Installing a new Windows 7 is so much fun :)

Ha, I'm having so much fun installing a fresh new OS

I've used Windows 7 as soon as it was released on Beta, even building a new system for it. Making the jump to 64bit, and saying good bye to old XP. Even though they say that it's just Vista Service Pack 3+, to me it's worth upgrading, in which Vista wasn't. So even after upgrading to new versions a couple times, it wasn't till I got the warnings that my RC1 version is about to expire that I've finally installed the Retail version. Though I've had it sitting here for months since I pre-ordered it at half price.

Of course, I'm doing a custom (Clean) install, not an upgrade this time, even though it allows to do it from Win 7 RC1. Btw, anyone can do a clean install with the cheaper upgrade version of Win 7, not needing an older version of Windows to do.
I've put all the files I've installed in a single directory on a different hard drive knowing this day would come. Gah, it has gotten huge. But it's not installing them that is a pain, but backing up and restoring all the previous settings for each app.

In the past, doing this type of upgrading was exciting. Not so much anymore. I've still got much to go. Where did I put that crack Serial Numbers?

But on the bright side, it's nice to remove a lot of the junk. While using the earlier versions of Win 7, I took the opportunity to test out many different alternatives from what I'm using. Often finding that many of the free versions are better than retail.

Also noticed that my system has improved since then:

The Windows Index Score at the top (underneath) is when I first installed Win 7 beta. The one below is my score after a new install... also some tweaks and additions since then. My hard drives (WD Caviar Blacks) are the bottleneck. Even set them to use AHCI this install and it didn't improve the score. I guess a striped raid or SSD is needed. But I do not trust Bios Raids, so would have to put down a lot of cash for a good Raid card if I really want to improve it.

Stsin wrote:

Where did I put that crack Serial Numbers?

lol

I hate doing re-installs.

It always seems so straightforward.

And then I realise I forgot this .... and I need that .... and I didn't back up this .... and I can't find that ....

My main PC could really do with a re-install i think. But I really can't be bothered. Maybe I'll just buy a new PC ...

Yep, what took so long was the preparation by trying to copy all the settings before installing.

Like for FireFox, I was exporting the bookmarks, then using another program to export passwords (I'd hate to have to redo all the passwords for all my brutes...and the many forums.).

BUT I found a much easier way. Just go to %AppData%\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\profiles and backup that randomly named profile. After reinstalling, copy and replace everything in that profile to the new one. It worked well, about everything was exactly the same: bookmarks, passwords, addons, and even all the greasemonkey scripts worked as before. The only thing I had to reinstall was the flashplayer. If using FireFox 3.6, they made it simple. Just type "about:support" in the URL, then it will display a button that goes directly to your profile which you can backup. I'm Glad today's programs don't store those settings in the registry like in the past.

So after learning that, I just go to %AppData%\Roaming to see the many other apps that save their settings there. Just backing up what's there has worked well in restoring many apps as before, like uTorrent, mIRC, foobar2000, etc.



When I did the custom (clean) install, I selected the same hard drive partition as the old. I was expecting an option to format that drive, but it started installing right away, saying that it has detected an older OS and putting it all in windows.old. So, you can actually do a new install right away on top of an old OS (if have enough space left), then later restore many of the settings by picking through that windows.old directory. Also shows to ensure you have a wiped drive before installing, format the drive yourself beforehand.

I was with Windows 7 before 2 months but I still don't know why I installed Win XP again? But I'm very satisfied with it because is one of the stable OS's i've ever tested I think to install it again after few days :)

Same as you. Went from beloved XP to Win 7 64 bits. First OS without a single driver problem during install. The only thing that was annoying was the removal of the old classic start menu from Win 7. Hopefully there is the Classic Shell that is imo the most valuable add-on for Win 7. So now everything looks again as in Win 95: smooth and without useless visual gadgets.

Sioc wrote:

Same as you. Went from beloved XP to Win 7 64 bits. First OS without a single driver problem during install. The only thing that was annoying was the removal of the old classic start menu from Win 7. Hopefully there is the Classic Shell that is imo the most valuable add-on for Win 7. So now everything looks again as in Win 95: smooth and without useless visual gadgets.

That's pretty nice. I've actually forgot about it since I haven't touched XP in many months. I guess they want people to become more dependent on Gadgets for quick access to programs. And my start menu's all program lists become huge very quickly as I install everything under the sun. Have to spend a lot of time organizing them in groups of folders

Btw, on my earlier version of Windows 7, it stopped show anything in my 'all programs' menu. Opening explorer to the menu and moving the menu items and back lets me see them again in the start menu, but was short lasting since they just disappeared again later. I ended moving all and moving back a bit at a time to find the culprit file. It ended up being either Dragon Age or ATI's Cataclysm links.


For all those thinking about or installing Windows 7:

Here is a great starter guide about Windows 7, especially for installation and tweaks:
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
The free basic guide is sufficient; it just doesn't include the pictures.

Since it's a PDF, one of the first programs I installed was the free Foxit Reader.
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
Much quicker and not a resource hog like Adobe Acrobat. Nor does it have the tendency to lock or crash the browser when opening a pdf through the web. Make it the default reader, and disable all the services added by acrobat (which got on my system when installing CS4).

Some other programs that new Window 7 users should install not mentioned in that guide:

WinRar or 7zip. MS' archiver is still fail IMO.

DirectX9 D3DX9 binaries
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=2da43d38-db71-4c1b-bc6a-9b6652cd92a3
Though Windows 7 has directX 11, there are games that specifically look for DirectX9+ (not recognizing 11). Even apps, like Media Player Homecinema.

There are some apps that use MSAgent which is no longer included with Windows 7.
I had to give them my email address for them to send me a link to the hotfix with password (why they don't just publicly post it, I don't know why). For 64 bit version only:
http://hotfixv4.microsoft.com/Microsoft%20Agent/latest/MSAgentWin7x64/200909210200/free/395040_intl_x64_zip.exe
pswd:n-fx*ftc

I should post a list of my favorite programs to install on Windows 7 x64 :)

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I should post a list of my favorite programs to install on Windows 7 x64

Ok, then let's go for it... :-)
Everything below is free of course and works flawlessy on Win7 X64.

Antivirus & Malware:
- Anvir Task Manager Free (get rid of the all that crap at startup) - http://www.anvir.com/taskmanager/
- CCleaner (HD cleaning) - http://www.ccleaner.com/
- Spybot Search & Destroy (malware removal) - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html
- HijackThis (registry analysis & cleaning) - http://www.hijackthis.de/en
- M$ Security Essentials (there are good other ones as well see http://www.av-comparatives.org/) - http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Disk management & integration:
- Classic Shell (Win7 looks now like Win95...) - http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
- 7-zip 64 bits (most efficient packer, take the beta which allows 64bit advantages) - http://www.7-zip.org/
- CDBurnerXP (burning freebie) - http://cdburnerxp.se/?lang=en
- Defraggler (block by block defragmenter) - http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
- Clonezilla (very very useful to make full images of HD in case of a crash! saved me from reinstalling windows a few times) - http://clonezilla.org/
- Total Commander (this one is shareware, but can't live without a two-window side-by-side file manager since the Cli-Mate in the Amiga days in the 80s ;-) ) - http://www.ghisler.com/index.htm

Multimedia:
- AutoGK (DVD encoding) - http://www.autogk.me.uk/
- IrfanView (image viewer) - http://www.irfanview.com/
- VLC media player (send Windows Media Center to trashcan) - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
- Winamp (mostly audio/streaming player) - http://www.winamp.com/
- Audacity (audio editor) - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

Coding:
- M$ Visual Studio Express (VB, C#, C++, etc... and it's free) - http://www.microsoft.com/exPress/

Text:
- Bullzip pdf printer (best pdf virtual printer around there) - http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php
- Foxit Reader (send Acrobat Reader to trashcan) - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
- Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlighting) - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
- OpenOffice (= M$ Office 4 free) - http://www.openoffice.org/

Sioc wrote:

Everything below is free of course and works flawlessy on Win7 X64.

Great list. I'm using most of them and will try some of the others :)

Quote :

Antivirus & Malware:
- Anvir Task Manager Free (get rid of the all that crap at startup) - http://www.anvir.com/taskmanager/
- CCleaner (HD cleaning) - http://www.ccleaner.com/
- Spybot Search & Destroy (malware removal) - http://www.safer-networking.org/en/home/index.html
- HijackThis (registry analysis & cleaning) - http://www.hijackthis.de/en
- M$ Security Essentials (there are good other ones as well see http://www.av-comparatives.org/) - http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

I'm giving M$ Security Essentials a try this time around (replaces Windows Defender).
Deselected all options when installed Spybot for less bloat.
- A-Squared Free (Anti-Virus + Anti-Spyware in one, and one of the least intrusive, used for manual scans) - http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/

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Disk management & integration:
- Classic Shell (Win7 looks now like Win95...) - http://classicshell.sourceforge.net/
- 7-zip 64 bits (most efficient packer, take the beta which allows 64bit advantages) - http://www.7-zip.org/
- CDBurnerXP (burning freebie) - http://cdburnerxp.se/?lang=en
- Defraggler (block by block defragmenter) - http://www.piriform.com/defraggler
- Clonezilla (very very useful to make full images of HD in case of a crash! saved me from reinstalling windows a few times) - http://clonezilla.org/
- Total Commander (this one is shareware, but can't live without a two-window side-by-side file manager since the Cli-Mate in the Amiga days in the 80s ;-) ) - http://www.ghisler.com/index.htm

I replaced Nero with CDBurnerXP. Nero became way too bloated and all I used was the Nero Burning Rom. I actually paid $100 for the Nero package, just to get charged extra to upgrade later...screw them.

Never used Total Commander, but was an Amiga Directory Opus user myself. Damn, you must be old The biggest revulsion when I switched to Windows was that very limited Windows Explorer. But Win 7 does make it somewhat easier now with snap left and right for two views...that is if don't mind it being full screen

Windows 7 defragger is improved from past OS versions, like now able to do MFT and multiple drives at once. Also can cancel with no problems. So trying that for now.

- Slysoft's AnyDVD (disables protection on the fly, so can use any copy program.) - http://www.slysoft.com/en/
A must for multimedia systems. It's not free, but bought it over 9 years ago when it was an unlimited upgrade license :)
- ImgBurn (free image burner) - http://www.imgburn.com/
Other than images, I use it to burn BD5/9 DVDs for my PS3.

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Multimedia:
- AutoGK (DVD encoding) - http://www.autogk.me.uk/
- IrfanView (image viewer) - http://www.irfanview.com/
- VLC media player (send Windows Media Center to trashcan) - http://www.videolan.org/vlc/
- Winamp (mostly audio/streaming player) - http://www.winamp.com/
- Audacity (audio editor) - http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

- MeGUI (The most comprehensive video encoder gui) - http://mewiki.project357.com/wiki/MeGUI
- AviSynth (frameserver for editing video) - http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page

- FastPictureViewer (fastest image viewer, but not free) - http://www.fastpictureviewer.com/
64 bit version that uses GPU hardware acceleration and multiple processor cores. Especially worth it when dealing with huge digital camera raws. I like it because it's simple.
- Picasa (free image viewer with a good organizer) - http://picasa.google.com/
To use when want to do more, also supports GPU hardware acceleration.

For anime Viewers:
CCCP (Combined Community Codec Pack - The only supported video package for all fansub groups) - http://www.cccp-project.net/
I also suggest this for anyone wanting to play about any video format out there. Stay away from any other codec packs. Comes with Media Player Classic Homecinema. Highly configurable, like for DXVA to play HD video with hardly any CPU utilization (1% for mine). And a must for new 1080p releases using stylized animated soft subtitles, also supporting ordered chapters.

MeGUI + AviSynth + CCCP = WIN :)

Quote :

Text:
- Bullzip pdf printer (best pdf virtual printer around there) - http://www.bullzip.com/products/pdf/info.php
- Foxit Reader (send Acrobat Reader to trashcan) - http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/reader/
- Notepad++ (text editor with syntax highlighting) - http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm
- OpenOffice (= M$ Office 4 free) - http://www.openoffice.org/

Totally agree.

Windows Virtual XP:

This is reason alone to upgrade to Windows 7. Windows XP Mode is quite simple and fast to install and works extremely well integrated with Windows 7. But need at least the Pro version.

Well, it took me a couple days to get my previous Virtual XPs to work after a clean installation:

Spoiler: