Windows 7 vs Windows 10

I finally made a decision on Win 7 vs. Win 10: I decided to decide my decision later. I'm staying with Windows 7 for now. I will consider an upgrade to 10 at a later date/time, but for now status quo wins.

There are various reasons for sticking with Windows 7, but mostly I want to wait a little while to see how Windows 10 plays out. In the meantime I will install Windows 7 on both my new builds, followed by the endless updates, customizing, program installs, etc.

IMO, a very wise choice.  You can always change later, after the bugs surface and are fixed, maybe.

It's been a long day, and not a successful one with Windows 7. I tried 3 separate clean installations, using 3 different discs. Despite starting with a reformatted SSD each time, I kept coming up with 49GB of space used. I could not reclaim the missing space no matter what I did. The Windows directory showed 19 GB of space used, but I could not find what happened to the other 30 GB. Scouring the Internet gave me no hints or solutions. On top of that major irritation, I had 3 other problems with Windows 7 that I could not resolve.

First, I could not get Bluetooth to work in Windows 7. Second, I had to refresh the network each time I restarted Windows 7 on Wi-Fi. Third, I could not get my Brother printer to work on wireless (I have not been able to get wireless to work on any of my Windows 7 computers). With Windows 10, everything easily worked on the first attempt.

The short story is that Windows 10 is reinstalled on the computer. Everything is working right out of the box and it's only using 17.2 GB of space. Plus it boots much faster than Windows 7 (approximately 10 seconds).

It's funny that I wanted to wait for Windows 10 to mature to experience less problems, yet it's working better for me than Windows 7.

Do you think or know, does formatting clear the SSD cache as well.  I'm thinking that W10 leaves a fragment that interferes with a reinstall of w7. A wild guess.......

I do not know the answer to your question, Bill, but 30 GB is a massive amount of space to go missing. At this point I don't even remember which was the first OS I installed. But each time that I formatted the SSD, it showed 238 GB available in the partition. Searching through hidden files and directories also gave me no clues.

I decided to run with Windows 10. So far it is working very well and I cannot think of a good reason not to use it. I'm going forward with installing all the programs we need, etc. Since I can only work on this a little at a time, it will probably be a week before I replace my wife's current computer. Plus I still need to install the Samsung 850 Pro 512 GB SSD when it arrives.

While I wanted to go with Windows 7, I spent way too much time on it and I simply got tired of fighting with it. I am certainly not going to reinstall it an umpteenth time. I might have kept Windows 7 were it not for the lost 30~ GB of space, but compounded with the other 3 problems I finally gave up. Hopefully I won't regret my decision, but for now it's a done deal.

I remember, the first try was w7 with 29g of missing space.  You did that 3 times using a couple of different install disks, each with the same or greater space loss (one was as high as 40g).  Then you tried w10 with 18.5g of used space, before updates, on the SSD. Beyond that I don't remember......

You're right, Windows 7 was installed first. So the problem has been there from the get-go. I have no idea why, and at this point I may never get my answer.

I will install Windows 7 on my Intel i7 build, just to get the free upgrade to Windows 10. I am curious as to what the space usage will be on initial installation of Windows 7.

Well, maybe. Or I can just move forward with Windows 10, which is working perfectly. I really have no desire to continue the aggravation, just to install an OS that I will eventually upgrade to Windows 10 anyway.

While I am grateful for the idea, I'd rather just having something that works without the fuss.

When I clean install Windows 7 on a reformatted SSD, it uses up 49 GB of space. When I install Windows 10 over Windows 7, only 17.3 GB is used. I have no idea why, and at this point it doesn't matter as I already invested way too much time on this project. Windows 10 has resolved my problems, and it's time to go forward.

I'm told change is good.

Scuzzy; when it's for a buck.