What Was the Best and Worst Windows OS For You?

[kiriakost]

Worst: Win-95 ( every third party software was replacing system .DLL) OS stability become fragile.
Best : Win XP 32bit
Better for now: Win 7 Pro 64bit ( I am in control of the OS by 96%)

 

[Vario]

Did you use Vista much before SP1? That fixed the most glaring issues, the biggest on the UX side being the adjustments to UAC. They also made some performance improvements to the eye candy, so as of SP1 you could reasonably run it out-of-the-box and it was mostly fine on any machine that met the published minimums. Tweaking eye candy settings made it downright usable. On release, though... ugh.

My experience with Me was bad enough on the university PCs that I never even installed it on my own machine.

Must have been SP1, not sure. It came with a Dell Latitude D530 laptop.

 

[theFOoL]

Pretty much a OEM would either do two things: not have SP1 or have it and you just didn't enjoy Vista. As said SP1 brought so much improvement

 

[qubit]

Pretty much a OEM would either do two things: not have SP1 or have it and you just didn't enjoy Vista. As said SP1 brought so much improvement

I remember how much more stable it was with SP1. With SP2 it became a lot better still. However, it never fully got over that sluggishness. W7 was noticeably more responsive.

 

[JalleR]

Best Win 7
Worst windows 8/ and especially server 2012
I will say that Win 11 really tries to piss me off so it is almoste up there with server 2012

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

7 wasn't that bad, but I always had a lot of issues with windows updates on 7....

The "Never ending searching for updates" and alike....
I made a thread about it years ago here on TPU....

An early-2010s update, is infamous for Windows Update error code 0x80080005. I traced it to an early-2010s patch for Windows 7 SP1.

Vista hands down I am 47 I has had "all the Windows" Actually not entirely true I skipped over ME and the 8's

I will stay on 10 as long as I possibly can until there is an actual feature in 11 that makes me have to give in(DX12 for 10 for me)

8.1 was superb, IMX. 10 is known for jankyness, where CBS complains about an update that's for a stinkin' TP update of 10. (complains about that package being invalid)

10 also most frequently has the issue of Defender updates failing with Windows Update error code 0x80070643.

8x and 10=I saw a bug where Windows Update keeps giving a generic error, IIRC and you have to "spam" the retry-button with the mouse! (for 10, earlier RTM builds)

Windows 7, got noticeably slower, post-beta! LOL! Windows 7 build 7000 was the fastest on my Core 2 that I had in 2009.

Windows 11 pretty much only makes me ticked off when it goes to a blank screen and have to hold down the power button, but only in a Chromium browser, so far and when that happens, the monitor backlight stays lit and the monitor never gives the no-signal error message. I have yet to get crashes in games! Still no crash in Pale Moon and still no crash in Firefox. I never even touched CO!

 

[Vayra86]

I'm also partial to W10 right now. It looked sensible when it got released, and it still does today. Lots of fears about it going to shit have been moving to W11.

Gonna stay on 10 for as long as possible.
Previous versions I liked: 95. 7.
The rest was utter shite in one way or another, despite using XP and Vista for a loooong time, they never made me happy, though somehow I did like Vista over XP.

 

[RJARRRPCGP]

I'm also partial to W10 right now. It looked sensible when it got released, and it still does today. Lots of fears about it going to shit have been moving to W11.

Gonna stay on 10 for as long as possible.

I went to 11 in mid-April, 2022 and it made 10 feel like a beta of 11, LOL.

 

[Vario]

I'm waiting on a LTSC equivalent for Win 11. My understanding is that stripped out Win 10 LTSC basically is even in performance with consumer grade Win 11 for Alderlake, even with e core improvements, simply by being leaner.

I will migrate to the enterprise/long term servicing Win 11 when it is available for better E-core scheduling support. As it stands now, my i9 is flawless, but as software gets more demanding in the next couple years, it might be nice.

Pretty much a OEM would either do two things: not have SP1 or have it and you just didn't enjoy Vista. As said SP1 brought so much improvement

Pretty sure it had SP1 and later SP2 as the laptop was acquired in 2008 for work and later grad school purposes, either way I would have upgraded to SP2. Vista was good for me. I used that laptop from 2008 until 2012 and then occasionally for stuff like car repairs as a "pdf shop manual" until it finally retired in 2019. Even upgraded the processor to a faster core 2 duo and the ram from 2GB to 4GB. I also upgraded the HDD to larger capacity model, don't recall size, possibly 512GB. It survived quite a lot and it was made out of several eBay sourced D530 zombie parts before I recycled it. The machine worked fine for word processing and web browsing and felt fairly quick even in 2019, probably given its minimal demand work load.

 

[OkieDan]

Windows 11 pretty much only makes me ticked off when it goes to a blank screen and have to hold down the power button, but only in a Chromium browser, so far and when that happens, the monitor backlight stays lit and the monitor never gives the no-signal error message. I have yet to get crashes in games! Still no crash in Pale Moon and still no crash in Firefox. I never even touched CO!

You might try CTRL+SHIFT+WIN+B when that happens to reset graphics driver.

Worst: Win-95 ( every third party software was replacing system .DLL) OS stability become fragile.

That was a major reason people didn't like Win9x whether they knew it or not.

 

[Mussels]

You really should give LTSB or LTSC a look.

It tempts me a lot for people like parents/grandparents or even those on garbage internet, just to slow down the updates and rate of change


NT/XP still hold much joy for me.
They had so much flaws like the internal memory leaks and stuff that never got fixed til 7 rolled around years later (Like how audio would slow your network, or your network would crackle your audio! mmm! good times!) but they also needed very little to run, and ran well if you didnt luck out with the combinations that had issues

I'm waiting on a LTSC equivalent for Win 11. My understanding is that stripped out Win 10 LTSC basically is even in performance with consumer grade Win 11 for Alderlake, even with e core improvements, simply by being leaner.

The only time it'll go poorly is when you have tasks that require a P core, and end up on a HT or E core
It may not happen often, but when it does it could cause serious performance problems depending on what you're doing at the time

R23 for example is all the cores and threads, so it wont care
ST benchmarks wont care

But if you have 8 P cores and windows decides to use 4 P cores and 4 E-cores for some game that needs 8 cores in the future, performance is gunna be lower in a confusing way

(This is just a theoretical example - even 10 does it's best to not have this happen)

 

[Icon Charlie]

Heh.
The ones I liked the most and used through the years. Dos 4.22, Win 3/3.11, Win 95, Win 2000 (10+ years), Win 7 6+years), Win 10. IMHO Win2000 was built like a tank. I only had to do one full reinstall during that time. I really enjoyed Win 2000 being Robust.

The ones I hated. Win Me, Win XP (I hated it so much for being so unstable that I stayed on Win/2000 for 10+ years), Vista, Win 11- the bloated OS is just awful. I dislike M$ and Win 11 so much that I, the old man is starting to transition into Zorin Linux as it reminds me of Win 7 a bit. I'll keep Win 10 as long as possible.

 

[eidairaman1]

Worst was Vista, 10.

Ok was XP and ME.

8 was 7 with a stupid start Screen

Best Was 98SE, 2000, 7.

11 is OK as long as you disable WID and use powershell to install just needed updates only. Now just to find a way to restore all elements of the Control Panel from W3.1-W7 and Kill Settings, and Skin W11 GUI with W7 GUI without requiring additional services/TSRs

 

[lexluthermiester]

NT/XP still hold much joy for me.

I feel you. If I didn't love 7 so much, XP would be my fav version of Windows.