Upgraded to Windows 7 RC – how I kept from reinstalling everything, and what didn’t work

02 July 2009

Last night, I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC.  I installed the Beta for my wife on a spare laptop, and she hated it, so I gave her her Windows XP back. :-).  I have used it for a single day now, and I haven’t encountered any blocking issues.  My process:

  1. Backup disk partition with Acronis True Image Home 2009
  2. Upgrade from Vista x64 to Windows7 x64
  3. Try all critical applications and drivers to ensure they still work
  4. Breath a sigh of relief.

If anything had stopped working, I was prepared to immediately reimage my hard drive with the backup image taken with Acronis (I don’t like to repave machines – big waste of time).

Here is a picture of my new desktop (1900 x 1200) from the Dell 24in monitor.  I have checked the following things I depend on daily and have ensured they still work:

  • Google Chrome
  • Skype
  • Visual Studio 2008 w/ Resharper (I did turn off UAC because it’s still annoying)
  • Tethering Windows Mobile Smartphone through AT&T for mobile internet connection
  • Google Desktop (search and app launching)
  • Pidgin (IM)
  • PortableApps
  • TweetDeck
  • Microsoft Office
  • CCTray
  • And all my diverse hardware

What didn’t work was Syncing my smartphone.  I haven’t dug in, but that doesn’t work at present (Samsung BlackJack II with WM5).

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Read More     5 Comments

Comments

Ray said on 7.05.2009 at 9:46 AM

I dont really understand the point in installing Windows 7 just to turn off all the great features like new taskbar and windows indexing which effectively works like google desktop just to turn your system into something that resembles Win XP?..

Jeffrey Palermo said on 7.06.2009 at 9:13 AM

@Ray,

I don't much care for features when choosing and Operation System. The OS is the core of the computer. Vista x64 is way more stable than XP, so I'm giving Win7 a shot. Stability is what I'm after, not features.

G. Andrew Duthie said on 7.06.2009 at 9:46 AM

Jeffrey,

Try uninstalling and reinstalling Windows Mobile Device Center. That should enable syncing with the RC. I've got two machines set up with the RC and both are able to sync my Fuze.

Scott M said on 8.03.2009 at 8:24 AM

I'm confused. You first say you installed Win 7 RC and that you then put XP back on the machine.

Then you go on to talk about going from Vista to Windows 7?

Where is the discussion on how you went from 7 to XP again?

Jeffrey Palermo said on 8.03.2009 at 8:28 AM

I gave my wife her old laptop back (that had Windows XP on it).

For my own computer, I went from Vista to 7 RC back to Vista. I used Acronis Home Image 2009 to do the disk image and restore so that I didn't have to reinstall Windows Vista and all the programs.