So Windows 7 is out, and the copy of Home Premium, for my girlfriend’s netbook, showed up today. I was excited, hey I’m a geek, to get this setup, and was really curious to see how painful an upgrade from XP Home to Windows 7 Home Premium would be. I played nice and did the upgrade according to Microsoft’s steps, with only 1 minor change.
I started by downloading the Windows Easy Transfer utility. It was a quick download and install, and is pretty simple to use. It’s purpose is to make a backup, proprietary .MIG format, of your “important” data. By default this includes any user directories on the system, plus the shared folders. The netbook doesn’t have a whole lot going on, other than a small iTunes library so the scan portion of the utility was pretty quick. It found around 6.8 GB if data to backup, the afforementioned user directory was small, but the iTunes folder linked to from “My Music” was around 5GB alone. The interface lets you customize the backup, remove some folders add others, right down to files. The next step in the process is to tell the utility where you want to put the backup. I was provided 3 options, USB Easy Transfer Cable, Network Connection, External Drive or USB Drive. There is a 4th option to use a CD/DVD burner, which I believe was not shown as I did not have one attached. I don’t have an “Easy Transfer Cable”, I didn’t know such a thing existed honestly. My plan was to send the backup to my desktop across my home network. When I tried to that however I found the program did not allow anything other than an IP, and it did not like me trying to access the share for some reason. This could be my fault, my experience with networking between XP and Vista has been nothing short of a nightmare. With that option exhausted I decided to cheat. I mapped a network drive to the share, and put the backup there. It was no big deal, just a little odd that the “Network Location” option did not seem to like the share. Once I selected that, the program started doing it’s thing, and about 45 minutes later I had a 6 GB .MIG file on my computer. I would like to have seen some sort of compression on this, and maybe the program would run better if it made the backup, then transferred it to the storage location, but I am not Microsoft, I am sure they had they reason for doing it this way ;) With the backup safely on my desktop, I deviated from the Microsoft steps. I made my own backups as well. I copied basically the same thing the Transfer tool did, but as I have never used this tool, and know how backups can fail, I wanted to be sure I did not lose my girlfriend’s music. Girlfriend aggro is never a good thing, even more so when I ran an upgrade she never asked for :)
Now that I had my two backups, mine and Microsoft’s, I moved on to the fun part, the upgrade itself. Now anyone paying attention to Windows 7 knows you cannot upgrade from XP to 7 directly, or as Microsoft puts it, “in place”. I also had the challenge of how to run a DVD when the netbook has no DVD drive, or any drive for that matter. I was slightly dissapointed to find a TechNet article stating that the downloaded versions of Windows 7 can be converted to an ISO to run from a USB drive. I don’t understand why a purchased physical copy does not include access to a downloaded copy as well, but that’s another rant in itself. I first tried to run the upgrade from the DVD drive in my desktop, over the network. Not a great idea to begin with, but it did not work. It would start ok, and then the network transfer would take too long and time it out. So I began my search for a way to do this with a USB flash drive. For once I was surprised to find that Microsoft helped out, and they had a nice video on how to do this. The video is short and to the point, and even has written steps below, Installing Win7 using a USB stick. I watched the video and read the handful of steps, only to find this was beyond simple. No need for any software to make the USB stick bootable. Just format the stick fresh, to be safe, and then copy the entire contents from the upgrade disc over to the USB stick. I followed the steps, put the USB stick into the netbook, and booted to it with no problems.
The upgrade itself ran with no problems, overall the loading, copying, and installing took around 20 minutes by my best guess. After that I logged into Windows 7 on the netbook, and was greeted with everything, minus the integrated webcam, working perfectly. I’m having a little trouble finding a driver for the webcam in Windows 7, but that’s fine. I’ll take 1 missing driver for something nonessential over missing every driver like in a previous upgrade, Vista. Its also not Microsoft’s fault anyways, it’s the manufacturer, and its not a major issue to begin with. Windows 7 did a great job of picking up my wireless network with no problems, using its own drivers and not a third party driver/software package. The display went to its native resolution without any issues, and everything looked great. I was even surprised to find Aero running on a netbook. Say what you, will but if you’re using a GUI, it better be nice to look at, and Aero is very nice to look at.
After the initial setup, I was stumped on how to install the Windows Easy Transfer tool on Windows 7, so I could move the backup back onto the netbook. I looked online and felt rather stupid when I found it is included in Windows 7 (Start->Accessories->System Tools). So I started the program, and it asked me if this was my old computer or my “new” computer. I selected the obvious, and then chose the type of storage I had chosen when making the backup. Next I browsed realized I needed to remake the mapped drive, and after doing so browsed to the backup with no issues. The restore took another 45 minutes give or take to complete, and when it was done, it was as if I had done an “in place” upgrade. All settings were applied again, even wallpapers and user icons.
The one thing the transfer tool does not do, and it clearly states this, is the Program Files directory. I don’t expect it to, otherwise Microsoft might as well just take the time and write the upgrade to cover Windows XP as a normal upgrade. This is where an article I read last week came in handy. I ran across something from one of the tech blogs, sorry I forgot which one, about a site called ninite.com. This site is simple, it has a bunch of check boxes for the most commonly used free programs such as browsers, plugins, anti-virus, imaging software (like Paint.Net or GIMP), and a whole bunch of others. You check what you want in your installer, and then download it. Now this isn’t just a zip file containing a bunch of EXEs to run. It is a real installer one click installer. After the download it runs through and installs each application you selected one by one. The idea is ingenious. It takes one of the most tedious parts of getting a new computer, and upgrade, a reinstall, whatever, and makes it simple as can be. I chose the usual, Firefox, Flash, Adobe Reader, Java, iTunes, and 7zip. They even go so far as to have options for Evernote, Filezilla, Notepadd++, the thing is great. I managed to do something that usually takes me an hour or more to complete, in 20 minutes tops. I really recommend using this for anyone who has does this type of thing regularly, and may not have the convenience of some sort of image software.
So now everything is installed, Windows 7 is great, I like what I see so far. The new taskbar is fantastic, and so much more functional than it has been. Tomorrow my copy of Professional shows up, and we’ll see if this upgrade will be as simple. I am upgrading this computer from Vista Ultimate 64-bit to Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. You might ask why Pro and not Ultimate again, the answer is simple. The upgrade for Pro, at the half price pre-order special, is only $100. The upgrade for Ultimate was something like $220, there is no discount. I don’t even need Ultimate. I honestly don’t even know what the hell it has over Professional to begin with, except the AppLocker thing, which I have no use for really. The only reason I have Ultimate is because I participated in the Windows Feedback Panel from a couple years ago, and got a free copy of Vista Ultimate. I expect the same thing as the Xp to 7 upgrade when I do it. Because I am “downgrading” the OS, it is not a normal upgrade again, and I will have to do the same thing I did for XP, just on a much bigger scale. My backup file from the Easy Transfer tool is in the 60 GB range. I am less worried about this, if I lose the data on the C drive I could care less, I have a hefty D and E that have the important stuff.
I’ll be sure to update when that’s done in case there are any surprises. In the meantime, check out ninite.com, seriously, great idea, great tool.
