Most of what you are seeing is not typical to a Windows 7 install. I use it for my main machine and it works perfectly. I also install it for clients and dont see these problems.
Microsoft's way of making windows more secure is to prevent anyone, even you, to use your computer. Something that is supposed to take me less than 2 seconds to do is now turning into hours of research and tweaking.
This is a good thing. Windows 7 was changed to protect the average joe from themselves.
You are a computer technician and you usually need to or enjoy digging a little deeper so you are going to hit walls. You are a minority and its bad for you, but its great for the majority.
I need to make a new text file in my C: drive. Won't let me. I changed permissions, changed the owner (why the **** should I ever have to do that? I am the administrator) and someone said even disable UAC. I don't see how that would have any effect on this.
I have UAC off and an admin account and I can make a new text file in my C root. Probably shouldn't be dropping files there anyway.
Many of the programs that I use can't create new files.
Whats the error message? Are you dropping them in a system area?
That's not even it still. Strange things happen, like keyboard or mouse don't fully work when the computer starts (I can click but can't move - have to unplug/replug mouse/keyboard -microsoft brand).
I suspect you have driver issues. Uninstall the drivers and get the latest Windows 7 drivers from the maker.
Explorer crashes every time I get out of add/remove programs.
Ive seen this in Vista, I cant remember what the fix was. But I believe you and suspect it probably carried over from Vista.
Ethernet randomly disconnects and has to be disabled/re-renabled (drivers up to date). I had to turn off power management for it. Why isn't that turned off by default if it causes such problems?
Who makes the ethernet card?
Microsoft just puts out a product then it's up to us to work out all the bugs.
Thats what the beta was for
As I mentioned before, your issues are not typical to most installs. Perhaps you can post your system specs here, brands, model numbers and all. I suspect you have some old, cheap or lesser known hardware.