14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is offering a set of minimum hardware requirements for Windows 7 for a good reason. Fact is that while the latest iteration of the Windows client is indeed capable of going lower than the minimum system requirements, and still offer a satisfactory user experience, there are scenarios in which the functionality of the OS under normal parameters can be impacted negatively just because of a computer that’s lacking in horsepower. In Windows 7, high definition videos viewed in Windows Media Center can stop playing when users normalize the video window after maximizing it in the first place. Users with computers with limited system resources are the most exposed to this problem.
“Your high-definition video may stop playing in Windows Media Center after reducing your video window from full screen but the Media Center controls still show the video is playing, Microsoft informed. “Media Center interacts with many system components including video drivers when maximizing and minimizing screen size and, depending on available system resources, may stop playing a high-definition video after repeated screen size changes but not update the Media Center controls.”
Personally, I tried to reproduce this bug on a computer with 3.5 GB of RAM and couldn’t, although I was also performing CPU intensive tasks, while playing with the Windows Media Center window in Windows 7 RTM. The Windows Media Center controls apparently go through a refresh, jumping to minute zero in the video for under a second, but then get updated, and everything works fine. Still, for users affected by the glitch, here’s the solution from Microsoft, “Click the Stop button to force the Media Center controls to update and then click the Start button to resume playing.”
For Windows 7, Microsoft recommends that end users run a 1GHz or faster 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor, with a DirectX 9 capable graphics processor with at least WDDM 1.0, and with no less than 1GB RAM (32-bit) - 2GB RAM (64-bit) preferred.