Windows 7 RTM

Well, I got it.

Windows 7 RTM.

And I’ve been working now to upgrade to it for quite a few hours.

I know that the last article I wrote had some interesting commentary on Windows 7, and that there were some people who wanted more. I’ve got more articles I’m going to write about Windows 7 and the features, but I decided to wait until I had the RTM version on my machine before adding the next installment. Installments will be much more frequent now that I have it and it’s installed and functional.

I was running Windows XP on my machine. To get from Windows XP to Windows 7 requires a few steps. First, you have to download the install files and then run it. And poof, you have Windows 7. As if Microsoft would make it that easy. Of course they wouldn’t.

I ran the setup and it told me that I should run the upgrade advisor. Of course, they neglect to mention that even though the product is no longer beta, the upgrade advisor is. So, I run upgrade advisor and it takes a good 7 to 8 minutes to come back and tell me, no, you can’t get there from here. Go about 3 blocks that-away and ask someone, because you can’t get there from here. (Apologies to Jeff Foxworthy.) I had to have Vista installed to upgrade to Windows 7.

I went to MSDN, downloaded Windows Vista (which I’d sworn would never be installed on this machine, but to achieve my goals, I had to do what was needed). Another 2 hours gone, and I broke open the ISO and ran setup. And poof, I had Vista and then rebooted and ran the Windows 7 install and poof, there was Windows 7. No. Of course not. It couldn’t be that easy.

Being the person I am, I decided that I would install all the updates that are needed as they came out. I like installing even the optional updates. One of those updates was Windows Power Shell. It’s a really neat tool that everyone in the Microsoft Windows PowerShell team is raving about as if it were the world’s gift to scripting. I’ve never actually used it. But, I had it installed, and Vista said it couldn’t install with PowerShell. So, I went to Add/Remove programs, and of course, no PowerShell. No Microsoft Windows Power Shell. No Windows PowerShell. No Windows Power Shell 1.0. No trace of it anywhere. It turns out that a security patch removed the PowerShell entry from the Add/Remove programs list. I had to go into the registry and pull the uninstall key from an entry that was in there. This sounds like something everyone should be able to do, right? Clearly, design and function are not strong in this process.

So far, this experience has been far from smooth. I ran the Vista installer and when it was done, I tried running the Windows 7 installer, and ran it and poof, I had Windows 7. No. It couldn’t be that easy. I ran it and was told that I had to have either Vista Service Pack 1 or Vista Service Pack 2 to continue with an upgrade. I realized my mistake. I’d downloaded Windows Vista. Not Windows Vista Service Pack 2. So, after waiting overnight for my machine to upgrade to Vista, I had to do even more patching to get to where I needed to go. Being somewhat impatient about it, I went to the MSDN home page and downloaded the Vista Service Pack 2. I ran Service Pack 2 and it churned along for a few minutes and then told me that I had to have Service Pack 1 to continue. I installed Service Pack 1, and re-ran the upgrade advisor. It said I was good to go. Now, on to the installation of Windows 7. Finally.

It ran through the installation, rebooted multiple times and then came up with almost all my applications. My desktop settings were retained. My passwords were retained. My network access had to be re-entered, and my AVG had to be reinstalled, but for the most part, this was about the smoothest upgrade, especially with two OS level jumps I’ve ever experienced. AVG and the network settings both broke on the upgrade to Vista, not Windows 7. The only adjustment I had to make was my video. I’m running a Dell OptiPlex GX270 and the video card seems to be the type that was around when Moses was a choirboy. But, that was actually relatively simple. I downloaded the Windows XP drivers from Dell for the video card, ran them in XP compatibility mode and rebooted and my machine worked just fine.

Annoying, somewhat. Slow? I started this process on Friday evening, and it’s Sunday morning as I type this, but, part of that was the machine. (I have two SATA drives and an IDE that conflict so I actually have to be there to interrupt during each reboot.) But, all-in-all, a very satisfying upgrade.

Next up, I will explore the various features of the new Operating System and go over some of the fun new things.