"The Upgrade from Hell" Topic

So I decided to replace Vista Ultimate on the desktop and XP Home on netbook with Windows 7.

Fortunately, I decide to do one computer at a time. I chose to convert the desktop first because the SmartCard software is working well on the netbook. The netbook is also the machine I use for primarily for email. The high horse power desktop is used for Photoshop and other applications requiring large amounts of disk space and memory.

Some time ago, I combined the two physical hard drives into one through RAID 0. This interleaves the tracks on both drives resulting in about a 30% time savings on disk reads and writes. As it turns out, that's not significant and so I decided to un-RAID the dives while I do this conversion.

Vista Ultimate has the capability to do a total computer backup. So I did. Then disabled the RAID which, as expected, made all the data of the HDs unusable. Then I restored Vista Ultimate from the restore disks. If you have a purchased copy of Vista, then a option appears during the installation process asking whether you want to perform a complete system restore. Not so with restore disks made from an OEM version.

It took me a few hours of internet research to figure this out. Once I did, I was able to find a Vista CD image. I have to install a torrent client on my netbook to download the iso image. Once I burned this to a CD and rebooted the desktop with it, the option appeared and I was able to go through all the menu selections until…I got an error message telling the disk was the wrongs size.

Upon examination, I discovered that the restore have repartioned the HD into a bootable partition that was only 50GB and the rest was unpartitioned. Back to the internet for a few hours to find a Linux self booting portioning utility. Repartitioned the HD back to the proper size and I was off to the races! NO! It's STILL the wrong size!

The time is now 3AM -- I've been wrestling with this thing for 12 hours! Must sleep…

…7AM and I'm back at it. At this point, I'm so frustrated that I've given up trying to restore my HD. So I resign myself to days of installing software and reorganizing the HD. I reinstall Office 2007, clean out all the junk software that comes with the machine. So it's about noon and I'm ready to install Windows 7 Home Premium.

I go through the menus and what does it tell me? VISTA ULTIMATE CANNOT BE UPGRADED, IT MUST BE REPLACED. ALL DATA ON THE HD WILL BE LOST. What, are you kidding me? Nowhere in the documentation, magazine articles, compatibility checking software provided by Microsoft, enclosed instructions, or on the box does it tell me that! Had I known that, I would have done a simple file backup to begin with and saved about 20 hours of frustration!

By 6PM I had Windows 7 purring along, Office 2007 reinstalled, CAC S/W and ActiveClient running.

The bottom line is that the crappy restore disk from HP wouldn't let me restore my data so it was all lost. The Windows 7 "upgrade" made me flush all my applications anyway so I wouldn't have made the complete system backup and would have just copied all my data an external drive to begin with. The upgrade would have taken a couple of hours instead of about 30.

The netbook is next. Should be interesting…

Hope it works from scratch. We're gonna retire the present Dell to my game room for games and buy a new one with W-7 already installed. It seems like the only way to be sure.

I thought that was "Pull out and nuke it from orbit . . ."?

I aways assume the hard drive needs to be nuked. Its the only way to be sure…

I'm not upgrading from XP.

If it works, don't fix it…

I'm staying with XP on all 5 PCs here (and staying with Mac for my work machine).

I NEVER install the first version of any Microsoft software – there's always something wrong with it. (I'm convinced that Microsoft doesn't so much as "release" software as "allows it to escape.")

Windows 7 will come whenever I replace a PC.

Wyatt

All Linux here at home, except for the occasional game. I'm doing my annual wipe-and-reload of XP for games, and don't intend to replace XP until something that really requires an upgrade comes along (if ever). I'm not even bothering to installing Firefox and Thunderbird on XP this time around.

Vista on the new work laptop seems to work well enough, and I'll let our IT guys worry about if and when to upgrade.

- Bob

From all accounts, Windows 7 is what Vista should have been. Purely from a user perspective, Vista had a nice interface, painless installtion of software, and no thought required hardware installtion. The problem with Vista is that it slow and bloated. This, in turn, made it impractical for older machines and completely unusable on Atom based netbooks.

Say what you will about Microsoft, but they are pervasive. No matter where you go, there they are. Linux have made some inroads, but are, and probably continue to be, also rans. Now, I'm not going to try to tell how good Microsoft is, but I will tell how common Microsoft is.

It's ironic that one of the marketing slogans for Apple's iPhone is "There's an app for that." One could easily say that about Windows.

At any rate, I will convert my netbook from XP to Windows 7. It will be a little slower, but I don't want to run two different operating systems. I want the netbook to behave (in the user interface sense) just like the desktop.

The problems I experienced were with the absence of critical information, not with the products themsleves.

clean install >> upgrade

I'm pretty sure you have to go from like to like to upgrade. Vista ultimate goes to win7 ultimate, not pro or home premium.

And yeah, it's always better to do a clean install rather than an upgrade.

XP = Stable.
Stable = no upgrade.

Why? Because I have been working with Windows since v2.0.
You learn a lot in 21 years of dealing with M$.

Heck, I still have a working win95 box. And a working C64.
Though I did get rid of my Osborne 1 when one of the 92K floppy drives died.

Darn it! I'm OLD! I miss C/PM!

Regards, the Gorb

Two big thumbs up for Windows 7 for me! And I treat Windows 7 as Vista Version 2 -- there is remarkably little that has changed. At first I was really disappointed with the upgrade. But then I found (and keep on finding) the subtle little tweaks that make 7 so much easier to use.

I'm still waiting for my Vista upgrade – I have to email them my receipt which I haven't scanned yet. I've heard that the start menu is done away with which is a bit of a pain – after getting used to it, it was a very nice feature.
--
Tim