W7, finally running...

[flexy]

I had the hardest time since i wanted an UPGRADE of my Vista 64 Ultimate, but without risking any of my data.

So i made 1:1 clone partition of my Vista partition and planned to boot from the "clone" so i can update the cloned Vista install to W7.

I spent about a day figuring this out, the problem was that i needed to hide the existing old" Vista partition using a boot manager, and i had to delete all the "mounted DOS devices" in the registry and let it reabuild upon boot.

The problem was that the new Vista clone partition didnt want to see itself as "C:" (even with the other partition hidden)...but deleting those entries in the registry solved that problem and after HOURS i could finally boot into my clone Vista and UPGRADE to W7.

It took approx 4-5 hours doing the upgrade, and i actually didn't experience ANY problems, except that it went through about 1.000.000 files and settings....so it REALLY took some time

The ONLY problem (SURRRPRISSSEEEE...) again is the Audigy Driver where W7 says there is an update, but it doesn't want to install.

Windows Mail gone is odd.....but otherwise everything runs fine and all my programs are here again.

By the way i downloaded the W7 due to MS server overload from rapidshare and i made sure that the SHA1 checksum of the ISO was the same as the official beta. I mean, at least some use for a rapidshare premium account

Edit: Love W7, WAYYYYYYYYY snappier than Vista.

 

[Peter Trend]

I hope audio drivers aren't left behind. I had a lot of trouble with Creative EMU 0404 drivers moving from XP32 to Vista64, but Im hoping it shouldnt be so difficult for companies to get their existing Vista64 drivers working on W7.

I will send RME an email to ask if they are going to support W7. Their Vista64 drivers are pretty flawless. In fact the reputation of their drivers was a deciding factor in buying their product in the first place!

If RME dont support W7, I won't even bother with it. If they support it I'll get that beta onto a spare drive (can't be bothered with dual-booting at this stage, need to see if it works first!)

 

[gcy]

got it working on an old laptop with pentium m 740. could not get the intel pro wireless 2200 802.11b/g to work, had to use an usb wireless adapter - which windows loaded a driver automatically. used avg free and thunderbird for email and everything seems to work. windows updated my video and sound. still looking for drivers for the intel wireless, no luck so far.

 

[flexy]

for me everything seems to work, W7 actually installed SOME audigy driver, i DO have sound.

I have one "pci input device" in device manager where it couldnt find a driver...no idea what it is but certainly nothing crucial.

For that that this is a BETA its awesome, i had WAY more problems getting Vista to run in the BETA phases than this OS!

it also downloaded some pre-release Nvidia driver for my 8800GTS, looking really good here. I havent gamed yet, but this will come next.

I was a little puzzled that MAIL was gone, so i went to Windows Live and downloaded that "live mail" thing, and right now its importing all my accounts and emails from the old vista installation. (And that's a LOT). If i dont like "live mail" i can always use Outlook. "Win Mail" was actually ONE of the programs i constantly hated.

Note how i already talk about Vista in the past

But it really looks like that we have a winner with W7.

Just one example:

On my vista machine when i booted it took at least a couple minutes AFTER the boot to get all my startup-programs loaded and being able to access everything....startup time again has been cut tremendously....if W7 loads the desktop after boot all the start-up programs ARE actually preloaded and in the tray bar, and that's how its supposed to be.

Sidenote: RMCLOCK now finally works again..this is EXCELLENT. It never did for me under Vista.