Since Vista’s release, Microsoft requires software developers to pay for driver-signature certification, and plenty of software authors can’t afford the fee. As with Vista, Win7 may force end users to run applications developed for 2000/XP in compatibility mode, or by disabling driver signature enforcement at boot.

Another annoying issue is file sharing between networked servers and devices with non-Windows operating systems, especially where CIFS/Samba standards are concerned. Changing local security policies in Win7 Professional (not supported in the Home Premium edition) may correct some of these cases, at the expense of lower privacy and/or encryption settings. Otherwise, end users may need to run VirtualBox, VMWare, or some other virtualization/partitioning service with an earlier Windows OS as a stopgap solution until/unless a remedy is brought to market.