About 3 years ago Windows Vista Ultimate suffered a catastrophic series of errors rendering the system boot-able but useless. At the time I'd been running on 2 500GB HDs which were filling up fast anyway and so I opted to try Windows 7.
What a superior product Win 7 Ultimate is. While not all that much different than Vista, it was faster, had a much more Dog Collared UAC, the window snap thing and the show desktop button on the right on the taskbar, folks it just rocks as most of us know. When I migrated to Win 7 I also installed an SSD from which to boot off it. As a 1st/2nd gen Kingston SSD NOW SSD 64GB it seemed to be markedly faster than my HDD and I mated that with a 3TB USB 2.0 external I'd been using with my little WIN XP Netbook I bought when they got cheap and all the rage was heading into the Ultrabook era.
Yesterday was finally the day when I upgraded to my 2nd SSD, A Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB Drive. I performed a few write and read test dumped a dozen gigs on it and used crystal mark to get some readings. About 2-4X as fast, and loads more room. I was constantly trying to keep 3-4gb free on the 64GB SSD and it just wasnt cutting it. The INOPS were also of course higher and it supports 6Gb/sec SATA and is backwards compatible. All things working great.
Everything on Win 7 was running tits so I wanted to "clone the SSD" so that I wouldn't have to re-install windows or mess with the settings. I succeeded in doing this and it took less than 30 minutes which impressed me but at 60-100mb/sec I guess I should have just been pleased rather than astonished. I checked that all the files were there and everything looked great. Windows showed that it was booting off the D drive. So wanted to free up the space on the old SSD the C drive and so I formatted it. No issue right?
WRONG!!!! After a reboot the computer told me to do I did, and it boots to this light blue "This copy of Windows 7" is not genuine. WINDOWS GENUINE (dis) ADVANTAGE, I contacted Microsoft using my XP netbook via chat and they said I'd need to re-install windows 7 or better yet just upgrade and install windows 8. I told them that it was working fine for the last 3 years and genuine until yesterday and that it is still genuine but that I needed their help to fix the issue caused by the reboot.
Needless to say I was pissed. Went to bed- didn't even try to deal with it because I knew the odds were worse than successfully navigating an asteroid field and like Harrision Ford with a broken leg, not interested in hearing it. The mission was now restore this computer to use safeguard and get the files. Unable to find my Windows 7 Ultimate disc, I tried to download the iso file they gave me a link for and put it on my SD card/reader and then plug it in.
After about a dozen reboots in the bios and flipping settings orders and where to read from it became apparent that the Asus P5K Deluxe +WIFI was not interested in booting from the usb drive even though it could see it and it was directed to boot from it. I tried all 3 of the SD cards I have a shitty old generic 4GB card, a faster 4GB Sandisk Ultra II, and my new 32 GB Sony 40mb/sec card. Neither worked. Thanks for that splendid support MS. I asked if they could send me a DVD copy of Win 7. Nope. At one time they were giving them away to Vista users who'd had enough, they were even giving copies of Win XP away if you hated Vista. Now you can't even buy A Win 7 DVD from Microsoft. When I heard that today I was like man? Doesn't that seem odd to you?
Running out of ideas and with a computer that still had all my files and settings as I could see from the "run command prompt" I located a WIN XP SP1 disk OEM small ewww, and a Windows Vista Ultimate OEM double ewwww. Like a prisoner trying to escape in the laundry it was getting dirty and this whole situation stunk. It also really wasn't my fault or maybe it is I dont know, but there was no mention of how this could trigger a genuine error fault or that it would be unsolvable. I don't know how I had the foresight to not shatter my VISTA DVD but I didn't. The BIOS seemed to be interested in booting from the DVD drive or the SSD with the porked copy of 7. For the Empire I trayed that VISTA disc. About 35 min later the Vista cookies were done, well then I had to start doing updates immediately to the tune of about a gig of them. LOL 80 critical updates in total LOL. So hours into this disaster I was playing with Vista. I immediately remembered why I hated Vista to begin with.
U-A-C, there is nothing like being prompted a 2nd time anytime you try to do anything or being forced to use "Run as administrator" when you are already on the sole administrator account or even when you do, programs not working, because of the whim of Vista or a missing driver, that issue of which I recall all too well Microsoft. Even renaming a file, sometimes it will let you, other times it wont. Who knows why? My guess, half baked code. That is not what I paid for when I purchase Vista, and when I purchased Windows 7 I didn't also pay for the bullshit.
Also missing, the ability to snap windows the Win 7 taskbar which kicks Vista in the ass, and the show desktop button built right in. Its just cleaner in Win 7. Soooooo then did Vista want to load my Magic Disc program, nope. It needed to finish updating all kinds of drivers/runtimes in order to work another hour of wasted time just to get this pig unporked and functional. Finally I procured an ISO of Win 7 and installed it all the while trying to get in touch with MS tech support about how I would go about activating it.
I even offered to send them my Vista OEM disc with its key, in trade for any version of Win 7, but they just weren't interested. Go figure that one out. At this point everything was oh you should just upgrade to Win 8 and it will be better and fix all your issues. Sure. Finally they did offer me a "$40 one time lost key activation fee" but somehow the iso file they gave me a link to was part of a widely available one that I'd have to scrap, redownload another iso and do another wipe of the drive and reinstall or of course I could simply opt to upgrade to Windows 8.
Windows 8 Windows 8 Windows 8. FFS. Finally I told the lady no thank you but I'll stick with my copy of Windows VISTA if I have to and do that until I find my disc before I'm paying again to get back to Win 7 or upgrade to Windows 8. I seen Windows 8, Windows 8 lives in the next room and we get along just fine as long as I'm watching a silly vid clip on Youtube or browsing CNN, but don't ask me to flip between windows or play clicky click click with the DT/Metro-Rollable interfarce that is Windows 8. Where is the real START button? hmmmmm?
Skeptical and I wonder why, with all your stellar help so far and the only way its getting fixed is though my own resourcefulness. "Contact the vendor where you got your Win 7 OEM and they should have your key on file". LOL. Yeah well problem is I can't remember where I got it from. I contacted Newegg and Bestbuy and it didn't come from either of them so maybe Amazon but I doubt it. Anyway I installed copied my files from the D drive in my user folder back over to the C drive, formatted the D drive
formatting 2 drives in two days is not how I want to live my personal computing existence, and then applied the Win 7 ISO.
Now I have a functioning copy of Vista and 7 one on this SSD and one of that SSD. I've contacted them via chat 3 times and phone 4 times, each time I have to try and explain it. I've been hung up on 3 out of 4 times and that really really pisses me off too.
I have completely given up to their incompetent and unhelpful support and have had to resort to any means necessary to restore my system to conditions before all this WGA BS occured and I think we all know what that has meant. Unfortunately I will have to restore all my settings manually and have to re-install all the programs I was trying to preserve on my "tits" setup manually too.
Thanks alot Microsoft. Thanks for Vista, Thanks for making me install that years later, thanks for making me have to jump through crappy hoops because your staff is incompetent and lazy and your products don't work the way they should. Thanks for not doing more to make your latest product as functional as your prior product while also as easy or easier to use and following basic design elements. Oh and to the new CEO. Fix that stupid error in Voice recognition when you confirm a spelling change with the dialog O-K which is made up of 2 letters, change it to ACCEPT which isn't recognized by speech recognition as letters of the alphabet but a command word which is what anybody who knew what the hell they were doing would do. Yes I reported that years ago but its still there because you are all so busy messing up your products and providing such wonderful customer service.
TE.
What a superior product Win 7 Ultimate is. While not all that much different than Vista, it was faster, had a much more Dog Collared UAC, the window snap thing and the show desktop button on the right on the taskbar, folks it just rocks as most of us know. When I migrated to Win 7 I also installed an SSD from which to boot off it. As a 1st/2nd gen Kingston SSD NOW SSD 64GB it seemed to be markedly faster than my HDD and I mated that with a 3TB USB 2.0 external I'd been using with my little WIN XP Netbook I bought when they got cheap and all the rage was heading into the Ultrabook era.
Yesterday was finally the day when I upgraded to my 2nd SSD, A Samsung 840 EVO 250 GB Drive. I performed a few write and read test dumped a dozen gigs on it and used crystal mark to get some readings. About 2-4X as fast, and loads more room. I was constantly trying to keep 3-4gb free on the 64GB SSD and it just wasnt cutting it. The INOPS were also of course higher and it supports 6Gb/sec SATA and is backwards compatible. All things working great.
Everything on Win 7 was running tits so I wanted to "clone the SSD" so that I wouldn't have to re-install windows or mess with the settings. I succeeded in doing this and it took less than 30 minutes which impressed me but at 60-100mb/sec I guess I should have just been pleased rather than astonished. I checked that all the files were there and everything looked great. Windows showed that it was booting off the D drive. So wanted to free up the space on the old SSD the C drive and so I formatted it. No issue right?
WRONG!!!! After a reboot the computer told me to do I did, and it boots to this light blue "This copy of Windows 7" is not genuine. WINDOWS GENUINE (dis) ADVANTAGE, I contacted Microsoft using my XP netbook via chat and they said I'd need to re-install windows 7 or better yet just upgrade and install windows 8. I told them that it was working fine for the last 3 years and genuine until yesterday and that it is still genuine but that I needed their help to fix the issue caused by the reboot.
Needless to say I was pissed. Went to bed- didn't even try to deal with it because I knew the odds were worse than successfully navigating an asteroid field and like Harrision Ford with a broken leg, not interested in hearing it. The mission was now restore this computer to use safeguard and get the files. Unable to find my Windows 7 Ultimate disc, I tried to download the iso file they gave me a link for and put it on my SD card/reader and then plug it in.
After about a dozen reboots in the bios and flipping settings orders and where to read from it became apparent that the Asus P5K Deluxe +WIFI was not interested in booting from the usb drive even though it could see it and it was directed to boot from it. I tried all 3 of the SD cards I have a shitty old generic 4GB card, a faster 4GB Sandisk Ultra II, and my new 32 GB Sony 40mb/sec card. Neither worked. Thanks for that splendid support MS. I asked if they could send me a DVD copy of Win 7. Nope. At one time they were giving them away to Vista users who'd had enough, they were even giving copies of Win XP away if you hated Vista. Now you can't even buy A Win 7 DVD from Microsoft. When I heard that today I was like man? Doesn't that seem odd to you?
Running out of ideas and with a computer that still had all my files and settings as I could see from the "run command prompt" I located a WIN XP SP1 disk OEM small ewww, and a Windows Vista Ultimate OEM double ewwww. Like a prisoner trying to escape in the laundry it was getting dirty and this whole situation stunk. It also really wasn't my fault or maybe it is I dont know, but there was no mention of how this could trigger a genuine error fault or that it would be unsolvable. I don't know how I had the foresight to not shatter my VISTA DVD but I didn't. The BIOS seemed to be interested in booting from the DVD drive or the SSD with the porked copy of 7. For the Empire I trayed that VISTA disc. About 35 min later the Vista cookies were done, well then I had to start doing updates immediately to the tune of about a gig of them. LOL 80 critical updates in total LOL. So hours into this disaster I was playing with Vista. I immediately remembered why I hated Vista to begin with.
U-A-C, there is nothing like being prompted a 2nd time anytime you try to do anything or being forced to use "Run as administrator" when you are already on the sole administrator account or even when you do, programs not working, because of the whim of Vista or a missing driver, that issue of which I recall all too well Microsoft. Even renaming a file, sometimes it will let you, other times it wont. Who knows why? My guess, half baked code. That is not what I paid for when I purchase Vista, and when I purchased Windows 7 I didn't also pay for the bullshit.
Also missing, the ability to snap windows the Win 7 taskbar which kicks Vista in the ass, and the show desktop button built right in. Its just cleaner in Win 7. Soooooo then did Vista want to load my Magic Disc program, nope. It needed to finish updating all kinds of drivers/runtimes in order to work another hour of wasted time just to get this pig unporked and functional. Finally I procured an ISO of Win 7 and installed it all the while trying to get in touch with MS tech support about how I would go about activating it.
I even offered to send them my Vista OEM disc with its key, in trade for any version of Win 7, but they just weren't interested. Go figure that one out. At this point everything was oh you should just upgrade to Win 8 and it will be better and fix all your issues. Sure. Finally they did offer me a "$40 one time lost key activation fee" but somehow the iso file they gave me a link to was part of a widely available one that I'd have to scrap, redownload another iso and do another wipe of the drive and reinstall or of course I could simply opt to upgrade to Windows 8.
Windows 8 Windows 8 Windows 8. FFS. Finally I told the lady no thank you but I'll stick with my copy of Windows VISTA if I have to and do that until I find my disc before I'm paying again to get back to Win 7 or upgrade to Windows 8. I seen Windows 8, Windows 8 lives in the next room and we get along just fine as long as I'm watching a silly vid clip on Youtube or browsing CNN, but don't ask me to flip between windows or play clicky click click with the DT/Metro-Rollable interfarce that is Windows 8. Where is the real START button? hmmmmm?
Skeptical and I wonder why, with all your stellar help so far and the only way its getting fixed is though my own resourcefulness. "Contact the vendor where you got your Win 7 OEM and they should have your key on file". LOL. Yeah well problem is I can't remember where I got it from. I contacted Newegg and Bestbuy and it didn't come from either of them so maybe Amazon but I doubt it. Anyway I installed copied my files from the D drive in my user folder back over to the C drive, formatted the D drive
formatting 2 drives in two days is not how I want to live my personal computing existence, and then applied the Win 7 ISO. Now I have a functioning copy of Vista and 7 one on this SSD and one of that SSD. I've contacted them via chat 3 times and phone 4 times, each time I have to try and explain it. I've been hung up on 3 out of 4 times and that really really pisses me off too.
I have completely given up to their incompetent and unhelpful support and have had to resort to any means necessary to restore my system to conditions before all this WGA BS occured and I think we all know what that has meant. Unfortunately I will have to restore all my settings manually and have to re-install all the programs I was trying to preserve on my "tits" setup manually too.
Thanks alot Microsoft. Thanks for Vista, Thanks for making me install that years later, thanks for making me have to jump through crappy hoops because your staff is incompetent and lazy and your products don't work the way they should. Thanks for not doing more to make your latest product as functional as your prior product while also as easy or easier to use and following basic design elements. Oh and to the new CEO. Fix that stupid error in Voice recognition when you confirm a spelling change with the dialog O-K which is made up of 2 letters, change it to ACCEPT which isn't recognized by speech recognition as letters of the alphabet but a command word which is what anybody who knew what the hell they were doing would do. Yes I reported that years ago but its still there because you are all so busy messing up your products and providing such wonderful customer service.
TE.
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