W7RC

[Psymon]

I want to try out the windows 7 release candidate when it comes out on the 5th. Before I do, there's a few things I'd like to clear up if anyone can help.

I'm going to buy a cheapo HDD to install it on.
Say I've burned the installer to a DVD and have both HDDs plugged in (this one with XP and all my stuff and an empty one).
Boot to DVD, install on new HDD...

Q1: After my PC reboots, will it ask me which OS to load or will W7 become a default?
Q2: What do I do about drivers? network, GPU, audio, etc... I've no problem with a clean install of XP, but will the same drivers be compatible with W7?
Q3: With both HDDs installed, will I be able to access the files on the XP HDD when I'm in W7? what about playing games?
Q4: Is there any way that installing W7 on the other HDD might mess with my XP install or drivers leaving it unstable?

Cheers

[venney]

Hey Psy.
This won’t be a for-sure response but I will tell you what I think from experience.

W7 will be loaded as your default OS, I am sure you can change this somehow after woods. If a clean XP install is no problem, it may be a case of just installing XP again after 7, making XP default. But I am sure there is an easier way than this.

You probably will be able to see all your old files on your xp drive, as it should be formatted the same, but you will not be able to run any games/applications because they won’t have any registry entries, and if they did they may not even be compatible with W7. You will, however, be able to access your music files and that sort of stuff without problem (I think).

I would recommend that you find as many drivers as you can before installing 7. Someone I know has the 7beta and he cannot connect to the internet from lack of compatible drivers. I assume if you are connected via Ethernet cable to your router the internet shouldn’t be a problem. But get free antivirus and gpu drivers etc before you do the install (knowing you, I’m sure you already have been gathering these!).

And as far as i am aware, the only thing W7 will mess with is the boot selection. XP should be left completely alone, as you are doing it on another drive completely.

This is what I think, but wait for liljim or gecko to confirm lol

[Psymon]

If going back to the 1 HDD after puts me back exactly where I left off then I'll be happy.

I only wanted a butchers at the new look and features but if its gunna cause too much hassle I won't bother. I mean what's the point if I have no internets or it doesn't use my gpu, etc.

[liljim]

I can answer some of this for u

1. once its installed, u should be diven a boot menu at every boot asking which OS to load with win7 being default. This can always be changed or edited through the boot.ini file.

2. cant comment much on the drivers as i need to research win7 more. If its NTFS then drivers shouldnt be an issue but if its the WFS they were discussing quite some time ago than drivers are going to be completely different.

3. This also depends on the file system, chances are it will see your NTFS drive (win xp) and access files such as music, etc. Im sure u do know that you wont run anything thats installed on the xp drive. For example, if you have team fortress 2 installed on the xp drive then add the other drive and system it will not play TF2 from there. It will have to be installed through win7 for it to acknowledge it IF its compatable at all.

4. In short, no. The only thing it will change regarding the existing drive and os is the MBR and boot.ini which can easly be reverted back if you decide to ditch the win 7 later on. Theres 2 ways and its a personal choice but what i do is in a dual booting system that you are pulling a drive and dropping back to a single system is boot from the xp disk, enter recovery console, at the prompt type FIXMBR, type yes to confirm it then type exit and it will reboot without giving u the os selection anymore. You can now remove or format the extra drive. The other is to edit the boot.ini file from within xp.

Theres some quick answers, hopefully that helps some.

[Psymon]

Nice one jim.

I think I'll take the XP HDD out and have just the spare HDD in when I install. Then swap them back round when I get fed up with W7. No way it can change the boot.ini if the HDD isn't in.

[Psymon]

I managed to get a 160GB HDD for £9 :D
I did this by getting the train home and blagging one from my bro's PC :P
Anyway, I'm now typing this from within W7.
I had trouble at first where before installing i gave an 0xc00000e9 error code and halted, but I found it was from a faulty burn onto the DVD.
3 DVDs later (cheap low quality batch... whoops) and W7 finally installed.
It automatically installed audio, network, and gpu drivers for me.
The audio drivers won't do 5.1 though, and the gpu drivers weren't the latest, but I can fix that myself. It's better than nothing though, like how XP is on a fresh install.
So far I like it. I barely used vista, enough to dislike it, but I can already spot a few differences and they're for the better.

One question before I get back to trying stuff out:
Since I installed the 64bit version, there are 'program files' and 'program files (x86)'.
I get that one is for 64bit aps, the other for 32bit/x86. Will files in the folders be treated differently or is it just a way of keeping the files seperate for ease of recognition by the user?

On my XP install, I would never install anything into program files since it was the 'default' and it's also where anything dodgy might plant itself. So I made my own folder that I installed everything in so I was sure what I had installed and what had installed itself.

[liljim]

Theres no need in creating your own directory, most anything "dodgy" will make its way into the system 32 folder and not program files. I assume the 2 different install directories your looking at is for organization for both you and the OS. it uses a 32 bit emulator to run the apps to having them in their own directory probably makes it easier. XP 64 is set up the same way. With xp 64 though, not all 32 bit apps worked but i did manage to get a few to run. Games ran great, i attribute that to it seeing all of the 4 gigs of ram i have. Loading times were improved but driver support sucked.

Im going to try win7 myself ans see what its all about. Im downloading the 32 bit version but will probably grab the 64 also.

[Psymon]

2 days in, and I think I've seen enough.

Theres a few nice featues, like pinning stuff to the taskbar and , and I like the resource monitor but that was in Vista. But most stuff is just 'prettier' or 'simpler'. However to me that just makes things SLOWER and either gives me less control than im used to or I have to jump through more hoops to get what I want. But those issues were introduced in vista, which is the problem with windows 7, hehe.

Played L4D and I got a minimum frame rate of 20. Never been close to that in XP.

I'll leave it installed since I can now play 'vista only' games, should I want to, but I'll be sticking to XP.

[Psymon]

Hopefully you see before you begin that download, liljim.

[liljim]

I started it already, router rebooted about half way through and i never resumed it. Probably wont either. I have the preconceived notion that i wont like it therefore no matter what i actually wind up liking about it it will never be enough. So, ill save myself the bandwidth and stick to what im happy with.