Windows 7 – The installation

When Microsoft announced cut price copies of Windows 7 for those prepared to pre-order back in the summer, I jumped at the chance. It wasn’t a gamble for me as I’d been testing Windows 7 for some time and at the time I placed my order, was using the Windows 7 Release Candidate on a regular basis, so I knew what I was going to get.

Yet when the courier arrived on 22nd October with my new retail copy of Windows 7 I must admit to suddenly feeling a bit apprehensive about installing it for real.

My apprehension wasn’t caused by the idea of running Windows 7 “full time”, it was the task of upgrading my Vista machine that was fuelling the need for something stronger than coffee.

I’d already backed up all my data, downloaded installation files for numerous applications from the internet and had a bunch of CDs and DVDs to hand for the boxed software I use. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, thankfully, not very much as it turns out. But it wasn’t perfect.

To Upgrade, or Cleanly Install?

I popped the DVD in my drive and let setup go about its job. It asked for the usual information – which country was I in, what language did I want to use, keyboard layout, that sort of thing. Then it asked if I wanted to perform an upgrade or a clean installation. Excellent – I’ve got everything backed up, I’ll have a clean installation please!

What I didn’t notice (I’m sure it wasn’t there… it is, I just must have missed it!) was the option to do a spot of disk administration before performing the installation. Having selected a clean installation without doing any disk administration, setup detected my existing Vista installation and proudly informed me that it would copy my Vista installation to a directory called “Windows.old” and that I would be able to access my files, but wouldn’t be able to boot into Vista.

Hmm… what definition of “clean” is being used here?

Simple Installation

The installation itself was surprisingly simple. Gone are the days of specifying endless options and waiting while individual cabinets are copied and uncompressed… and then configured… With Windows 7 what gets installed is a standard disk image – much like the IT department at your local large company might do. It still took 50 minutes though!

If I recall correctly, two restarts were needed during the installation process. However, setup neglects to tell you that it’s finished with the DVD and that you can remove it from your drive, so if you’re not paying attention and your computer is set to boot from DVD, it’s quite possible to go round an endless loop re-doing the same part of the installation process!

Eventually my PC re-booted and started Windows 7 for real. It looked good, everything was where I expected it to be, it found my network and I could get online and reach the internet and other computers on my home network without any fuss. All seemed well, so I started installing my applications in priority order.

Hang on… something’s not right here

About half way through loading my computer with software I suddenly realised that the visual niceties of Windows 7 were missing. I’d selected the Aero interface, but I wasn’t getting it. A quick poke around in device manager revealed that Windows 7 had failed to detect my video card properly (even though the release candidate managed) and had installed some vanilla drivers.

My card reader didn’t work.

My webcam didn’t work.

What I’d not done, lulled into a false sense of security by the success of the release candidate, was examine Vista’s Device Manager and make a note of all the devices on my system and their respective vendors & driver information before installing Windows 7. D’oh!

nVidia 1 – Windows Update 0

Luckily nVidia provide a nice tool that can be run on your computer and quickly identifies what graphics hardware you have – and then goes and fetches the appropriate driver for your combination of hardware and OS. Full marks to nVidia for that. No further graphics problems – Aero interface fully operational. Nice!

Not so many marks for Windows Update which subsequently & repeatedly tried to get me to install an older version of the nVidia drivers.

I patched up the other non-functional devices using Vista drivers (the driver model – except the video driver model – is the same between Vista and Windows 7) from my computer manufacturer’s website and had a fully functional computer once more.

I completed the installation of my application software and so far I can report that all applications are running correctly on Windows 7.

Remembering the bronze age

I’ve noticed that Microsoft seem to be a bit mean with the supplied mouse pointers and sample images / videos in Windows 7. The sample images and videos aren’t an issue for me – but I’ve used the 3D bronze mouse pointer for many years, so I was a bit disappointed to see that it wasn’t included in Windows 7.

Maybe this is one trivial reason the Windows 7 setup retains your Vista files in a Windows.old directory? A quick dive into the Windows.old\Cursors directory and I copied the 3D bronze mouse pointers over to my Windows 7 installation. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does mean I’ve got my 3D bronze mouse pointer back in most cases!

Next steps…

I think I’ll try Windows XP Mode next. I’ll report back shortly…