Windows 7 Upgrade Makes Some PCs Unusable

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My upgrade from Vista x64 went without problems. A few incompatibilities were pointed out by the program, BUT a few programs simply act up anyway. Oddly enough, Facebook is purely browser based but seems to be affected (I am using Firefox). Of course some Samsung drivers (especially NCE) refuse to work and Creative's driver for the X-Fi doesn't install correctly. Other than that there isn't much to complain.

HOWEVER, internal changes and the associated potential for less hassle aside, UAC is EXACTLY the same as the latest Vista version. The interface changes are minimal in my use and pinning programs to the task bar is really only partially implemented. (No groups, minimized windows are easily missed, trying to start another instance is a bit annoying)

Really, despite all the hype, this is Vista SP3 at best.
 
Considering the shear unlimited amount of possible computer configurations out there I'm amazed this isn't a more frequent problem.

That said, any move to a new OS (no matter if its a new Windows, Mac OSX, Linux, etc) should be accompanied by a backup of all important data.
 
[citation][nom]rumar4u[/nom]All things that Marcus Yam Post are against Windows. Pure Mac Fan[/citation]

Doesn't matter if he's a Mac fan or not...the simple fact that his article is true, more than makes up for any opinions he may or may not have in regards to Apple or "IBM/Compatible" computers. I made 3 attempts to run the "upgrade" over the weekend, with no success. I also made 2 attempts to perform a clean install before it was finally successful on attempt #3 at a clean install. These problems didn't seem to exist in any of the betas or the RC....but they're more widespread than anyone hoped for with the RTM. I even ran the 90day Enterprise trial with no such issues....which makes it even more unusual that my Win7HP install had such issues.
 
I upgraded a PC from Vista to 7 and it actually runs better. Upgrade process was really easy.

I would imagine there has to be a portion of the "failed" upgrade machines that had pre-existing problems.
 
For all those who touch their machines, even to do a simple thing like a tuesday patch run, who do not have both OS images and file level backups, Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha, dumbass!

That said, the OS image backup functions of Vista and 7 suffer from the same borked code. They ONLY work to DVD (unless its the first image backup you've taken, and you restore to it before any program indexews, scans, or in any other way touches the backup folder on a hard disk, and you have at least 2 physical internal HDDs). Get a REAL backup program. After 20 years Microsoft's backup is still worse than a cheap app like TrueImage and robocopy for file backups...

Before you upgrade
1) back up everything to external disk.
2) reboot and take an offline system image of all drives will OS or applications
3) run the user migration tool to export your config manually (in case an upgrade does not work, but you want to preserve at least most of your configs after a clean install).
4) attempt an in place upgrade if you dare
5) if necessary, clean install and import data.
6) DO NEW BACKUPS
7) install updated apps and drivers
8) DO MORE NEW BACKUPS

It's time consuming. It's a pain. It's far less of both than rebuilding everything from scratch, and less costly if you forgot to document your software keys or back up downloaded installers...
 
Just to balance things out a bit. Problems With Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; multiple machines upgraded, all with serious, awful stability problems of some sort. Safari’s crashing. Photoshop’s crashing. Apps you didn’t even know could crash (like TextEdit) are crashing. They’re crashing when we save files, crashing randomly when we’re not saving files, and so on. iChat is putting out error messages about being unwilling to send text-only messages, seemingly at random. Some machines are hanging on restart; others boot up every time without a problem. The new feature we’re seeing more than any other is the updated crash reporter—something that hasn’t been as extensively reported upon as, say, changes to how the screen dims when you click and hold on an icon in the dock. Snow Leopard not installing on boot volume , Incorrect Time Zones, Security settings not launching, etc.
 
this issue is due to an Intel ATA controller driver. I seen this during testing for my company and was fixed by updating to the latest intel ATA driver/chipset driver.

as for clean installs it is the only way to go, cause lets face it, you wouldn't take your old pine tree car deodorizer and shove it in your new car.
 
[citation][nom]rumar4u[/nom]All things that Marcus Yam Post are against Windows. Pure Mac Fan[/citation]

How can reporting a thread of Win7 install errors be considered as being "against Windows?" If it is true, then it is true and hopefully by exposing such then it will prevent others from incurring the same problem. If he was truly "against Windows" then he would say nothing and let the problems go on unreported so that there would be no talk of how to avert the problem. That way the problem could snow ball without any interference.

Ever think that maybe the editor said "Yam, you have the Apple beat and the Windows issues beat." Rarely does a reporter work on just what he likes.
 
[citation][nom]o0RaidR0o[/nom]Just to balance things out a bit. Problems With Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard; multiple machines upgraded, all with serious, awful stability problems of some sort. Safari’s crashing. Photoshop’s crashing. Apps you didn’t even know could crash (like TextEdit) are crashing. They’re crashing when we save files, crashing randomly when we’re not saving files, and so on. iChat is putting out error messages about being unwilling to send text-only messages, seemingly at random. Some machines are hanging on restart; others boot up every time without a problem. The new feature we’re seeing more than any other is the updated crash reporter—something that hasn’t been as extensively reported upon as, say, changes to how the screen dims when you click and hold on an icon in the dock. Snow Leopard not installing on boot volume , Incorrect Time Zones, Security settings not launching, etc.[/citation]

Interesting. I had to install SL on several machines myself (45 to be exact), and had no problems. You need to go into your Library->Preferences and delete the various plist files that are associated with the programs that are crashing. Either that or someone came along and interrupted the install process, or the hardware is not compatible with SL...must be Intel.

Like most OS installs, the problems are usually the result of the end user. Sounds like a lot of the Win7 issues occur when people try to install the 62-bit onto a 32-bit OS or they don't do a clean install. This problem with the Win7 installs I blame 100% on the end-user, though I wish MS would stick to using .iso
 
All of the student digital river issues have supposedly been fixed. If you were affect you have to go download the updated installer. (I guess the first version wouldn't let you upgrade from x32 to x64, but now it does via a clean install)
 
I had this problem with an Enterprise ISO I got from MSDN. The computer just kept rebooting and there was nothing I could do. However, it turned out to be a bad download as many are reporting. Once I've re-downloaded the same ISO, everything went smoothly.
 
So a new operating system from Microsoft is released and people expected there to be no problems of any kind? I'd love to meet these people because I have like $100,000 in Monopoly money I'd love to sell to them for real money. I can't honestly believe that people would skip formatting and doing a clean install. So what if it takes forever to backup your data? If it's that important of data that you need would you not eventually back it up anyway? May as well back it up now and then do a fresh install and have fewer problems. Besides, anyone who buys an operating system within the first six months of its release is just asking for problems and vulnerabilities.
 
upgraded my laptop & desktop both from ultimate 64 to ultimate 64, tooook soooo long, about 2 hours for both, no hick ups no issues at all. Might add l both machines are fairly new. Usually would have done clean install, but was too lazy/lack of time to backup my stuff.
About this mac vs ms, pls just grow up, if you like mac hooray , if you like windows cheers for you. I like them all and have them, I have a mac pro, build my own pcs and love KDE, linux, AIX et al. Each of them has their beauty, go ahead and try them, learn and explore them, create something with them, that's what they are for.(and they all have their problems and when you encounter them and learn a little bit about computing you will arrive to show respect regardless who uses what)
 
Sign that your OS is less than awesome: Clean install required (or even recommended)

IMO that sounds like a huge PITA, and paying $89-200 for doing all that work seems nuts. I have about 10-15 apps that I use regularly and maybe 10 more that I use infrequently. That is a lot of re-intsalling if wipe the disk and start "clean"

Sticking with Vista until there is a compelling reason to switch (ie real performance difference?)
 
I've had two "show stoppers" installing Windows 7 upgrade. When I say show stoppers I'm referring to how an average person, without computer skills would be effected.

MS requires the upgrade of Win7 be installed into the same partition as the currently active Windows...whether it be a Vista or XP install. There is a way around this, but not for a typical person without computer skills.

1st install:
I installed Windows 7 into a XP Mediacenter PC. The PC had a fairly popular Abit motherboard. Win7 did not install drivers for the ethernet chip. This effectively locked me out from surfing the web for a solution with that computer. Luckily, I had another computer and knew how to search for drivers for the onboard ethernet chip. This took about an hour of time...as the drivers were not available on Abit's website either. I transfered the drivers to the computer with a memory stick and was back in business.

2nd install:
This time I installed the Win7 Premium 32bit upgrade on a Dell 9300 laptop that was running Vista Ultimate (but that originally came with XP.) The software informed me that it couldn't do a simple upgrade because I was changing the version so I had to do a custom install and lose all installed programs. That worked right up to the point it had to reboot when the system refused to boot into the setup menu. It did, fortunately, recover into Vista...after a lonnnnng wait, and I had to rerun the install from a format and use a trick I located on the web to use the upgrade as a full install. When booted into Win7 it was running VGA (basic video drivers) and had no WIFI or sound drivers. I had to hook the laptop up to the ethernet and activate. After this it downloaded update for the video and WIFI...but not the sound. Another hour search of the web located Vista drivers for the sound card.

So that was two installs with serious difficulties. A typical Tom's Hardware visitor might not think these are big deals but these are the exact kind of things my neighbors and friends come to me to fix when they can't figure them out.

Windows 7 install is a huge improvement over previous versions but MS still needs to do a better job with hardware recognition and driver availability, and foremost, MS needs to have drivers available for ethernet and WIFI.
 
I've had two "show stoppers" installing Windows 7 upgrade. When I say show stoppers I'm referring to how an average person, without computer skills would be effected.

MS requires the upgrade of Win7 be installed into the same partition as the currently active Windows...whether it be a Vista or XP install. There is a way around this, but not for a typical person without computer skills.

1st install:
I installed Windows 7 into a XP Mediacenter PC. The PC had a fairly popular Abit motherboard. Win7 did not install drivers for the ethernet chip. This effectively locked me out from surfing the web for a solution with that computer. Luckily, I had another computer and knew how to search for drivers for the onboard ethernet chip. This took about an hour of time...as the drivers were not available on Abit's website either. I transfered the drivers to the computer with a memory stick and was back in business.

2nd install:
This time I installed the Win7 Premium 32bit upgrade on a Dell 9300 laptop that was running Vista Ultimate (but that originally came with XP.) The software informed me that it couldn't do a simple upgrade because I was changing the version so I had to do a custom install and lose all installed programs. That worked right up to the point it had to reboot when the system refused to boot into the setup menu. It did, fortunately, recover into Vista...after a lonnnnng wait, and I had to rerun the install from a format and use a trick I located on the web to use the upgrade as a full install. When booted into Win7 it was running VGA (basic video drivers) and had no WIFI or sound drivers. I had to hook the laptop up to the ethernet and activate. After this it downloaded update for the video and WIFI...but not the sound. Another hour search of the web located Vista drivers for the sound card.

So that was two installs with serious difficulties. A typical Tom's Hardware visitor might not think these are big deals but these are the exact kind of things my neighbors and friends come to me to fix when they can't figure them out.

Windows 7 install is a huge improvement over previous versions but MS still needs to do a better job with hardware recognition and driver availability, and foremost, MS needs to have drivers available for ethernet and WIFI.
 
[citation][nom]yadayada[/nom]I've had two "show stoppers" installing Windows 7 upgrade. When I say show stoppers I'm referring to how an average person, without computer skills would be effected.MS requires the upgrade of Win7 be installed into the same partition as the currently active Windows...whether it be a Vista or XP install. There is a way around this, but not for a typical person without computer skills.1st install:I installed Windows 7 into a XP Mediacenter PC. The PC had a fairly popular Abit motherboard. Win7 did not install drivers for the ethernet chip. This effectively locked me out from surfing the web for a solution with that computer. Luckily, I had another computer and knew how to search for drivers for the onboard ethernet chip. This took about an hour of time...as the drivers were not available on Abit's website either. I transfered the drivers to the computer with a memory stick and was back in business.2nd install:This time I installed the Win7 Premium 32bit upgrade on a Dell 9300 laptop that was running Vista Ultimate (but that originally came with XP.) The software informed me that it couldn't do a simple upgrade because I was changing the version so I had to do a custom install and lose all installed programs. That worked right up to the point it had to reboot when the system refused to boot into the setup menu. It did, fortunately, recover into Vista...after a lonnnnng wait, and I had to rerun the install from a format and use a trick I located on the web to use the upgrade as a full install. When booted into Win7 it was running VGA (basic video drivers) and had no WIFI or sound drivers. I had to hook the laptop up to the ethernet and activate. After this it downloaded update for the video and WIFI...but not the sound. Another hour search of the web located Vista drivers for the sound card.So that was two installs with serious difficulties. A typical Tom's Hardware visitor might not think these are big deals but these are the exact kind of things my neighbors and friends come to me to fix when they can't figure them out.Windows 7 install is a huge improvement over previous versions but MS still needs to do a better job with hardware recognition and driver availability, and foremost, MS needs to have drivers available for ethernet and WIFI.[/citation]


MS has nothing to do with driver availability. The manufacturers had more than sufficient time to develop the necessary drivers. As for your "fairly popular ABit motherboard"...obviously it wasn't nearly as popular as you think. MS can only package the drivers they are provided with by the manufacturers. If you think this is a problem, maybe you should try using an OS that actually requires some knowledge, like Linux. Honestly, based solely on your posting here, I wouldn't let you within 20ft of my computer.
 
Bought the 3 pack upgrade for windows 7 and upgraded three machines in my household. One 32bit and two 64bit all Vista, I ran into no major problems although I did have to reload my soundcard driver on the 32 bit laptop to get my mic to work. I let it search online and it found it no problems.

My 32 laptop is by far more responsive with it's older C2D and 3GB of RAM.

Going to dive into setting up MC on the desktop and messing around the the 360 extender as I heard it works great this time around.
 
[citation][nom]redgarl[/nom]Phhh... it doesn't surprise me at all. Microsoft rush their products, we just need to think about the xbox 360 for example.[/citation]

They were working on Windows 7 before Vista was even completed. You are kidding yourself if you did not think they planned this. It is an exact repeat of the ME release followed by XP. Release a big steaming pile for everyone to take a bite out of, that way they buy themselves a little more time and the "next" OS looks like they actually cared and listened to what their customers wanted. Making others join in on the upgrades as well. Microsoft knows how to market their product. That is why they have a ridiculous marketshare.

Sony is reporting similar numbers for failing consoles as well. Controllers are flying out of Wii user's hands, and iPhones batteries are exploding and has the battery life of a mayfly. I am guessing that all of these products are rushed too since they have problems.

Seriously, all out products are failing because we keep letting companies pay some 10 year old in China to code out software and build out products, because it is cheap.
 
[citation][nom]datawrecker[/nom]They were working on Windows 7 before Vista was even completed. You are kidding yourself if you did not think they planned this. It is an exact repeat of the ME release followed by XP. Release a big steaming pile for everyone to take a bite out of, that way they buy themselves a little more time and the "next" OS looks like they actually cared and listened to what their customers wanted. Making others join in on the upgrades as well. Microsoft knows how to market their product. That is why they have a ridiculous marketshare. Sony is reporting similar numbers for failing consoles as well. Controllers are flying out of Wii user's hands, and iPhones batteries are exploding and has the battery life of a mayfly. I am guessing that all of these products are rushed too since they have problems.Seriously, all out products are failing because we keep letting companies pay some 10 year old in China to code out software and build out products, because it is cheap.[/citation]

WOW !!! im speechless! one of the funniest conspiracy theories i have ever heard ! good job man!
 
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