What do you absolutely hate about beloved Windows 7?


Recommended Posts

The basic theme is the thing that annoys me the most, I wish we were able to at least change its color or have some predefined color variations, but I'm pretty sure there will be awesome visual styles released by the community.

- The search bar in windows explorer. The 'filters' are not documented anywhere, and it doesnt let you customize the search (except for the set of filters that it shows). Also, you can only change the 'search space' in the result window. there should be a way to customize the search before hitting the search/enter button.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/...s/advquery.mspx

There is a deficiency in discoverability for many features. I dislike how the UI doesn't explicitly document keyboard shortcuts (Office 2007 was a godsend though).

What do I hate about it? I don't have it yet. I would like to see future versions offer more tinkering and manipulating the UI as a user wants to. no need for window blinds then.. :p

Buy a better computer.

Just to expand on the "improve performance" issue

The most annoying thing about Windows 7 is the fact that we are basically told to update our hardware

Most users say 4Gig (even 6) is really good for Windows 7 64Bit (???) So that means I have to buy more ram huh !

Hmm I'd say there will be a lot of new computers sold in the next year, I only wish I could afford to keep up!

Oh and for all the users running Windows 7 on 1 Gig of Ram on a 2ghz (single core) Um just stick to XP ;)

HomeGroup always bugging when I have my network location as Home, thus setting it to work. Action Center icon not disappearing sometimes when I made sure it only shows notifications. Checking the basic status of my network connection used to be easy with XP, right clicking and clicking STATUS in bold. Now I need to open Network and Sharing Center and then open the connection itself. Some of the light blue colors are relaxing to the eye but I prefer the beta colors instead, this seems a bit fruityish imo

Just to expand on the "improve performance" issue

The most annoying thing about Windows 7 is the fact that we are basically told to update our hardware

Most users say 4Gig (even 6) is really good for Windows 7 64Bit (???) So that means I have to buy more ram huh !

Hmm I'd say there will be a lot of new computers sold in the next year, I only wish I could afford to keep up!

Oh and for all the users running Windows 7 on 1 Gig of Ram on a 2ghz (single core) Um just stick to XP ;)

Sorry, but the same crap was said when Windows XP came onto the scene. "2Ghz (single core)" says absolutely nothing to me, for all I know, that could be one of the original Pentium 4's released in 2001 in which case you've had plenty of time to upgrade.

And to throw petrol onto the fire. If we are to advance in software, Operating Systems need to be more sophisticated, which means more code, which means more processing power and memory and the list goes on.

- The KDE ripped off taskbar blows - using small icons makes it look absolutely useless, start menu is still not size/content customiseable enough.

- The Windows Explorer has gone from a great file manager to a complete and utter useless mess. I had to install a 3rd party program just to be able to manipulate files properly (see below for one fo the many reasons).

- Too much bling bling, then again if you remove the bling bling you're looking at Windows 2000, where's the middle road?

And my special favorite; If you remove Windows Search, you can't even use any Find functionality in the Windows Explorer. That's just pure awesome design right there - I cannot emphasise the mind boggling developer vision that was required for that.

On that note, I've gotten Win7 to BSOD multiple times already on a machine where Linux hasn't crashed .. well, ever.

UAC is turned off. Windows still blocks you. You cannot run as a true admin on either Vista or Win7. hence my post of something I hate on Windows 7.

Yes you can. You have to go into the local security policy to allow administrators to always run in elevated privelege mode and you can always take ownership of files and folders to change the ACL applied to them.

I assume you have been trying to drill down into your user profile for some reason. I don't remember having any issues going into other system directories so far, but I may have missed something. Unless there is something wrong with your user profile, there really is no reason to get in there. Just go into the <insert username here> folder from the start menu or the libraries from the Windows Explorer default view and get access to the content there. The reason they locked that portion down a great deal is to prevent malware that installs to your local profile rather than C:\Program Files and through windows installer from being installed and run on startup (in xp, everyone had access to the all users start menu startup folder).

Even people with normal user rights in XP were able to install software that only installed to the local profile. This is a problem, Vista/7 fixed that problem. If you were an administrator who absolutely needed to get into someone's user profile, you would already know how to do it. Taking ownership and changing permissions is not new to Windows 7, and anyone with 10 minutes of real IT experience knows how to get around permissions issues.

My advice, unless you absolutely have to get into one of those "locked" folders (which is unlikely especially on a consumer machine), don't.

- The KDE ripped off taskbar blows - using small icons makes it look absolutely useless, start menu is still not size/content customiseable enough.

- The Windows Explorer has gone from a great file manager to a complete and utter useless mess. I had to install a 3rd party program just to be able to manipulate files properly (see below for one fo the many reasons).

- Too much bling bling, then again if you remove the bling bling you're looking at Windows 2000, where's the middle road?

And my special favorite; If you remove Windows Search, you can't even use any Find functionality in the Windows Explorer. That's just pure awesome design right there - I cannot emphasise the mind boggling developer vision that was required for that.

On that note, I've gotten Win7 to BSOD multiple times already on a machine where Linux hasn't crashed .. well, ever.

The taskbar size and look (the parts you claim have been ripped from KDE) make it easier for people with touchscreens to open applications by finger. The start menu can be resized by changing the amount of previously opened applications that are displayed on the default start menu view.

Without any specific reason as to why Explorer is an "complete and utter useless mess" it's really hard for anyone to either help you or even understand what you mean. Your one example is removing Windows Search breaks search bars, which is weak considering all Windows Explorer search funtions are managed by Windows Search, and it makes perfect sense that if you disable search without installing a third party search application, you can't search (doesn't exactly take a brain surgeon to figure that one out). You could have chnaged the default indexed folders instead to save on resource use if that was your issue with it in the first place.

Why is someone that uses KDE upset about "Bling-Bling"?

I have had Windows7 blue screen on me as well, it was an issue with a faulty driver, which I was able to recover from, rather easily. It's only happened once on the 15 or so machines I've run it on. I'm happy you've had so much success with linux, most of the flavors out there are great operating systems in their own right. Linux doesn't have nearly the same hardware requirements that Windows 7 has, and typically doesn't use as many resources either.

If Windows is BSODing consistently, might I advise troubleshooting the issue? It's probably for the exact same reason every time.

Explorer is my #1 gripe. There's just so much with it that's wrong.

  • when scrolling in tree view the tooltip that pops up over long folder/file names doesn't always render properly
  • when deleting folders in tree view it always scrolls back to the top of the drive listing and is annoying as hell
  • getting total file sizes of 15 or more files is an extra click that shouldn't have to be an extra click
  • control panel layout
  • the top left corners of any window with a border padding of 2 or less have visual garbage on them

  • the close button on the properties page of devices in device manager flashes when you hover over it
  • the resize bug for the services window

I'd list more, but there's a lot that feels "meh". The performance of 7 is great, but the UI bugs and inconsistencies really need more polish and not linger around for 10 years before they're addressed and fixed.

I know performance is top priority, but when people use something for a prolonged period of time, day in and day out, the UI issues are very annoying and shouldn't have as many glitches and bugs in it as it does.

That they removed Windows Photo Gallery and Calendar. I know people can download the Live versions, but few people are going to do that and htey're going to miss out on this awesome program.

Both of those can be pulled from Vista. They work just fine. The mail app is still in 7 as well.

I hate nothing! Windows 7 is love :wub:

Well, I don't know about "Windows 7 is love", but there is nothing I would change about Windows 7. For me, it's perfect as-is.

The New Taskbar Is pretty ugly

I also have a problem on my main i7 machine where if I click the icon net to the clock to display all my hidden icons, my tasbar freezes for about 5 seconds. Sometimes during that 5 seconds the list of icons appears in the top left of my screen and other times it freezes for 5 seconds and shows me nothing. That annoys me the most.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but anyone who calls it perfect is not taking the discussion seriously.

I wish Explorer was tabbed. I almost wonder if it's a patent concern preventing it from happening.

Still haven't found a way to easily tag video directly in Explorer. Ridiculous.

I also wish I had better control over privacy-related issues. I have limited control over what shows up in certain "recent" lists. Bitlocker is helpful, but I'd like more robust encryption options that aren't tied to some company that may not exist in a few years or may be bought out by a competitor. Still no secure erase option.

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but anyone who calls it perfect is not taking the discussion seriously.

I wish Explorer was tabbed. I almost wonder if it's a patent concern preventing it from happening.

Still haven't found a way to easily tag video directly in Explorer. Ridiculous.

I also wish I had better control over privacy-related issues. I have limited control over what shows up in certain "recent" lists. Bitlocker is helpful, but I'd like more robust encryption options that aren't tied to some company that may not exist in a few years or may be bought out by a competitor. Still no secure erase option.

It's not perfect but there's certainly not anything I hate enough to post about (as the thread asks "...what do you absolutely hate..."). No BSOD's, nothing that has aggravated me yet aside from my WES giving my SSD a 5.9, but that's all cleared up now :), yay 7.2.

I also wish I had better control over privacy-related issues. I have limited control over what shows up in certain "recent" lists. Bitlocker is helpful, but I'd like more robust encryption options that aren't tied to some company that may not exist in a few years or may be bought out by a competitor. Still no secure erase option.

that aint happening , not anytime soon

maybe far in the future

Can't double-click a video file in explorer if WMP12 is already playing a video file...WMP12 continues to play the ALREADY playing file...I thought it could be just queuing it up to play after the current file's played through...but I can't see anything in the settings that confirms my thinking...

Oh and you CAN double-click the FIRST video file and it will start to play...:)

You can't customize taskbar grouping anymore. Turning off auto-combine so that labels always show on taskbar items is almost useless as nothing gets grouped anymore.

Example: In XP/Vista you could customize 3 or more open programs get grouped to one taskbar item.

- The KDE ripped off taskbar blows - using small icons makes it look absolutely useless, start menu is still not size/content customiseable enough.

- The Windows Explorer has gone from a great file manager to a complete and utter useless mess. I had to install a 3rd party program just to be able to manipulate files properly (see below for one fo the many reasons).

- Too much bling bling, then again if you remove the bling bling you're looking at Windows 2000, where's the middle road?

And my special favorite; If you remove Windows Search, you can't even use any Find functionality in the Windows Explorer. That's just pure awesome design right there - I cannot emphasise the mind boggling developer vision that was required for that.

On that note, I've gotten Win7 to BSOD multiple times already on a machine where Linux hasn't crashed .. well, ever.

Besides having large icons like the KDE taskbar they work completely differently... its really more similar to the OSX dock if anything...

This topic is now closed to further replies.
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
  • Posts

    • Google reportedly set to lose two key Gemini and DeepMind researchers to Anthropic by Karthik Mudaliar Google is reportedly preparing to lose two more prominent artificial intelligence researchers, with Gemini contributors Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel planning to join rival AI developer Anthropic. According to a report from Bloomberg, both researchers are viewed internally as important contributors to Google’s flagship Gemini model family. Adler worked on Google’s AI coding efforts, while Pritzel was involved in the process used to train AI systems. Neither company has publicly confirmed the moves. The report also does not say when the researchers will formally leave Google or what positions they will hold at Anthropic. Training a large AI model requires decisions covering its architecture, data preparation, distributed computing infrastructure, and post-training methods that shape how the finished system behaves. Researchers with experience operating at the scale of Gemini are consequently difficult to replace quickly. Both Adler and Pritzel have previously contributed to Google DeepMind’s scientific research as well. They are listed among the authors of the company’s work on expanding AlphaFold protein-structure predictions across entire proteomes, alongside AlphaFold researchers including John Jumper. The reported departures arrive shortly after another important change within Google’s Gemini organization. Gemini co-lead Noam Shazeer is leaving Google for OpenAI, after returning to the search company in 2024 through its deal with Character.AI. Shazeer is particularly well known as one of the authors of the Transformer paper, whose architecture became the foundation for most modern large language models. Anthropic, meanwhile, has been recruiting recognizable figures from other leading laboratories. OpenAI co-founder and former Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic’s pre-training team in May. His move, followed by the reported recruitment of several Google researchers, suggests Anthropic is strengthening the research teams responsible for the core capabilities of future Claude models rather than concentrating solely on product and enterprise sales. The competition is complicated by the companies’ extensive commercial relationships. Anthropic competes directly with Google’s Gemini models, but it also relies on Google as an infrastructure partner. In April, Anthropic announced an expanded agreement with Google and Broadcom covering multiple gigawatts of next-generation Tensor Processing Unit capacity. TPUs are Google-designed accelerators used to train and run large AI models. via Bloomberg
    • This article makes my head hurt. Lots of confusing words
    • Google adds built-in computer control to Gemini 3.5 flash by Karthik Mudaliar Google has added Computer Use as a built-in tool in Gemini 3.5 Flash, giving developers a single model that can reason about a task and operate graphical interfaces across browsers, mobile devices, and desktop environments. The feature is available through the Gemini API and Google’s Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, although it remains a preview feature for now. Computer Use enables an AI agent to examine screenshots and return actions such as mouse clicks, scrolling, and keyboard input. A developer’s application must execute those actions, capture the resulting screen, and send it back to Gemini, creating a continuous loop until the task is completed. Google says the integration can be used for activities including repetitive form filling, application testing, research across multiple websites, and longer enterprise workflows. Gemini 3.5 Flash can work with browser, mobile, and desktop environments, whereas Google’s earlier standalone Computer Use model was primarily positioned around browser interaction. The main change is consolidation. Computer control was previously offered through the separate Gemini 2.5 Computer Use preview model. As Neowin reported when that model was introduced, it was designed to interpret a visual interface and generate actions without requiring a website-specific API. Google later brought Computer Use to preview versions of Gemini 3 Pro and Gemini 3 Flash in January 2026. The latest release now incorporates the tool into the stable Gemini 3.5 Flash model rather than requiring developers to select a specialized model solely for interface automation. Gemini 3.5 Flash itself was announced in May as Google’s latest fast model for coding and multi-step agent workflows. It supports a one-million-token input context window and up to 65,000 output tokens, along with adjustable thinking levels that let developers trade additional reasoning for lower latency and cost. Google also added that Gemini 3.5 Flash received targeted adversarial training for computer-use scenarios. The company is also offering safeguards that can require user confirmation before sensitive or irreversible actions and automatically stop a workflow when suspected prompt injection is detected. Its developer documentation describes configurable protections for areas such as financial transactions and changes to sensitive records. Google isn't the first to bring Computer Use to its platform. Anthropic has made computer control available through Claude, while OpenAI has continued improving computer-use performance in its recent models. Microsoft has also applied the concept to business workflows, including a Computer Use capability for the Researcher agent in Microsoft 365 Copilot.
    • After I installed KB5095093, the volume on my ARM laptop won't go above 20%. It's stuck on the hearing protection level, which is pretty much useless if you want to listen to anything. I rolled back.
    • Amazon Prime Day slashes Samsung's newest Galaxy Watch Ultra by 45 percent by Karthik Mudaliar Samsung’s flagship Android smartwatch has received one of its steepest Prime Day cuts. Amazon has dropped the 2025 Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra in Titanium Blue to $357.24, saving buyers around $292 from its $649.99 list price. That's a 45 percent discount (purchase link below). The 47mm Galaxy Watch Ultra uses a titanium casing and a 1.5-inch Super AMOLED display with a resolution of 480 x 480 and peak brightness of 3,000 nits. It includes LTE connectivity, Bluetooth 5.3, Wi-Fi, NFC, and dual-frequency L1+L5 GPS for more accurate outdoor route tracking. The 2025 model has 64GB of storage, a 590mAh battery, sapphire crystal glass, 10ATM water resistance, IP68 protection, and MIL-STD-810H durability testing. Its health and fitness tools include heart rate monitoring, sleep coaching, Energy Score, Running Coach, body composition analysis, temperature sensing, and ECG support, where available. This model is best suited to Android users who regularly run, hike, cycle, or train outdoors and want cellular access without carrying a phone. The larger battery, rugged construction, bright display, and dedicated Quick Button also make it a stronger option than Samsung’s regular Galaxy Watch models for extended workouts and demanding environments. Grab the Titanium Blue Galaxy Watch Ultra before the Prime Day price resets: Samsung Galaxy Watch Ultra (2025) [Sold and Shipped by Amazon] Good to know This Amazon deal is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. Become a Prime member (for Students or SNAP) via Neowin Get Prime Access - Prime for half price (for qualifying Medicaid, EBT, SNAP) Subscribe to Prime Video, Audible Plus, Music Unlimited or Kindle Unlimited via Neowin As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.
  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Scoobystu earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • First Post
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      First Post
    • One Month Later
      D0nn13 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Rookie
      +ChiefOfNeo went up a rank
      Rookie
    • One Year In
      Tom Schmidt earned a badge
      One Year In
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      463
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      177
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      124
    4. 4
      Michael Scrip
      79
    5. 5
      Xenon
      76
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!