Honestly, Windows always sucked pretty bad. It's a badly designed OS that won't perform well at all after a year of use, even on good computers. I've always had problems with its unreliable FS, ridiculous crappy updates that require more than one reboot sometimes and general idiosyncrasies.

I'll give props to MS for keeping a stable API and ABI, that's pretty hard to do and they nailed it. But it's pretty much all I can give them props for.

Basically, Windows is what keeps me off PC gaming since I can't stand it. Normally my opinion regarding it gets better when I stay away from it for a good time, but it just takes some time of continuous use to lose my patience again.

With MS it's always matter of finding the right version. It happened to me only twice in my life, with Windows 2000 and Windows 7, and I try to keep best working versions as long as possible. With Windows ME things went beyond ridiculous, it was a horrible mess for almost all its existence, then it received fixes that made it decent when the end of MS support for it was approaching. Anyway, with Win 9x versions I was always bugged by a stupid bug MS never fixed: my onboard audio chipset used for MIDI a MS version (actually almost just a rebranded copy) of a Roland reference driver that had a bug, Roland eventually fixed the bug, sloppy, greedy and lazy MS never did, and for reasons I don't know I could never install the fixed Roland version in its place. I didn 't use MIDI very much, but back then Ultima Online required also MIDI audio, so I could never install a 3 months trial version that was included with a gaming magazine, and when I finally upgraded to Win 2000 the UO offer had expired. And that same bugged driver was passed unchanged and unfixed as a precious heirloom across all Win 9x/ME versions, I had to switch to the NT family to get rid of it.
And this is just one of the problems I had with too many Windows versions, when I had to downgrade from 2000 to XP a long period of incompatibilities started that ended only when I finally upgraded to the best Windows ever, at least for me, Windows 7. So MS fans, astroturfers and employees around forums, social networks and newsgroup can say whatever they want to try and persuade me up to wear their fingers out on their keyboards, I won't ever trust them and I won't ever drop a fine working Windows version until its extended support expires.

I can't update anymore, found many "solutions", tried many things, impossible to solve. That's really a pain. The only thing I like in windows 10 is the new flat look (and not because it's great but because it's flat), and they could just have given it has a new skin for windows 7.

I agree 100%. The latest big update to windows 10 massively slowed down my system, and even before then, I was always running into little problems and annoyances that made me dread having to boot into Windows. Plus Edge browser is easily the worst browser I've used since IE6. It's pretty amazing that after so many years they finally managed to make IE usable, onlybto replace it with an unusable turd only moments later!

Overall, windows 8 was a much more solid OS. They made some stupid decisions with the interface, but it was incredibly fast and bug free on all my systems. Such a damn shame that they had to take so many steps back with 10. -

No, I eventually had to use it for some years between 2000 and 7, but I don't miss it, it's been the period during which old DRMs gave me most problems, and XP, unlike 7, let Thief III's one, the unbelievably crappy StarForce, corrupt optical drives' drivers, and reinstalling them wasn't enough, I had to reinstall XP each time I tried to install T III (*), until I gave up and waited for the GOG DRM-free version, that I got when I had already switched to Win 7. In that period, with all that time wasted, I reinstalled Morrowind too late and now I'm struggling to finish it, because each time I play it again I feel a little lost.

(*) Edit: StarForce actually behaved like a rootkit or a trojan, and kept on corrupting drivers after I restored them.

Windows 10 is garbage. I'm having so many more problems than with Windows 7. At this point, they don't give a damn about consumer satisfaction because they have such an insurmountable monopoly.

Yesterday, I had a bunch of my files revert to opening with "Groove" or the Windows "Movies & TV" player. So very annoying. Reminds me of when it reset to Edge instead of Chrome. They play dirty.

I tried the "Anniversary" update. What happened? It destroyed my 1TB external. I can no longer use it. Looks like the boot files are screwed. I had like 800MB of data on there. I'm going to have to buy a program for like $70 to get it back, though some of it is lost forever. No way I'm getting back the encoded partition. I'm just sick about that.

All the problems I've had, combined with the removal of options and the anti-consumer "features", have made W10 a miserable experience for me. Not only do I despise this OS but all the good-will I had toward Microsoft has evaporated.

It's kind of funny but Windows has killed any desire to get an Xbox. It was my "number 2" wanted console option for a long time but I do not wish to be involved in a Microsoft ecosystem any longer. I mistrust them as a company and that's not a good thing. I don't intend to buy any Microsoft published PC games unless they come to Steam.

It's almost hard for me to believe that I was defending Microsoft and telling all my friends that W7 was a great step in the right direction a few years ago after the Vista debacle.

-ly awesome? I agree.

Well not awesome, but I prefer it to 7 and 8/8.1. There have been a few hiccups but overall I've had a pretty good experience with it.

Just think... If only you stuck with 7 how your life would be.  I saw the direction Microsoft was going with Windows with 8 and 8.1 and I wanted no part of it.  Used 10 a few times on my friends laptop trying to get shit work for him (trying to get Fallout 4 running on his semi "gaming" laptop was an interesting affair which resulted in decent success after turning everything off or down).  I feel sorry that you went through such a rough time with an OS.  Makes me very glad that I decided to stick with 7 till 2020.  I might even build a new PC soon and thinking about trying Steam OS (even though I'm sure there are still tons of problems with that OS and not all Steam games being on there yet) or I'll look to see if I get Windows 7 Professional installed on it.

Anyone know a way to revert back to 7? I don't have an activation key, and it seems as though best buy and others have stopped selling it.

I'm glad I avoided the Windows 10 stealth update nonsense. Did everything I could to not get it ( it was a FIGHT ), and managed to sidestep it's unwanted advances.