Scared to Upgrade

Let me start off by saying I have terrible luck with everything.

I bought a new computer this summer, an MSI GT627. I actually didn't want to get any computer with Vista but thanks to the free upgrade offer, I figured I could deal with Vista for a few months. After my free Upgrade disc arrived last week (32bit Home Premium) I set it aside to install this weekend. Now that I started reading all these horror stories of people with unsuccessful installs and constant death-loops, I'm terrified to do it.

Are the odds really high that I'm going to make my computer useless? I intend to do the upgrade and not a clean install (custom upgrade) but all the "success" stories I read seem to be people doing clean installs. Am I doomed unless I wipe out my C drive and just clean install?

Also, I did partition my drive so most of my data is on D. Would all that remain intact even if I had to clean install if all hell breaks loose?

Oh, and if I actually do upgrade it successfully, will I still be able to activate the Japanese language IME that I use now? That is still included on the Upgrade DVD isn't it?

As I'm sure you can tell by now, I've never done anything like this before so any help, suggestions, and encouragement would be appreciated.

 

It is very, VERY unlikely that you will render your computer useless. I always get nervous when installing new operating systems... But in all the times I have done it, it has never ever gone wrong for me. When you do decide to install your OS, just take it slowly and read everything carefully and you will be fine! Installing windows 7 was a piece of cake and I think everyone could do it without problems! So go ahead and do it, and i'm sure you will be just fine!

I would also recommend a clean install as it will be alot faster - and if you have most of your data on drive D, then you will not lose any of it!

If you have any more questions, just ask me!

Good luck!

Benjamin.

 

Thanks for the reply.

So if I did a clean install, I would have to reinstall all my programs afterward, right? Would it actually give me the option to just do drive C and it would not affect the partition D?

If I did have to do a clean install, I'd rather it be the 64x version since my computer can handle it and has 4gb of ram. Are there any dangers/downsides to installing the 64x version? Is there enough support from programs that it will be worth having or should I not worry about it and stick with 32 bit?

 

Unless you start messing around with overclocking or BIOS flashing, you don't have to worry about messing up your computer long-term. Worst case with an OS install is a re-install.

 

That doesn't seem to be the case with the people in the thread I was reading. A lot of them can't install it, can't get back to Vista... nothing. I'd really like to avoid that problem.

I see you have a MSI as well. Were there any problems getting any of the features to work after your upgrade?

 

No problems whatsoever. MSI has W7 drivers up which work in 32 and 64 bit. I did the clean install because I was upgrading to 64-bit as well, but if you got the free upgrade discs from MSI that may not be an option for you... you may only have a 32-bit disc.

I'm pretty sure the perpetual loop problem was in issue with the electronic download in the student program.

 

I thought the problem was just with the student download too, but there were a few people in the thread claiming they had a store bought copy so that kept my fears up.

Yeah, my disc is 32 bit but I thought that with the handy guide in this very forum about how to get a copy of the 64 bit I could try that. IF that works. Think it's a good idea?

 

What thread, I have beta tested Win 7 on 4 and different Laptops since April 2009 and 0 problems install and it works 100% better then Vista.

If people are having problems its many facotrs including they have no idea what they are doing.

I will 100% guarantee the only real problems Are:

Having the right drivers ( most times Vista drivers work too)
Hardware that is faulty

The OS is a breeze to install average times 20 to 30 minutes
and its more stable then Vista and more compatible over all.

When it comes to some of these threads, people will do stupid things or have problems with hardware and drivers and its always the OS fault (M$) its not you should learn to understand the loudest people are the ones who moan and complain.

 

Yep. A GT627 deserves 64-bit. I don't know why MSI continues to load 32-bit on their high-end systems. I would have borrowed someone's 64-bit vista discs to change over if Windows 7 hadn't been so near release.

 

If you have a product key you you can use then you can download the 64 bit on the link here but it has to be the same one, if 32 bit home premium then you have to download 64 bit home premium. But the difference with 32 bit and 64 bit is not really so much. I have used both and 32 bit worked as well and it does not insist on digital driver signatures. ( one problem people are having because they do not know this is that win 84 must have digitally signed drivers and if the driver is not digitally signed then you must do a work around and force the driver to install, not always easy, 32 bit you can install non signed drivers)

Are the drivers for you notebook 32 or 64bit? If the site has a good number of 32 bit drivers then just install your upgrade 32 bit for now.

 

But this person wants little trouble and you are asking for trouble if few 64 bit drivers are available, if they are available then great but if not go with 32 bit.

Trouble comes in when drivers do not work

 

Thank you for your input thus far.

neilnat has said in this thread that MSI has drivers for both 32 and 64 bit but I haven't checked for myself yet. What other drivers should I keep in mind that may come back and haunt me if I did go the 64 bit route? I'm only in the consideration phase right now so I'd just like to know as much as I can before I decide which version to upgrade to, if any.

As for the thread I'm talking about, it was on a Microsoft forum, I believe. Huge thread filled with days worth of people coming in with the problems.

 

Some drivers in Windows 7 will work fine, Widows 7 has much better driver support then Vista.

also you can go here and ask tons of questions there are a core of about 100 die hard Beta testers there: The windows 7 site

 

Correct, the list on the MSI website says 32bit, but all drives, when inspected, have 32 and 64 bit support (you can see the 64bit folders in the extracted files). Also, they are being used by MANY users who have upgraded. Drivers would probably not be an issue as much as old programs... very old programs or highly specialized programs (designed by your companies IT guy years ago or something)

 

I won't get into the 64 versus 32 bit part of this, but I have to take exception with what Benjamin said about "recommend a clean install as it will be a lot faster". Sorry, but that is just not true. Sure the install of the OS might be faster, but when you also include the time to install and reconfigure all the user installed applications as well an in-place upgrade is much faster. I did one last weekend going from Vista 32 Ultimate to Win7 32 Ultimate. It went very quick, less than two hours and when done ALL of my apps were ready to use as was all my data. (See my signature line below for a link to my upgrade notes.)

Also you said you have MOST of your data on D:, if you do a clean install the data that you have elsewhere (I am betting it's stuff like Outlook PST files etc) will be lost. An in-place upgrade will avoid that.

In the past I always advocated a clean install of a new OS. When going from Win2k to WinXP or WinXP to Vista, but to be honest the underlying architecture of Vista and Win7 are so similar I really consider Win7 as a service pack to Vista. (It really isn't that, but it is much closer than we have ever had when transitioning from one OS to another.) What surprised me most in my upgrade was I recovered over 6gb of disk space!

Gary

 

Don't judge by that. Remember pretty much the ONLY folks who come to those forums are ones who have trouble. The rest, who had no issues, don't bother to post that fact.

Gary

 

Vista is not a mess for me. Windows 7 is "upgraded(stripped down) Vista". I guess that you haven't used Vista much.

 

Don't play the experience card, unless you know who you are talking to. I have been at this as an IT professional for over 40 years and owned the first computer store in Cincinnati in 1976 (before you even got started building and programming computers). I am the CTO for a company that sells software to Fortune 500 companies and I am the lead developer. So climb down off your high horse.

Go back and carefully read what I wrote. I said in the past I too would suggest a clean install of a new OS. If one has the time, the drivers, a complete inventory of all the applications installed on the machine, installation media for all of them, record of all of the configuration options for all of these applications and did I mention the TIME... then a clean install is the best. (Just not ALWAYS the best if you can't meet the criteria I just enumerated.) I also said that the underlying architecture of Win7 and Vista is very similar and made it clear to say it was NOT a service pack, but because the architecture was so little changed that this really could be TREATED as a service pack.

On what are you basing the claim that "the code has been rewritten "? I am a Microsoft Certified Solution Partner and I have seen nothing from Microsoft whatsoever, to back up that claim. I have been following the information about Win7 directly from Microsoft for a long time. I have to do that as it affects the code I product I deliver to my clients. There were lots of parts re-written for sure. But a blanket statement like you made is totally false. This was the most evolutionary change in an OS we have seen from Microsoft in a long time. In the past going from Win3.1 to Win95 to Win98 to Win2k to WinXP to Vista each has been a huge change in not just the code but the entire architecture of the OS. Such is not the case from Vista to Win7. The architecture has changed very little in this case. Vista was not a mess. It had driver issues early on, but for the most part it was a great, stable OS. That's why the architecture of it remains pretty much intact in Win7. The only mess Vista had was a marketing one and lazy hardware developers who didn't want to write drivers for legacy devices. (Actually I shouldn't single out those developers. Many companies like Creative saw a marketing opportunity to force folks into buying new hardware by not providing updated drivers. But I digress.)

And your assertion that "Upgrades still keep files from the older OS" may have been true in the past, but do you know that to be fact in this upgrade? I am pretty sure such is not the case here. I did a careful disk cleanup, before I did the upgrade and not just using the built in Disk Cleanup function in Vista. I did my own forensics, cleaning out other nooks and crannies that as a developer I knew could be safely dispensed with. And after the upgrade was complete and I deleted the $inPlace.~TR and $Windows.~TR directories that the upgrade left behind, I found I had 6 gb more space than when I started! So if the upgrade "still kept files from the older OS", it kept very few.

Next time before you go shooting your mouth off about what "real IT professionals and techs" recommend and calling folks idiots, you might want to carefully read what the real IT professional actually wrote and check out the link they provided.

Gary

P.S. If you truly don't want to keep anything from Vista, you better quickly uninstall Win7 and go back to WinXP. Because there are most assuredly still parts of Vista in Win7. Many parts.

 

maybe you should go easy on him, Gary? i mean, dr. nick is not a real doctor after all.

 

BSOD's are not caused by a badly written OS. It was the fault of your crappy device drivers. I haven't had a single BSOD with Vista for more than 2 yrs I used it.
You say that Windows 7 is not based upon Vista's code. You are dead wrong. Microsoft just wanted to fulfill those people who said that Vista eats more system resources, so they stripped down the resource usage in Windows 7, and they upgraded the DirectX technology (which is available for Vista now) as well. I upgraded to Win 7 because I wanted to use the most recent OS for my needs. We have had thousands of arguments here regarding Vista vs XP vs Win 7. So I don't want to start one again. No offense intended.

 

I do appreciate the help some of you are trying to give, but the amount of useful posts is starting to collapse under the weight of the bickering. If you people would truly like to help me with my problem, can you take the arguing elsewhere and just leave tips and suggestions here for myself and those in a similar situation?

Thanks.

 

Oh dear God. Why is there this mess over clean installs versus upgrades?

If you guys want to argue over the merits of the two methods, plz start your own thread.

In this guy's case, he's probably best doing the clean install, to sooth over his conscious.

For the record, the laptop I'm typing on was an upgrade installation.

I was thinking about reporting all these BS posts, but that is too much work.

 

I did not say it was not based on Vista code that is was reworked and rewritten.

My own post:

It was written better and to work better with resources.

To the OP up to you, for the best possible install a clean install is better. With that I'm done

 

I'm sorry I deleted my posts and I will stay away from you........It was not directed to you personally.

 

No need to stay away from me. As I said im my PM to you, it may not have been your intent to direct it at me personally, but since I was directly quoted in the reply and you called the folks who were making the same assertions I did about Win7 idiots, what else was I to think? If you hadn't quoted me, I would have not been offended. I'll take your word for it that it was not your intent to call me an idiot and move on.

And I'd welcome the chance to truly discuss the reasons why we differ about Win7's lineage from Vista. But let's do that in another thread and without the word "idiots".

Gary

 

Sorry things went off the rails. As I said in one of those derailing posts, if you have a complete list of all of the software you have added to VISTA, can lay your hands on the installation media for all of them, can readily reconfigure each back to the way you have them now and have the time to do all that, by all means do a clean install. It is ALWAYS the better option given those parameters. But if you don't, in this particular case you might want to try an upgrade. Unlike darn near every other OS upgrade path we have faced since Windows 3.1, I think Microsoft actually got this one right. I have always been a dyed in the wool clean install guy, but I am over the moon with this upgrade.

For me the bottom line is this, what do you have to loose with an inplace upgrade? Go ahead, inventory your current manifest of applications and note the particulars of how they are each configured. Then try the upgrade. It will take you two hours or so. Then if you're not as happy as I am with mine, blow it up and do the clean install. You've only wasted a couple of hours, and even those couple of hours didn't require you to sit in front of the machine like the clean install is going to do. I started mine walked away after answering a prompts. A couple of hours latter I came back and then when it rebooted I had to login and let it whir away for a few more minutes as it finished up.

If I did a clean install I'd be looking at an eight to ten hour session in front of my machine reinstalling and reconfiguring everything. And that doesn't even take into account the time it would take to prepare for that.

Gary