Using Windows 7 or Vista Compatibility Mode

Windows Vista or Windows 7, will have problems running some older versions of applications, just because so much has changed under the hood from Windows XP days. There is a compatibility mode that can be easily set per application. To configure the compatibility mode for an application, just locate the installation directory and right click on the .exe, selecting Properties from the menu.

Select the Compatibility tab:
You can choose to run the program in Windows XP compatibility mode, or even all the way back to Windows 95 compatibility.

Probably the most useful setting to start off with would be to disable the visual themes and desktop composition, if you can’t get things working. If you are trying to run a video game, you will often need to choose “Run this program as an administrator”. You’ll have to play around with it, but most likely you can get your application working this way.

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Run Windows XP on Windows 7

it’s been a long time since the release of Windows 7 but there are few individuals who are not impressed with Windows 7 and want to continue with XP

Windows XP is so simple and easy to use that not everyone wants to come out of XP. So if you are using Windows 7 but also wants XP back then Windows 7 has something interesting for you.

 The feature is called “XP mode on windows 7” and it can enable you to continue with XP while using Windows 7. This feature works with the feature called Windows Virtual PC. Other advantage of this feature is that while Windows 7 is compatible with most of the applications in XP, in case there is some application that runs only on XP then you can run it easily.

The only thing to note is that you must have Windows 7 Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate to run Windows XP Mode. Download link for the same is given below

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx

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windows 7 advantages and disadvantages

Advantages:

1. Windows 7 is faster than its predecessors, both in terms of installation and boot up time.
2. Calculator has been enhanced with some new features like unit conversion, calculations like fuel economy and auto lease payment.
3. WordPad in Windows 7 has improved much better and look similar to the Microsoft Office Word. It can be used to open, edit file names with docx extension which was earlier introduced with MS-Office 2007. Word prediction is the new feature in Word Pad. Realistic brush has been added in Paint.
4. Microsoft facilitates in windows 7, to download some eye-catching themes and background images from its own Microsoft website or from RSS feed. It allows the user to customize every part of the themes and save for our future use or send to the other windows 7 users.
5. It also supports advanced touch and handwriting recognition.
6. Windows 7 supports Virtual Hard Disks with the support of enhanced performances of multi core processors.
7. Windows Media Player 12 has got much enhanced features in the Windows 7 and drag and drop option has been added which were not there in the previous versions.
8. Windows 7 allows the user to make the best use of graphic cards from the different vendors.
9. Bitlocker is a feature which provides encryption for the internal drives in vista, but it is extended to the external drives in windows 7. This makes backup and restore much easier.
10. Default settings of User Account have been eliminated, to protect form the unauthorized software to be installed.
11. Windows 7 has included a new concept, jumplists which organize the recently used files as well as web pages.
12. More than that, it also allows the user to overcome the clutter in the desktop by introducing three new features Aero Peek, Aero shake and snap.
13. Home networking has been made much easier than its previous operating systems and is probably safe from hackers.

 Disadvantages:


1. Some of the users are not satisfied with the new features, because, they need to buy out additional resources such as RAM, etc to make use of them.
2. It is expensive than the previous Microsoft operating systems.
3. Some of the users have problems such as; their system hangs after installing Windows 7
4. If the user has got an HP multifunction printer, and its driver being upgraded to the Windows 7, then the printer doesn’t response to the print commands. So, the user needs to go to the new HP solution Center to resolve this problem.
5. Windows have specific themes for United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, Japan, South Africa and Australia, if the user is not from the above country and he wish to have a specific theme of his country, he will not get that, hence the user will not satisfied with that feature.
6. Some of the features like Start Menu user interface, Windows Ultimate Extras, InkBall, Windows Photo Gallery, Windows Movie Maker, Windows Calendar Windows Mail called Windows Live Essentials were included in Vista are removed in Windows 7.

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