Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC)

Oh I misunderstood you on that, my hardware config:
AMD 64 X2 5000+ (2,6 MHz)
Dual RAM 800MHz (2x1GB)
Integrated Graphic card: ATI Radeon 1250

 

Smoking fast on this hardware.

 

I m downloading Win 7 right now...can't wait to install it

 

How many open ports does it have open by default?

 

lol, I see many ports open. To see from cmd prompt
netstat -ano

also open then 2nd cmd prompt with tasklist /svc, now view PID and match to open ports.

7 has very good out of the box hdd reads/writes compared to Vista Ultimate. WAY better. Almost as fast as XP, but not quite.

Browsing if very much noticably faster. I mean, very very noticable. I have never seen a browser (ff,opera,km) open as fast or load pages as fast, even not cached. Impressive.

I installed CoD4, with latest win7 drivers. and older ones. There is definately no comparison to XP in that respect. I would even say Vista is better than 7. Granted, this is not a true test really, but since many will play games on thier 7 machines, my initial outlook is if I ever go to a lan party again, I shall be going with XP.

I have yet to find a program that refuses to work, so that is a plus.

Sul.

 

Thanks Ron for link.

I have a question about Win7.
Very often i use Sleep Mode supported by Win7 but when i Wake Up my system then i noticed that 2 leds on my keyboard are turned on (Caps Lock and Scroll Lock - Num Lock is disabled). What is going on?

 

I installed Windows 7 RC on my Sony Vaio VGN-S360 laptop (1.7 ghz, 1 gig ram, 75 gig hard drive) and I must say that it runs just as well as on my Desktop (3.0 ghz, 2 gigs ram). Very responsive. I'm impressed. Runs a lot better with Windows 7 than with Vista. I think MicroSoft has got a winner here. I just wish they'd fix that SRP thing I mentioned previously.

Later...

 

Do you know if this version will received updates?

 

Accoding to all the documentation, it seems updates are highly encouraged. the upate service is running on my version, but have not seen any applied yet.

Sul.

 

Neowin is reporting that there are two IE8 updates for Win 7 that should be showing up in WU by now.

 

I am quite disapointed, that www.regdefrag.com does not work, though it says, that it supports W7, I had to do 3 clean instal since 2x I ended up with BSOD.
Now I am stucked with bad icons, because reg defragmentation allways fixed them and free reg defrag does not help. Not to mention punkbuster and COD4.

 

Do you know if we can just update this version with the final when it arrives?

We just need to have a paid key or execute an update tool from the final?

 

Update from RC to RTM will not be supported, maybe it will work, but it is not recommended by Microsoft.

 

They were there when I updated the first time. The only mandatory update was for Windows Defender. The two IE updates had to be selected to be installed. Just click on "View available updates"...you'll see them.

Later...

 

Win 7 RC fails to thwart well-known hacker risk
F-Secure Q&A: Windows 7 File Extension Hiding

 

Yea, I ran this as a performance test. I know PB has already stated they do not support Beta OS's. Out of the box, 7 on my hardware does not compete with XP for something like this. It might be as good or better if you tweak 7 a bit, but I will save that for later when I have free time... whenever that may be lol.

Sul.

 

Trespasser, you are correct. Basic User setting does not work at all. It is only a deny rule. The registry is the same as xp/vista concerning SAFER/SRP. There is now the application blocker, which is listed in the registry as SRP v2. Those registry values appear to be xml from a brief look. Perhaps there is room in there to tweak.

Regardless, Basic User ATM does not work in 7, even reloading registry or using gpupdate. I will play more later and see what might come of it.

Sul.

EDIT:

It seems that by applying SRP rules or AppLocker rules by hand, there is no joy either. Matter of fact, simply creating a rule in AppLocker, where the rule is to deny *notepad.exe, it does not work. After reboot, after registry reload or after gpupdate. This includes hand built entries in the registry as well.

It would appear that AppLocker has heirarchy of first deny, then allow. So to block notepad, you would first allow all %windir%, then deny only notepad. It has some good features I think if they would just work.

SRP seems broken to me. Set the default level to unrestricted. Set enforcement to apply to all users including admins and include all files including dlls. Then with no rules in place for SRP other than the defaults to allow windir and program files, try to start cmd.exe or taskmanager. They fail. And this is with no rules in place at all for SRP.

Yes, I do think they have a bit left to get correct. I even turned UAC off, and made a new admin account. No love in that direction either. One nice thing to come with AppLocker though, only one registry value in xml style format rather than multiple like SRP currently uses.

It seems that technet has nothing yet. Does anyone have a link to anything on MSDN for win7 yet? Nothing I see in win32 and com development for AppLocker or SRP.

 

There is a service called AppIDSvc which is not running by default. To enable AppLocker, this must be running. You must also reopen the secpol mmc after you start the service for AppLocker rules to start working. AppLocker does work now, but with only allow or deny. Still, it is a large improvement over SRP for those actions. The exceptions rules is really what takes it to a better level.

Sul.

EDIT:

It seems one can no longer apply SRP registry settings in win7 and have them work outside of using a snapin console. Pity that. I tried a lot of manual entries of differing methods and nothing works yet that way.

 

I hereby take back all of those negative comments I made about Windows 7 RC (Ultimate).

I have it installed on my system now.

It has it's Vista-ness, but, once I got over that stigma it complete turned me around. Very impressive.

Unlike the lower versions of Vista, once you get around the default security grips it's got pretty close to the same customize-ability as XP Pro which, to me, is more important than all the features.

If the default Hibernation, Virtual Memory (pagefile) and System Restore functions are all enabled and system managed then obviously you're gonna have a BIG Operating System, at least 13Gb's with a bareboned install. I did manage to get ths OS size down to a little over 5Gb's (with the Hibernation, Virtual Memory and System Restore disabled) so that I could burn a Ghost Image on a (1) DVD.

Overall, I'm quite pleased with how Windows 7 RC (Ultimate) turned out.

I also have the 64bit version. I had it installed and running for a day or two. It was actually on that OS that I became more comfortable with the whole Windows 7 environment. No specific reason for me going back to 32bit. I guess I wanted to get the 32bit version burned on a DVD first. I'll start working on the 64 bit version later tonite and on into tommorrow so I can get it backed up too. It's gonna take at least 2 DVD's to back that OS up. The last I remember it was a little over 9Gb's bareboned.

 

I applaud you for keeping an open mind when you are such a staunch XP fan. I know all too well how appealing XP can be. Hopefully 7 can be a worthy successor.

Sul.

 

JV16 PowerTools 2009 is another reg defrag, that will result in BSOD and clean instal. I wonder, what is wrong with them, removing half of registry?

 

After much more extensive playing, it seems SRP and AppLocker will only perform functions over items listed in both the registry and the gp. Unlike prior versions where only registry entries were needed. Works well enough when it does work though.

Maybe this has been gone over, but there is some issues with the UAC in win7 that are pretty critical. Seems it can be circumvented with vbscript easily. Acutally it can be turned off without user notice. Pretty big hole for ordinary users I would say. SRP/AL might help mitigate that but that is a test for a later date.

Sul.