Windows 7 Upgrade Can Take Nearly a Day 706
Eugen writes "A Microsoft Software Engineer has posted the results of tests the company performed on the upgrade time of Windows 7. The metric used was total upgrade time across different user profiles (with different data set sizes and number of programs installed) and different hardware profiles. A clean 32-bit install on what Microsoft calls 'high-end hardware' should take only 30 minutes. In the worst case scenario, the process will take about 1220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That's with 650GB of data and 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don't even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware. The other interesting point worth noting is that the 32-bit upgrade is faster on a clean install than a 64-bit upgrade, regardless of the hardware configuration, and is faster on low-end hardware, regardless of the Data Profile. In the other six cases, the 64-bit upgrade is faster than the 32-bit upgrade."
Almost competing (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
Agreed! Good job to MS for being honest in the results they witnessed. At this point I've done quite a few clean installs and upgrades to Win7 on what I would consider low-end systems (early Pentium 4's, 512MB RAM) with my slowest install thus far being around 3 hours.
And I have seen Ubuntu (one of my FAVORITE desktop OS'es) take no less than 8 hours to complete.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Informative)
Apples and oranges comparison.
The various distros throw in an office suite, image tools, tons of other apps, servers, several browsers, compilers, interpreters, etc., and a system to keep ALL of them up to date. What does Microsoft throw in? wordpad and paint. No perl, no python, no php, no apache, ONE browser, no compiler, no package management outside of its' own applications ...
And forget about trialing it off a bootable cd or usb key to see if it does what you want or breaks on your hardware ...
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Funny)
Right, because so many people have issues where Windows breaks on their hardware. So few companies publish Windows drivers for their products these days.
Windows 7's barely out and you've forgotten Vista already!
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The system on Linux (nvidia notwithstanding - my next card, which should be in the post by now, is a Radeon, because AMD have been nice people and released specs) where the OS generally comes with nearly every driver you need is arguably superior to the rather odd Windows system of having every hardware company (who often can't write working software) write little bits of kernel code.
Until you need to upgrade your Ubuntu repostitory servers [slashdot.org], that is.
Honestly, it's rare to find a driver that you cannot download for Windows. Very rare. Rare enough that if you can't find a driver for it, they probably have piss poor customer service and you'd be better off without them. Also, once you have the drivers, if it takes more than 5 minutes to get them working correctly I'd be shocked. 5 minutes to get -anything- that wasn't already working to work in Linux would be amazing, and I'd probably
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No you don't, which is why you post AC. Stupid troll.
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Again, you miss the entire point - that the compiler does it once, at compile time, after which you can lose the compiler and still load and run the code directly. Hence, c is a compiled language. vb.net and c# are interpreted languages - even Microsoft admits they're interpreted. WTF do you think "JIT compiling" is? It's interpretation of the byte-code intermediate language put out by the so-called "compiler". Otherwise you wouldn't NEED a "JIT runtime + caching scheme" to get the still-shitty perfor
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
- less than 1 hour backing up stuff
- 4 hours repartitioning (I had ordered all the copy/move/resize operations in the worst manner possible
- 40 minutes tops with the installer itself
- zero minutes restoring backups - I had separated a
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Informative)
Or pick a different mirror. I've seen Ubuntu mirrors (usually the default round-robin selects the slow ones...) end up rate-limiting the download. Instead of getting broadband speeds, you get maybe twice-dialup download speeds. Other mirrors can saturate a good link and then some.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, I think you're full of crap.
I believe him. But the problem was probably because he found some way to pull up Task Manager during the install and was killing various processes because he "knows what he wants". Seriously, I used to work with a guy who would kill installs in the middle of the process if he saw it installing components that he didn't want, or he'd refuse to reboot even though it said it needed to in order to finish the install process. And then he'd turn around and bitch about how the install "didn't work" and that it was "broken". The funny/sad thing about this is that these are fairly technical people that pull this crap when they should really know better.
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Informative)
Note: I'm talking about the 64bit install on a 2.67 GHz C2D with 4 GB of RAM and a 10k HDD. Although I also had excellent results on an ancient 2.4 GHz P4 with only 1GB of RAM. Obviously the latter wasn't nearly as fast as the former but it was still much better than doing an XP install.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Informative)
As I just posted here:
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1367735&cid=29415807 [slashdot.org]
I was able to crash the installer just by hooking up my monitor by DVI. I'm sure it's a hardware specific combo, and granted this isn't the final code (RC1, not RTM...and I've heard microsoft does make changes between the final RC and RTM), but hopefully they got it fixed.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
Upgrading Windows is just asking for trouble.
The OS on my MBP, 10.6 is upgraded from 10.5 which was transferred over from an installation on a different notebook, which was upgraded from 10.4, which was cloned over from yet another notebook, which was upgraded from 10.3. I think that was the last clean install, although it could have actually been 10.2. So this OS has been upgraded through at least four major versions, run on three different machines, with two different major processor architectures (PowerPC and x86).
And it works just fine. I'm sure there are people running Linux with even more impressive provenances.
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It should be, they created a new imaging software tool (sorta like Ghost, but better in 90%+ cases) specifically for installing Vista, and it's the same tool they use for Windows 7. I use it in a corporate environment to push out custom PC images, and man is it slick. It will lay down an image in 1/4 the time a Ghost image will, and it has none of the downsides of the standard Windows setup install (like the mass amounts of custom .cab files and scripts to go through and pull components out of).
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
Upgrading your OS is just asking for trouble IMO.
Only when "your OS" is Windows. I've found most other OSs upgrade just fine.
It's the registry and the way programs toss libraries all over the place that really make it difficult for MS to have a reliable update mechanism.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Funny)
Windows 95. The version that came on 13 floppy disks. Especially if you got a "lucky" bad sector on disk 13.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Interesting)
seriously. i installed it on an old, old athlon xp 1700+ box and the install went fine
now, i couldnt use it, because...well it turns out none of the hardware had vista/7 drivers. id been running linux on the box so long that i pretty much forgot about needing to find drivers for things *shrug*
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, I could very much believe he had problem. I had a problem where I got the Win7 RC installed on one machine, but another machine with a near identical setup (same model motherboard with same bios, same cpu, hard drive, etc) didn't work. It kept crashing during the install. Well, long story short, I realized one difference was that one was hooked up by VGA, the other by DVI. I switched the DVI machine to VGA and it worked fine. Apparently something bad was happening when the installer tried to configure the video on the DVI machine. I had to switch it to VGA, do the install, upgrade the video drivers, then switch back to DVI and everything was good.
PS. If anyone is interested, the offending combination was a Gigabyte GA-73PVM-S2H with onboard nvidia 7100 paired with a samsung 2494HM LCD
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The only suggestion I've gotten that I haven't followed up on was the generic, 'Well - did you buy Linux compatible hardware?!'
Yeah, that was more of something to check BEFORE you go to amazing lengths trying to install.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Insightful)
This is typically how my Linux experiences go....
Linux Community: X works in Linux! And it's free!
Me: Huh, that's pretty cool....
Linux Community: Yeah and it's super easy. Easier to setup than Windows. And you'll never get a virus. And it's free!
Me: Wow, that does sound pretty cool...
Linux Community: Heard you had a problem with Vista's power management stuff? Yeah, you should run Linux - no problems there....
Me: Wow - that does really sound great...
Linux Community: Hey - Windows 7 is coming out - but look at this chart. It shows how much faster Linux is. And look, the install took less clicks and is much easier. Ant it's free! My Grandma runs it now. It's awesome.
Me: I have to say, that really, really sounds great....
Linux Community: I see you play WoW. I dunno if you know this but Linux can totally do that. Linux is like everywhere man. Why don't try it? It's free. It's everything Windows does, only free and less problems. It just works. Just download it man. Piece of cake.
Me: I don't know - that sounds great. I really don't like Windows; and I'd love to be able to play with the source of my OS....God Linux sounds great.
Linux Community: Oh - yes - it is! Here's a link man....go for it. Just download it and burn it. It's yours. Free. And just like Windows, only better. It does everything. Everything you want - it does. Better. Faster. Free! Try it. Don't be a chicken....try it.
Me: Huh - yeah - Linux seems cool but um...I'm having a problem. (The specific problem varies depending on the year I was trying it. Internet back in '03, RAID in '06, Wireless in '07, Installing in '09).
Linux Community: Oh yeah - that's nothing just do X (where X is something ridiculous like 'download it again')
Me: Umm yeah - so, that's not working for me. I still can't this working.
Linux Community: Did you read the guide? It's this page here - you should have read this before you did the install. It's really long and complicated and it will make you change your BIOS settings. It's called 'DO THIS BEFORE YOU INSTALL.HTML'. Go there, do it, try again.
Me: Umm - Okay. WTF? I don't know what any of this means but I just changed four things in my BIOS. But I still can't install.
Them: Did you verify the download? Use this MD5 tool to verify that the download was correct. I mean, you can't just trust a file to download correctly these days...it's really a gamble.
Me: Umm - Okay. I installed some program in Windows and it says it has the same number as what it should be...but it still doesn't work.
Them: Okay - well, go to this random guys blog. He has four pages of detailed instructions. You'll need to download a Windows driver and run this program that will, maybe get it to work.
Me: Alright - I spent FOUR HOURS screwing with this and I still can't get online unless I disable security on my wireless router.
Them: Well, just disable the security on your router. Yay! Linux works great!
Me: WTF? I don't want to disable my security. I want to be able to use it like it worked in Windows.
Them: Then buy a wirless router that works in Linux.
Me: Okay - which one can I buy off NewEgg that will work.
Them: Well, a lot of people have good luck with XYZ - but it depends on what chipset is used.
Me: WTF? How do I know what chipset is used?
Them: Well, buy it, and if it works, you'll know it's the right one.
Me: You want me to buy something that 'might' work, but if it doesn't work I'm SOL?
Them: Yup! If you don't like that, you can just buy a brand new PC with Linux installed from Dell!
Me: Is it any cheaper than the Windows version?
Them: Nope.
Me: WTF?
Them: Geez man, chill out. Linux *isn't* windows. It's not just going to magically work. Hardware manufactures don't support Linux, so you need to make sure, in advance, that your hardware will work.
You also can't expect Lin
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Funny)
There's a club for people like you. We have t-shirts.
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Informative)
Careful - talk like that will get you flagged a troll around here :)
This was my last post on the Ubuntu forums that really outlines what I'd gone through trying to install Ubunut 9.04...
I know this thread is getting pretty long so I thought it might help if I consolidated everything into a single post so that people who see this don't have to read through all 4 pages of posts.
Ubuntu 9.04 Install Problems Summary
1. Download the Ubuntu 9.04 i386 ISO
2. Burn ISO to a blank DVD using IMG Burn
3. Reboot, try to install Linux
4. Install fails - I see an error message about ACPI and find myself at a command prompt.
5. Read - Edit BIOS - I'm directed to https://help.ubuntu.com/9.04/install...ios-setup.html [ubuntu.com] - I read and find that I didn't disable my 'Memory Hole' so I do that.
6. Reboot, try to install Linux
7. Install fails - I see an error message about ACPI and find myself at a command prompt.
8. Read - Edit BIOS - After visiting this and other forums, I found that by enabling AMD Quiet N Cool the ACPI error would be resolved. This information was not included in the 9.04 installation-guide linked to above.
9. Reboot, try to install Linux
10. Install fails - I see *no* error message - so that's a good sign (I think) - but I still end up at a command prompt.
11. Read - At this point, it seems like the install disk itself is the most likely source of my problems. I'm told to check the md5 of the download and the CD itself though the install screen.
12. Install winmd5sum And use this to verify that my download was correct (and it was).
13. Reboot, try to have the Ubuntu installer verify the disk.
14. Disk Check Fails The same as with the install, I end up at the command prompt. Unsure of what to do next I...
15. Re-Burned ISO to a blank DVD using IMG Burn on a separate PC, hoping that the burn was bad. As recommended, I use a low speed burn to reduce the chances of errors. IMG Burn 'verifies' that the burn was successful (I'm not sure if that means anything or not).
16. Reboot, try to install Linux (with the new disk)
17. Install fails - Same as before, no error message that I can see - just the command prompt.
18. Read the forums and end up directed to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BootOptions [ubuntu.com] - without really understanding the boot options in the F6 menu
19. Reboot - Install fails Same sort of fail as before, did this a bunch of different times with the different options.
20. Read the forums again. I end up at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto [ubuntu.com] - I have three hard-drives two are configured in a RAID 0 though my BIOS. I'm unsure if the FakeRaid would impact the installer or not (I'm trying to install to the un-raided hard-drive).
21. Read the forums again. It's suggested that I try the alternate download.
22. Download the Ubuntu 9.04 i386 alternate installer ISO
23. Use winmd5sum To verify that my download was correct (and it was).
24. Burned ISO to a blank DVD using IMG Burn
25. Reboot, try to install Linux
26. Install fails - This time I end up stuck in an infinite loop. The text based installer says it can't mount the CD and to insert the CD, but the CD is in. My DVD drive seems to be functioning though - I used it to install Windows 7 two days ago without any problems.
27. Read the forums again. No suggestions, and without an
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You're ridiculous. You know that? Completely ridiculous.
As soon as I finish figuring out how to get my wireless internet to work in ubuntu, I'm totally going to trash your post with the most erudite and articulate rebuttal ever!
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Insightful)
When Linux "just works" it really does just work. However, when it doesn't, there's a good chance that you have to either dig up a strange workaround or ask a developer to fix things for you.
Things rarely "just work" on Windows, but the annoying installation step that precedes using most hardware/software usually has a higher overall chance of succeeding. However, when stuff breaks on Windows, it can be very bad too (anything from strange workarounds and processes that rival Linux manual configuration steps to "magical fixes" involving installing, uninstalling, or reinstalling specific versions of software). Windows has a handicap here in that sometimes it doesn't matter how experienced you are, the only way of fixing some stuff is with magic voodoo steps or a complete reinstall (under Linux, you usually can dig around enough to find the root cause and fix it).
So when things work as designed, Linux is easier, though things work as designed more often under Windows. When things break, it can equally suck for both OSes, and if you're an advanced user Windows can be even more frustrating.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Things work as designed
under Windows 98%
under Linux what? 30%?
This is all only talking from personal experience and is not supposed to be misinterpreted as anything even remotely resembling fact but the above numbers are what I have experienced with Windows since XP SP2 and with Linux since about year 2000 (several distributions). The two percent missing on Windows have usually been some tools hastily put together by some stoned dude or games where the developer rushed the product. For the latter, there wer
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the problem is that there is a big difference between "experienced" Linux users, and "experienced" Windows users. If people who think they were an "experienced" Windows user really were, they would know how to use various tools available to diag
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It is true that Mark's tools and a lot of knowledge will let you dig quite more into Windows than you'd expect. However, you still hit the inevitable brick wall that is closed source. At some point, if there's a bug in the source, you're not going to be able to figure it out without digging into assembly language, which is undesirable.
I also get the impression -and this may very well be caused by my relative inexperience with Windows internals as opposed to Linux internals- that Windows is more complicated
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
I have to agree ironically.
Often I find that it's under Linux that you have to find the voodoo spell that'll fix your problem. Often you'll find three or four different solutions to the problem that apply to everything except you're a version too early or too late. Things are a LOT better than they were a couple years ago, but there's still a few things where the number of search terms you're narrowing down gets pretty intense. By contrast, once you learn how to fix something in Windows, it tends to be fairly consistent. Get hit with a worm in XP, for example, and the same fix that worked in NT and even to a degree in 9x will work. Get hit with a bad wlan connection in your flavour of linux, and you'd better hope someone has already solved the problem, because the way you solved it before doesn't work anymore.
Only Vista (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
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Re:Only Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. http://xkcd.com/612/ [xkcd.com]
Re:Only Vista (Score:5, Insightful)
After 14 years of living with Windows (holy pants, has it been that long?), I'm resigned to installing clean every few years whether there is a new OS or not - it's like a mini-upgrade I give myself, and best of all it's free (for very low values of own time and soul). Basically, in my experience, Windows is sort of like a giant ball of playdough rolling down a city street - it gets dirtier and heavier over time, less appealing and not so colourful, not to mention the used condoms and syringes it occasionally picks up, and so you need to break out a new batch of playdough once in a while. I'm not saying that this is right and that it's a reason to not get angry about these results, but can you imagine the tubs of crap that are being sloshed around in the bowels of your computer when your two-year-old Vista install is being digested for 20h? Are you going to get a pretty result, all clean and good with everything working? Will you be able to uninstall something that didn't quite make it when all is said and done?
Just start clean, it's easier on the conscience...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I built a 64-bit Vista box last year for gaming and it hasn't picked up lint. The reason? Everything other than gaming goes in an XP virtual machine. I've rolled back to the snapshot, applied patches, retaken the snapshot, and then reinstalled apps 3 times in the VM, but the main box has stayed minty fresh.
Re:Only Vista (Score:4, Insightful)
Comments like this remind me of why windows will never hit the mainstream. "Regular" users will never be able to preform complex tasks such as installing two operating systems instead of one, or not using their operating system so that it doesn't break...
oh wait, something's wrong here... ;)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Blame the app and driver vendors (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, from my experience the "cruft" that supposedly gets Windows bloatier and slower, isn't as much a Microsoft issue, but the result of all those crap half-arsed 3'rd party installers and (more importantly) uninstallers, that placed crap all over the place and then forgot to uninstall it.
On my home machine I must have thousands of copy protection DLL's and drivers from all those paranoid game publishers alone, because God forbid that they don't place yet another obfuscated and untested driver on the DVD chain. You know, what with all the pirates running a cracked version without that anyway, God forbid that they'd stop punishing us honest paying customers instead. I must have such an unholy mix of StarForce, SafeDisc, SecuROM, and a few other things shat by the bowels of Hell, that it's got to reach either critical mass or sentience one of these days and start WW3.
And of course half the uninstallers forget to take _that_ crap out.
Then there are all the non-game things that just have to try to keep themselves resident, load their DLL's or custom libraries deep in Windows, and whatever. Last time I installed even Mozilla or Open Office from scratch (admittedly, that was way back in 2.0 days), they just had to try to keep themselves resident in memory, to appear that they launch faster than the MS alternative. Using the user's few RAM as your own private RAM-Disk has got to be an acceptable substitute to optimizing your own freaking code to actually load faster. But nah, the user surely has nothing better to do with his RAM than to help with out willy-waving, and will gladly buy another gigabyte just to help one more incompetent company brag about loading faster than MS.
Or here's an idea: how about using the standard widgets of whatever OS and window manager you run on? Now that ought to shave off the time of loading yet another cutesy skinned UI.
And then there's stuff loaded apparently for my convenience, that is "mine" only if I happened to be a marketroid for one of those vendors. Like EA's auto-downloader trying to stay resident in the tray, for no other reason than that apparently they don't want to let me download patches with a browser. Sun's Java trying to stay resident in the tray, just so it can pester me with reminders to get the latest Java 1.6... when I'm deliberately trying to test code that _must_ run with Java 1.4. Etc.
And then there's the occasional screw-up like an older version of McAffee antivirus which, I swear to the elder gods, actually couldn't cope with being installed in another directory than the default. So the first update actually installed a second copy, at the default location, but let the old one active too. So suddenly I had two antiviruses stacked in memory, and of course uninstalling only removed one. Took some grumbling and digging through Windows innards, just to get rid of it.
Then there's the stuff which plants its bits so deep in Windows, that you almost have to kill the host to get the parasite out. Goa'uld style. And I'm not even talking actual viruses and trojans, but antiviruses, and the occasional program which just has to bombard you with ads at all times. (And I'm still not even talking proper malware. An older RealPlayer version did just that... and that's why it was the last version I ever tried.)
Then there's stuff which just has to add some unneeded functionality, apparently just because they can't trust the default Windows implementation to do its job. I'm talking stuff like Creative adding its own disk change detector, never mind that Windows's auto-play works perfectly well as it is. Or that if I disabled that, I don't want Creative automatically starting to play anything either.
Then there are all the tons of custom skinned widgets, libraries that I need just for one single program (yeah, I sooo always wanted a display driver that needs .Net, thank you ATI), etc.
It's just sad. It used to be that you needed a virus to get your computer to crawl, while your hard drive icon and modem LEDs blink like crazy. For the last decade increasingly you only need to install legit paid-for software.
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clean install is going to scare a lot of the old softies. Just wait for the uproar when "xp compatibility mode" doesn't run half of their crap, too.
Oh well, at least MS is doing to vista what they should have done what, 5 years ago?
Re:Only Vista (Score:4, Funny)
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Then they borked it. It dont run 1/2 my crap on Vista 64.
Have you even tried it?
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I remember before Win98 and W2K officially released, we'd scramble to the most populated Warez channels on IRC to get the latest build of whatever beta there was at the time and (maybe) install just so we could say "Why would I run a 'released' OS?". Now it's: "I'm not installing 'till they release something STABLE!".
What happened to the adventurous?
Re:Only Vista (Score:4, Funny)
I quite agree. I'm running build 16387 and it is very sta
Re:Only Vista (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Only Vista (Score:5, Funny)
WOOOOOSH!
Sarcastic WOOSH generation complete. Automatically submitting "Preview" and "Submit" buttons.
What's a day (Score:5, Funny)
when you consider the lifetime of misery that follows?
Re:What's a day (Score:4, Funny)
What's a day when you consider the lifetime of misery that follows?
It's like the complete opposite of Linux: you spend a lifetime of misery trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, and then get to use it for 20 hours before you realise you need to use something that only runs in Windows.
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Yes, the misery of having a machine that runs video games, can use modern peripherals without extra work, can inter-operate with the most possible other machines and users and actually get stuff done!
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I know VISTA sucks hard in that regard.
That is my experience with Vista64 exactly. Nothing but pain and misery.
Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:5, Funny)
This reminds me of a funny bit from "The Three Stooges" that goes something like this:
Moe: I'll take this end ...and I'll take the end in the middle!
Larry: I'll take that end
Curly:
Just so you know, there isn't an "end" in the middle. There is "low-end" and "high-end" but there is no "mid-end." That would be medium level, mid-grade or average or something else.
Mid-end is almost as jarring to the grammar nodes of my brain as "incentivize."
Re:Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:5, Insightful)
No, I order from the dollar menu to get the same food mass for half the price of the regular menu items. I like the double cheese burgers and their flame broiled goodness...
Re:Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Mid-end?! Really?! (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously, who here hasn't charted out the $ to calorie ratios of all the menu items at popular fast food chains? They even make it easier by putting the calorie listings on the back of the place mat at mcdonalds!
It isn't worth it. The free sachets of mayo win every time.
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How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:5, Informative)
*never* upgrade Windows! Always start from a clean disk!
Re:How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:5, Informative)
Re:How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny? Sorry, but I am an AVID windows user and I would never ever recommend "upgrading" to a newer version. To be honest, the upgrade procedure DOES work and it works quite well, but if you're going to change your OS, you may as well start fresh and avoid the potential errors that sometimes (although rarely) do crop up.
This also applies to service packs, I learned that lesson the hard way when XP SP2 was released. I don't know if anyone remembers but a fresh, clean install of XP with SP2 slipstreamed onto the installation disk worked perfectly well, but those who installed SP2 on top of Vanilla XP or XP SP1 ran into some very strange problems with program compatibility and such.
Re:How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:4, Insightful)
Until Microsoft can get Windows to upgrade cleanly from one release to another, it'll never be ready for the desktop.
FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.)
If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Re:FUD (Score:4, Insightful)
Installing win7 from a usb stick on a medium computer took me 20mins or so maybe a little less. What is the point of bringing this up. Its like. 'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.) If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Since when do they distribute Windows 7 Retail on a USB stick? This article is not FUD, it is the recorded time from installing from a DVD-ROM drive.
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I dont think it will take much longer from DVD, and will possibly be faster.
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However, most people will have 8x speed on their DVD-ROM drive. That's a theoretical transfer rate of 10.57MB/s, but in real world more like 3-4MB/s. Seeks speed also makes DVD-ROM's slow.
I prefer to use a USB powered 2.5inch drive caddie for portability. 500GB hard drive, maxes out the USB bus and seek time isn't really a problem.
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You know, I haven't seen a lot of derogatory spellings of Microsoft or Windows on Slashdot in a long while. Except in posts that declaim the practice. Maybe it's time to follow your own advice, eh?
Re:FUD (Score:5, Informative)
It can of course replace commas:
"See that guy eh he's a hoser."
Or question marks:
"Hes crazy eh"
And of course bewilderment:
"EH?!"
What is the cost to a business ... (Score:2)
Re:What is the cost to a business ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't "upgrade" your CEO's PC. You buy a new one, you build it, you rip an image of his/her old PC, load it on a VM and copy what you need. You stop by his/her office the next morning and show them the new PC, introduce them to any new OS functionality they'll need to become familiar with, and ensure that all of their applications and data exist and work.
If anything goes wrong, you still have the VM of the old machine you can fire up on any box to keep them working till you fix the issue.
If you are running off with the CEO's PC for 20 hours (especially over business hours), you should fear for your job's security.
-Rick
Re: (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
What does that mean?
Re: (Score:2)
"There's been a lot of commotion about the mention of the upgrade from "Vista SP1 to Vista SP1." This is not a typo: while it is obviously not something that is typically done, but it can be used as a repair method: the upgrade process reinstalls the operating system by replacing any corrupt and modified system files. In this case, the method was used so as to have something to compare against in the benchmarking process. The reason "Vista SP2 to
This is why ... (Score:5, Funny)
.. the Windows 7 Drinking Game [today.com] exists. Let's add:
* One shot every thirty minutes the install or upgrade process takes.
* One shot if you have to start over.
* Drain the bottle if it ATE YOUR GODDAMN DATA.
Any others to add?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Just to remind you of Windows XP SP2:
* A tiny sip for each time you have to confirm that yes, that file should also be upgraded, even if the upgrade routine itself just blocked it.
It took me a full working day just to install a service pack.
Note: Even though it states a "tiny sip", this one is guaranteed to ruin your liver if this "feature" is still there.
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* Drink every time the "estimated time left" goes up instead of down or is otherwise shown to be inaccurate.
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Is it me? (Score:2)
Why would documents, music, video...etc add anything to an upgrade process? Shouldn't be system files and drivers that are affected? What exactly is done with a document or a music file that would require touching during an OS upgrade?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
"The upgrade process (be it Vista or 7) copies the data out of the current \Users, \Program Files, and \Windows directory to a temporary directory. It then kills those directories and lays down the new OS. After that, it copies all of the data back (well, probably a move operation -- but it still takes a long time). You can watch it if you do a Ctrl-F10 to bring up a command prompt during the upgrade process."
(Seems it's actaully shift-F10)
Kind of makes sense really,
Not a typo? (Score:2)
the process will take a bit 1220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo:
Actually, I think that is a typo. Either the phrase a bit shouldn't be there, or it should read something like a bit longer --.
Re:Not a typo? (Score:4, Funny)
I vote for the "plain fucking stupid" option...
Archlinux (Score:2)
understanding worst-case-scenarios (Score:2, Funny)
You could never get laid ever again in your entire lifetime!
Actually this one was quite a realistic scenario ... let's try another one:
You could be eaten by a grue within the next minute!
Upgrade FTL (Score:3, Interesting)
I know "upgrades" are usually cheaper - but maybe they should just give you a rebate (or immediate discount) when you send in your previous licence number - and force you to do a clean install. To help those who are not so knowlegeable - maybe you include an idiots guide to backing up files using an external HD/DVD or something like that. That should be enough for even the moderately technical person. For the idiot - maybe you include a token voucher ($20 or so) that can be used at a big box partner to help cover the cost of the upgrade for you and recover your data.
Just a thought...
Remebering NT4 (Score:2)
Awww memories. Seems like an eternity ago it took me near 20 hours to do an NT4 install because the installer didn't like the motherboard's cache so I had to turn it off to do the install....on each and every PC in the department. Of course several failed numerous times and had to be reinstalled. No, I think I'll be doing only fresh installs of Win7...if any.
"the process will take a bit 1220 minutes" (Score:5, Funny)
OMG, if the clean install is something like 4.8GB [overclock.net] then that would be 4.13175854 * 10^10 bits, times 1220 minutes/bit equals 95 840 997.1 years!
Why does more data mean a longer install? (Score:4, Insightful)
What the hell is the upgrade doing to all that data... identifying all the non-DRM'd illegal media and sending a list of it to Microsoft?
I don't get it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This is Slashdot, remember. It gets kinda hard to tell whether some of the paranoia here is serious or not...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It took me a day to go to to Snow Leopard! (Score:3, Interesting)
It took me a day to go to Snow Leopard
1. Back up system .1 release came out
2. Install Snow Leopard
3. Do a "migrate" of my old data to the new OS
4. Discover that all my apps crashed!
5. Restore the system to the backup I made in step 1
6. Repeat process when the
Why does user data make a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
WTF? According to the referenced MS blog post, the 650Gb is user data. Why in the world would upgrading your OS and installed apps depend on the amount of per-user data you had? Why is the system updater even bothering to look in the per-user directories?
Re:Why does user data make a difference? (Score:5, Informative)
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HA! 13 disks....is that all? Pansie!
I have the 21 disk install of OS 2.1 in the closet
Weep for me
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got a Dos disk image punched into punchcards somewhere.
I was bored in class one day and found you can hook the punchcard writer into a rs232 port. ran through the schools stock of punchcards in 1 hour.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For hobbies, there are tons of programs. For professional users, there are zero.
For instance, you could create a demo record in Linux. However, there's no way in hell you could master and release a studio quality album.
You could create a nice home video with cinelerra. I can almost guarantee no studio quality movie has ever been released using only linux for post processing.
You could make a nice flyer for your lost dog with OOo or GIMP. You could not produce an image for any major magazine without using a
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Wow, Where do you get one of those 42,000 RPM drives?
At the store two blocks down the road. They are also having a special on a free zero with every purchase!