After having tried one of the beta versions and being very impressed with it, I eagerly awaited the RC. Downloaded, and installed. Took 4 hours to install this RC1, it runs like molasses in January, and few things work. I don't really care why they don't work anymore, just want to add my comments in the hopes that RC2 will work properly. First thing on the list is having the install change the hard drive mode in the BIOS, plenty of threads about his now. Super slow install, may be related to the messed up hard drive mode. When I had the networks disconnected, the HD would stop spinning after 15 or 20 minutes, when a network was connected to the internet the HD would spin at maximum and stayed that way for an hour until I got sick of looking at it and not being able to do anything. ie8 was broken so I couldn't surf to get drivers, worked great in the previous beta so I can't see what would have happened The install just seems to be way too big. 7GB? way too much stuff in there, maybe give us an advanced mode so that we cantrim a bunch of this junk out. I don't know about the requirement to partition the HD, but it is not so good for machines with an SSD since it takes away some of the advantages of the wear leveling built into almost all of them. It also slows mine down substantially over a single partition so I think this should go away too. If this was my first look at the new OS I would proclaim it as absolute junk. Since I've seen how it could run with the previous version, I'm still hopeful that you'll get this fixed so that it is slim and fast again. I know my comments are pretty much meaningless, but there they are. For now it's back to XP since I can not operate the RC1 due to the issues.

hmmmm 32 min d/l, 15 min install - desktop. So I am wondering what is different on your system?Kris

Hi GregSorry you had a bad experience with the RC Build.Your comments are not meaningless and they will be passed along.Would you mind posting and giving some details about your system as well as how you were installing the RC?This could help to possibly resolve some of these issues in future builds.Thanks and regards,Thank You for testing Windows 7 Ronnie Vernon MVP

yes greg, posting what's your rig might help... i didn't had any problem installing RC on my newly purchased HD and to think that my board probably auto detected it since i didn't bother adjusting some settings... my installation went probably less than 15mins... heres my rig: Pentium D 820 2.5ghz (oc at 3.15ghz) 2gb team elite ddr2-800mhz powercolor hd2600xt 512mb seagate 320gb sata-II 16mb cache (newly purchased, used as drive C *unpartitioned*) maxtor 80gb IDE (old HD, used as backup for installers, etc.) so far everything seems to be faster and it uses less than 450mb~600mb ram first time i ran it... and yes about the installation size? 7gb was a major improvement from the first beta 7000 i installed (16gb++ was required)

> After having tried one of the beta versions and being very impressed with it, I eagerly awaited the RC. Downloaded, and installed. Took 4 > hours to install this RC1, it runs like molasses in January, and few things work.4 HOURS?!?!?! Whoa! There's gotta be something wrong here. As Kris77 said - his install took 15 mins to install. Mine took about 20 - that's including a format of the target drive. My computer ISa bit over 3 years old - gotta give it a little slack.> I don't really care why they don't work anymore, just want to add my comments in the hopes that RC2 will work properly.Unless something seriously goes wrong, there probably won't be a 2nd RC. But there WILL be a version that's RTM'ed.> First thing on the list is having the install change the hard drive mode in the BIOS, plenty of threads about his now.Oh? This is the first time I've heard any mention of the BIOS settings being changed by Windows or it's installer. Can you post some reference to these issues?> Super slow install, may be related to the messed up hard drive mode.If something did indeed change the hard drive's mode, then yes, that likely can be the problem with why Windows took forever to install AND why it runs slowly.> When I had the networks disconnected, the HD would stop spinning after 15 or 20 minutes, when a network was connected to the internet the > HD would spin at maximum and stayed that way for an hour until I got sick of looking at it and not being able to do anything.> ie8 was broken so I couldn't surf to get drivers, worked great in the previous beta so I can't see what would have happenedOnce again, if the HDD is in the wrong mode, it WILL run slowly. > The install just seems to be way too big. 7GB? way too much stuff in there, maybe give us an advanced mode so that we cantrim a bunch of > this junk out.Most of that 7 GB is drivers. But unless you've got a dinky 40 GB drive, drive space isn't that big a deal. > I don't know about the requirement to partition the HD, but it is not so good for machines with an SSD since it takes away some of the > advantages of the wear leveling built into almost all of them. It also slows mine down substantially over a single partition so I think this > should go away too.There are some new features built into Windows 7 that are supposed to help SSD drives out.> If this was my first look at the new OS I would proclaim it as absolute junk. Since I've seen how it could run with the previous version, I'm > still hopeful that you'll get this fixed so that it is slim and fast again. Well... If that experience was my only experience, I'd probably go along with your assessment. However, I'm thinking something went seriously wrong here. I can understand a beta build going wonky, but a RC is supposed to be to a higher standard. You mentioned how much you were impressed with the Beta build you tried. To cut to the chase, it might be a good idea to reset the hardware to what it's supposed to be set to and try installing the RC once again. Given there are a LOT of people out there who aren't experiencing this sort of thing, I gotta wonder if there isn't something going on with your system. Windows Installer doesn't generally alter BIOS settingsfrom my experience.> I know my comments are pretty much meaningless, but there they are. For now it's back to XP since I can not operate the RC1 due to the > issues.Your comments aren't meaningless, nor useless. Finding and fixing any potential bugs IS what this program is all about. Any further information you can provide would benefit everyone.

The more I think about this, I wonder if something like a loose sata or IDE cable didn't cause it - that is, tons of read errors that are being corrected on the fly. That would produce precisely the result you are seeing. I have actually experienced that. So. When you went back to XP, were you using the same HD spindle? Or maybe a different one? While I have seen it, it is rare, that a simple reboot, or cold reboot (unplug computer for 15 seconds) will fix it. (this resets the BIOS and forces rebuild of the CMOS and memory resident device blocks.)(this is based on our DOS forbears!) I would love to hear back from you on some specifics of what your computer / hard drives are! This is rare, and as Ronnie implied, finding out what happened is important, to help you, and others who might have the same problem. Do get back to us! Kris

The only thing that I have to test this on is a Fujitsu u810 (u1010) laptop which is below the suggested processor so I expected it to be slow, but not this slow. The previous beta was every bit as fast as XP Tablet on this computer, was stable, everything that I tried worked, all the apps I tried worked, most of the special Fujitsu drivers even worked. I never got past the ie8 crashing bug to get the rest of the drivers to try them, the only driver I had already downloaded was the system chip drivers which did not install properly on this build, but did install properly on the previous build. The biggest speed issue was the disk IO with 7100. For whatever reason as soon as I was connected to the internet the disk was running a full tilt and never slowed down. If I turned the connections off, it would eventually stop spinning. Install method was the same between previous beta and RC1... USB connected Sony S70U drive, regular install (not upgrade) clean dedicated drive (not trying to dual boot), drive gives 25+MBps reads and 20MBps writes (tested with DV Raptor from Canopus). Fujitsu restore disk pushes more than 2GB of data onto the hard drive in less than 15 minutes - Takes an hour to push the win7RC1 to hard drive before first reboot, took about 30-45 minutes for the same thing to happen with the previous beta. Fujitsu restore process takes all of 30 minutes start to finish including installing all the drivers. specs on the u810 Intel Atom 110 @ 800Mhz 1GB soldered to board RAM 32GB disk - PATA connected UDMA enabled Intel 945 or 950 chipset On the beta it gave me a WEI of 1.5 due to the processor, on RC1 it could not rate this machine. WEI for the hard drive was somewhere around 3 or 4 with the beta and that was the part that the RC1 WEI could not measure. Ready boost worked well on beta, had trouble finding a card to work on RC1 and didn't seem to help with the speed on RC1, worked great with beta. I don't know what changed, but I was completely happy with the beta I was using, in short I thought it was great. This RC1 I never want to look at again. Assuming that there is an RC2, and assuming that it doesn't mess with the BIOS again, I'll try it and provide comments. If it messes with the BIOS I'm going to spread the word far and wide that this is a dangerous issue that could help lodge a virus into the BIOS where it would be damn hard to remove. There are far too many posts recently about how the install changed the hard drive operation mode in the BIOS to ignore the issue. I probably won't be checking back very often to see if there are more questions as I'm kind of done testing until a new version is available for download. I do have a 50mbps connection at work, so downloading a new version takes all of a few minutes, not afraid to grab the newest version if it meets my required BIOS change. If you have no desire to change the way the instal interacts with the BIOS, at least give us the option to decide yes or no, then I'm completely done with this OS until it is forced on me in the next hardware upgrade rotation at work, and even then I may only go after exhausting all other possible downgrades. Sorry to be so negative, but they are honest, uncolored descriptions of what I see is wrong. When you think of all the netbook style computers coming out, and that they are using all manor of Solid State drives (from CF cards to real SSD drives) and slower processors (800mhz and up), the need for a fully functional, lighter weight OS really becomes apparent, and my u810 is not that far off the performance mark that it shouldn't work just fine. And just think how fast that OS will be on a built for speed tower with multiple processor and more RAM than one can imagine. Install time is not my biggest concern since that generally only happens once.

I really agree on last part"the need for a fully functional, lighter weight OS really becomes apparent, and my u810 is not that far off the performance mark that it shouldn't work just fine. And just think how fast that OS will be on a built for speed tower with multiple processor and more RAM than one can imagine". The PC Gaming comunity hated Vista, and what I'v seen so far of Windows7 Performance isunder current Vista.http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproperf/thread/52630855-a1f0-4343-b8e1-69838dce1a48

I had the opposite experience. My install was not the fastest but the OS executes perfectly! I had a problem with sound that was apparently fixed in RC. I have installed VS, Offices and other programs and they all work perfectly. This is from a laptop which I was concidering selling for 50 bucks on ebay. I had installed Vista and in my case the machine became really crapy and not usable. It is not a dual core just P4 but it was usable in XP but Vista no such luck.I installed RCon another old laptop, even older,andit worked beyond my expectations. I did, however, peformed a clean installed. Maybe that has something to do with it. WOW I really wonder why the experience is so vastly different? I have a Quad coerbox going to build it and try again see if the first two attemps where just pure luck!Report back once done

I only ever do clean installs when given the choice. This laptop is the first that I have ever had (and had to use) with just a restore disk, but in this case that restore disk works perfectly. Just to add a little qualification: I manage about 50 XP machines at work, plus 4 windows 2003 servers with active directory, 2 win2000 servers, and 2 XP machines that are really just servers. We deal with audio and video applications and moving that content around our network for video and audio editing and internet radio streaming. RAID 5 and RAID 6 storage arrays plus whatever the Avid Lanshare uses. BSI radio automation, shoutcast servers, and a Darwin Streaming Server (on win2000). We also have an Xserve, but it hasn't had power applied in more than a year because I don't like the way it interfaces to the user (me), it also doesn't really have a purpose so better to save the power. We also have 16 Mac Pro towers (intel flavor), and every time I need to do something outside their little box of a world, life gets difficult. These have OSX and XP on them. It may not be the most advanced system, but it gains every time I read a book and learn about new ways to make it run better. The u810 is my personal machine and I'm using it because four small screws and the hard drive is out so swapping should be easy. The u810 is my PDF reader plus light web surfing and some document work (which is hard because of the small keyboard). I was interested in win7 to see about the support for some of our media streams, thankfully our primary radio stream is now supported which can only help us to grow the station.

Hi ONTI'm not trying to defend anything, but this is comparing apples to oranges. :)You have a 2 1/2 year old OS that is @ SP2 and a Beta OS that's just barelyout ofthefirst stage.I participated in every step of the Vista beta and my recollection is that Build 5564 (RC1)was not nearly as stable or functional at this point in time.All of the info about the Vista beta is still out there.My thoughts.Thank You for testing Windows 7 Ronnie Vernon MVP

Greg 999 just so you don't feel like the only one, I too have had terrible problems with RC1 on my HP DV5-1235DX notebook. I also have it on a Lenovo 3000 K100 desktop system. On this desktop I am currently posting this via Firefox in Win7 RC1 and all is good. It is stable and fast. But on my HP it is buggy and has a number of problems. 1. My notification area icons are consistently disappearing. I have reformatted and reinstalled 3 times now and all 3 times this happened after a few hours of use. The sound, network and power icons went away. 2. I keep getting a problem with shutting down stalling at the screen that says "shutting down." 3. After one reformat I installed Vista again and got it going right with all the software and drivers and updates. Then I thought, maybe doing an upgrade in place will works since it will have all the proper vista drivers including chipset etc. I did the update and this time it totally hosed the computer so that it would not even boot. With that hard drive installed it would not even get past showing the ESC to enter startup options. I took the drive out and reformatted it and put it back in and installed Vista on it. Working fine. 4. Occasional blue screens. 5. Would not recognize an external hard BlacX sata drive dock. Worked fine on the desktop but on the laptop it would show in Dev. Manager, but with it connected the Drive Manager would not start up. 6. Various software that worked fine on the desktop with Win7 RC1 are not running well on the HP. I am betting this is a problem with something very basic like the ChipSet drivers. But the installer won't even run on the laptop with RC1. Works fine in Vista.Kevin

Legna - It's been the conventional wisdom for many, many moons, when installing Windows it's ALWAYS ALWAYS best to do a clean install. Upgrades, unless they're done on a freshly installed copy of the previous OS can cause a lot of grief.

HI Ronnie Vernon MVP I'm just thinking that with the baad reception of Vista it may be a wise move to get better benchmarks than an old OS (XP). This is a RC not an Alpha build or a Beta test. Its like Ford letting you test drive next years model car and say dont minde the poor gas milige and the poor acceleration will fix it. And finding quotes like this makes me wonder. "It's been nearly four months since Microsoft released its only Windows 7 beta, and it's likely that further changes to the code following this week's release on MSDN TechNet and next week's broad availability will be restricted to bug-fixes. Senior vice president Steven Sinofsky described the RC as "Windows 7 as we intend to ship it" and said there would be no further public previews before final release." Don't get me wrong, I'm exited to try Windows 7 and I hope testing it will bring a better product to the market. 3D Mark05 (using driver 185.85) T9300 Intel 2.5, 4G Ram , 8800M GTX Windows7 64 "14478" (cpu 13012) Vista 64 sp1 "14714" (cpu 13134)2 place Vista 64 "13926" (cpu 11776) XP 32 "15212" (cpu 10171) Winner So Performance of Windows 7 isunder current Vista 64 sp1 and 734 points under XP .

I downloaded the RC1 DVD image and burnt it to disk. Then I repartioned a dinky 40GB drive so I could still use XP SP2 in dual boot.I have an nVidia graphcs card on the venerable Latitude C840. This is a P4, 1GB ram machine. It has UVGA display.The problem I have is that after installing it, on the 2rd reboot it hangs. I have pulled the plug and popped the battery and restarted using:a) Hammer F5 like crazy, but nothing happens when i see the Starting Windows screenb) Hit F8 and chose VGA 640 x 480 display, it just sits there with the windows logo fluorescing.c) The next step is hit F8 and go safe mode.OK, it trundles through the drivers, and hangs on\$WINDOWS.~BT\Windows\system32\DRIVERS\disk.sysBang thats where it dies.This is in Safe Mode mind you.I guess it doesn't like my hard disk.Pity.++++Update -- I rebooted into XP, and was presented with an error message that said:This version of Windows could not be installed.Your previous version of Windows has been restored, and you can continue to use it.Then the rest of the message is advice about the upgrade advisor.

I do not write well or even try to (much), but I liked your post.I read, and if it's interesting I'll say something. >Update -- I rebooted into XP, and was presented with an error message that said: >This version of Windows could not be installed. >Your previous version of Windows has been restored, and you can continue to use it. >Then the rest of the message is advice about the upgrade advisor.I wanted to ask if you booted from the CD or did you run it from within XP? The dinky disk, does it check out ok in xp?and if it does, did you let win7 delete anything on it and reformat?I wanted to separately rant to the zipperneck with the axe, and I will, but he wins, he always does. I just don't have to like it.

@Chitbill I tried from the DVD image burnt to a DVD. It stopped at the point I mentioned before. I also tried doing a fresh install from Windows XP into a logical drive. I had split my 40GB drive into C with 15GB and D with 23 GB (formatted). The 40GB disk checks out fine with Windows XP Sp2 and Sp3. I am totally astonished that Microsoft expects anyone to upgrade to Windows 7.0 if it won't install. Given that many of us are veterans going back to Windows 98 beta, I do actually expect an RC1 to install, or if it won't install provide an explanation. Wiht the install from Windows XP SP2, it did load the windows files, expand them and reboot as expected, but after twenty minutes staring at the Starting Windows screen on the 2nd reboot, I gave up. It wont even install on Windows VPC 2007 SP1 either. Maybe the image I have is corrupted. Maybe if MS want people to test it out let them ask for a free DVD with nil shipping. UPDATE: OK, I take back what I said. The laptop I am using right now with Windows 7 RC1 is a Dell Latitude D600 with a 40GB hard disk, 512MB Ram and a Mobile Pentium M 1.4GHz CPU. It was not exactly a jet-propelled install, but it did only take 20 minutes or so. For those who may be interested, I had to install the ATI Radeon 9000 Mobile drivers manually -- run the setup so it pulls out the files, then do an update driver install pointing to the inf file. Do video first, then the audio, then the WLAN 1350 Dell, finally the O2Micro. The 40GB dinky drive is a 4200rpm IDE drive that dates back to probably 2002. I do have USB 2.0 ports which probably says something about the mobo. The system was first manufactured in April 2004. (sysop note, if you want to abstract this post somewhere else for relevance, please feel free.)

@Chitbill Maybe the image I have is corrupted. Maybe if MS want people to test it out let them ask for a free DVD with nil shipping. I will gladly send them $10 or $15 to know that I have a good copy to try. From what I remember of the install, it copies files to the HD, then it spends a lot of time either expanding those files or moving them around. Would be nice if only the required files were expanded and then copied to the HD much like the older OS's. It would also be great if there was an advanced area in the install GUI to let people decide exactly what parts they want installed. I would have opted to leave out all the printers, and probably a bunch of other things. At this point anything that allows me to transfer less stuff would be a good idea. Also keep in mind that many of the target platforms only have a 4GB or 8GB SSD so the install needs to be compact. Yes I am a very "less is more" person in this regard.

And one more thing... Instead of putting up the ISO as a single file, why not break it up into chunks with something like Winrar, going one more step you could then put up some parity recovery files with Quick Par, this would ensure that the download was correct.