Microsoft Windows 7 Boot Splash Screen

We recently moved some of the operating systems on our workstations to Windows 7 64-Bit. As usual a clean install is always recommended. With years of IT experience dating back to pre-windows world I have rarely seen an upgrade go clean if the upgraded machine has been heavily used. So, anyway we thought we would shout out a couple of items that seem rudimentary but, were nevertheless roadblocks to stop an otherwise happy end-user from moving on with their daily routine and experiencing Microsoft Windows 7 the way it should be.

Finally, Microsoft did it right in terms of User Interface and Performance. They finally re-wrote the Explorer from the ground up… getting rid of a lot of annoying bugs that have plagued the Operating System for years such as menu’s getting stuck, the auto-hide feature not always auto-hiding the start bar, etc… After running it now since it’s release in October, we have not had a single blue screeen of death and we have not had to restart it unless it was for an update or hardware install. Backwards compatibility with 32-bit applications has been non-existent thus far as Win 7 allows you to install programs in different compatibility modes including XP. Vista had issues with slow downs when viewing shared folders on the network that made it almost unusable. We’ve had a completely new experience with Win 7. We highly recommend the new Windows 7 Operating System.

Now onto the random issues of getting a good install. We have high-end workstations with somewhat complicated setups including multiple raid configurations within a single machine, SLI, Dual Monitors, Bluetooth devices, etc… There were only a couple of issues but, they were there and we want to get rid of the hassles for anyone else.

First off if you’re having audio issues such as popping, noise on the line etc… If your machine is using RealTek Audio which is quite popular as a generic interface for sound. Use the older version for Vista 32/64.

When installing to a system with Raided drives DISCONNECT ALL OTHER PHYSICAL DRIVES aside from the physical drives that create the logical drive for boot. It’s strange but, the Windows 7 setup will sometimes see the drives and/or show you that one is there but, when you try to go to install it to that drive it will give a system error message saying it can’t find a logical drive. Again, DISCONNECT ALL OTHER PHYSICAL DRIVES aside from the physical drives that create the logical drive for boot. The behavior of the setup and what you see in the BIOS would lead you to believe otherwise so, just try it.

The final issue that we had was with multi-monitor setups. If you turn on your system for the first time with multiple monitors and open some applications then, close the windows, make changes to the layout of your monitors within the display preferences, application windows can get stuck off screen. The only way we could figure out how to get those windows back to their proper spots was to go to the open window’s icon in the start bar and while the application is open hover over the icon which will bring up preview thumbs. Right click on the preview thumb for the stuck window and click maximize. That should maximize the window to your primary screen. The last step is to left click on the title bar and drag it from the top of the screen down. This should unsnap the window from fullscreen. Close the application and not just the window so, it remembers where it was before. When you restart the application, it should now show up where it’s suppose to… in plain sight.

Most of you will have new machines with Windows 7 pre-installed however, we hope these couple of tips help the few of you that are starting from the ground up. Microsoft Windows 7 was a breath of fresh air to start using. We’re very excited to see what great things developers come up with to make it even better!