Windows 7 upgrades "crippling" PCs

hence why it's always better to do a clean install than a shoddy upgrade from Vista.

By DaChimp on 28 Oct 2009

Endless Reboot

I had the same problem with a clean install of Windows 7 RC1 shortly after it came out. The hardware was brand new and bought for Windows 7 at home. I informed Microsoft and when I got no response (not even an acknowledgement), I assumed I must be alone. My new hardware is now running Windows 2000. I still have no working copy of Windows 7 at home.

I would dearly like to get an answer to this issue.

By paulstanding on 28 Oct 2009

If this problem is down to a corrupt burn of the install CD, then it raises the question of whether digital distribution of an OS the right way to go for the layman.

The student upgrade version of Windows 7 distributed by Digital River was a farce too. Rather than providing a simple download of an ISO to burn, they provided 3 files, two .BOX files and a .EXE which, when extracted, dumped the contents of the DVD into a folder on the HDD with no further instructions.

With a bit of googling I found a random site with some instructions on how to convert the extracted files to an ISO via the command line, but there is no way the average non-techie coud have handled it.

Also, The Digital River distribution of the 64-bit version wouldn't allow extraction on 32-bit platforms leaving those wanting to upgrade to 64-bit from 32-bit stranded.

It's a pretty poor show which is a shame as Windows 7 is really good.

By renhoek on 28 Oct 2009

I'm with you DaChimp, I would never do an inplace upgrade to a new OS. Clean install everytime, it's just logical.

By Grunthos on 28 Oct 2009

Microsoft has to learn that the upgrade is as important as the features in the OS. During the whole beta stage I repeatedly saw instructions to do a clean install and that they were not worried about upgrades. They should have handled the XP transition too. You can upgrade XP to Vista and Vista to Win 7 so why not XP to Win 7. I dare say that this is only 1% of upgraders that are having this trouble but still, why ruin a great OS with problems like this. If it is corrupt ISOs then it's out of their hands. We'll see

By TimoGunt on 28 Oct 2009

Just reading the linked thread and it appears that the problem is occurring with retail copies of the disc, so rules out a bad burn.

By renhoek on 28 Oct 2009

by the way I'm all for clean installs myself but we're the minority because most people don't want to reinstall everything. You can't blame them. Us techies like a bit of messing about

By TimoGunt on 28 Oct 2009

Just reading the linked thread and it appears that the problem is occurring with retail copies of the disc, so rules out a bad burn.

By renhoek on 28 Oct 2009

It's not just us techies who mess around, typical users also install garbage on their PCs which will inevitably end up causing a problem somewhere, either during the installation or a month or two down the line. MS should be more strongly recommending that clean installs are done, and telling people how to partition their disk from the outset to separate system files and user files and make things easier in future.

By halsteadk on 28 Oct 2009

What's the point?

I work as a programmer and am using Vista. My working environment is rock solid and I have a number of tools installed including Adobe CS4 Web Premium, Flex builder, various PHP tools plus the usual office package.

A Clean install would mean at least one entire day spent on a process that yields minor productivity improvements. Even an upgrade install would involve a complete backup before I start.

Why would I bother? Slick as Windows 7 is, slick doesn't pay the bills. The cost of the software might be £70 but the cost of my time to install it is worth much more and that's assuming it works. If the install goes wrong then the cost becomes utterly prohibitive: I can't afford the risk.

I will get Windows 7 when I buy a PC with it on, OR I decide that I can afford to risk toasting my laptop (which isn't used for development). As for becoming my primary OS, not for a while yet.

After all, IT'S ONLY AN OPERATING SYSTEM! It doesn't allow me to do anything more than I could do before, nor does it allow me to do anything significantly quicker.

By KevPartner on 28 Oct 2009

Predictable!

As sure as night follows day there will always be some people who have problems with Windows upgrades (remember XP SP1 anyone?). Its just not possible for MS to test every combination of hardware + naive idiot. Most of the posters seem to share one thing in common; It never occurred to them to do an image backup before they started!!! One guy commenced the upgrade with only 300mb of freespace. Doh!

By rjp2000 on 28 Oct 2009

@KevPartner
Yes I agree which is why I won't pay Apple's premium prices to get Mac OSX!!

By rjp2000 on 28 Oct 2009

Most of the posters on that forum have email addresses ending ...@mac.com, probably.

By verdot on 28 Oct 2009

Most of the posters on that forum have email addresses ending ...@mac.com, probably.

By verdot on 28 Oct 2009

What's so magic about a clean install? Has anyone actually examined Microsoft's code to see whether Windows is capable of corrupting itself? Of course not. This looks like an urban myth to me. Superstition and hearsay. I certainly don't enjoy spending 24 hours staring at progress bars.

By c6ten on 28 Oct 2009

c6ten - doing an in-place upgrade is like putting a new carpet down without sorting out the rotten floorboards underneath.

There's nothing "magic" about a clean install, the point is that there is also nothing magic about an in-place upgrade, which it would need to cope with any eventuality that a user had got their computer into with Vista. The people doing in-place upgrades stand a higher chance of spending a lot more time looking at progress bars (or worse) than those who do a clean sweep.

By halsteadk on 28 Oct 2009

I'm with KevPartner. I just don't see the point of a desperate rush to upgrade. It is Vista in all but name. There have been no real, stand out improvements and most likely the fractional speed increases come from Microsoft disabling some things that ran by default.

I still want to downgrade to XP. The big problem is finding the time to reinstall everything I use day to day.

By bubbles16 on 28 Oct 2009

Endless Reboot

I had the same problem with a clean install of Windows 7 RC1 shortly after it came out. The hardware was brand new and bought for Windows 7 at home. I informed Microsoft and when I got no response (not even an acknowledgement), I assumed I must be alone. My new hardware is now running Windows 2000. I still have no working copy of Windows 7 at home.

I would dearly like to get an answer to this issue.

By paulstanding on 28 Oct 2009

@ renhoek

The reason 32-bit users are having problems with the 64-bit upgrade is that they are using a 32-bit OS.

Microsoft only support 32-bit to 32-bit or 64-bit to 64-bit. There is no upgrade path from 32-bit to 64-bit. It is a clean install or nothing, so not surprising.

I bought a 64-bit 7 Pro and did a clean install (previously had 32-bit Ultimate). It was quick and painless, then restoring my data and re-installing the core apps.

It doesn't take much time and I ended up with a clean machine.

By big_D on 28 Oct 2009

re Endless Reboot

@paulstanding
Sorry but your post seems a bit strange. If I'd tried to install W7 without success on new kit, I can't imagine going back to W2k, XP or Vista maybe. I'm surprised that you can still get all the drivers to support the latest kit, and that modern software will run on it. But I guess that's the good thing about Windows, the support for old versions from MS and hardware vendors lasts for years.

By rjp2000 on 28 Oct 2009

@c6ten
"What's so magic about a clean install?"
Simple really, your new installation doesn't inherit the junk and problems of your old version.

By rjp2000 on 28 Oct 2009

What junk? What problems? I ran Windows 98 for 8 years without a single BSOD, and it was an inplace upgrade from Win 95. This is just superstition, and only makes sense if your computer has previously belonged to a monkey.

By c6ten on 28 Oct 2009

@c6ten
Just because you didn't have problems the one time you did an upgrade however many years ago doesn't mean that upgrades don't cause problem. You use the word 'superstition', I use the word 'anecdote'. Neither equals evidence.

By jenny_hearn on 28 Oct 2009

@big_D

That is all well and good if you get given a disc to do the clean install from.

Student upgraders just got a download designed to be run from within the OS instead of a something that would create a bootable install DVD.

It's thanks to a third party piece of software WinToFlash that I was able to perform a clean install upgrade from 32 bit Vista to 64 bit 7.

By malfranks2 on 28 Oct 2009

Hmm...

@KevPartner:
If it doesn't pay the bills, you're absolutely right not to upgrade.
However: "Even an upgrade install would involve a complete backup before I start."

You mean you're a programmer and you don't make frequent backups?

@c6ten
"I certainly don't enjoy spending 24 hours staring at progress bars."

YMMV but for me, on two different spec machines (a two year old desktop and a 4 month old laptop) a clean install took 19 minutes each (yes, I timed them)...

Restoring data files took (approx figures here) 40 minutes (100GB) and 10 minutes (25GB)...

Reinstalling programs approx 30 mins on each machine.

...24hrs? Time for a new PC perhaps?

By mviracca on 28 Oct 2009

@big_D

As malfranks2 says in his post, the issue with the student upgrade is not with the OS itself but with the distribution app used by Digital River.

The app that was used to package the 64-bit OS is not compatible with a 32-bit host OS, so if you chose to purchase the 64-bit version you can't even extract the setup files to build an OS CD.

By renhoek on 28 Oct 2009

I never bothered with a clean install from Vista to 7 because I didn't think you had to with Service Packs!

By cookster on 28 Oct 2009

"YMMV but for me, on two different spec machines (a two year old desktop and a 4 month old laptop) a clean install took 19 minutes each (yes, I timed them)...

Restoring data files took (approx figures here) 40 minutes (100GB) and 10 minutes (25GB)...

Reinstalling programs approx 30 mins on each machine."

So that's 3 hours wasted for two machines. The figure I was talking about was starting from a Windows XP Home install disk and downloading and installing 3 successive service packs. A new machine? I wish, but this is my father who will not listen to reason. Clean installs may make sense for a trained technician, but I am a programmer and have better things to do than fool about with my working environment. And your figure for half an hour to install required software is laughable. That only makes sense if all you want to do is surf for porn.

By c6ten on 28 Oct 2009

@: cookster

I never bothered with a clean install from Vista to 7 because I didn't think you had to with Service Packs!

Your humour is so original.

By chapelgarth on 28 Oct 2009

I had a fatal crash on Wednesday last week, My Win 7 RC that was, not me. It locked up completely with a message "Your machine failed to shut down properly, please select option 1 or 2" I should have chosen the option to continue loading as this works. The other option was about restoring it via safe mode - i think - anyway that led to another message to select a restore point, but realizing I'd left something on the desktop and not on the external drive, I chose not to select a restore point and pressed 'cancel' - machine died - sat around waiting for over an hour - and gave up - Rebooted and chose the 1st option to start windows normally and no problem - it went straight in! - Weird - some people may have seen this and may have chosen to do a complete re-install - I was on the verge of it - but was kind of lucky - anyway things are back on the external drive now - safer there :)

By nicomo on 28 Oct 2009

@KevPartner

Totally Agree with you.

Unfortunately only us techies know this.

Mass marketing has brainwashed the rest of the world! They're so gullible they'll believe anything new has instant 'go faster stripes' on it and will always believe they are in front of you, if they have something you haven't got. Well - let them pay for it! I'll wait half a year or more and then make my decision.

By nicomo on 28 Oct 2009

No Surprise

Oh, the wonders of Windows. Secret, proprietary software at its best.

By 6tricky9 on 29 Oct 2009

I was stuck in the Digital River 32-bit to 64-bit loop, and this was unforgivable.

However, it is unfair to say that extract dumped the files in a folder with no instructions: if the unpack worked, it ran Setup.

By nigelmercier on 29 Oct 2009

"Us techies"

Snigger... you think true techies read this rag? I'd call myself an enthusiast and that's being complimentary.

By stevvi on 29 Oct 2009

"Oh, the wonders of Windows. Secret, proprietary software at its best"
However - how many Linux users have read the code? And understood it? All?
The openness of open source can be crucial to the survival of software, but let's not kid ourselves that in practice it's any more understood in the real world of real users.

By AdrianB on 29 Oct 2009

Clean install isn't so clean

Having backed up everything I needed and ensured I had installation packages for important apps, I went for a clean install.

Except it didn't do what I would call a clean install. I expected my drive to be formatted and a true "clean" installation to occur.

But the installation detected the presence of Vista and announced that this would be copied to a "windows.old" directory.

Although the installation worked, I do seem to have an odd mix of new Win7 files and odd bits and pieces left over from Vista.

(Yes, I know now that there is an option to monkey around with your drive after selecting custom install, but at the time I missed that and just assumed clean meant clean.)

Not very satisfactory, but nothing like the problems others have had.

By agavinm on 29 Oct 2009

Clean is best but...

Ran the Beta, then RC now have converted my 3 workstations to Win 7. Every sympathy for the "pain" of clean installs because it does take time which is why I use 3 PCs, each dedicated to specific tasks makes it easier. My PCs are all "roll your own", non standard and I have had no problems. x64 XP to x64 win 7 Pro, fine, RC to 32 bit Home Premium fine and both installs very, very fast.

However, x64 Vista Bus to x64 Win 7 Pro, a bit of a pain. Will only allow you to launch from within Vista, I opted for a new copy of Windows rather than upgrade but whilst faultless, took forever. If I were doing it again, I would have trashed the C:\ drive first and then booted from DVD.

Obviously in a large network with standard PCs, you would image the lot but at home, a clean install does give you the option of dumping the garbage and building nice clean restore images.

By Bikey2 on 29 Oct 2009

End user stupidity

I do end user support for one of th leading laptop manufactures. the issue is that people are stupid! pretty much all laptops are equipt with the partition based recovery with advisories to create the disc. if they don't make the disc and an os installation fails they're in trouble if they want to go back. did any of these people run the upgrade advisor as instructed before hand?

By cul8r2nite on 29 Oct 2009

Will Green

I installed Windows 7 with no problems at all. All I lost was my ancient scanner. It's faster and easier to use. . . . .at the moment

By Jarowish on 29 Oct 2009

Not sure why...........

have done 2 upgrades on 2 different machines, both were running Windows Vista Home Premium x64. My father bought the Win 7 Family Upgrade and we upgraded both machines with no problems. Although, I will eventually get the original version since I don't really care for upgrades very much. I am wondering what people are doing or the circumstances to their problems.

By tentaro on 29 Oct 2009

Works for me

I bought the family upgrade pack and did a reinstall on an HP Touchsmart (that wasn't as smart as it should have been)and upgrades on two oher machines, one 32 bit and one 64 bit. No probalem on any machine, I did the upgrades simply because I couldn't face the hassle of reinstalling all my software.

And has anybody else noticed the dove with the olive branch on the boot up screen... is microspft saying sorry for Vista???

By bobthequiz on 29 Oct 2009

doesn’t have problems

Hi everyone, I’m not sure if it’s just me or not: But has anyone noticed that a person named “Bill” doesn’t have problems with his machines? I want to thank all that put up their post and complaints.

By mrhockey2 on 29 Oct 2009

"@KevPartner
Yes I agree which is why I won't pay Apple's premium prices to get Mac OSX!!"

Funny you should use this issue to have a dig at Apple. I certainly agree that a clean install after a reliable backup is the only sensible way to upgrade any OS. Doing this with OS X is a painless procedure. First you backup by creating a bootable clone of your existing system on an external drive. You can then erase your HDD and install the new OS from scratch. Finally you import your old files and settings with the migration assistant, using your clone as the source "computer". One click to start the process then you can go and have a cup of tea while all your applications are reinstalled for you. You don't need to reinstall a thing. It also configures your new system the same way you had the old one, so no need to go and set it all up again how you like it. How long it takes depends on how much data you have. Up and running straight away.

In the event that you do have problems with your new system (and this again can happen with any OS of course) you can boot your computer using the clone and run your old system and the old OS if you need to.

No 32-bit/64-bit headaches either since Snow Leopard can run 32 and 64 bit processes side by side.

As for premium prices - £70 to upgrade from Tiger to Leopard and £10 for each of my three computers to upgrade to Snow Leopard looks pretty small beer in comparison to what it would have cost to go XP to Vista then Vista to 7.

I will now don my flak jacket and helmet and retire to the trench.

By nneone on 29 Oct 2009

How about Ubuntu? :)

I am waiting for my W7 disc ... but I am wondering, should I bother? As KevPartner says, its only an OS. At the moment I am runnig Vista and Ubuntu ... so far, Ubuntu wins ... if it weren't for the fact that some people I work with expect me to "speak windows" then I would probably switch to Ubuntu permanently! Its wonderfully fast and very easy to use - no shortage of software ... and so far, it has never crashed!! :)

Les

By advocatusdiaboli on 29 Oct 2009

I've had no problems installing windows 7, but then i re-install my pc every few months and always do a fresh install.
My pc (which i custom built) has had xp 32, vista 32, win 7 32 and 64 bit, currently using 64 bit. Windows 7 is by far the fastest and easiest OS to install, the only reason people are having problems is because of user error.

Reaading through some of these comments it's clear many people have no idea how a hard drive works, data isn't deleted, it's just scribbled over and written over with new data, most of the time this old data is only marginally scribbled over which then causes problems when trying to read the new data that's ontop unless you use programmes like 'CCleaner' or 'Windows Washer' which can in effect 'shred' the old data so that it can never be recovered or read again, basically giving you a clean sheet of paper to work on.

Upgrading is always going to cause problems because it's simply writing the new data over the top of the old data. With a fresh install C: partitions should always be formatted, deleted, then a new C: partition made (which only takes a few seconds, especially since windows 7 only does a quick format)then install, which takes 10-15 mins.

For those of you who shy away from the Drive Options at the installation menu i strongly suggest you start using those options, it only takes a few seconds to create, delete, and format partitions, your pc/laptop will install and run much better for it :-)

Always have at least 1 partition, a second hard drive/external harddrive is always good too, it's never a good idea to keep your media, setup files or anything else you need on the OS partition, always keep it seperate.

Sorry for the ramble, kinda went off subject but hopefully the information will be helpfull to some people :-)

By Battletiger on 29 Oct 2009

You cant upgrade from XP to Win7? I did here. With the exception of a single "unkown device" its running fine. What made me laugh is that the installer did NOT nuke or repartition the drive (unlike, say, an XP or Vista install), and it left the previous OS in a useable state.

By alan_lj on 29 Oct 2009

No Problem with upgrade from XP Pro

I did a custom upgrade from XP Pro to Windows 7 Home premium on 26/10 and it worked a treat. Not a hiccup and it's running since with no problems.

By ppdoyle on 29 Oct 2009

ThinkPad T60 Win7 Professional Clean Install

On Friday last I carried out a clean install on a Lenove Thinkpad T60 Laptop. I had only one problem with the installation, that was with the Fingerprint reader software which was apparently not recognised.
On Saturday morning I received an update from Microsoft and, hey presto, the Fingerprint reader is now fully functional. (As are all the other IBM / Lenovo quirky little applets)
I can categorically state that this was one of the simplest and error free installations which I have carried out, having been using Windows since version 3.1. If there are problems being experienced by others in the big wide world, then I am fairly confident that the problems will be more to do with peculiarites in the Hardware / Software mixes which are being used.
I wonder what the number of possible permutations of such mixes might be?
Anyone care to hazard a guess? If you stop to think about it, it's not so much of a surprise that some combinations will cause problems, it's more of a minor miracle that so many do not.
Me? I'm happy...

By Brachy1 on 29 Oct 2009

You cant upgrade from XP to Win7? I did here. With the exception of a single "unkown device" its running fine. What made me laugh is that the installer did NOT nuke or repartition the drive (unlike, say, an XP or Vista install), and it left the previous OS in a useable state.

By alan_lj on 29 Oct 2009

Windows 7

Installed windows 7 64 bit with no problems. beauty of it is , is Windows xp Mode. Neither my printer nor scanner have windows 7 drivers, but they work a treat in xp mode. So I have installed the apps I am likely to want to print from in XP mode as well as in windows 7 then I can either work in windows 7 and transfer the files to xp mode to print or work in xp mode.

By birdmaniw on 29 Oct 2009

No probs

I had no problems, I swapped computers and transferred everything, 15 minutes of my time, a couple of hours of the computers and it was the same computer I knew, just on new hardware, later I upgraded from OS 10.4 to OS 10.5, with no problems and very quick, I haven't tried snow leopard yet but friends say its good. Im no longer interested in what software promises, only on what it actually delivers, without hassle.
There are good upgrades out there, I think some of you are looking in the wrong place.

By Mayburys on 29 Oct 2009

Digitial download dodginess

I bought Windows 7 HP Upgrade via digital download, but also ordered the backup CD. I suffered from the "Unspecified Error" problem some people encountered, where it is thought the downloaded .box files were corrupted, and the extraction would fail about 1/3 of the way through. Repeated downloads didn't solve the issue.

I have to say though, the backup disk arrived via courier within 3 working days, and installation from the DVD was completely painless. I do agree with some of the comments above though - is digital download the way to go for this sort of thing, when the system obviously isn't up to it? I suggest this because I've bought multiple, large games over Steam, and I've never had any problems with download corruption, so I'm assuming there's something in Valve's system that doesn't exist in Microsoft's? Better error detection perhaps?

By piphil on 30 Oct 2009

I downloaded the 64 bit DR edition, although the first time the download was corrupted, which isn't good considering its 3GB, the second time the setup program successfully extracted the files (I was running 32 bit Vista). However, it then errored. Copying the files to a flash drive was successful however, but there was no instructions given.

By qwertyqwerty87 on 31 Oct 2009

It's about freedom

@AdrianB: "However - how many Linux users have read the code? And understood it? All?"

The point isn't that everybody *must* read and understand code, but that everybody *has the freedom* to read and understand code.

By 6tricky9 on 1 Nov 2009

Another Microsoft boob

Yet again we have the vunerable users who must be first to have windows 7, didnt they learn from other cock ups from microsoft ie vista. Always wait see if the system is any good before spending good money to make Bill Gates richer he sells his goods to russia at reduced prices but we pay through the nose and get skimmed off.

By kw3047 on 1 Nov 2009

Back to the ol' Mac Debate

I'll be clear from the start... I hate Mac OSX... Granted that it is beautifully stable, fast, reliable and can provide usage of some specialist production applications/hardware.

But it's ugly, clunky and I just don't like it.

So I'm running Windows XP SP3, Ubuntu and Windows 7 and have had absolutely no problems with any of them (i won't even poke at vista with a pole as it's so terrible). I have run superbly stable installations of the Win7 Beta, RC and Retail since the public release of the beta and have never recieved any more that a few far-between minor incidents.

The funny thing is that I do know people who have been having some issues with Win7... but then again they have with Vista(yuck) and even good ol' XP. The problem is that they're using poor quality, cheap components to build their systems or not really following good general practice for installing their new OS (if you don't know how then ask or hire someone who does/can).

Cheap or incompatible combinations of Hardware is the biggest PC killer that there is around, or so it is in my experience.

Which is why my system is a Quad-Core Intel Xeon MAC PRO... running all manner of x86 and x64 OS's. Not because I love OSX.. because as I said before I hate it (and only have it installed for a bit of Songwriting and recording). But because Mac computers have hardware that has been matched, calibrated and stringently tested for compatibility, performance and stability (which the big players like Dell and co. would like everyone else to believe about them).

So.. installing and using Windows 7 on a Mac.. prob more stable and pain-free than on most PC's.

By flexage on 1 Nov 2009