without a problem. I looked up the specs for your Biostar motherboard but could not find a lot about the BIOS specs. Check your mobo manual, I am pretty sure Biostar will give you that option also.
The only thing you will need to check on is if you have enough data and power plugs to support two hard drives, but I am pretty sure you can work with that.
Just as an after thought about Windows XP and security.... I use it actively and so does my wife. I have Comodo firewall (free) with all their other junk turned off or deleted, and Avira AV (free). I have never been hacked, virus attacked, blah blah in years. The security threat to XP is vastly exaggerated and IMHO it's a darn good OS. My wife used it for years on the machine I built for her and connected every day into her work intranet via a VPN, surfed the internet, etc. She is running only SP3, runs Firefox with Noscript add-on enabled, Comodo, Avira and she is still running just peachy.
As far as I can see, the rest of your hardware should support Windows 7.

[FulciLives]

My computer does the same thing ... just hit F8 during boot and a boot menu pops up allowing you to pick which HDD to boot from.

With this method you don't need GRUB or some other mucky muck to select your dual boot options.


I would also like to point out that VirtualBox runs Windows XP very well and gives you access to USB peripherals like scanners and printers. VirtualBox is free so you might be able to do a clean install of Windows XP in VirtualBox and run it (when you need to run it) from inside Windows 7.


You might be able to avoid the dual booting this way, or at least avoid it in most circumstances.


It's much easier to stay in Windows 7 (your new home) and jump into Windows XP via VirtualBox when you need to than to have to reboot into WinXP, do whatever, then reboot back into Windows 7.


- John "FulciLives" Coleman


P.S.
You really should consider upgrading to 8GB of RAM in total. Especially if you intend to run VirtualBox in Windows 7 in order to run Windows XP.

[hello_hello]

(5) When needing/desiring to use XP apps, I would go to BIOS and change the boot order so that the XP drive is in play. When done with XP, I'd re-program BIOS to boot up with the Win-7 drive. I am aware that a dual XP/7 boot on one drive is possible, but I want to keep both OS's completely separate mainly to preserve all aspects of my current XP set-up. If by chance a way exists to boot with either drive without having to re-configure BIOS, please advise.

It depends on the BIOS your MB has, but often there's no need to reconfigure the BIOS in order to choose which drive to boot from. In my case, tapping the F12 key instead of the key for entering the BIOS configuration brings up a boot menu. It's a simple way to tell the BIOS which device to boot from without needing to reconfigure it each time. If I don't tap the F12 key the BIOS uses the configured boot order.
When you first power up the computer, have a look at the options displayed at the bottom of the screen. The key to enter the BIOS configuration should be listed (the Delete key in my case). Is there one for a boot menu?

I have Windows installed on two different drives. In my case they're both XP (although I'm considering sideways-grading one of them to Win7 sometime soon too) but the principle is the same. I installed Windows on each drive while the other was disconnected so each install would remain oblivious to the other. I didn't want Windows to set up dual booting because I wanted to be able to disconnect one of the drives at any time without messing up the boot process. Plus I wanted to be able to image each independently and restore the image without Windows thinking it was dual booting as a result.

(7) Future Option is to expand on-board memory from 4 to 8 gigs (8 is the max for Win-7 Home Premium). QUESTION: If this is done, and if I continue to use XP every so often, will adjustments have to be made to XP, or will XP just ignore the extra memory and operate as it always has??
Frank

If you have 4GB of RAM installed already, chances are pretty good XP is already ignoring some of it. The total memory XP can access is all installed memory, which includes memory on a video card. My video card has 500MB of RAM. The motherboard has 4GB. When I right click on My Computer and select properties, Windows displays 3.5GB of RAM as being used. At one stage I had two video cards installed, so Windows only listed 3GB of RAM under Right Click/My Computer/Properties.
So yeah, if you install more RAM, XP will just ignore more of it.

[hello_hello]

(6) Mindful that XP support ends in April, and that XP may very well be vulnerable to malicious bugs thereafter, all software on the XP drive would be adjusted so that no update calls to the WWW of any kind can be made when operating in XP mode.

Simply disabling any Ethernet ports in Device Manger should stop XP and software from accessing the internet (assuming that's how you're connected), but it's not something I plan on doing. Internet Security depends a lot on the browser being used. My thinking is that a browser needs to be vulnerable to an exploit in order for it to infect you. If it can't get past the browser first.....
If you're using something other than IE and keep it up to date, my guess is it should be pretty safe to surf for quite a while even if the OS is XP. Especially if you run antivirus software. I haven't run any in years myself and don't intend to start again now, but I'll still be using a combination of XP and Firefox to surf for some time to come.

[bevills1]

I too will need to upgrade from XP before long, not so much because I want to but because support for XP will stop just like it did for Win2k a few years ago. I don't mean just Microsoft support either. There's a charting program and accounting program I use that now work with XP or later version of Windows, and their XP support will likely stop in a year or two. Ten years from now we'll all probably be upgrading to Windows 12 or something by then.

Anyway I wonder whether it's better to upgrade to Win8, Win7 64 bit or Win7 32 bit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these 3 versions? I think I read somewhere driver support for Win7 64 bit isn't as good. Is that true?

[Steve(MS)]

Some time back when I was working on multi-boot with an XP/W7, after doing some searches there seems to be an issue with
XP not knowing enough about the W7 install and XP will delete restore points and shadow copies.
It amounts to a doing registry change(s).

Here is the link that I referred to and used:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/127417-system-restore-points-stop-xp-dual-boot-delete.html

After this, XP cannot see the W7 partition/drive but W7 can see XP since it hasn't been modded.
To get stuff from XP to W7, I simply place files on a separate partition without an OS.

This might be the objection computer techs have to the dual boots, using XP and W7.

[El Heggunte]

Some time back when I was working on multi-boot with an XP/W7, after doing some searches there seems to be an issue with XP not knowing enough about the W7 install and XP will delete restore points and shadow copies.
It amounts to a doing registry change(s).

Here is the link that I referred to and used:
http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/127417-system-restore-points-stop-xp-dual-boot-delete.html

Just don't use System Restore, problem solved

[redwudz]

Anyway I wonder whether it's better to upgrade to Win8, Win7 64 bit or Win7 32 bit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these 3 versions? I think I read somewhere driver support for Win7 64 bit isn't as good. Is that true?

I never had any problems with W7 64 bit drivers. In fact most of them are already on the W7 OS disc. With that said, not a lot of difference between performance of W7 32 bit or W7 64 bit. But I would recommend more than 4 GB with W7 64 bit, especially if you have on-board video using some of your RAM.

I've only got XP on one PC and that's a netbook. All the other PCs here (About 12) run W7 32 and a couple of them run W7 64. No software or driver problems
with any of them.

I do have W8.1 on this laptop and lots of compatibility and software problems with it still not resolved. I can't really recommend this OS. W8.1 was worse than W8. Neither seems to work with Avast antivirus or Comodo firewall and there are lots of odd problems yet to be resolved on my laptop relating to the OS and Internet Explorer. Maybe it's just my laptop, but I certainly wouldn't want it on a regular PC.

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings and Happy New Year ....

To Hello_Hello --

The F12 key did indeed bring up a boot option screen, showing the (at present) available options, Hard Drive or DVD-CD drive. I chose hard drive and got an error message saying "No Possible BIOS file found" - I assume that is something to be referred to when doing boot-ups of this kind. Hitting the ESC key started the normal boot-up.

BTW -- Just to recap --

Motherboard is a Biostar Group TA790GXE (version 6.0) with an . American Megatrends 080014 BIOS (June 9th, 2010)

CPU is a 2.50 GHZ AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 64-bit ready (should be fine for Win-7 Home Premium-64

OS ... Windows XP Home w/SP3 (build 2600)

Memory .... 3,328 Megabytes usable (so says Belarc Analyzer)

Memory Slots 'DIMM0' (1st) and 'DIMM2' (3rd): 2,048 MB each
Memory Slots 'DIMM1' (2nd) and 'DIMM3' (4th): each empty

Display-Graphics Card .... ATI Radeon HD 3300

500-mb seagate HDD | Lite-On DVD-CD drive | 6 usb ports (one being fed by 10-port powered hub)

Thanks to everyone else for comments and suggestions. I've got this thread bookmarked for future reference.

Happy New Year from Frank-0-Video

[jman98]

Anyway I wonder whether it's better to upgrade to Win8, Win7 64 bit or Win7 32 bit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these 3 versions? I think I read somewhere driver support for Win7 64 bit isn't as good. Is that true?

If you have really old hardware you can't live without, there is some chance that the manufacturer never bothered to write 64 bit drivers. Again, "really old" is the operative phrase here. I had an ancient scanner from around 2002 or so that had no 64 bit Win 7 drivers. I did find a 3rd party 64 bit driver for it, but the cost was so much that I decided to just get a new scanner and got rid of the old one. I didn't have any other issues with 64 bit drivers.

The only reason I can think of for going with 32 bit drivers is if you can't live without using the 32 bit firewire drivers that allow some cable boxes to record directly to PCs via firewire using the CapDVHS program. Those drivers have never been updated for 64 bit Windows and probably never will be. The author has stated no interest in making 64 bit drivers available and some desperate people who hired guys via the internet to write the 64 bit drivers have gotten nothing for their trouble with EVERY attempt being abandoned in failure.

Win 8 is a POS. If you haven't used it, you really should before you agree to buy it. The better your IT skills, the more you will hate Win 8. If all you want to do is send email, read web pages, play iTunes music and maybe send a few photos to friends, it's fine. If you want to do anything technical at all under it, you will hate it. Imagine taking the WORST features of tablets and Windows and combing both into a new OS and you have Win 8.

[hello_hello]

Greetings and Happy New Year ....

To Hello_Hello --

The F12 key did indeed bring up a boot option screen, showing the (at present) available options, Hard Drive or DVD-CD drive. I chose hard drive and got an error message saying "No Possible BIOS file found" - I assume that is something to be referred to when doing boot-ups of this kind. Hitting the ESC key started the normal boot-up.

Sorry, that's a new one to me. I've got four hard drives in this PC running as two RAID-0 volumes, but they effectively show up as two hard drives in the BIOS. I tap F12, the boot menu comes up.... and I must have done this a hundred times but I "think"....
In the boot menu list "Hard Drives" has a "+" next to it to indicate there's more than one of them. I highlight "Hard Drives", hit enter and the list expands to display both drives. I highlight a drive and hit enter and the BIOS uses that drive for booting.

Why you got the "No Possible BIOS file found" error message, I have no idea.
It's possible, (although doesn't explain the error) the boot menu may only let you select an option such as hard drive, CD drive, or floppy etc. In my case I have a couple of optical drives but they don't show up individually in the boot menu. Selecting CD Drive means I'm selecting the first CD Drive. Selecting Hard Drive may mean booting from the first hard drive, but I think generally the boot menu should let you pick a particular hard drive if there's more than one. I guess once you've installed a second drive you'll find out.

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings Hello_Hello and Thanx-A-Lot

I won't worry too much because there's an alternative route via the BIOS that requires no more than 4 or 5 keystrokes. In theory, it should not be an issue. But I'll know for sure when I get the newer drive and put Win-7 on it.

Thanks again for your advice,
Frank-0-Video

[nic2k4]

I installed Windows on each drive while the other was disconnected so each install would remain oblivious to the other.

This is very important if you want to use the BIOS for selecting the OS (boot drive). When you install Windows, a bit of code is written to the MBR of the first drive detected by the BIOS, it points to the location of the NTLDR file for a particular Windows installation. You can install another Windows on a different drive while both drives are running, but that pointer will always be on the first drive. When you switch boot drive with the BIOS, you are overriding the BIOS selection of which drive is the the first one and since the second drive's MBR would not have the pointer it won't boot the way you expect.

This implies that once you are booted into the second OS the drive letters won't be the same; I would recommend you set the label for each drives.

Anyway I wonder whether it's better to upgrade to Win8, Win7 64 bit or Win7 32 bit. What are the advantages and disadvantages of these 3 versions?

Win 8.x as a whole is a nightmare for MS, Win 7 sales are outpacing it even including new PC shipments. You can make it operate and feel more like Win 7 with Classic Shell, but other compatibility issues will remain. The future is 64 bit and both driver and software support is improving. Apart from added memory support, there's not much difference between 32 and 64 bit. As Jman98 pointed out, the main reason to choose 32 bit is driver support for some piece of hardware that is dear to you. Even Apple is going 64 bit.

[Frank-0-Video]

Wouldn't it be nice if we all went to bed tonite, and then woke tomorrow to find that every piece of hardware and software made in the last 30-some years had been magically transformed to at least Win-7-64 compatibility!! How about some MS-DOS and Commodore Basic 64-bit games anyone..???

[usually_quiet]

I use Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 regularly. All could have some hardware and software compatibility issues and user interface adjustment issue for someone switching from Windows XP. ...but Windows 7 would be the easiest of the three to get used to and has the least compatibility problems.

It's mainly the Windows 8 and 8.1 user interface that drives most people crazy. If MS had provided a choice of user interfaces, one for laptop/desktop PCs with no touchscreen and one for touchscreen equipped devices, Windows 8 and 8.1 would not be meeting with so much resistance.

[Frank-0-Video]

Greetings ....

You bring up a great point there, Usually_Quiet ---

The user interfaces of two of the built-in Windows accessory programs, Paint and Wordpad, were drastically altered when Windows 7 came out. It was so frustrating trying to figure out how to do those things that were done so easily in XP-and-earlier versions.

Thankfully, a free version of the Softmaker Word Processor has succeeded Wordpad (and the never liked or used MS Word) as my go-to word processor, while the 3rd party utility TWEAK-UAC allows me to use XP Paint in the regular Win-7 environment -WITHOUT- having to go thru the Virtual Machine process.

Thanx-A-Lot, Frank-0-Video