Windows 7

[charlemagne]

I did a clean Win7 prof 64 install yesterday, and everything is working fine. I couldn't do an upgrade because I've been running Vista Home Premium before, and you can't upgrade that to Win7 Prof.

I'm really liking it so far. Setup was fast and flawless. The new quickstart and taskbar behavior are great. What I'm really enjoying is the desktop wallpaper slideshow feature, this is something I wanted to have since, I don't know, 98 Also, good riddance to the vista sidebar, being able to just put gadgets down where I want them is great, too.

All in all, well done, Microsoft. There's a ton of useful features and no annoyances so far. I don't know how big changes are "under the hood", although the UI stuff doesn't feel like something you couldn't have done with just a service pack for Vista. It's a bit like what SP2 did for XP. I probably wouldn't have paid hard money for Windows 7, but since I got it for free as a student, I'm glad I got it.

[Dominus Atheos]

Did you upgrade with the Student Version? If so it seems that the way they packaged it makes it have tons of issues on people's machines when they attempt the upgrade. Supposedly a fixed version is in the works.

I am having that particular problem right now. There is a read/write permissions error when i unpack the install files. I am going to try to convert it to an ISO (or "obtain" one) and then burn to disk and boot from that. I have a valid key so it isnt exactly in violation of their EULA to do that.

Apparently it's an caused by trying to upgrade a 32-bit version of windows to the 64 bit version.

We are aware that consumers are encountering difficulties installing Windows 7 where the customer is currently running a 32 bit version of Windows such as Windows Vista, but purchased the 64 bit version of Windows 7.

Error message: “We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded…”

If you want to move from Windows Vista 32 bit to Windows 7 64 bit, or if you are running Windows XP, you have to do a Custom or Clean Installation that must be started by booting off the Windows 7 64 bit DVD. This means that you wipe the current operating system completely from your system, and install the new operating system from scratch. To perform a Custom or Clean installation, please contact Digital River, unless you have already ordered a Backup DVD with your initial order.

To contact Digital River about this issue, please request via the following link.

http://windows7.digitalriver.com/servle ... D.46354000 In the Web form select the Download Option in the drop down menu and include "64-bit Installation Block" in the first line of your problem description.

[Zac Naloen]

Main bit of feedback for me as heavy user of the media features.


Media center is much improved, I use streaming to my xbox pretty much every evening and had to use Tversity media server to play back all my videos (.mkv, x.264 formats with transcoding), this seems to have really poor compatibility with Windows 7 so I'd pretty much given up on that until I looked into Media Center 7 and wmp12.

x264 is supported out of the box and simply installing divx7 and an ac3 filter incorporates .mkv support (installing codecs like this wouldn't have made any difference on vista) so that I can now stream every video on my pc to xbox via the windows media center extender which automatically transcodes now (and seemingly better than Tversity does it). Even streams 720p content with no complaints. No need to fiddle about with settings. Even media center runs quicker on the xbox than it used to.

Very pleased with that.

[SCVN 2812]

Overall I'm impressed by how fast it boots up and becomes usable. I did the student pricing upgrade on my laptop and its much more responsive. Run into a few glitches. I had to upgrade to the 2010 version of Kaspersky internet security to get it to work right with Windows 7, otherwise most of the processes were blocked.

Ironically enough, the one program so far that doesn't work is Internet Explorer. I normally use Firefox but there are a few pages out there that require IE once in a blue moon. Every time I start it up it gives me a C+++ error and says it must be shut down. Sometimes it says something about rundll32.exe being part of the problem. Google so far has not been helpful, Microsoft just says to reset Internet Explorer. Which causes the errors to pop up and accomplishes nothing. I suspect the same issue may be preventing me from updating the Nivida accelerator drivers as well through Windows update.

[phongn]

Overall I'm impressed by how fast it boots up and becomes usable. I did the student pricing upgrade on my laptop and its much more responsive. Run into a few glitches. I had to upgrade to the 2010 version of Kaspersky internet security to get it to work right with Windows 7, otherwise most of the processes were blocked.

The built-in Windows firewall is more than enough for any home user.

Ironically enough, the one program so far that doesn't work is Internet Explorer. I normally use Firefox but there are a few pages out there that require IE once in a blue moon. Every time I start it up it gives me a C+++ error and says it must be shut down. Sometimes it says something about rundll32.exe being part of the problem.

Have you tried using IE's safe mode? You may have some browser helper object or ActiveX control that's not playing nice.

[SCVN 2812]

Safe mode doesn't work either. That was among the first things I tried, as well as restoring it to an earlier version.

[General Zod]

Safe mode doesn't work either. That was among the first things I tried, as well as restoring it to an earlier version.

Do you use any toolbars in IE? A bit of Googling suggests it might be related to Yahoo Toolbars and the like. Removing those could help.

[Stark]

I would still use XP on a netbook, because 7 still eats batteries like pringles.

Really? I think Flash uses it on one of the Asus ones, and he hasn't complained about battery life. What sort of thing do you use yours for?

[Darth Nostril]

Well my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate should be arriving tomorrow (the full version which was a massive 95 pence more expensive than the upgrade version from Amazon UK)

I'm currently running Win XP 64, is there going to be any benefit to performing a clean install over simply upgrading the existing installation?

[Dominus Atheos]

Well my copy of Windows 7 Ultimate should be arriving tomorrow (the full version which was a massive 95 pence more expensive than the upgrade version from Amazon UK)

I'm currently running Win XP 64, is there going to be any benefit to performing a clean install over simply upgrading the existing installation?

The first and most obvious drawback of upgrading is the headache of it being impossible. XP will not upgrade to 7. The only choice you have is a clean install.

[Darth Nostril]

Well I was more concerned with whether I would have to reformat a 1Tb drive (which takes fucking forever) during a clean install, but I'm happy to see that Win 7 64bit just gets on and installs itself once you point it at a partition.

[Transbot9]

Any of those student version issues from theultimatesteal.com? I bought Office through that last year and had no problems with it, but Office is a different ball-game.

[General Zod]

Any of those student version issues from theultimatesteal.com? I bought Office through that last year and had no problems with it, but Office is a different ball-game.

Uhm, no. They're the student discount upgrades for Windows downloaded straight from Microsoft. Did you even read the thread or is this some sort of thinly veiled marketing ploy?

[Marcus Aurelius]

Well I was more concerned with whether I would have to reformat a 1Tb drive (which takes fucking forever) during a clean install, but I'm happy to see that Win 7 64bit just gets on and installs itself once you point it at a partition.

Didn't Vista already have an option to do a "quick format", that is just create the file system and skip any (mostly unnecessary on a new drive and not very effective on an old drive) checks* while formatting? The actual FS creation does not take much time even on a large partition.

* If you suspect that the drive is damaged you should use the manufacturer's integrity check utility in any case. Joe Sixpack may not know how to do so, but the rudimentary checks performed by Microsoft format utilities are a poor substitute for a proper integrity test.

[Transbot9]

Any of those student version issues from theultimatesteal.com? I bought Office through that last year and had no problems with it, but Office is a different ball-game.

Uhm, no. They're the student discount upgrades for Windows downloaded straight from Microsoft. Did you even read the thread or is this some sort of thinly veiled marketing ploy?

Ultimate Steal is Microsoft. Sometimes Microsoft has multiple ways of doing things, though, and I posted this before I poked around enough to find out it's just the upgrade version of Pro offered through there.

[charlemagne]

Didn't Vista already have an option to do a "quick format", that is just create the file system and skip any (mostly unnecessary on a new drive and not very effective on an old drive) checks* while formatting? The actual FS creation does not take much time even on a large partition.

Yeah, it did, and Win7 does, too. I formatted my primary drive when installing 7, and it took the usual, I don't know, 5 seconds? That's a 250GB SATA drive only, but like you said, it doesn't take long. I actually can't remember the last time formatting some drive took longer than seconds for me

[Darth Nostril]

I decided to stick with XP64 and skip Vista entirely so my only experience of an install from CD boot was XPs painfully slow antiquated kludge job, Win 7 came as a pleasant surprise.
The hard drive itself is barely two months old so there's not going to be any problems with that.

Still reinstalling all my apps, making sure they work and generally poking around & getting familiar with the UI.

[El Moose Monstero]

Any of those student version issues from theultimatesteal.com? I bought Office through that last year and had no problems with it, but Office is a different ball-game.

Uhm, no. They're the student discount upgrades for Windows downloaded straight from Microsoft. Did you even read the thread or is this some sort of thinly veiled marketing ploy?

Ultimate Steal is Microsoft. Sometimes Microsoft has multiple ways of doing things, though, and I posted this before I poked around enough to find out it's just the upgrade version of Pro offered through there.

I thought I had issues with the student version from the UltimateSteal offer, but it turns out it was just an incompatibility with my wireless card and once I sorted that out, it's been working perfectly since then, no complaints here.

[darthdavid]

Well I installed 7 Ultimate yesterday on both my laptop and my desktop and I've been quite happy with it on both. Right off the bat it fixed a number of driver issues I'd been having with XP x64 on the desktop and vanilla XP on the laptop (x64 generally having shitty driver support everywhere on anything and my laptop having been released in that short period when manufacturers were loathe to release anything but vista drivers).

Most noticeably upgrading has finally convinced my graphics card to use DX9 in TF2 as opposed to DX8 (bleargh). Everything is so shiny now!

The laptop was barely usable back when it had Vista on it (even after I doubled its ram, I don't know what the fuck they were thinking shipping it with so little) but with 7 it's quite snappy even with all the shiny gewgaws and visual effects turned up to 11.

Definitely worth the upgrade.

[AMT]

has there been any word if the student upgrade download issue for 32-to-64 has been fixed?

[Dominus Atheos]

has there been any word if the student upgrade download issue for 32-to-64 has been fixed?

The article I posted last week in this thread had a way to get the 32 bit installer:

http://windows7.digitalriver.com/servle ... D.46354000 In the Web form select the Download Option in the drop down menu and include "64-bit Installation Block" in the first line of your problem description.

If you want the 64-bit version, Microsoft made an ISO available here that you can burn to a disk and do a clean install with. It only works with one of the student upgrade keys though.

[AMT]

has there been any word if the student upgrade download issue for 32-to-64 has been fixed?

The article I posted last week in this thread had a way to get the 32 bit installer:

http://windows7.digitalriver.com/servle ... D.46354000 In the Web form select the Download Option in the drop down menu and include "64-bit Installation Block" in the first line of your problem description.

If you want the 64-bit version, Microsoft made an ISO available here that you can burn to a disk and do a clean install with. It only works with one of the student upgrade keys though.

So I have to do a damned clean install if I want to upgrade from 32 Vista Basic to 64 Windows 7. Oh, nice to have known that when I bought the damned thing.

[Ace Pace]

Information on which versions required a clean upgrade has been available for quite a few weeks/months.

[MKSheppard]

My only bitch about Windows 7 is the goddamn Game Explorer. I want to have the option of creating my own goddamn game entries and editing them; instead of having to rely on either:

A.) Having either insanely popular games like Starcrap, or relatively recent ones like Company of Heroes.

B.) Third Party Game Explorer Editors (Vista Game Explorer Editor).

[Beowulf]

Information on which versions required a clean upgrade has been available for quite a few weeks/months.

Additionally, you have never had the option to do an upgrade install from 32 bit anything to 64 bit anything.