So I finally moved onto Windows 7 today.

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 1:29 pm

And after feeling quickly uncomfortable with how much they changed and moved everything around, I sought for as many ways to make it behave like XP as possible.

Installing Classic Shell is a good start, though I still wish I could eliminate the Back/Forward buttons and the tree bar from the Explorer window, unless (god forbid) they're a fixed part of the Aero style?

I've also managed to get the taskbar to display only the time in the corner by making the taskbar use small icons - however, this still leaves the time section of the taskbar taking up more horizontal space than it really should, with no means to reduce its size. Alternatively, I'd rather use some of that space by having it display the seconds as well as the hour and minute. Is this possible at all?

Overall, I'm hoping it won't turn out to be a nightmare trying to restore everything MS saw fit to break for the sake of "ease of use". I was also fairly disappointed not to receive a "choose what you what installed" section during the installation process. Down to the limits of storing everything in a WIM archive I presume?

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:18 pm

marzsyndrome wrote:I was also fairly disappointed not to receive a "choose what you what installed" section during the installation process. Down to the limits of storing everything in a WIM archive I presume?

You can turn features (media center, wmp, ie, dotnet 3.5.1, etc) on/off pretty easily with dism or with autounattend.xml

Windows Vista/7 are light years ahead when it comes to deployment options compared to good old XP. Unlike XP integrating updates/drivers is fully supported (and there are even official tools to do this) you can preinstall applications so when you do a clean install your programs are already installed...trust me, its just better.

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 2:39 pm

I can understand in a way why many people prefer 7 - though I just wish MS had thought of providing/maintaining an easy means of keeping the classic Shell and search functions. If you're like me, who's been used to basic Explorer setups since first using Windows 95 back in '96, you're bound to feel irked when they add a lot of extra crap to the shell that you don't really need. It makes the Explorer windows look not just bigger, but feel more bloated.

I mean, to go from simple shells like this:

to this:

Argh.

BTW, how to get rid of that extra bar in Explorer showing "Organize", "Include in Library" etc? An awful shame ClassicShell appears to have no means of getting rid of those icons in its own bar either.

Post by **user_hidden** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:19 pm

what classic shell do you use?

i have been tinkering with this one......FREEWARE

http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 3:52 pm

Yup, that's the one I'm using atm. Still doesn't quite turn everything back to XP-like levels though. For one thing I'd rather it didn't show icons on the right end of its bar, leaving only the text menus on the left end.

Okay, another question: how to make Explorer windows use 32x32 icons rather than 48x48? I looked at Personalize > Window Color, but the Icon setting is already at 32x32, which makes no sense. Furthermore, if you use Small Icons on the main desktop it'll use 32x32, but not so for Explorer icons.

newsposter · Post by **newsposter** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:32 pm

"specialization is for insects"

Robert A Heinlein

yumeyao · Post by **yumeyao** » Fri Apr 08, 2011 10:55 pm

I believe there are several ways where win7 really sucks. But there is the fact that win7's memory management is superior to xp's, in the case you have large memory. Win7 also takes full use of your multi-processor and your CPU cache.

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 12:54 pm

Well I'm using the 32-bit version and have 2GB RAM, so how capable it is of managing large RAM is debatable for me. And seeing as I don't really intend on switching to 64-bit anytime soon due entirely to the fact its compatibility with older Windows programs is drastically lower..... well.

I must say though, it runs pretty well on my nearly-six-years-old 3Ghz Pentium 4. Thought it would've been too old for a system like this.

=[FEAR]=JIGSAW · Post by **=[FEAR]=JIGSAW** » Sat Apr 09, 2011 3:21 pm

I went from XP to Win7 64 with 8Gb RAM .... man oh man, it's nice .....
have not found a program i used with XP that does not work for me yet on Win764

... for my personnel system, i'll never look back

crashfly · Post by **crashfly** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 12:05 am

My main reason for moving to Windows 7 over a year ago was the fact they have released games requiring Vista (think Halo 2). I heard Vista was a piece of junk, and Win7 was what Vista was supposed to be. I have found no reason to complain so far. I have even embrace the libraries (although I do not use them that often). The homegroup crap I have turned off, but otherwise Windows 7 has run everything I have thrown at it.

code65536 · Post by **code65536** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:11 am

I moved to Windows 7 on every box except my main one. I love every aspect of Windows 7 except for how they totally f*cked up Explorer (and it's not just a matter of appearances, which I honestly don't care much about, but there are a number of actual usability regressions!). It's a pity, since I like the other aspects of Windows 7 (and even some of the new features of the shell, like the new taskbar), but Explorer is a deal-breaker.

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:48 am

code65536: can you cite any particular examples? I know one thing I was *very* dismayed to discover is that its set-up to Auto-Arrange by default, with no easy means of disabling it other than through quite detailed registry hacking. If I want to keep newly created files at one end of an Explorer window/directory, I'll do just that thanks MS. =P

yumeyao · Post by **yumeyao** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:19 am

Yeah, the usability really fucks my daily life.

Why I should manually replace the explorer shortcut on the taskbar every time I create a new user otherwise I can only start the useless 'library' instead of 'my computer'? Yes I'm aware of 'Win+E' but that's not the point I'm talking about.

And what's the 'library' and 'home group' on my explorer's panel? Why they are just there holding their spaces? (I know 'home group' can be turned off, but I haven't heard any people who removed the library).

The 'library' are so useless, even worse than 'my document'. You know, you can navigate up-level to your 'home folder' from 'my document' but you can't do so with the 'library'.

Then let talking about the 'favorite'. I have to say that's a better idea than xp's 'folder tasks'. I really have placed some my working directories into it.
But, wait, what is the 'recent places'? That's a extremely good idea with extremely bad implement.

First, you can't sort them by the last time you visited. This cut off the usablity to zero.

Next, you see your wanted folder 'my data' and want to enter it? So you just double-click on it. But.. you shout right after that, 'why I enter another folder?' Well, the answer is when you're double-clicking, the explorer reads more folders and sorts them, so your 'my data' is hence moved down, that's why you enter another folder.
So in order to use this feature, you have to wait for more than 10 seconds(that's an estimated number after a long time of use) before you can actually select into your wanted folder. 10 secondes!! You can already browse into your wanted folder and even find your wanted file!!!
So this further decrease the usability to a negative number.

And the search box. Before Vista, I always used the GUI search but things changed after vista. I'm now used to 'dir /s' and 'findstr', WTF!!!! Anyway, thanks to code's CmdOpen, it's much faster to do so.

The search box is really fucking as it tends to search on your type words. Even Google Instance knows to not provide old results but this search box doesn't.
And it always can't get what you search, i.e. the result is not complete!!! I couldn't even find a reason to help M$ defend this!!
Well, after tons of difficultity, you finally make out a complete result with exactly what files you want. You want to see on file's detail, to see where it's located. You CAN'T!!! Can you ever image a 'search tool' without that!!!!
Then you finally get to see the context menu item 'open file location', oh, you finally get to know where it is. Then you click on 'Back', and want to check next file in the result. HOLY SHIT!!! The result is not even saved, it started all over again!!!!

Those are really defects in the explorer, I'm so regretted that I haven't got used to other things like TC, but who'd pay for it when explorer + CmdOpen satisfied our needs? But now, explorer really kills me.

There are also other things that have their default setting incorrect. The default manner when you close your laptop's lid in win7 is sleeping!!! God! Can't I close its lid and go for lunch while it's still downloading/compiling/copying/syncing something? The sleep destroys them all!!

Maybe it's really user-friendly to users who can only type 10 letters in one minute and watch 10 lines in one minute and move mouses to desired position in more than 10 seconds, but it's significantly not for normal users!

ricktendo64 · Post by **ricktendo64** » Sun Apr 10, 2011 10:38 am

The only two things I dont like are the always combined taskbar buttons and homegroup, both of which I turn off in sysprep and dont plague me after

dumpydooby · Post by **dumpydooby** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 4:26 am

When revealing hidden elements in the system tray, I much prefer the sliding out method over the new popup method.

But Windows 7's compatibility with TRIM is what really convinced me to make the jump.

On an unrelated note, since I've been doing iOS and Android development lately, I've had to run OSX in a VM while using this Windows 7 machine as the host (note: iOS SDK is only compatible with OSX). It's worked out well so far, slightly glitchy but definitely works. It was a real bitch getting it set up on account of my AMD processor. But seriously, just the OS and iOS SDK take up 20GB of space, and that's with a minimal installation (no extra languages, no optional programs, no third-party stuff besides Firefox). Talk about bloat! Good grief!

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 2:25 pm

In Windows 7's View options, selecting "Medium icons" displays file icons in a 48x48 size, but I want them to display in 32x32 like how XP did it. How do I go about doing this?

Kelsenellenelvian · Post by **Kelsenellenelvian** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 2:39 pm

Click on an icon on the desktop, hold ctrl and scroll your mouse up & down!

Watch the icons grow big 'n small.

marzsyndrome · Post by **marzsyndrome** » Mon Apr 11, 2011 9:30 pm

Thanks, that helps for now I guess.

I was rather incensed to discover that MS thought it smart enough to (force)enable Auto-Arrange by default, something that was apparently just introduced in 7 for no discernible reason. After googling for solutions and trying a registry fix I think I've safely gotten rid of it, though I notice that with each new folder viewed in Explorer, Auto-Arrange is still ticked by default (the option becomes adjustible when viewing in Icons mode), and I'd like to know if it's possible to program it in so that all new windows won't have it default-ticked.

Furthermore, is there any way of eliminating the stupid Back/Forward buttons and branch-box in an Explorer window and have it look more like, well, the traditional "title bar and file menu" windows used by applications (and of course, by every window in XP and back)?

Knowone · Post by **Knowone** » Fri Oct 07, 2011 5:17 am

I got tired of Windows' Explorer already at XP a couple of years ago. After a ridiculous amount of testing and experimenting with alternatives I came across Directory Opus. haven't looked back since.

Not having to wrestle with Explorer on a daily basis and getting the start menu workable with Classic Shell I am very happy with Windows 7.

Actually I came across this thread while searching for an add-on with Classic Shell. Well, searching is not over!