User interface

[alidan]

is there any way for windows 7, through the abilities present in os alone, or in 3rd party applications (preferably free) to make the complete user interface that of windows xp?

ill give a bit of back story. i have a win 7 computer, well, its my little brothers, and when i set it up, i realised that i hate everything about windows 7, besides dx11, its video playback can be hardware accelerated better than on xp (dont point me anywhere, what i play cant be accelerated on xp), and possibly trim if i get a ssd (which i plan to soonish)

now 64bit im torn on because i like that everything is better on it if your system is modern, but playing some things made for 32bit have a fit when played on 64bit. i can get over that, but 64 bit isnt a + or - for me.

now when i went from windows 98 to xp, everything changed in a way that made sense, and was better. from xp to vista (never owned, but have used enough to comment on it) it was a complete mess that was thankfully never pushed to hard on up, and xp to win7, well... it is better than vista ill give it that, but is it better than xp... if you never used a computer before, yes, if you owned a mac and need to use a computer, yes, and if you are a heavy gamer, and want dx11 regardless if much uses it, than yes.

i have a hd5770 and love gaming on the pc, but dx11 alone isnt enough for me to over look the whole ui issues.

for me everything was changed in win7 in a way that seamed completely unnecessary and unwanted. i seen next to no people able to tell me things that make win 7 better than xp aside from boot time (i reboot once every 2-3 weeks, 10 seconds shorter doesn't matter to me), trim for ssd (i dont have, and is over all negligible difference, i want an ssd for its speed at reading, not its write speed) and dx11 (which i want but not that much)

so i want to know is there some way to make it feel like i'm using windows xp completely, as in classic start menu and classic start bar with xp theme (to name a few)?

 

[buwish]

Have a look at this thread:

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/655-63-make-look

 

[alidan]

i just read that whole thing, granted i skiped over some of the longer rants, and i got till i noticed that they were still useing a beta version before i checked when they were made. that thread its almost a year old. and it was closed at least 9 months ago.

i read it and most of what they said was get use to it, basicly telling anyone who prefers the whole xp interface to f off.

in the whole of the last 9 months at least, there has to be at least something more comprehensive for me to read about making win7 look and act like xp.

i like the advancements that win 7 makes, but i cant stand all the backwards intercase crap.

 

[sminlal]

In terms of the user interface vs. XP style, nothing has changed in Windows 7 since the beta version.

 

[Shadow703793]

Hmm... you want a reasons why you need Win 7?

1. XP is no longer supported.

2. If you do use file sharing,etc it is much easier to do this on 7 than XP.

3. Most of the newer hardware (esp. printers, scanners,etc) will not have drivers for XP.

4. Win 7 usually can find the drivers for your hardware via Windows Update,etc. Saves a bunch of time imo.

5. This is the future of the GUI, get over it. Windows 8 and on will use a smiler GUI to 7.

6. At least for me, 7 is quite a bit more stable than XP x86/x64.

(i dont have, and is over all negligible difference, i want an ssd for its speed at reading, not its write speed)

?????? You do realize that for an OS drive, 4K read write are quite important? WHY would you not care about write speed? I hate having to wait a few minutes to transfer 4-5GB worth of RAW images from HDD to HDD, even with RAID, it takes too long.


It shouldn't be hard to transfer between XP and 7. Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature.

 

[sminlal]

Once you get used to it, it becomes second nature.

I'd agree with this. I was a long, long time XP power user and there were a bunch of things that bugged me about the Windows 7 interface. I still don't like how much screen real estate is wasted in some of the windows and dialogue boxes. But it only took me a few days of use to get pretty comfortable with the it and now when I have to go back to XP it seems clunky and restrictive to me.

We all hate change, but it's usually nowhere near as bad as we fear.

 

[alidan]

xp is still supported till 2014 if im not mistaken, its vista that will loose support before xp.
file sharing, you mean over a network? because i cant get the windows 7 machine to even share but i got xp to do it in less than 15 minutes.
newer hardware not haveing xp drivers? well, that would be a borderline retarded business move. with the market share that xp still has
drivers, at least for me, have never been an issue with anything on xp
its a horrific gui, and i cant stand the way anything, ANYTHING works on it.
7 being more stable... thats possible, at the same time xp never crashed on me without hardware dieing.

for me, i wouldn't be using the ssd as a boot drive, i have other things to use with it than i want windows and programs to boot faster. and for those, read speed is far more valuable to me than write

when i am finaly forced to use windows 7, i will get use to it, unless there is some third part application that makes it look and feel like xp.

the thing i hate most about it is the whole start bar. is there a way to at least get things to stack like in windows xp? where it says "9 whatevers" i click it and get a menu telling me what each one is, and when i right click it i get the cascade, and tile options? i use that in xp far more often than anything else that was changed i hate about 7. and so we are clear, i despise that little screenshot of what it looks like.

also is there a way to get classic control panel? it was so much simpler in any windows beside 7 (vista excluded sense i never touched it)

also sorry, i didn't get any notification of responses to this thread so i thought it was ignored.

 

[sminlal]

is there a way to get classic control panel?

Right-click "Start" and select "Properties"

Click the "start Menu" tab

Click the "Customize" button

Under "Control Panel" select the "Display as a menu" option

 

[alidan]

the win 7 computer we have is my little brothers, so i cant try that without him throwing a fit, does this bring back the cascade and tile options?

 

[sminlal]

It just changes the behaviour of the control panel.

 

[alidan]

so... do i or dont i get the functionality i want?

also, my little borthers computer, i had to use it to set something up for my parrents, and a was reminded of one of the most glareing problems with it besides the start bar stuff

the address bar.

i type c:\ and it wouldn't go to c:\ it just told me that folder doesn't exist, i had to do a significant amount of dicking around to even manage to get to the c:\

now anymore would be a rant but lets just end this with what cant they call it add remove programs? was that in any way shape or form confusing to people?

 

[sminlal]

Are you talking about typing "C:\" into the address bar of Windows Explorer? It works fine for me...

I can understand why they renamed "Add and Remove Programs" to "Programs and Features". They're trying to be consistent and make the alphabetical list sort by ITEM rather than ACTION. If they started each entry with an action then all the entries would start with ADD, CHANGE, etc. and it wouldn't be very useful. It's actually easier, IMHO, for people to be looking for "Program" in the list of Control Panel applets if they want to do something with a program.

And I say this as someone who I'm sure was just as flustered as you the first time I tried to find out how to see what programs were installed....

 

[alidan]

various problems with my computer right now dont let me post every day, and i have to make the most out of uptime, i think i got most of the errors.

i believe that it went this way.

windows 95
windows 98
windows me
and windows xp

all had the same way of functioning, had the same management, and had the same almost everything.

now going from windows 98 straight to windows xp, there were almost not changes, at least interface wise. the start menu was different but i could change that back to windows 98 style (not theme just style) and have it scrolling.

now i just had to fix my little brother computer, and i will say this, windows 7 goes from start to usable far faster than my xp, granted i had this going for close to a year and a half on this install, but he crippled his computer with spyware and *** that wouldn't allow programs to run.

i fixed that, but had to uses safe mode for it.

anyway, is there a way to get the start menu to act like it does in windows xp.

im trying to figure out if i can at least keep the basic user interface that im use to the same. start menu, folder and browsing all have to be the same, anything more, i can learn as i go... but i have to say that so far, with over 2 weeks of me needing to use 7, ill have to be dragged kicking and screaming into using it. i mean honestly, the most basic things i can think of donet even work in 7, and every time im reminded of it, it pisses me off just a little bit more every time.

all that being said, how is dual booting off a ssd? is it easy?

and will a 32bit os throw a fit if i have more than 3.5gb or ram? because if i go 7, im going to get 6 or 8gb.

im thinking dual boot would be the best way to go. that way, when i have something that is nessassary for 7 i got that, and i can go back to xp when im done.

 

[sminlal]

> i will say this, windows 7 goes from start to usable far faster than my xp

Wait 'till you see it on an SSD...


> all that being said, how is dual booting off a ssd? is it easy?

Can't help you with this, I'm a KISS kind of guy so I don't do dual boot. I use an XP virtual machine, and I only do that so I have an XP environment to test things in - all of the programs I actually use work just fine on 64-bit Windows 7.


> and will a 32bit os throw a fit if i have more than 3.5gb or ram? because if i go 7, im going to get 6 or 8gb.

A 32-bit OS will work with 6 or 8GBytes of memory, but you'll only be able to access about 3.5GBytes of it. There really isn't any point in buying more than 4GBytes of memory unless you use a 64-bit OS.