What's Coming to Windows 7 RC?

[Rob Williams]

From our front-page news:

With the first release candidate for Windows 7 to be released next month (rumor), you might be wondering what kind of changes will be put in place from the beta. Well, you don't have to wonder, as the developer team posted a blog update last Friday that details 36 different changes, all of which they take a look at in some depth.

If you've been using the beta at any length, then many of these changes should be pretty obvious. The first change mentioned regards the "Aero Peek" feature, one that shows an outline for currently opened windows. Due to demand, this has now been tied into Windows' ALT+TAB functionality. Also new are shortcuts for the quick launch. Pushing the Windows Key + # (respective number for the application in your quick launch), will go ahead and launch it. This can prove useful if you don't currently have control of the mouse.

Another somewhat major change is the taskbar scaling, and the number of icons that are able to be placed. Because they unified the launching/switching buttons, we've gained around ~25% more space, depending on your resolution. Also, since Windows 7 doesn't allow applications to automatically insert themselves into your quick launch, to make things easier, the OS will place the newly installed application towards the bottom of your start menu, so that you will immediately see it next time you go in there. That's to allow you the option to drag it to the quick launch, should you want to.

There is a lot more new than what I mentioned here though, so if you want to study what's en route, be sure to check out the blog post.

Building on the previous post that looked at the broad view of feedback, we want to start posting on the feedback and the engineering actions we’ve taken in responding to the feedback. We won’t be able to cover all the changes (as we’re still busy making them), but for today we wanted to start with a sampling of some of the more visible changes. We’re still on the same path working towards the release candidate and of course we know everyone is anxious for the next phase of our path to RTM.

Source: Engineering Windows 7​

 

[Kougar]

I hope they fixed the locked folder/files problem... starting to frequently run into newly created files and folders that I can't move, modify, or delete because something (I presume windows search) has it open. Can close down all open folders and programs and it still remains locked for a short while.

It's too bad they told me they aren't going to fix the jumplist bug, where if you have multiple taskbar buttons for an identical program (Two MS docs open, two folders, two FF windows, etc) and you use the jumplist to close one of them, the jumplist stays open after the window closes but is now mostly nonfunctional. This bug is for users that have text selected to show on their taskbar buttons and can't occur on default taskbar settings.

Also the latest F-secure 2009 (Both the AV suite and entire Protection suite) has some seious issues with Windows 7... the OS will try to close F-secure upon loading the desktop but F-secure prevents it, so they both get locked into a loop. Give it enough time and you could find yourself with 229 processes running, most of them "comhost.exe" that are attempting to close multiple instances of the F-secure exe, it's not pretty. Even after telling the OS to allow it and not ask again it wouldn't stop prompting the user to shut it down after the next reboot, and if you closed F-secure manually (like it was attempting) it would then display a taskbar prompt asking if you wish to turn it on... Windows 7 definitely is showing it's Vista heritage.

 

[Kougar]

I must have a gift, if there is a bug in the software I always seem to find it...

Due to the volume normalization getting screwed up in the Xonar drivers making it hard to hear half of the sounds or voice coms while in game I uninstalled my Xonar drivers, rebooted, reinstalled my Xonar drivers, rebooted, and was greeted with a "Windows is not Genuine" message prompt and a black, blank background.

Considering I have not changed the hardware, did not touch the BIOS, and haven't done anything that would warrant this I find this to be more than slightly peculiar, and not particularly a good sign. Vista was extremely buggy in regards to this, and W7 may prove to not be any better after all.

 

[Rob Williams]

I hope they fixed the locked folder/files problem

That issue is beyond frustrating, but it's far from being new (I've had the issue with XP, if not even earlier). If you believe it's Windows Search that causing the issue, just go into the task manager and kill the process, or go into the Services application (services.msc) and manually stop it, then delete or move the file in question. If you shut Search off and the problem persists, then it wasn't Search at fault. Could be the file system really.

You might also want to try out this application... it's saved me in the past.

Give it enough time and you could find yourself with 229 processes running

Haha! Wow, I've never had quite that many processes at any given time before. The computer must lag some nice when that happens.

That Windows Genuine error is ridiculous... you didn't even swap any hardware. Aside from that, it shouldn't call it un-Genuine to begin with... it should just re-ask you to activate. This is why I use an activation crack on my own legal copies of Vista... I can't stand dealing with that foolishness. The copies are legal, and my time is valuable... that's all I have to say about that.

 

[Kougar]

I did not see the search service in the Task Manager, but I did not think to use the services.msc to manually halt it. Next time it occurs I'll try that, thanks!

All the processes are deadlocked, and not sapping CPU time or doing anything. They just sat there eating a bit over 4MB each... machine wasn't lagging too badly but I'm sure it would've once I ran out of RAM!

Yes, you noticed that I said "not Geniune"... I have gotten similar messages in the past using Vista, most of the time the messages only ask that I reactivate. This time the machine actually thought it was a pirated copy or something. It locked me out and the works, along with saying it was not Genuine and asking me to "get genuine". And as ya say, I didn't even open the computer case or enter the BIOS.

It was interesting to note before I even submitted the error report, the program gave me a list of very specific instructions to execute on the slmgr file. I think MS is aware there are still activiation problems, but they must be fairly minimal... I sent in a error report but the only thing MS did was ask if it reoccured yet.

 

[Rob Williams]

I receive the activation issue from time to time as well. Just the other night, I updated a BIOS on the test motherboard, and sure enough, it told me to activate on the next boot. Nothing that a quick run of a crack won't fix though. I thoroughly enjoyed the fifteen minutes I saved for not having to call Microsoft's customer support.

But with your issue, you managed to reactivate it just fine though, right? Or did you have to call and explain the situation?

 

[Kougar]

I had to reactivate the OS the standard way over the internet. The beta has multiple activations allowed, so I wasn't particularly concerned... but a retail or( worse) OEM OS might have been a different story.

Once the OS was no longer locked down I was using the Error Reporting tool to report the problem, upon which it began walking me through a bunch of SLMGR commands to execute. Some were to force a reactivation of the Windows licensing service, others were to generate outputs to send in to them.

 

[Rob Williams]

Ahh that's interesting. It doesn't sound much like Windows 7 improves much in way of activation though, which is too bad. After having so many issues with Vista, I was hoping for something better (hell, I'm still wanting a far-improved command-line, but that hasn't happened since Windows 98).