DescentBB

I'm going to upgrade to win7. (same old HD, going to wait on the SSD for a bit)

Any suggestions regarding things to do, or not do?
Things that should be turned off, uninstalled, or installed (gotta get firefox first thing)?

Thanks for any input!

FWIW, as per Bubba's instructions \"stay away from anything home\", I'll pick up the upgrade version of Win 7 Premium. Without wading thru all the various windows options, and not wanting to pay more than $150 for this upgrade, that should be fine, shouldnt it?
BTW, I have windows XP Home edition (32 bit), that shouldnt make a difference on the upgrade version of win7 that I buy, should it?

There's a chart (on http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... tions.aspx) that details this, and the brief answer is: no, you can upgrade any version of XP to any version of Win7, although you'll have to reinstall your programs afterward any way you do it. (Many people recommend doing this anyway, since it cuts down on junk you no longer use that might be slowing down your system.)

Home Premium still falls under the \"Home\" category, and whether you should avoid it or not depends what you're doing with it. There are certain things it does not do that Professional does, although many people may not use them. (Simple comparison here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/window ... fault.aspx And a more complete one here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_ ... ison_chart) The most important are probably the lack of Windows XP Mode and the 16 GB limit on physical memory.

If you build your own systems you might want to go with a system builders copy it's cheaper than buying a regular copy.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... 20-%20$100

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Absolutely go with the OEM full version, its $135 and can do new installs. Upgrade requires an genuine activated copy of a previous Windows to install, and if its vista then upgrade won't even let you do a new install. Upgrading from Vista is just a bad idea all around because it takes forever and there is always a high risk of problems, and upgrading from XP formats the drive anyway. Better to have a disk that can do a new install around so later on if you want to reformat you don't have to install XP first.

I never had vista, so the \"upgrade\" would have to be a new install.

Thanks for the links! I'll buy this copy of win 7 professional OEM.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

I do build my own systems (usually find a friend to help me cause I'm lame), just for myself though. Seems odd that they'd have a version for $135, when they charge $260 for the same version but just not \"oem\"

Is there any difference between the full version and the OEM version?

Written right on the box, OEM comes with no phone support from Microsoft.

Here is the label you find on the box.

http://oem.microsoft.com/public/sblicen ... nglish.pdf

7. End User Support. You must provide end user support for the Software or Hardware. You must provide support under terms at
least as favorable to the end user as the terms that you provide to support any Customer System. At a minimum, you will provide
commercially reasonable telephone support.

yup to Heretic and Krom.

I recommend a clean install, not an upgrade. I've read several reports where though it works, it's a bit messy.

Now, I ran into something today. Eventhough I've activated W7, I got some kinda pop up message about activating it (again) because of some driver install. I wonder if driver installs effect the point system like hardware swaps do.

but then again, I swapped a lot of hardware trying to tech out a crashing problem. I just installed a new modem yesterday (which didn't change anything) so I bet that's what it was .... sry, helps to talk out loud sometimes.

I dont think I've ever called MS, not even since windows 3.11

So I guess it's a non issue, since I built this system, and plan on building the next one.

I just realized that my HD is 5 years old. Any opinions on getting a new HD, since I'll be starting from scratch reloading everything anyway? My current HD is an HD SATA3G Western Digital Caviar SE 250 GB 16mb cache.

I can buy a 500gb 32mb cache for $69. It's not a raptor, but the raptor's arent all that much faster in the real world use, right?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

opinions?

What is wrong with one of these?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... d%20higher

I dont need that much space. As it is, I only use 125gb or so of my current HD.

I never did reseat my cpu. I figured I should get some arctic silver 5.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

it's OEM. There's no real difference, right?

As an OS drive, you want something that has high areal density without a lot of platters which makes them more reliable (arguably), spin up faster, draw less power and run cooler.

A couple years ago now I switched drives and installed Windows XP on a Seagate 7200.11 / 750 GB drive (actually a 100 GB partition on the start of the drive) with the SATA controller in AHCI mode which requires a driver disk in order for XP to even see the drive. The result was I had to disable automatic login for XP because the system started up so fast that some of my tray icons would be randomly missing after boot up because they were loading before the systray itself was.

And the 7200.12 / 750 GB drive should be even faster than that: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6822148445

One handy thing is Windows Vista and Windows 7 no longer need a driver disk to see a drive on an AHCI controller. So you should definitely configure your SATA ports to AHCI mode in BIOS when you install because it enables NCQ and a few other tweaks that really bring out the best in SATA drives.

As for 750 GB being more space than you need, well the saying goes \"You can never have too much hard drive space.\". And at the moment the 750 is about the best position between price, performance and capacity. There are bigger and faster drives and smaller and cheaper drives, but by going in either direction you start to get diminishing returns either on price or performance. Probably late this year or early next year when the next generation drives hit the perfect point will shift towards 1 TB drives (its almost always around the $60-80 price point) but for now its dead on 750 GB.

Krom wrote:As an OS drive, you want something that has high areal density without a lot of platters which makes them more reliable (arguably), spin up faster, draw less power and run cooler.

interesting advice Krom. I'd not heard that before, all though it makes sense. Thanks.

Its visible plain as day if you pick up a Seagate drive that only has one platter; they are about half as thick as standard 3.5\" drives and a fair amount lighter.

cool. I always run at least two drives. One always solely for the OS.

I'm going to run 1 drive, and likely with no partitions.
So Krom, do you have a recommendation as far as a seagate drive (will seagate be THAT much faster than the WD? I've had a bad seagate experience in the past.)

A WD black edition about the same age should be just as fast as a Seagate 7200.12. Anything with the same areal density, size and rotational speed is going to come out virtually identical unless you go out of your way to benchmark it in unreasonable/unrealistic ways.

OK. I think I'll stick with the WD HD (if that one will work with my P6T mb and i7 920...dont know why it wouldnt) I linked above. Should be just fine until the SSDs come down in price and increase in stability.

I just stick with Seagate because you can tell the generation right from the model name, don't have to look it up or do any guesswork to figure out if you are getting the latest or the oldest drive of whatever size you are looking for.

two questions:
since it's a \"bare\" drive, (I think that means OEM), will I have what is necessary to mount and install it, if I just use whatever my old drive was using?

Rereading your post, Krom, you're saying I should go ahead and get the 750gb drive (for $10)?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... -_-Product

Bare drives do not come with cables, drivers, or other software.

The cables should have come with your motherboard, the screws or mounts should have come with your case.

Although it isn't all that unheard of for a bare drive to come with 4 screws to mount it with. As long as you kept the boxes and extra parts that came with your motherboard and case you should have everything you need. But if you don't then you will need a cable and the screws for mounting it.

As for the size, bigger is better but it really depends on the number of platters, less platters means less moving parts which is good for a drive that is going to be running a lot. Some manufacturers sort of give it away by the weight of the drive on the product page, look at the whole series and you can sort of guess the number of platters it has if they give accurate specs. Grab the biggest drive that is as light as the lightest one.

well, I do have a HD installed, it's a SATA drive as well, so I should have what I need...

I read thru the specs sheet and didnt see anything about platters....nor weight.

Ordered windows 7 64bit Professional and a 640 gb Hard Drive last night. Should be here in a week or so (the problem with living on an island )


A couple of questions:

When I install the HD (it'll be blank), do I have to format it, or can I just stick the win7 cd in and it will format and load windows?
(I have an external drive, loaded with xp, that I'll transfer all my backup stuff from to the win7 drive once it's loaded.)

Anything else to keep in mind with windows 7?
(someone told me to load everything in administrator mode (I dont know what that is, but assume it'll be obvious once I load win7)


Is there a problem if I dont create any partitions?

(I didnt want to create another thread and sully the tech forum with my questions...)

Anything in particular to turn off (like XP had windows update on auto, and a bunch of other stuff that gummed things up)?

Thanks!

Windows 7 setup will partition / format the drive for you (just use quickformat unless you want to be there for a few hours ).

A good tip is to disconnect all other hard drives except the one you are installing on from the system before you start or W7 could end up sticking its bootloader in weird places. I had to learn that one the hard way.

Partitioning it isn't that important but it does come with *some* benefits. The outer edge of the drive is faster than the inner edge, so by installing the OS in a smaller partition at the beginning of the drive you can guarantee that the OS files never wander further into the disk where it is slower. But the chances of that happening are so remote anyway it is hardly worth bothering over. I quit doing it and just dedicated a whole disk to the OS/apps to cut down on the number of drive letters I had to put up with.

There is no such thing as \"Administrator mode\" in Windows 7, and besides that you need an administrator account to install software anyway. Perhaps he meant turning off UAC which can cut down on clicking a few popups and makes W7 behave the same way as Windows XP (no user security at all, everything runs as administrator by default). If you have a large barrage of drivers and programs to install it can cut down on the seconds it takes, but otherwise is a small difference.

There is an administrator account you can activate, but you need to go through the console. It's a PITA! There are some things you can only do through this account.

W7 admin/user accounts aren't like Xp accounts. There are a lot of things you are not allowed access to. (yes, even in Pro)Even after resetting control to my main account, it tends to want to re-write the permittions.

also, just fyi, there is no quicklaunch bar by default. Again, you can get it, but it takes some fenagalling. Both the Quick launch and Admin account activation can through google. There is a lot of tuts out there that are clear and very helpful.

Over all, I've been please even if it's been rather quirky.

Oh, add/remove Prgrams is now near the bottom of the control panel list relabeld as ..er.. Programs and (oh nuts, I forgot...I'm at work )
*help!*

Add or remove programs (/ \"Programs and Features\") is still in exactly the same place as it was in XP, 2000 and Vista: Start/(or windows key + R) ---> run ---> \"appwiz.cpl\".

When you setup windows 7 a hidden primary system partition will be automatically and forcefully created by setup during installation. You can avoid it by follow a few simple steps.

How to Avoid 200MB Hidden System Partition From Been Created During Windows 7 Installation

Let it setup make the recovery partition if it wants, 200 MB is hardly worth complaining about and it won't show up as a drive letter taking up space, and who knows, it could come in handy sometime.

Krom wrote:Add or remove programs (/ "Programs and Features") is still in exactly the same place as it was in XP, 2000 and Vista: Start/(or windows key + R) ---> run ---> "appwiz.cpl".

thank you.

I've had the worst time remembering that.

I do have a 100 MB \"System Reserved\" partition that takes up a drive letter ... but I don't need millions of drive letters, and I still have over a terabyte free on my main partition, so having a ten-thousandth of that unusable isn't exactly going to break the bank.

wow, great stuff! Thanks for the tips.
Anything else?

If I wanted to create a dual boot for win xp and win 7, how is that done?
Can I do that after I load win7 on my new drive?

Just leave your XP drive connected as is, connect the new drive and install Windows 7 on it. Windows 7 will automatically give you the option of choosing XP or 7 at boot up. However this will lead to XP being on C: and Windows 7 being on D: which can lead to some confusion / irritation.

Actually if you really need XP for something you should just install it in a VirtualBox VM, it will even support 3D acceleration (beta) if needed. Not to mention Windows 7 Professional comes with XP mode for free that can run productivity tasks or anything that isn't 3D/Multimedia. Since VBox and XP mode are around, the reasons for keeping an XP dual boot around are pretty thin, if you need something from XP in a hurry it is always faster and less disrupting just to fire it up in a VBox VM than to reboot your whole system. I'd just disconnect the current drive with XP on it and set it aside, that way if for some reason you really did need XP running on the physical hardware you could just shutdown then reconnect the drive and run XP that way.

He could also use the XP mode that he can download from Microsoft if the motherboard supports Hardware Assisted Virtualization. I do recall him say he was getting Windows 7 Pro. I have never used VitualBox.

Is there in pros for using VitualBox instead of Windows Virtual PC?

VirtualBox has a better interface (IMO), is just a bit easier to use and more responsive. Plus the aforementioned 3D acceleration support lets you play old 3D games that don't work right in W7, which is completely beyond Windows Virtual PC.

Edit: Also; Microsoft fixed/removed the hardware virtualization requirement from XP mode.

It's actually a CPU requirement rather than a motherboard requirement, not that it matters.