Windows 7® & Vista® Update

By: Ang Biondo

 

 

About a month or so ago we talked about Windows 7® Beta 1 making its debut earlier this month.  I downloaded my copy and decided to install it in my Gateway MX6425 notebook.  My Gateway is 4 yrs old and equipped with an AMD Turion™ 64 mobile CPU (single core), 1 GB DDR 333 RAM and, a WD 120 GB Hard drive and a Sony DVD/CD writer.  By Vista® standards greatly under qualified.  I originally ran the Vista® Ultimate Beta on this machine and it bogged down terribly.  I upped the memory to 2 GB and had little more success.  I finally removed Vista® and restored the system to its original state with XP home.

 

Let’s stop here to answer a few questions I received in the past few weeks.:

 

Q:  What do I need to know about running a beta product?

A:  Beta products are pre-releases of products not yet released for sale to the public.  This means that you need to understand you are working by the rules of “Murphy’s Law” – I something can    go wrong it will. 

 

Q:  Are beta products safe for a novice to use? 

A:  Beta products are not fully supported by the manufacturer and the user is often on his/her own when a problem occurs.  Beta users depend on user groups and forums for support, and the manufacture expects users, user groups, and forums, to report the problems encountered in hopes that the beta program will shake out all the bugs before going retail.  To answer the question – it’s not recommended. 

 

Q:  Is it safe to run a beta program on my only computer?

A:  NO! If you only have one computer, “Murphy’s Law” becomes a commandment.  Many beta users have a computer that is used only for beta products.  In many cases, if you only have one computer and that computer can be booted from an external drive, you might be able to install the beta on the external drive.  If your only computer is a desktop, and it gives you the choice to set your boot drive in the BIOS, you can install a second drive (slave) and set to boot from that drive before installing the beta product, especially if the beta product is an operating system like “Windows 7®. 

 

I hope I have answered the questions sufficiently.  Beta products are neat to work with as long as they are installed on a computer you don’t need to depend on. 

 

Now, with the Windows 7® Beta in my hands and the curiosity of a cat, I decided to install it on (you guessed it), my trusty old Gateway.  But I wanted to compare it to the previous Vista® installation so I removed one of memory modules and proceeded with the installation. 

 

The installation gave me a choice of upgrading so I could keep all my settings or a new install.  If you give me a choice of upgrade or clean install, I’ll pick clean install almost every time.  I say almost because if I am installing a retail version over an existing version and want to keep my current settings and installed software compatible with the new installation, then it is best to upgrade rather than clean install. 

Since I had restored XP Home®, and had nothing on the drive that I needed to keep, I had to do a clean install, since the upgrade is only valid if you are upgrading from Vista®.  

 

The installation was flawless, and to my surprise performed as well if not better than XP Home®, at this point. Everything worked but the sound, which was expected.  Gateway used AMD processors in these machines and Vista® was designed to use with Intel processors.  At least this is what I was informed by a Microsoft® technician in the process of debugging the Vista® installation.  I also had to upgrade the computers BIOS in order to accommodate Vista®.  This is the reason for no sound, since the sound card is integrated into the motherboard and impacted by the BIOS, I had to obtain drivers that were compatible with the new BIOS. 

 

Windows 7® Ultimate, like Vista® Ultimate, has many bells and whistles.  The more bells and whistles you choose to use the more resources are used.  For example, the Vista® Ultimate 32 bit version originally only recognized 3.25 GB of RAM before SP1.  If you wanted to take advantage of all the bells and whistles integrated into the product you would have to have 8 GB of RAM and the 64 bit version installed per Microsoft’s® recommendations.  However the average off the shelf computer or eMachine, is usually only capable of recognizing a mere 2 GB of RAM.  Needless to say the Guru’s who designed Vista® literally came out with a horse (a Clydesdale at that), that they expected you to house in a dog house designed for a Mexican Chiwawa. In other words the full blown high end product was not designed for the average home user.  

 

Windows 7®, so far appears to have corrected some of the problems encountered with Vista®.  It may even have corrected most of them, but it is too early to tell.  As yet, I have seen no serious negative reports, but the beta for public release has only been out a few weeks.  Those who were testing the earlier beta versions are for the most part experienced seasoned developers who usually know their way around a fledgling system filled with bugs.  But, even the most experienced developer doesn’t usually get to use 100% of the operating system, thus the need for beta users. 

 

To better understand this, one needs to know how such a complex program as a computer operating system is born.  In years past this was accomplished with the use of individual teams.  Basically the simple explanation is each team develops a module, or piece of the program.  The modules (pieces of the program) are then assembled into one program.  The problems or bugs are usually not with the individual modules, or mini programs that make up the main program, but how the module is integrated into the main program.  

 The teams who wrote the individual modules, would test them thoroughly before submitting them for integration into the main body of the program, being constructed.  The team who was responsible for tying the ends together had the tough job of integrating each module into the main system and making it as transparent as possible to the end user. When this involves thousands of calls or sub-calls to the many mini programs or modules that had to be compiled into a single operating system it became a living nightmare. I always had this vision in my head of the team members with this responsibility, tripping over the bottles of anti-acid as they scurried from computer to computer. 

 

 Today such complex programs and operating systems are developed with programs such as “Microsoft® Team Suite©”, or possibly something even more advanced.  This makes projects like developing new sophisticated complex software applications much easier by allowing developers to intigrate the modules as they go along.  However, problems still persist and the final product usually manages to contain a bug or two to be shaken out.

 

So far my experiences with Microsoft’s new pride and joy have been a positive one.  I have installed several gadgets in the sidebar, Microsoft Office Professional 2007®, Adobe PhotoShop along with several of my favorite utilities and software applications, all without problems.  

 

That’s not to say there are no problems, I did have a problem initially.  Naturally the first applications I installed was my Vipre anti-virus/spyware applications and the Sunbelt personal firewall.  The Vipre virus protection went without a hitch, however I encountered a problem installing the firewall.  The computer needed to reboot after installation in order for the firewall to work.  It was at this point that I encountered a minor glitch.  On reboot the computer stalled in a loop between the splash screen and the desktop screen.  After waiting several minutes and several resets I was forced to reinstall the Windows 7® beta.  

 

I did attempt a repair with the Windows 7® repair feature, to no avail while the firewall software was installed.  My attempts to remove the firewall in safe mode also proved futile.  I contemplated using “regedit” to remove the some 100+ calls for “Sunbelt” in the registry, but chose to reinstall the Windows 7® beta instead.  Besides, if I had created a restore point prior to the installation, the Windows 7® repair feature would have had a reference point to repair from. 

 

The windows firewall is activated at startup and must be turned off prior to installing a third party firewall.  In some cases, when you turn off the Windows firewall, it also closes port 80, which must be open prior to installing a third party firewall.  Port 80 is normally open, and I will have to ask Microsoft™ and Sunbelt™ techie’s for the reason or solution for this.    

 

One of the quirks I have encountered is that when a problem does occur, Windows 7® has a “quick fix” feature that detects when a problem occurs and attempts of fix it.  However, in the repair process it reverts back to the last known good boot settings, losing any updates or programs you may have installed since that last good boot.  This is not necessarily a bad feature, but it does happen.  The solution is a simple one, all you need do is create a restore point after installing a new application or making a change to your system.  This is a practice one should make a habit of anyway. 

 

I have not installed the other Gigabyte of DDR as yet and would like to see how much I can load the computer before encountering any major problems.  I’m tempted to install Windows 7® on my desktop, but will probably wait until the final or retail version hits the shelves. 

 

My desktop is a home built system running Vista® Ultimate (32 bit version), equipped with an Intel Core 2 quad CPU, 4 GB DDR2 800 MHz, 1.5 Terabytes HDD storage and all the other normal peripherals. I am well satisfied with the performance of this machine even though I am running the 32 bit version of Vista.  The retail version comes with both the 32 and 64 bit DVD’s, but if you want to run software originally written for the old 16 bit operating systems i.e. Windows 98®, your stuck with using the 32 bit version of Vista®.

 

Windows 7® will undoubtedly be sold with similar platforms as Vista® and the Ultimate version will probably include both the 32 and 64 bit versions.  As it stands, I believe you can still download either beta version from Microsoft’s web site, but I don’t know how long either will be available.  I’m under the impression that Microsoft plans on coming out with the retail version of Windows 7® by August, so the beta versions probably won’t be made available too much longer.   Check it out Windows 7® : http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

 

 

Copyright© Februray, 2009

 

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