Windows 7 BETA

[Kryten]

A chap I know from another forum (relating to my specific line of work) has just installed it on his Asus EeePC 1000HE (1.66ghz Atom, 160gb HDD, 1gb RAM)
He's certain it's a hell of a lot of quicker than XP was on it.

That's one of the tests I've been waiting for - MS have been saying it will be very "netbook" friendly and I tended to agree, seeing how well it ran on my shit laptop.

 

[TdC]

bahs, I want it on my lappy but am scared to take the rescue partition off someone tell me it's going to be ok

 

[dysfunction]

It'll be ok!

 

[Syri]

most laptops with a rescue partition will either come with a disc that can restore the partition, or at least a program to create some discs. Have a look around the manufacturer's folder and see if there's anything about creating a set of rescue discs.
If there isn't anything in there, you might be able to use something like partition magic to make some space for windows 7 to occupy without impacting the rescue area. I believe that can also back up the partition information, so you can restore it if anything goes wrong.
Obviously though, the rescue discs would be the best option if they're available.

 

[TdC]

It'll be ok!

In matters of IT I trust you about as much as Wij telling me it's ok to take a deep breath and bend over in his private sauna

most laptops with a rescue partition will either come with a disc that can restore the partition, or at least a program to create some discs. Have a look around the manufacturer's folder and see if there's anything about creating a set of rescue discs.
If there isn't anything in there, you might be able to use something like partition magic to make some space for windows 7 to occupy without impacting the rescue area. I believe that can also back up the partition information, so you can restore it if anything goes wrong.
Obviously though, the rescue discs would be the best option if they're available.

the problem is that doze7 64b seems wants a whole new disklabel, or partitioning scheme. there are ways around it, which are detailed in this thread: Windows 7 on Sony Z - Notebook Forums and Laptop Discussion

ofc it's much more planning/work than I thought at first, and Sony hasn't got all the needed drivers available yet :/

 

[Syri]

Windows probably isn't happy about the custom partitioning scheme used for the recovery. It's usually protected to "hide" it from windows, so neither the user nor a virus or other such program can do any damage to it, intentional or otherwise. They usually have a custom boot loader that hooks into the bios, so you can press a certain key when booting to activate the recovery partition.
Creating a set of recovery dvds will basically back up all of the information in that hidden partition, and the first dvd of the set (usually needs at least 2 discs) is normally bootable, so the special partitioning information is no longer needed, nor is the recovery partition.
I don't know exactly how the Sony one works, as I've never actually used one, but I used to work on the helpdesk for PC World, and dealt with the recovery for various other brands such as HP and the Dixons brands like Advent, all of which used a similar system.

 

[TdC]

well I did make a set of recovery dvds in case my hdd failed. I shall test them to see if they actually work, and then give it another shot

 

[Cyradix]

Windows 7 will also create a 100-200mb hidden partition for recovery purposes.
More about it here : How to Avoid 200MB Hidden System Partition From Been Created During Windows 7 Installation My Digital Life

 

[TdC]

aha but I want to install 64b d'7 on my formerly 32b Vista Business. will that work?

 

[Cyradix]

Upgrade your Vista 32bit to Windows 7 64bit? Nope... reinstall....
You should be able to keep your partitions though. Just format it first when selecting the partition to install on during the setup...

 

[TdC]

as far as I have been able to discover, the trick is to delete the partition you want to install doze 7 into. if the space is empty *before* the install starts, eg it needs free space to begin with thus you can not delete the partition from within the '7 installer.

I tried what you said, but from within the installer and it refused to create a new partition based on complaining about the lack of a GPT disklayout.

 

[Cyradix]

Hmmm....
What I did on my home computer was : In Vista Disk management "Shrink volume" to free some space, boot from the Win7 dvd and installed on the free space....
It installed without warnings or errors and I got a perfect dual boot.

 

[TdC]

64 bit or 32? afaict the 64b version requires GPT

 

[Cyradix]

64bit. Was build 7077 though. I upgraded to RC

 

[TdC]

hmm I'll give it another go when I get home tonight

 

[yaruar]

It's running very well on my laptop at home, it just feels right. A few software issues, google chrome is broken badly on 64 bit, but everything else i use seems ok so far. I've been using windows 7 on it since it came out to open beta and almost never had to boot back to vista. Lovely and responsive, it's a win!

 

[Cyradix]

You can fix Chrome on your Windows 7 64bit by adding this to the shortcut : --in-process-plugins
So it should read something like : C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --in-process-plugins

 

[Ch3tan]

Wow, this is so fast. Really nice.

I have installed it in a seperate partition, but it runs so well I may just get rid of XP, backup Vista and upgrade it over the top.

edit:// do Ati drivers work fine with it? Is it worth installing them? The default drivers seem to be fine...

 

[Cyradix]

Don't know how it is with ATI, but for nvidia cards the drivers provided by windowsupdate are the Windows 7 beta drivers from the nvidia site...

 

[Ch3tan]

Ack, how annoying. Windows 7 is not giving me an option to boot into vista, it thinks it is the only OS even though I installed it onto a fresh partition. Anyone around this without removing win7 and starting again?

 

[Kryten]

Couple of updates that I've found out today.

1. No native BR support. No biggy, never have and never will use the native support when PowerDVD suffices.

2. Driver glitch - unsurprisingly from the nVidia camp. do NOT install nVidia drivers for nvidia chipsetted motherboards, just use whatever MS shove on automatically.

 

[MYstIC G]

Ack, how annoying. Windows 7 is not giving me an option to boot into vista, it thinks it is the only OS even though I installed it onto a fresh partition. Anyone around this without removing win7 and starting again?

Probably need to add the necessary lines to Boot.ini

That or put on a "proper" boot manager.

 

[yaruar]

You can fix Chrome on your Windows 7 64bit by adding this to the shortcut : --in-process-plugins
So it should read something like : C:\Users\Administrator\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --in-process-plugins

apparantly that was reasonably stable on the previous build but on the RC makes it crash. TBH IE 8 is doing me fine, appart from the refresh button being in a stupd place.

 

[Kryten]

Browser is the first thing to be changed here IE8 isn't bad (well, it's fucking shoddy on XP, not exactly great on Vista and it's ok on 7) so stick with Firefox here

 

[Ch3tan]

Well I decided that having 4 partitions and 3 os's was a pain in the arse. Just running win7/vista now. Goodbye for good XP, Vista was much faster and smoother than XP for me, and win7 is Vista on performance enhancing drugs, it's great!

Going to install win7 on my cousins home pc and laptop as well, XP runs like a dog on both.

 

[Yaka]

well upgraded from beta, samba which for some reason didnt work before with my tux based leech box works now. what doesnt work is for some reason i cant go on line. no network conn at all

 

[dysfunction]

Some Nvidia GFX card drivers

GeForce Release 185

 

[Ch3tan]

No radeon drivers for my card (1950xtx), only drivers for the cards released since then Really need one, as the timing on my tv is not right and means I get a black border under win7.

 

[TdC]

update from me too: shrunk my vista partition on the lappy, and now the installer doesn't complain at all. prolly because the unpartitioned space is exactly that, unpartitioned

 

[Yaka]

anyone know how i can get my connection working again other than a full install? ive tried eveything, reboot cm and router various setting changes a few threads suggest elsewhere nothing is working