Solutions Pro

Over 9 years ago I was using Windows 2000 professional as my main desktop PC when a friend convinced me to try Windows XP Professional. I decided to give it a try and I was a fan instantly, huge improvement from Windows 2000 Pro. The marriage lasted until August 2009 when I decided to ride the waves of uncertainty by converting my main Windows XP Pro desktop into Windows 7, my first 64bit main workhorse PC. Windows XP had its own issues with memory limitations (32bit), blue screen of death, slowness, etc. but it was great, it worked, for the most part.

So far my experience with Windows 7 and 64bit desktop technology has been great, in fact, very good. I have used 64bit OS and hardware in enterprise but not at home, for personal use. I am not rebooting my desktop as often as I use to (its been weeks since last reboot), the applications load faster, I can't recall the last time I had to end a task or locked up an application, over all experience is good so far. I will leave the extensive benchmarking and how many milliseconds faster Windows 7 is from XP Pro to the big IT shops.

I did run into few issues though:

• Audio Drivers for Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe do not work, at least you won't get surround sound. I did manage to get it to work after playing around with the settings and just using two speakers output.
• Firefox gets extremely slow after few days. In windows xp, the memory with about 20 open tabs use to be around 500MB but here, with less open tabs, the memory usage reaches over 1GB and it gets really slow. I believe, its an issue with firefox 3.5 than Windows 7 but can't really pin point the problem for now. I don't have a fix for this yet.
• No Quick Launch Menu - If you want to re-enable quick launch menu in Windows 7, read below.
• Weird behavior with Windows Live Messenger. It does not minimize to the system tray menu along with duplicate windows of the same application/IM window. Its really annoying but its possible to fix it with backward compatibility that windows 7 offers with Vista and XP.

Quick Launch Menu

If you are like me, you probably love the Quick Lauch menu in Windows Xp and other MS Server Operating Systems. It is one of the first thing I enable when first logging into new OS install. Its a great way to launch applications that you use most often. By default, quick launch menu is disabled in Windows 7, as you are able to pin any application to the task bar. A great feature but it takes a bit of getting use to... here are few steps to enable the Quick launch menu and make your life a little bit easier:

Right Click on the Taskbar > Toolbars > New Toolbar

When folder dialog box pops up, put this string in Folder name box:

%userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

You should see quick launch menu re-appear in the taskbar. If you wish to use just the icons, turn off lock taskbar and right click on the taskbar and take show text and titles off.

Running Applications in Windows XP/Vista Compatibility Mode

When you install Windows 7 and use Windows Live Messenger, you will notice some very strange behavior. I only ran it for couple of hours and it drove me crazy. The Messengers's window does not minimize to the system tray, if you "close" the window, it signs you out. Moreover, you see multiple windows, often three even when there is only two (1 for the conversation and other for the Messenger it self) - super annoying. Here is how to fix that:

Windows 7 has a great feature that allows you to run applications in legacy or backward compatible mode. That's a first considering Microsoft has never offered such support to previous applications or OSes.

Browse to this folder:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Live\Messenger

Right click on the "msnmsgr.exe" file and select properties. Once the properties box pops up, click on the Compatibility tab. Pick the OS of choice and hit apply. Follow the screenshots on the right for some visuals.

I hope this was helpful to some of the people looking to move away from Windows XP but still keep some of the small features that Windows XP offered.

If you have any questions or comments be sure to post a comment here.

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