This is a first of a series of articles that are more a diary on my experience bringing up the Windows 7 RTM, and not so much a how-to – though it’s my hope that this series will help users who are looking to upgrade.
The Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturing) is gradually making its way into the hands of users. Subscribers to Microsoft’s TechNet and MSDN already have it in hand, but it will be several months before most users can actually pick up a copy.
I’ve got a Windows 7 reference system running, and it’s humming along nicely. I don’t have much on it yet, although I just downloaded the Windows XP Mode release candidate), which I’ll be checking out for a freelance assignment.
Of course, having the shipping version in hand leads me to my next step: upgrading my primary production system to Windows 7. I’m running the Win7 release candidate now. Since it’s my production system, it’s a little complicated. So here’s what I’m doing to prep for installing Windows 7 RTM on my main machine.
Before I dive into how I’m prepping my production system, I want to mention an interesting oddity I encountered when I attempted a clean install onto the Windows 7 reference system. That system has two physical hard drives. Both had no partitions on them when I booted from the Windows 7 DVD. The primary (first SATA) drive is a 7,200RPM Seagate 7200.10; the secondary drive is a 5400RPM WD GreenPower RE2.
When I installed Windows 7 the first time, it spread itself over both physical drives. The 100MB System Reserved partition and the boot loader was on the primary boot drive, but the rest of Windows 7 was on the secondary drive. This makes my plan to use the secondary drive only for partition backup and test application files problematic. So I had to disconnect that drive, reinstall Windows 7 RTM, then reconnect the drive.
Some people don’t care to have the System Recovery Partition at all. You can prevent this small partition from being created at all by following these handy steps.
Now, back to prepping an existing system for Windows 7.
The good news is that I’m installing the RTM over an existing Windows 7 RC installation. When you do that, you get a new, completely clean install. At the same time, Windows Setup will preserve your existing installation, so you can always retrieve stuff you may have forgotten to back up.
First, of course, is to back up all the stuff that needs backup. Note that I’ve got install files or the install discs for most applications. On the other hand, I want to spare myself some download time for apps I don’t have install files or discs. Then, of course, there’s all the data that needs backup. These include:
- Steam Games. I have a lot of games I’ve gotten from Valve’s Steam online distribution service. Steam has a nifty backup feature, so it’s easy to make backups of all your games. (It’s in the Steam application file menu: Back up my games.) Unfortunately, it’s going to take about 11 DVD-sized files to back them all up. It’s a good thing I’ve got a 4TB external SATA backup drive.
- Data Files. In terms of raw gigabytes, I have more data files than steam games. In fact, my main user folder contains roughly 487 GB of data. Much of that is digital photographs in Nikon RAW format, but there’s a ton of other data, including all the files from past articles I’ve written, stuff in the AppData folder, game backups and so on.
- Other Data Files. These are files I need to explicitly create just to make sure I’ve got them. These would include bookmarks, cookies and other ephemera from the three (!) different browsers I use regularly, Microsoft Office template files, Outlook data files, game save files that weren’t in the user directory and so on.
- Deactivate DRM’s Applications. I’ve got a couple of games that perform online activation (the latest being Blood Bowl), and they need to be either uninstalled or de-activated. One set of applications is Adobe CS4 Master Suite. Here’s where I encountered my first glitch. When I tried to deactivate the Adobe apps, I got a “Deactivation Denied” error, with an error number 194:1. That’s apparently a connectivity problem. When I contacted Adobe’s help line, they tried to deactivate from their end – and also failed. Apparently, the deactivation server was down. So I’ll have to wait a day or so.
Curses, foiled by DRM!
While inconvenient, I’m pretty sure this will iron itself out. It’s not the first time I’ve encountered issues with Adobe activation / deactivation. I’m all for protecting intellectual property, but I do wish these companies would make their processes both more bulletproof and more transparent (I’m looking a you, Ubisoft!)
Once the prep work is complete, the system is ready for Windows 7. I’ll cover the actual setup process in the next update to this diary.
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5 comments
Ralph Watts says:
August 9, 2009 at 2:36 pm (UTC -7 )
RTM stands for “Release to Manufacturing” not “Release to Master”. I think you are confusing it with “GM” which is “Gold Master” which is a nearly interchangeable term in the software world.
Loyd Case says:
August 9, 2009 at 2:55 pm (UTC -7 )
You’re absolutely correct; I fixed the copy. Thanks!
Moggraider says:
August 9, 2009 at 3:03 pm (UTC -7 )
That’s true about Valve’s backup feature for Steam, but it’s really much more practical to just copy the whole Steam folder to an external drive as a backup. The DVD conversion takes too long. On a new computer, you copy the Steam folder over, then tell the installer to install to that folder, and it unlocks all your games rather quickly.
Loyd Case says:
August 9, 2009 at 3:48 pm (UTC -7 )
Actually, it’s been my experience that unpacking the 60GB backup takes only a small increment of time over copying 90GB, even over eSATA, and then they’re already unlocked and ready to go.
At one point, I had most of my benchmarking games from Steam, which was around 30GB after the backup. Restoring them took about twenty minutes. Even the backup of my 90GB of games took only 26 minutes. Of course, it helps to have a fast CPU.
Perhaps a smaller Steam archive would go more quickly using the copy method, though.
killerplat says:
August 9, 2009 at 10:08 pm (UTC -7 )
Well i just finally got hold of the windows 7 rtm disk by mail. (looks alot like the vista rtm disk lol) , for me at my work place we test and develop apps for a range of system configurations, and i personally have been using windows 7 along side my mac at work ( i am not a mac fan just have it for iphone app development, and other apple/linux releated stuff) .
Either way, Waht i do wiht all my dev systems is to have my data ( my documents, Temp folder, My music etc) all on a secondary drive, never on the same drive as the windows partition since i am always installing adn reinstalling stuff. Since windows vista it has been easy to make folder targets to different drives ( easiset way in win 7 is to open libraries and right click each of the folders and move data to the drive you want it in). I have found this procedure so usefull that i have repartition even single drives to have one parttion for windows and the other for data, and you get all the advatages of doing fresh installs everytime.
Another very easy tool i recently started using on my co workers laptops is to use the windows easy transfer app. It backs up all your files in your home directory as well as other directories ( you can choose even which files or accounts to backup) as well as your settings in windows ( this includes even your wallpaper and theme schemes). This makes migrating systems now even easier and the best part of the tool is that after you have restored your system it will give you a report telling you what applications were installed on the previous system and will check mark those that are installed on the current system.
By the way. RTM so far is much faster and looks like its way more stable than the rc version. But the rtm build seems to have some new compatibily problems. example i use vipre antivirus on my laptops and norton on my work system, in rc all the software worked fine with no problems, in the rtm build vipre has an engine blocked by win 7 due to changes in the driver engine. i guess that is why i seem to have a more stable system now, since a lot of the drivers had to be fixed b/n rc and rtm.