2020 - Win 10 vs Win 7

[csnow]

I searched but the newest discussion I could find was in 2017 and most people were recommending Win 7 for cabinet builds.  What is the OS of choice on a new build today?  I have access to both Win 10 and Win 7.  I know Win0 has made a lot of improvements and Win 7 is officially unsupported now by MS.  Is Win 7 still preferred today?  PC will be output to a 15khz CRT via jpac.  My gut says Win10 but I thought it prudent to ask for feedback.

[meyer980]

I've had two builds on Windows 10 and my daily computer is also Windows 10 (where I tend to test MAME configurations). I've had no trouble.

I've never done a 15khz build though so not sure how that plays into things.

[P-chan]

Win10 has been rock solid for me, I wouldn't go with 7 unless you had a very specific reason.

[Titchgamer]

I would use 10 these days.
7 was amazing but its had its time.

[Howard_Casto]

Really the only reason to use 7 is if you don't want to pay up and for whatever reason you can't do the free win 10 upgrade. 

[Grasshopper]

I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned the elephant in the room which is Microsoft’s obnoxious policy of forcing updates on users without their consent, and collecting telemetry and other data from users, again without their consent.

If you don’t care about privacy, and are OK with a faceless corporation remotely accessing and changing stuff on your PC whenever they feel like it, then a de-bloated Win 10 is perfectly fine.

However, for everyone else, I’d say that Win 7 is the better option (assuming it runs on your hardware).

[romshark]

That really only matters if your arcade computers are connected to the Internet. I think most people here keep their arcades "off the grid" (more to keep from worrying about antivirus and firewall programs slowing games down). My two cabinets stay offline unless I want to transfer updated front end game lists and art assets to them (they both have ethernet jacks behind the coin doors.)


Saying that, I do run Windows 7 on both my cabinets. There is stuff that runs under Win7 but not well / at all under 10. Some of the arcade games that run on standard PCs (Taito X/X2 and the such.) Most stuff works, but things like Silent Hill: the Arcade won't boot for me in Win10. Daemon Bride (the non-Nesica version) also won't load. However, things like MAME and the other popular emulators should run under 10 just fine.

[Ropi Jo]

I use W7 as I run my CRT via SVID from my old 3450 GPU. W10 drivers won't run the SVID output on that card and other I tried. Newer cards mostly don't even have SVID.

I did get W10 drivers to run the SVID on a 8800GT but the performance was awful.

Sticking with W7 was the simplest solution for me.

[BadMouth]

I updated to 10 and the hacked xbox360 controllers I used for the controls refused to stay in the proper order no matter what I tried.  Ended up switching to a keyboard encoder.  Never was an issue on Vista,lol.  If you are using a keyboard encoder, I guess it won't be an issue.

[P-chan]

I’m surprised that no one’s mentioned the elephant in the room which is Microsoft’s obnoxious policy of forcing updates on users without their consent, and collecting telemetry and other data from users, again without their consent.

If you don’t care about privacy, and are OK with a faceless corporation remotely accessing and changing stuff on your PC whenever they feel like it, then a de-bloated Win 10 is perfectly fine.

However, for everyone else, I’d say that Win 7 is the better option (assuming it runs on your hardware).

Agree with you, but also agree with romshark.  No reason to keep your cab connected to the internet at all.  I would be transferring new ROMs/MAME versions on a USB stick (after testing on another machine) anyway...

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Has anyone tried out the so-called "Ameliorated Win10" build? It's seems to be akin to the stripped down versions of XP years ago. Tears out all of the telemetry bits (including activation), and other various bloat.
I've got some hardware I'm going to try it on soon. I'm interested to see if it has any issues with GroovyMame/CRT Emudriver and how short a bootup I can get.
https://ameliorated.info/faq.html

[Howard_Casto]

Stripped down versions of windows are generally a waste of time.  The reason is software in our hobby (particularly front-ends and middle ware) often use old or odd parts of the windows OS that can be absent on a stripped down build.  When you run into an issue you'll never know for sure if the issue is the software you are trying to run or the fact that you have a un-sanctioned version of windows.

[Mike A]

Listen to Howard. You will have less headaches.

I don't know why people obsess over boot times.

Turn it on. Go grab a beer. When you get back it will be ready to go.

If it is still not ready drink more beer.

Repeat until ready.

[Osirus23]

I couldn't get past the ranting about "human rights", "the NSA", and quotes from Richard Stallman. By now you should be booting off an SSD that takes seconds anyway.

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

I enjoy the process of tinkering as much as I do actually playing the games. Originally I ran my cab off of a stripped down XP-64 build for no other reason than the peculiarity of it.

As for boot times, yes it's already blistering fast being on an SSD as compared to years ago. But none the less, power button to hyperspin in 5 seconds still amuses me.

[Osirus23]

XP-64, there's something I haven't seen in a long time. I actually used it on my first 64-bit desktop back in 2006. At the time it was a nightmare to find drivers for stuff.

[formula409]

Really the only reason to use 7 is if you don't want to pay up and for whatever reason you can't do the free win 10 upgrade.

If it's an arcade cabinet, even that isn't a reason since if you disable the windows shell, you can just never activate Windows, and there won't be any user visible differences between that and a paid for activated version of Windows.

You can just download a Windows 10 Enterprise ISO, install it, set up CRTEmudriver/whatever, disable the shell, never activate it, and you're done.

Windows is basically freeware for an arcade cabinet.