Quirks and tidbits about Windows

eatup

eatup

I'm starting this thread to post fun facts and tidbits about the Windows operating system.

For starters:

Windows 7 32-Bit boots up considerably faster than 64-Bit. I only noticed this after having been on the 64-Bit edition for sometime. Usually, I've never needed more than 4GB of RAM on any given NT6.x operating system.

So, in so as far as I can see, there is no benefit to running the 64-Bit version when the same OS performs much faster in 32-Bits!
 
XP install CD actually has an, "install counter" linked to Windows Activation.

I found this out doing a fresh install of my genuine XP Home 32 bit to the "road kill" PC I built. On attempting to activate XP I received a message telling me that the number of installs had been exeeded.

Microsoft never letting go of the customer in an effort to sell a new OS.

Cheers,

Mark. (Aunty Jack).
 
Windows 7 x86 (when running 16-bit or MS-DOS applications in windowed mode) adheres to the applied visual style. XP/Vista all show a classic styled window.
 
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Windows NT 3.x versions can run text based OS/2 applications (and I think there was an OS/2 installable client packages that would run 16-bit Presentation Manager apps on Windows NT 3.x as well.)
 
I can only think of one:

Local Users and Groups is enabled in XP Home. Go to mmc.exe and you can create a management coonsole shortcut to it, but you have to manage 127.0.0.1 instead of local machine, which tricks the computer into thinking your machine is another's.

That's quite known anyways but it's pretty useful.
 
In Vista and later, if you go to device manager and uninstall the sound driver, then refresh the list so that it reinstalls the default sound drivers provided by MS, you will find some very interesting options when you check the speaker settings in the Control Panel. Under the speakers enhancements tab, there now appears options to turn on virtual surround, bass boost, and room loudness correction.

If you have a pair of high quality speakers connected to your PC, you will hear the difference and it is astounding with those options turned on (except for room loudness correction, which I didn't find very useful)!
 
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Here's an old but useful one nevertheless (and the reason why I tend to extol Win7 [Ultimate] over Vista):

Starting with Win7 Enterprise/Ultimate, any edition of Win8.x, and any edition of Win 10, you can install the entire OS to a vhd file, rather than on an actual partition, without sacrificing the performance you get when you run a virtual machine. And when you boot that file without using a hypervisor like VirtualPC, it is called "native booting". The advantage of doing so are two fold: 1. No need to deal with messy hard drive repartitioning. You can have as many vhd files (for multi-booting) as you like on that single physical partition. 2. The last time I reinstalled Win7, I spent a good 6 hours updating it to the latest 180-ish hotfixes. Next time there won't be a need, I'll just restore the vhd file that I backed up after those updates were installed, add it to the boot menu, and it would be as good as if I had actually spent another 6 hours reinstalling them updates....
 
If installing FireFox 40+ from the same install file, this Youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoOhlqbSsts

will not go above 360p in WinXP, but in Win7 it will go up to 480p.

The difference is noticeable, the same FireFox installation makes for a more enjoyable experience in Win7!

SOURCE: Dual booting XP/Win7 on the same machine.

In summary, I would not want to watch Youtube videos in XP, if I can choose Win7 b/c the advantages are 2-fold:

1. Increased max resolution as already discussed

2. Speaker enhancements like SimSurround and Bass Boost can only be found natively in Win7's ControlPanel, so not only do YT videos look better, but they sound better in Win7!
 
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