A little advice, please! Transition to Windows 7. [Archive]

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grunau_baby

July 1st, 2010, 01:42

stansdds

July 1st, 2010, 02:48

Seems to me that it is the Professional version that has the Windows XP emulation mode. Don't know how important that might be to you or how well it works.

gigabyte

July 1st, 2010, 03:05

Hi,

for summer I am planning to finally drop Vista for W7 to give my rig and FSX a better performance.

Two questions are still open for me though:
1. Is home edition sufficiant or do I need professional (price difference is steep, so I prefer a "less-is-more" solution if it really works out)?
2. Are there many compatability conflicts with older software?
3. Should I go for 64 or 32 bit?

Thanks for any input!

Regards
Alex

Alex, I was an early adoptor of W7 and I have been very pleased, if you were satsified with Vista (I was fine with Vista myself I never had problems with it) you will love W7!

As to the choice between Home & Pro, I guess it depends on your needs, Pro does offer significant advantages especially if you have legacy software and are concerned with compatibility. I personally went with Pro and I am very pleased I did, the main advantage for me is the Windows XP Mode (Windows Virtual Machine running XP). Your computer must support Hardware Virtualization - check your BIOS for compatibility, and with Pro it is an optional "FREE" download, but IMHO a must for anyone who has older apps and games.

Compatibility is much improved in general in Home and Pro and pretty much a no brainer if you go with Pro and can use XP Mode. The one trick I found useful is if installing legacy software in W7 and you suspect it will have any compatibility issues at all, make sure you use Compatibility Mode on the installer - this can solve many problems later on. What I mean by this is, do not use the apps Autorun installer, locate the setup or install file with Win Explorer, Right Click the file, select "Properties" then the Compatibility tab and set the installer file to run in XP mode (you can also select which Service Pack version in the drop down). This is often overlooked, and people only set Compatibility on the program exe file after it is installed, with some Apps that does not work. I have only had one application that I have not been successful with so far, and I have to admit I have not tried very hard, it is an old database app written originally for W2K and ported to XP so it is not surprising there are issues, but I believe I could probably make it work if I wanted to spend some time on it. W7 Compatibility with Legacy apps is much improved over Vista IMHO.

Now the 32 bit vs. 64 bit, that depends on your hardware and what you want to run, really if your hardware will support 64 bit my feeling is that is the best choice. The main advantage for most people is support for more than 3.75 GB of system RAM, that is the max limitation of all 32 bit opperating systems, so even if you have 8 GB and your hardware spports it a 32 bit OS can't use anything above 3.75 gb. I do not think it makes much difference for games (FSX is an exception to that tho) there are few that can truly take advantage of a 64 bit OS, however if they can it will make a difference in performance. *note on this - some hardware will support a 64 bit OS but will still not support more than 3.75gb of RAM, so check you MOBO capacity before adding more than 4 GB and wasting your money - I found that out the hard way, my HP Media Centre ran W7/64 fine but it would not address any RAM above 3.75GB.

My personal opinion, W7 is an excellent OS, if your hardware supports a 64bit OS and more than 4GB of RAM it is worth every penny to get the Pro version and boost your RAM to at least 8 GB.

Hope this is of some help, and if you do make theleap and have any specific questions just drop me a PM, I am always happy to help if I can.

OH BTW for any W7 users out there, there is a great little Tweaking tool for W7, "Windows 7 in a Box" (just google the name), it allows a vast amount of tweaking options and does not require installation, just extract the exe to any folder andrun it, very handy little tool for geeks like me.

grunau_baby

July 1st, 2010, 04:08

Thanks Gigabyte,

for this amount of usefull information for me it helps me a lot:
1-2. Professional should be it for me, not so many older stuff on my rig, but the XP-compatability-mode is important enough, I don´t want to take any risks since the wife uses the comp for her job, too.
3. Uselessnes of my current RAM on my Vista is one of the main reasons to cross over, so I will have to go for 64 bit, BUT will have to find out first if my rig (not very old, but...) supports this step forward...

Still on month to, before I have enough time to even start with it, so lots to find out before.

Alex

gigabyte

July 1st, 2010, 07:38

You are most welcome Alex, I am sure you will find W7 a big improvement over XP and Vista, I am very pleased with the OS.

I am not sure on how you plan to do your upgrade, but something to consider if you can swing the small additional cost - buy a new Hard Drive to install the new OS on. I know it adds to the cost of the upgrade but the cost of a 1TB hard drive is now under $100.00 US and Cdn. The reason I mention this is twofold, 1) a fresh install is better than an inplace upgrade from the performance point of view not to mention much simpler, and 2) you can move you old HD to a secondary drive and simply copy your important data to your new user folder after you have W7 set-up and configured - with the added benifit of knowing you already have a full backup of everything on the original drive. Then once you have everything set-up the way you want it you can format the old HD and use it for inplace backup or even as the "Gaming" drive which helps with performance - I always try to keep my games on a drive seperate from the drive holding the OS.

There is also one other trick I use when doing this type of upgrade, I do phantom installs of many of my apps and copy the originals back over the new installs. This can be kind of tricky with things like FSX that have config files in several places but if you have added a fair amount of scenery and configuration you can save a lot of time.

The process I use works like this;

1) install your app (say FSX for example) on your new had drive normally to the same path you use for the original install i.e. C:\program files\microsoft games\Flight Simulator X (be careful if you are now using a 64 bit OS the new default install may show C:\Program Files (x86) you will need to change it to the regular Program Files). This will install a fresh unmodified or update version of the app/game.

2) navigate to the new app folder and rename it i.e. from Flight Simulator X to Backup Flight Simulator X

3 ) Now simply go and copy the original folder complete with all add on's and configurations from your old drive to the new drive right where they should be.

4) Make sure you check for all the supporting files and folders such as the saved flights, FSX.CFG etc that are in your old My Documents and Local Data folders and move them as well (I can give you a full list if you decide to do this) and any add on's that installed in folders outside the main App folder such as Capitian Sim add on planes or OZX Scenery, those will need to be copied to the new drive into the same path to be picked up.

5) test it all out... if everything seems to be OK after a reasonable period of time you can format the old drive and have lots of new free space, and delete the renamed folders on your new drive.

I know this seems like a lot of work, and it is, but it can save a great deal of reconfig especially for things like FSX where you have mapped keys and added a significant number of tweaks and add on's.

Good luck with the upgrade and as I said if you have any questions on the process let me know I am happy to help where I can.