Windows 7 Upgrade Thread - Share Your Experience

[digitalMedia]

October 22nd, 2009, 4:12 am

Today marks the official launch of Windows 7. Analysts, commentators, pundants and marketers are setting a high bar for this release, not only for Microsoft, but for IT services, software vendors, hardware vendors and retailers.

If you are upgrading, please share your experiences, questions and concerns. What OS are you upgrading from? Did you think the upgrade cost was worth it? How did your installation go? What are your initial impressions after installation? Review the OS after using it for a few weeks.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

[ATNO/TW]

October 22nd, 2009, 7:19 am

I'm still waiting (20 minutes so far) for the Dell upgrade registration page to load for the free upgrade for my new laptop. They must be pretty slammed at the moment.

I will be upgrading. Actually, I just installed Vista Business on this new computer and using it for the first time. I completely hope 7 installs easier than Vista did. What I'd like to do is install it on a separate partition. However, if it's anything like Vista, it absolutely did NOT like being installed on a secondary partition. It wouldn't even install when it was on the primary and the others were hidden. Had to completely format the machine and start from scratch.

//1.5 hours to submit 3 simple forms requesting info about my purchase. And only to receive an email that I've successfully registered and I will be emailed when it's available for upgrade on Dell systems. lol They must be really getting nailed right now. Could not believe how slow the servers were.

October 22nd, 2009, 10:26 am

I have a copy of Windows 7 Professional that I plan to move to, I will try to install it for the purpose of dual booting it with Vista(I don't want to lose my programs just yet). Thus I will not be utilizing an update method, rather a full installation. I'll just have to see how that goes.

@ ATNO/TW, what version are you planning to install/upgrade?

[ATNO/TW]

October 22nd, 2009, 10:37 am

The professional. It's an upgrade to Vista Business.

And be careful with the dual boot. I just went through that for the last two weeks with Vista, and apparently Vista won't install unless it's on the Primary Active partition. For some reason it can't seem to overwrite the MBR during install when it's not. I'm going to take an educated guess that Windows 7 will be the same way. I inadvertently screwed my laptop install up messing with the dual boot scenario between XP and Vista and ended up having to wipe the drive and reinstall everything from scratch because it got to a point where it wouldn't recognize the hard drive as a bootable device.

If you really want to protect and save all your current files, be extremely cautious how you go about it. At the very least have the most critical things backed up externally somehow.

[grinch2171]

October 23rd, 2009, 10:34 am

I'll be upgrading a few PC's here at work to Windows7 including my workstation. I love Windows7 so far been using it since Beta1.

[Bigwebmaster]

October 23rd, 2009, 11:45 am

I have also been using the beta of Windows 7 for months now. I do really like it and will be paying for Windows 7. My other computer has Windows Vista and am thinking about putting that one back to XP. I know alot of people seem okay with Vista now, but that computer was operating much better with XP. In my opinion its either XP or Windows 7. I have not been happy with Vista.

[joebert]

October 23rd, 2009, 12:03 pm

The computer I have now had a pirated copy of XP on it before I got it, I switched it to Linux for awhile, and eventually put a second drive in it with a legit copy of Vista.

I've played games on this computer using Vista and XP now, it did a lot better with games when it had XP on it, even though there's twice as much ram in it now as there was before Vista.

I'm seriously considering putting Windows 7 on this computer. I'm kinda stuck about how to do it though because of how recent the Vista purchase was, I don't want to pretty much waste money on the Vista install and end up having to buy a full copy of Windows 7. I'd rather upgrade.

I used the Microsoft upgrade advisor, it says I'm ready to go pretty much. I should be able to upgrade to the 32-bit version of 7. It's saying that if I want to use the 64-bit version I'm going to have to wipe everything and do a clean install.

I've still yet to even use Windows 7. I pretty much only use Windows for games, Netflixes on-demand stuff, and other media type stuff. I'd hate to spend the money on 7 and be in worse shape for games than I am with Vista.

[ATNO/TW]

October 23rd, 2009, 12:13 pm

Joe if you purchased the PC with Vista after July 1 2009 you may be eligible for the free upgrade

http://www.mydigitallife.info/2009/01/2 ... om-july-1/

[joebert]

October 23rd, 2009, 1:55 pm

The PC was built from parts as a gaming rig before I got it. It's a couple of years old now. I'm pretty sure I put Vista on it earlier than July, but it wouldn't matter anyways since that upgrade gimmick only applies to machines with pre-installed copies of Vista on them.

What I probably should do is just take Windows off this computer and buy another one with Windows 7 already on it for games. This computer is more than good enough for work with Ubuntu on it. It's kinda borderline for games these days. The marketing stuff about Windows 7 being good for breathing life into older computers is what has me wanting to use it here.

November 1st, 2009, 10:13 pm

Windows 7 marked with special features. It really surprises the users. It simplifies every tasks. It is designed to sleep and resume quicker, be less memory hungry, and spot USB devices faster. Windows 7 comes with a touchscreen and we won't always need a keyboard or mouse.

[grinch2171]

November 2nd, 2009, 7:00 am

luckygal wrote:

Windows 7 comes with a touchscreen and we won't always need a keyboard or mouse.

Win7 doesn't come with a touchscreen, it is touchscreen capable but so was XP. I have 55 XP computers that utilize a touchscreen only.

November 5th, 2009, 10:29 am

I haven't upgraded yet and I'm slightly nervous about it after having some problems upgrading to Vista last time. The Vista launch had its problems, though. Windows 7 so far doesn't seem to be getting the same amount of negative publicity.

[ATNO/TW]

December 2nd, 2009, 10:02 pm

OK the upgrade to Windows 7 Pro was successful via a Vista Business Dell OS but not without a few issues.

It took two attempts to do the upgrade. The first time failure I assumed was wrong because I'm using a Dell laptop and I thought the first failure may have been because I couldn't uninstall the Dell ControlPoint system manager. The second runthrough and successful install I contribute to uninstalling Symantec Endpoint version 11.x and iTunes.


The first thing I noticed I liked was the Aero support. I consider it odd that the Dell Latitude E6500 I bought recently did not support Aero on the Vista business upgrade but did in the Windows 7 upgrade. oddly I did not change any hardware whatsoever.