I got my copy of Windows 7 Home Premium (full install license) from Amazon on release day, via pre-order.  I wasn’t in a big hurry to upgrade since I’m already running the release candidate, which worked well since the last week has been pretty busy with family stuff (vacation, son’s first birthday).  Even though I wasn’t in a huge hurry, I didn’t want to wait too long, so when my evening freed up last night I decided it was time.  I didn’t technically upgrade, since I was already using the release candidate.

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.

Windows 7 Upgraded
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2 thoughts on “Windows 7 Upgraded

  • November 11, 2009 at 5:52 pm
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    Actually I upgraded my notebook to Windows 7 64-bit and I’m suffering major audio stutter.
    If I have audio playing it will randomly freeze my PC for a couple of seconds, regardless of the media player (Winamp, Media Player Classic, Windows Media Player, Firefox, Internet Explorer, even games). I’m hardly the only person with this problem, because a lot of people with a wide variety of different soundcards (in this case Realtek, but Creative and numerous other brands face the same issue) experience the exact same thing with Windows 7 64-bit.

    Not a case of outdated drivers (newer ones actually exacerbate the problem), nor outdated hardware (one of the latest integrated Realtek HD Audio solutions), unfortunately. I wish it could be solved, but none of the workarounds I’ve found works (some even go to extremes such as shutting down power management on the GPU). I’m almost tempted to reinstall Vista… almost, because audio stuttering aside, Windows 7 is invariably superior.

  • November 12, 2009 at 1:09 am
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    Not sure if it helps, Droniac, but my rig is based on an Asus P6T motherboard which has a Realtek ALC12000 for onboard sound. I didn’t do anything special when I installed Windows, just used the default drivers it installed. I also picked any optional updates that were in Windows update for my hardware (except the nVidia graphics drivers). I haven’t had any problems with the sound. The device just shows up as High Definition Audio Device when I look at it in the Device Manager, and the driver is MS provided.

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