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Windows 7

Which Windows platform are you using?


  • Total voters
    197
  • Poll closed .
PC home built: Win 10 Pro. Main Flightsim rig. Have FSX installed on it's own HDD, but almost never use it anymore. P3Dv3 & v4 on SSD, with scenery on it's own 3TB HDD

2 Laptops, both with Win 10 Home. (one is wife's.) I use my laptop for all mail and online work.

Flightsims work well, just need a better video card.

Wife's is real slow, can't figure what she does, as she's done this with 3 different laptops. I have same model, with 4-5 times the programs, and mine works well. EXCEPT: lately, for about last month or so, all three units, with no warning whatsoever, will lockup totally. No Blue or black screens, just suddenly everything quits working. If a video is playing, it just stops. Mouse always just stops moving. Hard shutdown, restart, and they are each good for rest of day. Other than that, no problems.
 
Win7 64bit,, FSX-A (Gold). It will do for a long time - 7 years old rig still running perfectly (HP). Once you strip all the crap (Programs you dont use or care for) out of the system, etc, it works fine so only MS updates I ever need a so called security patches or updates to the various versions of netware required by FSX. A major international aerospace company I work for are of a similar view all their corporate systems are Win 7 + Oracle with all the serious others stuff not MS you need for aerospace engineering work, etc, they have no interest in going to Win10 that tells you everything really, not a serious platform for high end, high volume users who need stability and reliabiity.

Will not be going to P3D as that means a whole new PC or Win10 (don't like it, got it and ditched it). Most of my on board applications are not MS, in fact only MS products used are the O/S and FSX all the others were deleted long ago for open source stuff that works better for me (I am also a Linux user/fan from way back).

As they if it ain't broke don't fix it. But I am up for a new video card shortly which will make FSX even better.
 
I am a Windows 7 user.
So far the poll has more Windows 7 users than Windows 10 users by about 20%.
What I find interesting is that for over 6 months I got a daily e-mail from Microsoft saying they would automatically convert me over to Windows 10 for free. I never clicked the "Install Now" link.
There must have been many of us who were happy with Windows 7 and did not want to try Windows 10 even if it didn't cost anything.
 
So far the poll has more Windows 7 users than Windows 10 users by about 20%.

But 186 (so far) is an almost insignificant sample size when you consider that most days this week there were 3-4000 concurrent FSX users on Steam (https://steamspy.com/app/314160#tab-ccu). There are probably far more non-Steam users out here so the number would quite possibly be at least double that.

Most people who criticise Windows 10 have either: 1 - installed it over Windows 7 as an update (clean installs seem to have far fewer issues), or 2 - never tried it and believe all the bad press it gets, or 3 - have tried it and didn't take the time to familiarise themselves with it and find out how to set it up properly. Without using any third-party apps you can set up the GUI so that it's almost identical to the Windows 7 GUI - you don't have to have tiles and you can have what's essentially the old Windows 7 Start menu. You can easily turn off anything that you think may be invading your privacy. Many see the "enforced" updates as a big issue but you can set them so that ONLY critical or security updates are accepted.

I was a big advocate of Windows 7 for some time after Windows 10 came out but decided to try it with my new build. I did my homework and went for a clean install (which I think is key to avoiding many problems) and took my time setting things up and now wouldn't consider going back to Windows 7. I wouldn't criticise anyone who's happy with Windows 7 but I would say don't believe all the negative hype about Windows 10. Some people do have strange problems with Windows 10 but, at least in most cases, they're often just down to finger trouble or a lack of familiarity with the new OS.
 
The Flight Sim machine is still running Win7. I have a laptop running Win10, and another running Linux (Ubuntu 16.04). Win10 is ok, for a Windows OS. I like it better than 7, up to a point... The point being privacy and being in control of my own computer (hence the Linux machine).
 
For my Flight Simulator machine I am still running the old Windows 7 laptop and after a hard drive change last year (two of them) it is running again just fine.

For all of my other work I have multiple machines running Windows 10
 
You guys that are still running Win7 do know that MS have been sneaking the Win10 telemetry stuff into Win7 don't you ?
If you keep your Win7 fully updated MS are spying on you guy too.
 
You guys that are still running Win7 do know that MS have been sneaking the Win10 telemetry stuff into Win7 don't you ?
If you keep your Win7 fully updated MS are spying on you guy too.

Can't speak for anyone else but I disabled auto updates about 5-6 years ago, since then I've been very careful about what does and does not get installed.
 
Windows 7-64 Pro
I find it interesting how many still have 7 since it took a lot of effort, in my case at least, not to be auto converted to 10.
I still can't believe MS did not receive more backlash with their shove it down your throat tactics.
I have no idea which is best, I just wanted to stick with the known rather than find out the hard way about any issues regarding gaming.
By the time more info was available, for me it had become a matter of principle to keep 7
 
I guess we should not be too surprised that the forum dedicated to FSX has more W7 users that W10 users, since the two products (FSX and W7) were released within 2 years of each other.
 
True, but Vista deserved all the hate it got. Yes they fixed most of the massive problems, but when it came out, it was unusable for a massive number of people.

I have run FSX on XP, Vista32, Vista64 (which was surprisingly stable and usable!), 7, 8 and now 10. I've had no significant problems on any of them - apart from the odd update that has broken the sim, or the OS, on pretty much every version.

Ian P.
 
A circa 2013 clean installation of Windows 7/64 (forked out a bit more and got the Ultimate edition) with FSX & Acceleration on a Core2Duo system that's been running smoothly ever since (I have upgraded the CPU, memory, hdd and graphics card though).

My next PC will probably be a Intel i7, but I plan on installing the same windows I have; until Windows 7 isn't supported any more. :\
 
I have computers with XP; Win7 Pro; and Win10 all running FSX. For some reason my Win 7 Pro refuses to successfully upgrade to SP1, which would be useful in some instances.
 
I still use Win 7, but more because I'm old fashioned, and Win 7 is the devil I know, rather than because it's particularly superior
in any way.

From what I read, the only real problem with Win 10 is it's forced upgrade policy. As I remember reading, Win 10 Preview, which
did not have this policy, was regarded as superior in every way over Win 7 for general game playing.

But as far as staying with Win 7 for a new build (if you're even able to find a Win 7 disc or download of any sort by that time),
I thought I read that all new motherboards supporting the new Intel 8th gen Coffee Lake CPU's wouldn't work with Win 7 or earlier
OS's. I don't know about motherboards with AMD CPU sockets.

Is that true?

- Rob
 
While I still Fly FSX (mainly because Instant Scenery 3 doesn't work with P3D_V4), P3D_V4 is my main Sim. Win7 was a good OS for me, but when I went to Win10 and P3D went 64bit it seemed to be a perfect match. However about a month into Win10 and things went awry (none of which I can remember now), but it caused me to dump 10 and go back to Win7. The change in P3D was startling in a bad way. It was as though I had just purchased FSX on my old system and it was almost unflyable. Nothing I did, with help from folks who tried their best to figure out what was going on, did any good and I had to relent and try Win10 one more time. It was like night and day. . .everything smoothed back out again and I would never even consider going to Win7 again.

I known there are Win7 users flying P3D_V4 saying "that had nothing to do with the OS". . . .there is a saying in the community when it comes to setting up addons and Sim settings. . ."What works for one persons system may not always work for another". . .I would paraphrase that and say. . ."An OS that works with one persons tweaks and settings rarely, if ever works for another". Win10 proved itself and since that second go-around I haven't had any problems with the OS (that couldn't be found and easily corrected).
 
I thought I read that all new motherboards supporting the new Intel 8th gen Coffee Lake CPU's wouldn't work with Win 7 or earlier
OS's. I don't know about motherboards with AMD CPU sockets.

Is that true?

- Rob

New hardware might not work with Win7 if compatible drivers aren’t available. Mind you, drivers for XP aren’t written any more either, so trying Win7 on the latest hardware is suck it and see. Some people have it running on the latest gear, some find they can’t. BTW, Coffee Lake? Who comes up with these names? Must be smokin’ somethin’.
 
Falcon sane words indeed re O/S and sims. My experience exactly. The only tweak I have come across that worked for me was not a sim tweak but a graphics driver change and I stumbled upon that by accident going between MS and HP, that driver tweak removed the bottle neck between the CPU and the GPU ( I have a HP Machine with all intel bits). While I am ready to move across to P3D and therefore Win10 as my current rig is well getting a bit old now (like me) I am severely constrained in this part of the world with internet download capacity (we have to use and rely on mobile wireless access not cable) and changing service provider does not fix the problem.

Your comments re what worked are duly noted for future reference.

Yep I could download it onto a hard drive but my current employer is a major competitor to LM so that would draw the IT crabs real quick if I took to downloading GB's of stuff from LM. Sigh.

Still I think Win7 is very stable and the corporate desktop platforms I use (plus the specialty stuff all big corporates use) are all Win7 based where I am as well, no change to Win10 foreseen either, so I think Win7 is going to be around for quite a while and MS are not going to shift the big players and corporate users onto WIN10 very easily at all.
 
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