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”He has a desktop system originally with XP. He skipped Win7 and went to Win8. He later accepted the free upgrade to Win10, which he has been using for months.”
— Doesn’t make sense without specific details
— If he had Windows 8 and not Windows 8.1, there isn’t an automatic upgrade to Windows 10 that I know of

Well, since he was offered (and accepted) an upgrade to Win10, I think he was on 8.1. He wouldn’t know.

”He tells me that his system is now booting into Win7 Pro. In Control Panel / System & Security / System, it reports the Windows edition as Windows 7 Professional SP1.”
— If it runs good, tell him to count his blessings

That’s EXACTLY what I told him. He got scared when XP went out of support. He wanted Win7, but it had already been superseded by Win8, and he didn’t know how to get Win7 (he could have asked me!).

He thought the devil might be involved (really!). I told him exactly what you said: that he should count his blessings. It’s a desktop system without a touch-screen. He wanted Win7 when XP was deprecated, but he felt compelled to buy Win8. Now he has exactly what he wanted in the first place (and what he really ought to have).

But I’m a curious guy. How does an XP->Win8->Win10 system somehow boot to Win7, apparently in native Win7 mode? That would be some really special sauce. It would revolutionize the world. If there were such thing as a Nobel Prize in Computing, the guy that figured THAT out would win for sure! I’m a Christian, but I have a hard time thinking that God did him the favor of installing Win7 on his system. Surely, God would have installed Linux.

And months it has only been 1 and a half.

I guess when you’re using Win10 on a desktop, weeks seem like months.

I wanted to say THANKS for a very useful and informative article! I have an ancient (really old) version of PaintShop Pro – these tools look so much more powerful and easier to use!

I hope we can look forward to a similar article on free audio editing tools. That would be awesome!

Thanks again!

Your not the only one with complaints about this drives performance.
It takes a dump on Newegg too, if this is your drive.

It is exactly my drive. I thought the Corsair brand was above reproach. It seems I was mistaken. Apparently this device is crap.

I checked the alignment – the drive is properly aligned on 4096-byte boundaries.

For the benefit of other responders – I did a clean (bare-metal) install of Win7 onto this SSD – my previous (mechanical) drive had failed completely. It was my intention to transfer only my license, not an actual copy of the original OS from the failed drive.

Check your BIOS settings and ensure that the drive is running in AHCI mode, it sounds to me that you have IDE mode enabled for your SATA devices.

Thanks for your suggestion. I am not a n00b. I was the guy that everyone asked how to resolve their IRQ and DMA conflicts 20 years ago. I remember when RLL hard drive technology was brand new – and people still clung to MFM.

SATA is superior to IDE, which is superior to RLL (I’m skipping a bit here) which is superior to MFM. This brand-new top-rated SSD ought to be the best of the best. But it is mediocre. Win7 says it is my system’s bottleneck, and implies a substantial performance penalty for my otherwise highly-rated system. Other benchmarks support this conclusion.

I’m asking if anyone here has provisioned a SSD as the primary boot volume on Win7 (64-bit) and run benchmarks. My system’s performance has degraded to a VERY noticeable extent since I have switched to a SSD primary drive.

The download link on the page works – it downloads a little 125kb installer. The installer, however, cannot find the server where the package is hosted.

I found this article:

http://groups.google.com/group/microsoft.public.windowsupdate/msg/3f5afa8ed33e121c

Which explains how to get a copy of XP Gold fully patched to SP3, using standalone install packages.

A key bit of information is that I did not need SP1a – I can install SP2 on an unpatched XP Gold, and then go to SP3 from there.

Cheers!

The same day that this issue of Windows Secrets came out, I saw an article on InfoWorld covering the results of AV Test’s recent report in which 22 AV programs were tested and compared.

Although Microsoft Security Essentials (barely) passed certification, was dead-last among certified products. AVG was highly rated.

I see no reason why I shouldn’t stick with AVG, and that’s still my recommendation to my friends and family.

Good column, Woody, but I would like to offer a bit of additional advice –

Instead of using gmail, yahoo, etc to create a throwaway address, go to 10MinuteMail.com. You INSTANTLY get an e-mail address and account which is good for ten minutes (you can request additiional time). This is usually plenty enough time to confirm the address, which is the only thing you usually want to do with a throwaway address.

There’s even a link to copy the address to your clipboard.

It could not possibly be any easier. There is no sign-up, no forms to fill out, no Captcha.