Are you still using Windows 7? \ VOGONS

Are you still using Windows 7?

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First post, by OM606

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Joined: 2025-01-15, 10:09
Location: France

I've come to realize that the OS i use the most nowadays is Windows 7 again. I've completely stopped gaming and lost my interest for hardware around 2013 and have been using Linux most of the time ever since.

My golden era of games and hardware is 2004-2009 when i was a teenager. I still had hardware from 2011-2014 laying around built some kind of "overkill" XP rig and ended up dual booting Windows 7 because i wanted to play the last games i really enjoyed 10-15 years ago such as Metro 2033, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 3 and Doom 2016.

I ended up installing my favorite games from the 2000s on the Win7 partition and realized that except for not being able to enable EAX through Alchemy in FEAR, the experience was just has good and didn't require more tweaking. All the tweaking i had to do under XP was hardware related (such as cfg files to fix texture and resolution issues in games likes Doom 3, Quake 4 or Prey) and is the same under both OS. I had some occasional crashes under XP that are not happening anymore since using the LAA (Large Adress Aware) patch under 7 x64. Assassin's Creed, i'm thinking about you.

I find myself using this PC a lot for pretty much anything that isn't online and i think 7 is still a relevant OS and maybe the pinnacle of what MS could do and certainly the last great Windows for offline gaming. I wonder how many of you are still using it and how do you feel about it being 16 years old. I guess it could be nostalgic for someone younger than me, similar to what XP is to me. In my case, i just think it is a solid OS and the one i'm the most familiar with.

On a side note, i'm not sure XP is that relevant for games from the Vista era. Most of my favorite games are from this weird era having EAX and DX10 at the same time. I guess this build became the Overkill x64 DX10 2007-2009 PC. It seems like my other build is doing a better job at a straight forward XP rig.

XP/Vista: E6600 - 8800 GTX - P5B Premium - X-Fi XtremeGamer
7: Xeon E3-1271 v3 - GTX 960 - Z97X-UD3H - Audigy RX
11/Linux: Some current generation Lenovo Legion 5, don't even know the specs.

Reply 1 of 7, by RandomStranger

Posted on Yesterday, 18:15

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Barely. I have a T630 thin client with Windows 7, but it doesn't see much action. For nostalgia I mostly use XP and Windows 98 and daily drive Linux which out of convenience also covers most of my gaming needs. The rest is shared between my XP rig and 7th generation gaming consoles if I crave for the authentic experience. Or for certain publishers to avoid their online services (Ubisoft, EA, Rockstar).

Reply 2 of 7, by Cyberdyne

Posted on Yesterday, 18:19

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All my interneting, bill paying and doomscrolling is made with an android phone. So my computers are mostly offline. I have one box and one laptop that have Windows 11. Everything else is mostly Windows 7/XP or old DOS. I would use Windows 7 to the end of times, if it were safe in the internet. There still is Firefox ESR. And few antivirus software. But ID card software does not work. And everything is unsafe.

I am aroused about any X86 motherboard that has full functional ISA slot. I think i have problem. Not really into that original (Turbo) XT,286,386 and CGA/EGA stuff. So just a DOS nut.
PS. If I upload RAR, it is a 16-bit DOS RAR Version 2.50.

Reply 3 of 7, by Barley

Posted on Yesterday, 19:12

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I have been dual booting Windows 11 and Windows XP, but I think I will change that to Windows 7 and Windows XP.

The issue I have with dual booting 11 and XP is that 11 is limited to a GTX 980 ti (let alone an Ivy Bridge cpu) so I can't really play any of the latest games. Also, just about the only sound card that spans that generation gap (without core isolation issues in W11) is the Audigy RX, which does not have EAX 5.0.

So I will put Windows 7 on there and use an X-Fi Titanium for EAX 5.0 goodness. Most of my games do just fine on Windows XP, but having W7-64 bit on there will allow me to use all the mods and widescreen fixes that are not compatible with Windows XP.

This will free me up to build a new-ish (not really) Windows 11 box with a 2070 Super I have laying around.

Reply 4 of 7, by Archer57

Posted on Yesterday, 23:56

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Joined: 2025-05-03, 18:30

Not really. Guess this mostly depends on what period of time you remember/like the most. For me it was XP. Vista/7 always felt no more than a stepping stone i have to endure because there are no other options. A significant downgrade from XP. Pretty much as bad as 10/11.

Nowadays i mostly use XP for old stuff and either modded 11 or linux for modern stuff. I would have switched to linux entirely long time ago, but desktop linux is so comically bad it did not even reach XP level of functionality by this point. Notably no application level firewall is just... perplexing.

I also have completely offline (Or should i say violently offline? I've desoldered NIC IC from the motherboard 😁 ) 11 system for games which is mostly used by kids, but i also use it to play stuff which does not run on XP.

AthlonXP 2200+,ECS K7VTA3 V8.0,1GB,GF FX5900XT 128MB,Audigy 2 ZS
AthlonXP 3200+,Epox EP-8RDA3I,2GB,GF 7600GT 256MB,Audigy 4
Athlon64 x2 4800+,Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe,4GB,GF 8800GT 1GB,Audigy 4
Core2Duo E8600,ECS G31T-M3,4GB,GF GTX660 2GB,Realtek ALC662

Reply 5 of 7, by SuperDeadite

Posted on Today, 00:12

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I dual boot 10/7. Mostly use 7 for a lot of Japanese games that require old directdraw features and MIDI stuff.

CM-64, CM-500, SC-55MkII, SC-88 Pro, SY22, TG100, MU2000EX, PLG100-SG, PLG150-DR, PLG150-AN, SG01k, NS5R, GZ-50M, SN-U110-07, SN-U110-10, Pocket Studio 5, DreamBlaster S2, X2, McFly, E-Wave, QWave, CrystalBlaster C2, Yucatan FX, BeepBlaster, SuperOctet!

Reply 6 of 7, by Shponglefan

Posted on Today, 00:29

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Posts: 3992
Joined: 2016-09-21, 13:13
Location: The North

I currently have no Windows 7 systems and as of last weekend, no longer have any Windows 10 systems either.

Though I have been thinking of converting my Ultimate XP build into a triple OS system with XP, Vista, and Win7.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 7 of 7, by kolderman

Posted on 13 minutes ago

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Joined: 2019-05-12, 04:22

Its my main retro emulator system. I.e. dosbox, scummvm, etc. I also licensed my Roland SoundCanvas VA there, meaning I am tied to that particular OS install. Works perfectly on my core2duo build, and is dual booted with WinXP for XP era gaming too.

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