[Admin note: This thread has been locked as much of the information is out of date. Opus 9.5 has been released with Windows 7 support. See the FAQs for the latest information on Windows 7 etc.]
I know this post might seem a bit premature, considering the fact that Windows 7 is currently in Beta 1 phase at the moment. But I'm still curious to know if anyone else has tried running Opus on it?
It installed fine, it imported my settings fine. But there were two major issues that I saw. First, 7 uses explorer everywhere, so Replace Explorer definitely doesn't work.
But the bigger issue is that Opus seemed to corrupt my file system whenever I used it to manipulate files. At least I think it was Opus. After installing it for the first time my disk became unwrwitable, but after a restart, chkdsk fixed some file indexes and all was well. I used Opus again and the same thing happened. At this point I didn't know what the problem was, so I reinstalled Windows 7 and began adding my apps back in one at a time. When I added Opus, the problems happened again. I uninstalled it, and now i've been using Windows 7 for several days without issue.
I don't suppose there's need to report this to the developers, I'm sure they are hard at work on the issue (or will be soon!). I just thought this would be an appropriate place to ask around and see if I am alone in my experiments with Windows 7.
I guess it will be much like Vista - there's little point trying to make Opus compatible with a beta - too much will change in Windows before the final release. It would just be a constant game of catch up. Perhaps you could keep a list of problems you encounter and re-visit them when MS are ready to release ?
As a matter of policy we never bother with beta Windows versions - things change far too much between the first betas and the final release, and it's just not worth our limited resources chasing problems which Microsoft will probably end up fixing for us.
The file corruption sounds very strange, there's nothing Opus does that could cause this on a normal system - if you can identify the exact action that you think triggers it then please let us know. Otherwise, see above
As far as Explorer Replacement goes, Microsoft have been making it harder and harder to replace Explorer with every version of Windows. For some reason it's important for third-parties to be able to specify a default web browser but the issue of user-selection of folder browser has never hit the main-stream. In the past we've always been able to find workarounds for the problems that Microsoft have thrown in our path so hopefully this will be the case again. Time will tell...
Thank you both for the feedback. It certainly makes sense that these errors won't be chased so early. I was just hoping to find someone else who has testes Opus on Windows 7 who can corroborate the problem. It's certainly possible that the issue isn't with Opus, or that I have done something wrong.
I've installed the latest Opus in Windows 7 Build 7000. For me it works fine so far. I didn't test the Explorer replacement feature. I haven't set this in vista neither.
I only tested a couple of main functions like copying files from one location to another. I didn't encounter the issues you mentioned so far.
Perhaps it's the explorer replacement function that is causing problems. I don't think I ever tried using Opus without it, since the first thing I always did after installing it was to import my settings from my XP partition.
I'll try installing it again tonight without importing my profile and see how things go. I too just performed some basic functions - moving and copying files, creating a few folders...
I booted into XP, turned off Replace Explorer, backed up my config, restarted into 7, installed Opus, and imported my config. Everything is working just fine
I almost reinstalled windows 7 beta after installing opus because I thought it hosed my machine. After installing with the default options, windows becomes almost unusable. No system folder will open including control panel to uninstall it/games/etc etc.. I was finally able to uninstall it by setting control panel to show on the start menu, expand control panel and starting the programs and features applet from there.
Windows 7 is already proving to be faster and more stable than vista and could be out within 6 months. I'm already using beta 1 since it's superior to vista - please provide a workaround for this as I hate windows explorer!
Microsoft haven't even released Windows 7 beta to MSDN. In fact, as far as I know, GPSoftware currently have no legal way to obtain a beta to work against. It's a bit early to start asking for fixes! (But by all means compile a list of issues.)
If you install a beta OS you should expect problems and report serious issues to Microsoft. That's the point of beta testing an OS so early in its life-cycle.
As the OS becomes more mature and Microsoft make betas more widely available I am sure that GPSoftware will start to look into it. I was going to install Windows 7 myself to help them until I investigated and realised it wasn't available yet, except via the PDC pre-beta build (which isn't generally available) and the leaked build (which I won't go near). If MS don't think it's ready to start testing then it's definitely not ready to start coding apps against.
Powlette - Try turning off Replace Explorer, that should give you access to your system folders again and Opus should run fine.
Leo - Microsoft is apparently going to 'officially' release the first beta build of Windows 7 very soon, maybe even today when Ballmer gives the keynote speech at the start of CES. Though it is generally agreed that the 'leaked' 7000 build is actually Beta 1. It's also thought that this will be a public beta, and that keys will be available to anyone who wants one. This doesn't justify using the leaked build even if it turns out to be the same as Beta 1, but it does mean you can test it soon without running into any nasty moral issues
Have you had any issues with the default drop handler in Opus under Windows 7? For me, dragging a file with the left mouse button and dropping it into another folder or another window isn't working.
I get a windows tooltip that says Target: [path of destination], but it doesn't copy/move.
Also, if I drag a file out of an archive and into a lister, the file is extracted to %temp%, but is never copied to the destination folder.
I downloaded Windows 7 beta from MSDN today (Thur. 1/8/09). But they are having trouble with license keys, you get an error if you try to get one, they say they are working on it.
I created a VM for Windows 7 today, and just installed Dopus 9 without error. But I haven't had time to use it yet.
General public availability of 7 should be available from today.
From what I hear from people who have been using it for a while it is pretty stable and MS have said that this release is almost feature complete. In fact compared to the Vista beta releases this is more like a release candidate.
Remember there is a new guy in charge of the Windows 7 release who did a very good job on the office side of the business and comes highly regarded. Therefore we shouldn't get the mess we got with Vista, but time will tell.
I'm going to get hold of a copy today and install it in a VM and then i'll give opus a shot.
Be aware that the beta will only be available to the first 2.5 million applicants. That sounds like a lot, but there has been a lot of media hype about this, so i think the available slots will go fast. There has been no official release time announced; the website just says 'afternoon' (PST).
I've decided that the disc corruption I experienced earlier was probably not related in any way to Opus. Several other people have experienced the same problems, and in the end it probably boils down to not letting the Windows 7 installer create and format the partition that it is installed on (we all set up dual-boot, and manually created the partition prior to running the installer using various 3rd party programs).
The biggest problem I've encountered is that the drop handler is acting strangely, as I described in a previous post. Other issues, like problems with Replace Explorer, and the inaccessibility of new shell folders like Libraries, are things that are to be expected when an OS changes so dramatically. These will be sorted out eventually...
I grabbed an MSDN copy yesterday but haven't found the time or braveness to install it on anything yet. (I like that my new laptop works... Not sure I want to break it!) I'm assuming MS won't include MSDN customers in their 2.5 million limit as that would be silly.
Do you mean Bill Veghte? I don't know much about him. I thought you meant Ray Ozzie at first, and was about to launch into a rant about how he is partially responsible for the crime against computer science which is Lotus Notes and should be defenestrated immediately.
The biggest mess with Vista was with drivers (especially NVidia's and some wireless LAN cards) and software incompatibility, but I think/hope we won't see many issues there as Windows 7 sounds like Vista with a few bells & whistles, not the huge back-end change which Vista was to XP (and which was long overdue and well worth the pain!).
