Windows 7 Downloads

[SiphonicSugar]

Hey, Windows XP was release back in 2001, which is over a decade ago, plus Microsoft only stopped supporting it last year.  XP was a very widely used operating system so people who programmed viruses and other malware knew they could cause the most pain by making them for XP.

I never knew that ATMs used XP!

[Dream of Omnimaga]

What's so bad about Windows XP?

From experience, XP tends to act more erratically than Seven, as in, some weird bugs will occur, such as when you drag and drop an icon and it remains "printed" in the screen somewhere. Security issues are highly present but were more because it was the most used OS and because most people used IE6. It also happened to be the most widely used OS when Limewire was around (that P2P thing had so many viruses on it). Personally, the only issue I had with XP is that it seemed less stable than 2000 and Seven. Security issues were regularly patched until the OS was discontinued in 2014 and viruses are often caught when people don't use common sense (eg using IE6 in 2010 unless parents or school refuse to let you install anything new and blocked all storage mediums on which you could use portable softwares)

[novenary]

XP was great back in the days but it hasn't aged well. When Vista came out, a lot of people stuck with XP. Vista was obviously not ready to be released, and there was absolutely no benefit in using the 64 bit version since most drivers were incompatible with it, which caused that huge marketing lie that it was fully 64 bit. While the OS had a 64 bit version and most CPUs sold were already capable of running 64 bit, OEM machines came with the 32 bit version instead. When 7 came out and fixed pretty much everything about the Vista fiasco, XP was already pretty old and people buying new machines stopped complaining. It makes no sense to use XP on a Vista era and newer machine. Instead, use Windows 7, 8.1 or 10.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Oh god... I still remember all the issues people had with TI-Connect and TiLP when Vista/7 64-bit came out. It took 4 years or so until they could finally send programs to their calculator.

[SJCubed]

yeah personally I never used vista. I went from windows 95 to 98 to xp to 7 to 8 to 8.1 to now 10

[semiprocoder]

Windows 10 is annoying. As I ranted it made me lose data, and also I don't like cortana that much, so I disabled it. It has very little answers and it researches stuff on bing(cmon). I expected it to be really good, but its just like, eh.

Also windows 10 is pretty good, but it was way overhyped. It didn't really make windows 8.1 too much better(although it improved it a bit), so it was way overhyped. Also im annoyed that my new comp has locked bios so I can't disable hyperthreading. Not too bad but still.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

Is it true that Windows 10 can destroy partitioned hard drives? Someone on Facebook claims this happened to him.

[semiprocoder]

I think so. My social studies teacher said that it deleted everything on his comp when he upgraded, but fortunately it didn't happen to me

[SJCubed]

I don't use Cortana too, and I use windows 10 similar to windows 8.1. so far, I never really had problems with windows 10 (other than some bugs which I was able to find solution for on google).

I'm mostly happy with windows 10 though.

[Luxen]

I used an oem disc to install win10, and can shed some light on it destroying data. Windows 10 requires some special formatting to run off a hard drive (idk why, but whatev)(not the filesystem, but how mbr is set up) and most hard drives arent partitioned in this style. Its supposed to be more secure for the data. Anyone who dualboots linux, or just generally formatted their hard drives themselves via gparted/similar, probably didnt notice that win10 doesnt abide by standard mbr partitioning tables and requires a reformatting of the entire hard drive - since the oem disc requires you to conceiously delete your old drive, i guess the guy didnt know what he was doing. Unless the 'upgrade' installer is different. My dad used that, and it only uninstalled a few programs; documents werent touched here.

I never lost data cause i have 2 hard drives, and i just removed my main to protect it, just in case. I had to use the oem cause i was upgrading from xp, which worked wonderfully till recently (my fault, not xp's).

Anyways, yeah. If you choose to upgrade, dont do anything stupid, and you should be fine. Just read what your doing.

Of course, we can always complain about how win10 cannot dual-boot with other OSs properly - to my knowledge.

[Dream of Omnimaga]

What would suck is if Windows 10 eventually only supported SSD drives. While this would be fine in a few years, currently it would be a disaster because SSDs are still expensive.

But would Windows 10 in its current form also require special formating on a SSD or is it only on HDD that it's a problem?

I'm personally thinking more and more about sticking to Windows 7 (or perhaps upgrading to 8.1 at one point) then switching to Linux as soon as either are discontinued. I would only use Windows for gaming and stuff that won't be feasible in Linux then (eg HP Prime program transfer)

[semiprocoder]

You know, windows 10 should give you a warning and at least save your data on a cloud drive and then restore it or something. Seriously. Many people losing their data just cause microsoft changes something.

Windows 11 could work though, once it comes out, if it is good(but then again, they will probably stay with their new format).

[SJCubed]

But would Windows 10 in its current form also require special formating on a SSD or is it only on HDD that it's a problem?

SSD and HDD both would need special formatting. SSD is not much different from HDD in the way it is formatted. Only difference is how they work (electronic vs physical disk) and the speed.

[Luxen]

Windows 10 would reformatt ssds and hdds; its the mbr partitioning system that its incompatible with. Its nothing to do with the drive itself.

Also, the oem is meant for use on a blank system; they (ms) dont expect oem users to use the disc for offline upgrading.

The upgrade installer available for win7/8 users doesnt really wipe things, it just plops win10 on top of the old system, since most everything in 7/8 is compatible. No idea what happens with mbr+win7 systems, but the newer partitioning taboes were introduced with winVista, so there shouldnt be any anyways.

Of course, it will uninstall programs listed as incompatible within the installer; many older Antivirus programs, Windows Media Player, etc.

[semiprocoder]

The only program it forced me to unistall was to uninstal the windows 7 xp compatibility mode(or whatever it's called)(so I can play empire earth, cause it only runs on xp and vista), but I reinstalled that as soon as I updated, and I can still play ee.