Can Anyone download the RC and other questions.

[mactronix]

Ok so im going to guess some of you may know me from the graphics and display forum and to be honest in pretty clueless about other aspects of how this kind of thing works with PC's.
What im wondering is can anyone download and use the RC of W7 ?
If not is it to late to register for it ?
Can i dual boot it on a XP system ?

Basically im running a XP system and am looking to update to W7 when its out. Now i thought i wasnt interested in all this RC stuff and was quite happy in the past to let others find all the glitches etc as my tec savy at OS level isnt all that.
I have since had a change of heart and wish to get in on the act and if possible help others with my findings.

The only thing i dont want to do is to be blunt **** up the XP part of the machine as its OEM and as such i dont think i can just reinstall the os if it all goes tits up.
Im running a 3850 At the minute but will be getting a 4770 shortly after release and wish to be able to compare the difference the new OS will make. Thats what im personally looking to get out of it from a purely selfish point of view.

I have totally no idea how to configure a dual boot system but am far from slow on the up take. Im guessing its not as easy as just downloading it and running the install, getting asked to partition C, pick a size for the partition install W7 in said partition and then pick which OS to use when booting the PC ?
Also if something goes wrong when running a dual boot system is the other system on the other OS completely isolated from this ?

Guess that enough questions for now
Sorry to go on, just wanted to try and get things straight
Thanks in advance for any answers

Mactronix

 

[Shadow703793]

1. Yes, it (Win 7 RC1) should be available for public download.
2. Yes, you can dual boot with XP.

========
If you have a spare HDD, unplug all your HDDs, plug in the spare. Then lad Win 7 to it. Then re-plug in all HDDs. You can boot in to the Win 7 installation using F12/DEL/F1 key option or something like that.

That's how I'm running it.

 

[astrotrain1000]

I'm using Windows 7 x64 and I love it. Shadows right, if you have a second hdd that is the best way to go. I think W7 actually gives you the option of dual booting when you install it, maybe someone else could confirm that?

 

[knotknut]

You can boot in to the Win 7 installation using F12/DEL/F1 key option or something like that.

That's how I'm running it.

Please explain.

 

[mactronix]

1. Yes, it (Win 7 RC1) should be available for public download.
2. Yes, you can dual boot with XP.

========
If you have a spare HDD, unplug all your HDDs, plug in the spare. Then lad Win 7 to it. Then re-plug in all HDDs. You can boot in to the Win 7 installation using F12/DEL/F1 key option or something like that.

That's how I'm running it.

Thanks for that. Im assuming that if i put it on a second HDD then when i am booted into W7 the other HDD isnt there as far as W7 is concerned ? Or would it just be better if im worried to physically keep the XP drive unpluged While im playing around with W7 ?
Its going to need new drivers for the graphics etc and i dont want to FUBAR the XP drivers.

Mactronix

 

[cliffro]

Well you should definitely have it unplugged while installing W7 for sure. And installing separate drivers will not in any way interfere with XP.

 

[mactronix]

So having Xp drivers and W7 drivers on the same system wont cause compatability/stability issues then ?
As i said this side of things is all greek to me.
So i can load W7 on to a seperate drive along with the drivers that are needed and all the apps that are on the other drive will just work ? What about using two drives does that mean setting up in a Raid config ?
Im sorry if these questions sound a bit dumb but as i said i have never done anything like this before.

Thanks
Mactronix

 

[kyeana]

You can have two different drives without having them in a RAID array 😉 They will just have different mapped letters (ie one might be your C:\ drive and the other might be your D:\ drive)

As for all your programs on the xp drive, they will not work on the W7 drive. They are all installed into the file system/registray/etc of the xp drive, and not on the W7 drive. You will have to re-install all the programs you want on the W7 drive to use them

That being said you can still access the files on your XP drive from the W7 drive. For example if you have music or documents (pretty much anything that doesn't need to be installed) on the xp drive, you can access them directly without having to copy them over to your W7 drive.

 

[mactronix]

Ok thanks for that kyeana,
So i guess its abit more complicated than i thought, but not too much.
Im looking forward to giving it a try.
I would expect more question around about the 6th of May if i were you guys 😉

Thanks
Mactronix

 

[silversurfernhs]

i done have any questions, but im sure enjoying the new os, i didnt run the betas so i dont know whats diff from those, but straight from vista 64, its an amazing improvement

 

[will_chellam]

I have just installed windows 7 (7057) on my xp machine, beforehand I had a 250Gb drive split into C: and D: (125 gb partitions) and two 1tb drives used for documents, videos etc.

Basically:

Boot from W7 CD
Install to D: partition (make sure nothing important on there!)
complete installation

when the computer starts up it automatically asks if you want to boot windows 7 or windows XP

done.

 

[Shadow703793]

Please explain.

Ok here's what I did step by step:

1. Unplug all HDDs except the HDD that you plan to install Win 7 on. Please note the boot order of the HDDs.
2. Boot, and install Win 7 on to that HDD.
3. After install, plug in all the removed HDDs. Make sure you change the boot order to the way it was before you unplugged the drives.
4. You can now boot in to Win 7 by pressing what ever key you need to access the boot drive menu. In my case it's F12 (For all Gigabyte boards it's F12 IIRC).

That's it. Reason for doing this is if you dual boot the normal way Win 7 will write to your MBR. I prefer not to do it since it can some times mess up things, esp. with a Beta/RC OS.

 

[Shadow703793]

Thanks for that. Im assuming that if i put it on a second HDD then when i am booted into W7 the other HDD isnt there as far as W7 is concerned ? Or would it just be better if im worried to physically keep the XP drive unpluged While im playing around with W7 ?
Its going to need new drivers for the graphics etc and i dont want to FUBAR the XP drivers.

Mactronix

Win 7 will still see all the HDDs, if done this way.

 

[mactronix]

Win 7 will still see all the HDDs, if done this way.

Thanks for babysitting me through this Shadow
Does it matter which drive i make the Master ? I only have one and will get a 80GB Drive for W7.
I plan to Install as you say with the W7 Drive as the Master (Old XP drive unplugged) Play with it for a couple of hours without the XP drive plugged in. That's the point after all cant just jump back to XP when things get a bit difficult.
If i get on with it then fine but i will re attach the XP drive as a slave so i can still get to files etc.
Then i just enter the boot order menu to decide if i want to run W7 today by selecting the master as first boot or XP by selecting the slave as first boot ?

Thanks again
Mactronix

 

[Shadow703793]

^After install you can plug in the XP drive back in. You can boot in to either drive by using the boot options in the motherboard. You can also let the motherboard load XP first by simply changing the order in the BIOS to boot from XP drive first.

Btw, RC is available right now to every one:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

You just have to sign up for the Microsoft Connect first.

 

[mactronix]

Thanks for the link, i already have it on disc but im waiting on the new drive and more importantly some decent drivers for my 4770. 🙁

Mactronix

 

[mactronix]

Can i please also ask about it saying you need 16GB free space to install W7. Is this just for swap and temp files etc while it installs or does it really take up that much space.
Reason being i have a spare 20GB baracuda drive sitting about and was going to put it on that but if it does really use 16GB i wont be able to get a decent game on it to test with.
I guesss waiting for the 80GB drive i ordered to arive makes sense or i would probably have to download another copy or key to get it to work on the 80 when it gets here.

Just want to get started :lol:

Mactronix

 

[Jonmor68]

No it doesn't actually install 16gb, but it needs that much for the install as it will be copying files onto the drive for instalation and extracting from compressed files.
Once it finishes the instalation files get deleted.
Think of it this way, you have a 20gb drive and copy a 7gb zip file to it, you then want to extract the files from the zip file containing 10gb of uncompressed files to the same drive, you will need enough free space for both, when finished you delete the zip file.