To start the process, I made a backup of my AppData and other user folders, then repartitioned and reformatted the drive.  The complete installation time from booting the PC with the DVD in the drive until the desktop came up was 25 minutes.  That of course was the easy part.  The next step was about 160 MB of downloads from Windows Update for security patches and driver updates for my keyboard, mouse, monitor, and graphics card.  This took about 20 minutes and required a reboot.

The only problem I had with Windows Update was the Nvidia drivers it installed.  It used the 191.07 Nvidia drivers which I found caused a stutter problem in Champions Online, but I was able to install the 190.62 drivers over the top of the existing 191.07 without any problems.

Installing software and games took another 5 hours, but I’m now back up and running on the Home Premium retail version.  I did backup my MMO program folders.  Instead of restoring them, I did re-run the installers but then I brought over the patched files before running the patcher.  This way I get the icons in the Games folder setup correctly but didn’t have to sit through hours of patch downloads.

The only major pain I had was fixing the 30 odd podcasts subscriptions I had in my Zune software.  There really should be a way to export those subscriptions as an XML to make it easier to move machines.

Since I was already on the release candidate, the upgrade really didn’t change much for me, but I’m still really enjoying the UI changes from XP to 7.  It may not be worth upgrading an existing machine, but if you’re building or buying a new box 7′s definitely the way to go.

On the 32- or 64-bit question, I recommend 64-bit.  You may have some compatibility issues on old peripherals, but most components should be fine and I’ve not had any software issues except for UAC.

I’m sure a lot of people just turn it off, but I’m trying to find ways to work within the security setup.  I’m happy to click on a UAC prompt when I’m installing a program, that’s not something I do daily, but I don’t want to click on a prompt every time I launch Xfire or Steam.  Xfire requires it be run in admin mode.  Steam doesn’t have to be run that way, but Fallen Earth (which I bought through Steam) does.  If you run a game in Steam that requires it be in admin mode, but Steam is not, then you get this very unhelpful message.

Of course the game is actually available but you either have to run the program directly from the SteamApps folder in admin mode or you have to launch Steam in admin mode.  Either way you’ll get a UAC prompt.  Every time.

Unfortunately Windows 7 doesn’t offer anyway (that I’ve found) to mark specific programs as trusted to avoid the UAC prompt.  The trick is to make the system start the program instead of your user account.  The way to make the system start Steam or Xfire is to use the Task Scheduler.  I found a handy little guide how on the Xfire blog.

Start the Task Scheduler and click on Create Task… from the Action panel on the right-hand side.  You’ll want to set a name for the task, something like SteamAdminNoUAC.  You’ll also want to make sure that the user account is correct and then set the task to only run while the user is logged on and most importantly set it to run with highest privileges.

If you want the task to start when you log on, then you can add a trigger.  Just go to the triggers tab and click on the New… button.

Next, you need to set the program you want started, in this case steam.exe.  Just click on the New… button from the actions tab.

From the conditions tab uncheck the power settings to only run if not on battery and to stop if a battery kicks in.  From the settings tab uncheck the setting to stop the task if it runs longer than a set time.

Once all of the settings are in place click OK.  Now you can start/stop the task from the scheduler and you’ll have Steam or Xfire running in admin mode without having a UAC prompt.

Since I don’t like these programs to autostart when I log onto my machine, I like to create shortcuts and icons for them.  Instead of having a shortcut directly to the program, you’ll need a scheduled task shortcut.  For my Steam task created above I use this:

C:\Windows\System32\schtasks.exe /run /tn SteamAdminNoUAC

This command tells the task scheduler to run the task named SteamAdminNoUAC.

I’ve setup shortcuts for both Steam and Xfire, set icons for the new shortcuts to point to the original executable, and dropped them in the same Programs folders so I can run both from the Start menu.