features you disabled in Windows 7 and why?

[Udedenkz]

Did you know that Windows Media Player runs just fine with just the executable (and no other files present) in the dir? Although the visualizer is part of another dll file - mpvis.dll - you should keep that if you want the cruddy anims when playing music. I also wouldn't remove the wmplayer.exe.mui, mui files are important as long as the file they are referring to exists.

:)

Do you even have the slightest idea how many applications depend on Internet Explorer? Winamp, for example, uses it, as well as countless other applications. Internet Explorer isn't just an application, it's also framework. It might not be such a big deal in Windows 7, but disabling it before sometimes (more times than not) resulted in severe issues with programs that contacted the internet, as well as Windows Explorer.

When I had used XP, I tried to completely remove it. The thing is Source games like CS:S use it for rendering the server page. With a total removal of Internet Explorer, it will ask you what to do with htm/html files - as there is no IE Core to render them. It will annoy you to no extent, it is better to just kill the browser but not the engine. Also Windows Explorer should work fine without IE and as far as I can tell it has nothing to do with networking abilities - internet will work fine, but all applications that use the IE render will suffer.

[bryonhowley]

Windows 7 does not have any feature that should be disabled by anyone period!

[LiquidSolstice]

Did you know that Windows Media Player runs just fine with just the executable (and no other files present) in the dir? Although the visualizer is part of another dll file - mpvis.dll - you should keep that if you want the cruddy anims when playing music. I also wouldn't remove the wmplayer.exe.mui, mui files are important as long as the file they are referring to exists.

:)

No, I don't buy the statement that WMP runs just fine with only the exe present. You may think it does, but something in the functionality will stop working when you get rid of it, you just haven't found it yet. I tried it in my vBox 7 that I use as a sandbox, and I've completely lost the ability to stream music, the language pack is totally effed up (all box characters), and some icons are missing. So no, I wouldn't say "it runs just fine". Thankfully, I restored the files and it now functions perfectly again.

It's quite retarded that you call that "tweaking". What exactly are you trying to tweak? You're removing functionality, and you do realize that the entire WMP12 Program Files folder (also checked the appdata folder) is roughly 6 and a half megabytes. Congrats. You shaved off 6 megabytes from your precious, oh, what's the standard HD sizes nowadays? 250 GB at least? Yeah, awesome.

No offense, but you really do sound like you know what you're doing, but you and the rest of your "tweaking" crowd seem to be suffering from a placebo affect. You can cry "it's my software, I'll do with it what I want", but at the end of the day, Windows 7 has worked on every single computer I've tried it on, both old and new, laptop and desktop, and I have yet to encounter any problem that required "tweaking". I think the issue is that the nostalgia from all the so called "tweaking" and "optimizing" from XP has driven you guys to assume that each Windows OS needs to be totally modified otherwise it will perform poorly.

I'm waiting for the day where people realize that Windows 7 has got to be the most hassle-free OS to use out of all the Windows OSes, and that it doesn't require much disabling except UAC and search indexing, if you don't use those.

[Xilo]

ITT: "Power users" who don't have a clue what they are doing. Oh, and don't forget the tinfoil hats.

[Udedenkz]

No, I don't buy the statement that WMP runs just fine with only the exe present. You may think it does, but something in the functionality will stop working when you get rid of it, you just haven't found it yet. I tried it in my vBox 7 that I use as a sandbox, and I've completely lost the ability to stream music, the language pack is totally effed up (all box characters), and some icons are missing. So no, I wouldn't say "it runs just fine". Thankfully, I restored the files and it now functions perfectly again.

It's quite retarded that you call that "tweaking". What exactly are you trying to tweak? You're removing functionality, and you do realize that the entire WMP12 Program Files folder (also checked the appdata folder) is roughly 6 and a half megabytes. Congrats. You shaved off 6 megabytes from your precious, oh, what's the standard HD sizes nowadays? 250 GB at least? Yeah, awesome.

No offense, but you really do sound like you know what you're doing, but you and the rest of your "tweaking" crowd seem to be suffering from a placebo affect. You can cry "it's my software, I'll do with it what I want", but at the end of the day, Windows 7 has worked on every single computer I've tried it on, both old and new, laptop and desktop, and I have yet to encounter any problem that required "tweaking". I think the issue is that the nostalgia from all the so called "tweaking" and "optimizing" from XP has driven you guys to assume that each Windows OS needs to be totally modified otherwise it will perform poorly.

I'm waiting for the day where people realize that Windows 7 has got to be the most hassle-free OS to use out of all the Windows OSes, and that it doesn't require much disabling except UAC and search indexing, if you don't use those.

Does it still play MP3s? Yes.

Does it still play MP4s? Yes.

Therefore, to me there is no functionality that is lost.

This is not tweaking, this is pure removal of unnecessary functionality. :)

Actually it does work. A normal Windows XP install boots in about half a min on a 2004 my emachines, while a nlited install boots in about half that time. I haven't yet tried a lited 7, but the results should be the same. The results of tweaking can actually be seen at boot by just booting the 12 or so (12 if you remove some dependencies, more like 15) services needed for basic functionality and internet VS. booting at all 50 or so.

[LiquidSolstice]

Does it still play MP3s? Yes.

Does it still play MP4s? Yes.

Therefore, to me there is no functionality that is lost.

This is not tweaking, this is pure removal of unnecessary functionality. :)

No, unneeded function as defined by you. The rest of us who use WMP to manage our libraries and stream them to our Xboxes, we call that needed functionality. And no, it doesn't make a damn bit of difference whether or not you delete them. I've timed the startup times after removing it and it does nothing for speed. You can gladly say "it's my OS, I'll do it the way I want" but the point is that it's not assisting your machine in any way, and any improvement you may think you see from deleting said files is purely placebo.

Actually it does work. A normal Windows XP install boots in about half a min on a 2004 my emachines, while a nlited install boots in about half that time. I haven't yet tried a lited 7, but the results should be the same.

No idea where XP's boot time has anything to do with deleting the majority of a 6 MB folder's contents.

[Udedenkz]

No idea where XP's boot time has anything to do with deleting the majority of a 6 MB folder's contents.

No, that was a comparison between the normal 2GB install of XP and an lite XP that can be installed on a 512MB Partition. :)

[LiquidSolstice]

No, that was a comparison between the normal 2GB install of XP and an lite XP that can be installed on a 512MB Partition. :)

And why pray tell would you want to install XP on a 512 MB partition? Don't you realize that programs, by default, install to the C:/ (or whatever the install drive is) drive?

If you're still living with ancient hardware, that's not called tweaking and "optimizing", that's called being too cheap to get decent hardware (which is no longer expensive, if all you're trying to run is XP).

[Udedenkz]

And why pray tell would you want to install XP on a 512 MB partition? Don't you realize that programs, by default, install to the C:/ (or whatever the install drive is) drive?

If you're still living with ancient hardware, that's not called tweaking and "optimizing", that's called being too cheap to get decent hardware (which is no longer expensive, if all you're trying to run is XP).

You missed the point.

[LiquidSolstice]

You missed the point.

If you say so. meanwhile, I'll still have a fully functioning operating system that does everything Microsoft intended it to, and when I have support issues, I won't have to keep a list saying "this is what I disabled, I wonder if this will cause an issue". Oh, and my Windows 7 runs plenty fast. Defragment regularly, don't install crapware, and you won't ever have to reinstall.

Have fun.

[neo158]

As I said earlier the only ones qualified to tweak/optimise windows is Microsoft, as they know what every part of their operating system does.

Microsoft have done a pretty good job of optimising Windows 7 to get it running on new and old hardware. So there is no need to tweak windows on any machine.

[GamblerFEXonlin]

with hard drives being so cheap these days i don't really care about space....

You should. Fast Flash based, server grade and the Raptor harddrives from Western digital are expensive and relatively small. Bigger files also means longer time to load, and more fragmentation issues.

[GamblerFEXonlin]

If you say so. meanwhile, I'll still have a fully functioning operating system that does everything Microsoft intended it to, and when I have support issues, I won't have to keep a list saying "this is what I disabled, I wonder if this will cause an issue". Oh, and my Windows 7 runs plenty fast. Defragment regularly, don't install crapware, and you won't ever have to reinstall.

I guess you are not very fast, on a general basis :p I find programs to launch much slower then on XP, and its strange that my Raptor WD1500 HD sounds much less busy in Vista and 7, than XP. Seems like Microsoft decided to insert a few millions NOOP instructions per HD I/O. NVIDIA Control panel takes several seconds to open vs. almost instantly on XP. Perfectdisk analyzing a HD is also much slower XP vs. vista and 7.

The user interface is also much more sluggish then XP. Each folder takes about half a second to open in Vista and 7, vs. instantly on XP.

Here is a video that shows how much CPU usage 7 uses vs. XP. GDI+ have several operations that can be hardware accelerated with proper graphics cards in XP, but it is not in Vista and 7. Latest WDDM 1.1 adds some, but still feels just as sluggish (could be my gtx 285 and WDDM 1.1 drivers). Vista and 7 the desktop composition is running in hardware, but they didn't migrate the GDI+ over.

Check out the link for more information on GDI+ and hardware acceleration.

Mac OSX they have migrated and now everything runs on the GPU, the CPU only have to issue relatively small drawing calls. On Vista and 7 however, we have GDI+, Windows DEsktop Compostition, WPF and now lately Direct2D.

If you look at the three Quartz implementation diagrams in sequence, you can see how the video card portion of the diagram has slowly expanded over the course of four years to encompass more and more of the display layer. The reason is clear when you look at the bandwidth numbers: 30GB/s between the GPU and VRAM, and that number is climbing rapidly—much more rapidly than the bandwidth between the CPU and RAM.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2005/...osx-10-4.ars/14

In programmer circles, Microsoft is the very model of modern bloated software. As a quick example, just check out your Windows Live Contacts database. Each contact gets a default 32MB database file.

I'm all for new features, but I think Windows Vista and 7 could run on much slower hardware if Microsoft wasn't such a bloat machine. It's not very environmentally friendly to produce computers (just check all the chemicals they use to make CPU's) and power efficiency is important in these days of possible human made climate change (the experts does't agree yet). You don't need a super CPU just for the web and there is no excuse not to hardware accelerate video playback.

[+allan MVC]

As I said earlier the only ones qualified to tweak/optimise windows is Microsoft, as they know what every part of their operating system does.

Microsoft have done a pretty good job of optimising Windows 7 to get it running on new and old hardware. So there is no need to tweak windows on any machine.

Well, let's define "tweaking", shall we? If you mean disabling services or uninstalling system files / folders because you want to reduce the footprint of the OS, then I agree completely. But tweaking can also mean modifying the interface so it better suits your comfort level, enabling or disabling items in the startup menu (ie, run, search, recent docs, etc), removing icon arrow overlays, disabling some visual effects, moving the pagefile to where you want it, and so on. I see absolutely nothing wrong with doing any of these things.That's all part of "making the OS your own".

[SuperKid]

I don't disable anything on Windows 7, i use Professional which removes the default games and i don't use bitlocker so yeah.

[hdood]

Here is a video that shows how much CPU usage 7 uses vs. XP. GDI+ have several operations that can be hardware accelerated with proper graphics cards in XP, but it is not in Vista and 7. Latest WDDM 1.1 adds some, but still feels just as sluggish (could be my gtx 285 and WDDM 1.1 drivers). Vista and 7 the desktop composition is running in hardware, but they didn't migrate the GDI+ over.

GDI+ is never hardware accelerated on any version of Windows. GDI+ is a software library with various utility functions and classes that make dealing with graphics easier. It does everything in software, and calls GDI when it's time to actually show something on screen (so that part can be accelerated, but nothing else.) Pedantry maybe, but worth knowing. The performance penalty for using GDI+ instead of GDI can be extreme, especially on slower systems.

Check out the link for more information on GDI+ and hardware acceleration.

Firstly I'm going to say that 7 does perform worse than XP. That isn't in dispute. However, the example you're using to "prove" this is extremely flawed. You cannot use Explorer to make some point about a graphics API, and you can't use it to compare different versions of Windows.

Explorer in XP and 7 is not the same program. It has changed massively, even on the graphics side. In XP it uses standard windowing and common controls, whereas in 7 it is based on Microsoft's internal windowless GUI framework. This might introduce additional overhead compared with XP, overhead that is entirely in the software framework itself and not with any Windows API.

In addition, scrolling up and down in Explorer is not necessarily just a benchmark of the graphics side. All the data that is being drawn has to come from somewhere. Changes might have been made in the way Explorer handles the extensions that create thumbnails of your files, for instance. Maybe they now run out-of-process for reliability reasons, something that adds more overhead. Maybe the code that creates the thumbnails has changed as well. Maybe it takes more processing power to read and draw icons and images that have higher quality. Maybe changes have been made to the artificial delays in various parts of the user interface (Windows has lots of these), and so on. The list goes on.

If you just want to make a point about graphics performance, then you have to run synthetic benchmarks that just do graphics, under controlled conditions. There wouldn't be much point though, because everyone recognizes that it is so. It is a necessary step towards the future. Maybe GDI is slightly slower, but at the same time the experience you get while running several Direct3D programs at the same time is much more pleasant than it was with XP and D3D <= 9.

What it feels like in real world use is more important than synthetic benchmarks, and Explorer honestly doesn't feel slow to me, and in some ways it even performs better. I have a folder with close to 7000 images, for instance, and 7 seems to handle this much better. Same with the image viewer.

Mac OSX they have migrated and now everything runs on the GPU, the CPU only have to issue relatively small drawing calls. On Vista and 7 however, we have GDI+, Windows DEsktop Compostition, WPF and now lately Direct2D.

Well, they had an easier job with OS X. Its APIs are fairly new, and they have little concern about breaking applications. Windows APIs like GDI and windowing (user), on the other hand, were designed in the 1980s and are very fragile, with thousands of applications relying on internal implementation details. The only real option I see is to create new frameworks that live side-by-side with the old. Microsoft has done that with Direct2D, but sadly there is no UI framework to go with it. The reason, in my opinion, is because Microsoft got so lost in their .NET vision.

there is no excuse not to hardware accelerate video playback.

What are you referring to here? Windows does have hardware acceleration of video. In fact, depending on the hardware you have, virtually the entire process can be handled by your graphics card's video decoder.

[Chrysalis]

As I said earlier the only ones qualified to tweak/optimise windows is Microsoft, as they know what every part of their operating system does.

Microsoft have done a pretty good job of optimising Windows 7 to get it running on new and old hardware. So there is no need to tweak windows on any machine.

another person who is up microsoft's arse. Microsoft will set the defaults that are most suited to the mainstream user, typically someone who isnt particurly savvy. However it is never ever possible to have a configuration that is optimal for 100% of userbase.

I have enabled superfetch on my machine again now and will concede that superfetch is significantly better than it was under vista, it still runs when the machine isnt idle but not very frequently so is fine. However I would leave it off if I didnt have much ram. Windows search is still turned off tho.

The worst thing a software developer can do is not allow their software to be configurable, eg. microsoft have alienated some people by dumbing down windows 7 gui, its less configurable than previous versions of windows. A developer may have a vision of how a product such work but its a garuantuee not everyone will agree with him, and if he tries to force the issue by not allowing tweaks etc. then he will restrict takeup of software.

I like windows 7 but I feel sick when I read things such as "its perfect" "it does nothing wrong" "no need to change anything" "if it doesnt work then it must be a end user problem".

[hdood]

I like windows 7 but I feel sick when I read things such as "its perfect" "it does nothing wrong" "no need to change anything" "if it doesnt work then it must be a end user problem".

It doesn't need any service packs or updates!

[Chrysalis]

NVIDIA Control panel takes several seconds to open vs. almost instantly on XP.

I have the same problem, it is a mystery, here is what I have discovered.

1 - The 182.50 wddm 1.0 nvidia driver the panel loads signifcantly faster than newer driver versions, but still way slower than XP, in XP I was using a way older driver, so could be driver related.

2 - The nvidia panel opens alot faster on my amd box than on my intel, the weird thing about this is that on paper my amd spec is weaker.

3 - on XP I know the configuration of IE affected how fast the nvidia panel opened, eg. when I used spybot to fill up the restricted site zone with rogue sites it made nvidia panel open very slowly. So it is possible some part of IE has affected how fast the panel opens in windows 7.

[Udedenkz]

I too don't like the way the GUI functions. What is the logic in not offloading scrolling to the GPU? (Windows Explorer)

For those who completely want to get rid of Internet Explorer in C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer ,

---> Do not remove ieproxy.dll

---> It is responsible for opening folders in the same window.

---> The rest doesn't seem used, so the rest can go

:)

[Xilo]

I too don't like the way the GUI functions. What is the logic in not offloading scrolling to the GPU? (Windows Explorer)

For those who completely want to get rid of Internet Explorer in C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer ,

---> Do not remove ieproxy.dll

---> It is responsible for opening folders in the same window.

---> The rest doesn't seem used, so the rest can go

:)

WHY in the world would you even do something like this?

[Udedenkz]

WHY in the world would you even do something like this?

Well offloading as much as possible from the CPU seems logical. Especially when it comes to drawing 2D stuff.

[LiquidSolstice]

I guess you are not very fast, on a general basis :p I find programs to launch much slower then on XP, and its strange that my Raptor WD1500 HD sounds much less busy in Vista and 7, than XP. Seems like Microsoft decided to insert a few millions NOOP instructions per HD I/O. NVIDIA Control panel takes several seconds to open vs. almost instantly on XP. Perfectdisk analyzing a HD is also much slower XP vs. vista and 7.

The user interface is also much more sluggish then XP. Each folder takes about half a second to open in Vista and 7, vs. instantly on XP.

Here is a video that shows how much CPU usage 7 uses vs. XP. GDI+ have several operations that can be hardware accelerated with proper graphics cards in XP, but it is not in Vista and 7. Latest WDDM 1.1 adds some, but still feels just as sluggish (could be my gtx 285 and WDDM 1.1 drivers). Vista and 7 the desktop composition is running in hardware, but they didn't migrate the GDI+ over.

Check out the link for more information on GDI+ and hardware acceleration.

Mac OSX they have migrated and now everything runs on the GPU, the CPU only have to issue relatively small drawing calls. On Vista and 7 however, we have GDI+, Windows DEsktop Compostition, WPF and now lately Direct2D.

If you look at the three Quartz implementation diagrams in sequence, you can see how the video card portion of the diagram has slowly expanded over the course of four years to encompass more and more of the display layer. The reason is clear when you look at the bandwidth numbers: 30GB/s between the GPU and VRAM, and that number is climbing rapidly?much more rapidly than the bandwidth between the CPU and RAM.

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2005/...osx-10-4.ars/14

In programmer circles, Microsoft is the very model of modern bloated software. As a quick example, just check out your Windows Live Contacts database. Each contact gets a default 32MB database file.

I'm all for new features, but I think Windows Vista and 7 could run on much slower hardware if Microsoft wasn't such a bloat machine. It's not very environmentally friendly to produce computers (just check all the chemicals they use to make CPU's) and power efficiency is important in these days of possible human made climate change (the experts does't agree yet). You don't need a super CPU just for the web and there is no excuse not to hardware accelerate video playback.

You really don't know the original meaning of software bloat, do you?

[hdood]

Well offloading as much as possible from the CPU seems logical. Especially when it comes to drawing 2D stuff.

It may seem logical, but it is extremely difficult to completely rewrite the implementation of an API designed in the 1980s (and designed around old hardware) to work on a completely different architecture. Even if you managed to do it and emulate the publicly defined API perfectly, you would most likely still end up with thousands of programs that would cease to function because they dependend on some internal implementation detail or quirk that you have now changed.

Chances are it is never going to be done, and that we will instead see a new UI framework that exists side-by-side with the legacy APIs (GDI/User) that new applications will be written to use.

[Udedenkz]

It may seem logical, but it is extremely difficult to completely rewrite the implementation of an API designed in the 1980s (and designed around old hardware) to work on a completely different architecture. Even if you managed to do it and emulate the publicly defined API perfectly, you would most likely still end up with thousands of programs that would cease to function because they dependend on some internal implementation detail or quirk that you have now changed.

Chances are it is never going to be done, and that we will instead see a new UI framework that exists side-by-side with the legacy APIs (GDI/User) that new applications will be written to use.

:(