Zweiblumen, as you stated, your only real "problem" there is the vid card. My system runs just fine with all of the eye candy, and I guess I have just gotten used to it all being on. For years with XP I would always set everything to "Windows Classic" (Win 2000) mode, because I didn't like the eye-candy. With 7, I don't find it as distracting as I did with Vista, or even XP default. Also, Zwei, even though the official RC1 of 7 will be out soon, if you upgrade your Build 7000 to 7057 your OS will be fine until Apr of 2010.

Sys Specs:
Core 2 Duo E6420, 2.13 GHz, 4 MB L2
nVidia 8600 GTS 256 MB
2 GB DDR2
320 GB, 120 GB, 80 GB, HDDs
etc

Going to build a new computer as soon as possible and make this box a hobby box.

I'm really thinking of blowing up my 32bit Vista partition. I am tired of 64bit windows 7 not being on my raptor drive. So, does build 7057 work until April 2010 with the real beta cd key that you get from microsoft?

YaWhateva, it does. At least it says it does. That could always be changed by MS. I originally downloaded Build 7000 32 bit from MS, with a key. Since then I have upgraded to 7048, then 7057, using the same key. 64 bit upgrade path and longevity shouldn't be any different.

Awesome, thanks for the quick reply, I might just nuke Vista tonight.

YaWhateva, you are welcome. Just keep in mind that just because I had no probs doesn't mean that you won't! Everything involving 7 has been very smooth for me. YMMV.

well yeah I have 64bit windows 7 installed since microsoft released the beta. I just had to install it on a non-raptor drive since Vista was filling that drive. I am just going to free up that hard drive so I can put 7 on it. 7 has been working perfectly for me and I love it. Rebooting into Vista sucks every single time I do it haha.

edit: unless you can do an 'upgrade' from vista 32bit to windows 7 64bit but I haven't heard anything like that being possible.

YaWhateva, figured you knew what you were doing. But, if booting to Vista sucked for you, imagine booting to XP Pro! After using 7 for a couple of months the difference is like night and day. Any idea as to how to change the boot prompt to get away from XP being a choice?

Speaking of specs, I was just admiring on the Gateway site a system with an incredible qaud-core CPU and 8 GB of RAM for only $800. Egad! Makes my machines sound like dinosaurs - they have a combined RAM limit of 4.5 GB (3/1.5).
My main machine runs XP Pro now and win2k previously wonderfully without a problem. I strongly suspect Windoze 7 would install but not fare well at all on an Athlon 1.6 Ghz with 1 GB of RAM. The video card is an Geforce 7600 GS that should last me at least two more years unless something changes to rush an upgrade; that would likely be system/MB failure.

The 1.3 Ghz secondary system/crash box has been feeling increasingly slower over time but still runs win2k sharply (the same installation for years now), the one game my wife plays on it, and the whatever other tasks asked of it. Win2k is by far my favourite OS still from MS.

At the time, I loved Win2k. Was just awesome. Now, I have to admit something; I bought and used Win ME. I have a cheap MS watch that came with it to prove it. What a turd of an OS.

ah yes, the look of win2k with the stability and security of the win95 first release. Never used it personally but had more than enough dealings with it doing inbound tech support.
edit: just thought again of the irony of using a song with "You make a grown man cry" in it for the grand release of a brand new OS. Perhaps they should have used that for Vista as well.

I think I will be buying a new system piecemeal starting with the case, etc. Components are so much faster and cheaper than when I built these two. Still not used to 1 GB of RAM costing less than $200-$300, and the new SATA drives are dirt cheap and huge compared to the much smaller capacity IDE drives I use now.

you can buy 4GB of ddr2 ram for $45 on newegg. haha.

Edit: oops, I just saw your question, Wyodiver.

You mean after you nuked that install? It should just go away itself, right? I have no idea how to get rid of it if it's still there after you got rid of that install, sorry.

Sweet.

According to tech site Ars Technica, the Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available to the public starting in May 2009, will be available through June 2009, and will expire June 1, 2010. We'll keep our eyes open for a specific date in May, and keep our fingers crossed that Microsoft doesn't underestimate the web like they did with the beta release. Check out Ars for more details.



Windows 7: Windows 7 Release Candidate Coming to Public May 2009

Well, here we go again. Build 7068 is out, in both 32 and 64 bit. Downloading now. I will probably do a clean install this time as I think I'm pushing my luck with all the upgrades. (Did upgrades from 7000 --> 7048 --> 7057.) I know I should just wait for the RC in May but I can't help myself. I'm helping the economy by going through so many DVDs. :thumbsup:

Here's a good Windows 7 site: Windows 7 Center

Aero (the graphics component) of Windows 7 should be much more responsive than Windows Vista. Speaking with a friend at Microsoft who works on Vista he said that they have removed the "Global Lock" on graphics, so that the UI should see more responsive. Now instead of having to wait for each UI action to take place in serial, actions can happen in parallel.

I've been using Windows 7 for a while now and I definitely notice that it's more responsive. It just seems much more polished than Vista, which is why I never switched to vista from XP.

Windows 7 RC1 7100 x86 and x64 leaked. Go to the usual torrent sites if interested.

Ok. Nobody cares. Done.

What are the usual torrent sites?

I care! ;) I haven't had the chance to install it yet but I do have it. My problem is I can't find my Beta key. Is there any way in Windows to find my key?

Ya, just Google keys. They all work. And it's legal.

32 bit:
RFFTV-J6K7W-MHBQJ-XYMMJ-Q8DCH
4HJRK-X6Q28-HWRFY-WDYHJ-K8HDH
J7PYM-6X6FJ-QRKYT-TW4KF-BY7H9
D67PP-QBKVV-6FWDJ-4K2XB-D4684

64 bit:
7XRCQ-RPY28-YY9P8-R6HD8-84GH3

---------- Post added at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:29 PM ----------

RickB:

Download music, movies, games, software! The Pirate Bay - The world's largest BitTorrent tracker
Mininova : The ultimate BitTorrent source!

Pvt me if you need help.

---------- Post added at 01:48 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:36 PM ----------

Win 7 RC News: You CAN upgrade from Build 7077 to the RC. You CAN'T upgrade from previous builds unless you do the following:

Microsoft urges testers to upgrade to Windows 7 RC from Vista | Windows 7 Center

How-To:

1. Download the ISO as you did previously and burn the ISO to a DVD.
2. Copy the whole image to a storage location you wish to run the upgrade from (a bootable flash drive or a directory on any partition on the machine running the pre-release build).
3. Browse to the sources directory.
4. Open the file cversion.ini in a text editor like Notepad.
5. Modify the MinClient build number to a value lower than the down-level build. For example, change 7100 to 7000 (pictured below).Microsoft urges testers to upgrade to Windows 7 RC from Vista
6. Save the file in place with the same name.
7. Run setup like you would normally from this modified copy of the image and the version check will be bypassed.

The same process will be required for an RC to RTM upgrade installation.

A clean install is always the best bet, IMO.

I'm still trying to decide if I want to just wipe vista and run windows 7. So you can just upgrade from Vista to windows 7 RC, right? someone said that you would be able to upgrade from a 32bit install of vista to a 64bit install of windows 7. I've never heard of you being able to do that, do you know anything about that?

YaWhateva, you can't upgrade from 32 bit to 64 bit. And even though you Can go from 32 bit Vista to 32 bit 7, or 64 bit to 64 bit, I always recommend a clean install. The MigWiz app makes it very easy to restore most of your Vista stuff after a clean install of 7. MigWiz, or Migration Wizard, will be located on the DVD you burn. Pretty painless. Let me if you have questions.

Awesome. I will look into the Migration Wizard. Thanks! I was just hoping not to have to reinstall everything because I have so much stuff on my Vista drive. But if I can save most of it that will work too

My other concern was virtual drives like Daemon Tools not working yet in windows 7. Do you have any info on that?

YaWhateva, Daemon Tools had problems, for me, on earlier builds of Win 7. I don't know if that's been fixed or not. I switched to Power ISO and have no problems.

Thanks!

Important news for those who downloaded Build 7100 32/64 bit from Torrents:

Leaked Windows 7 Build 7100 image was infected with trojan | Windows 7 Center

I checked mine and I'm fine. Got mine from Demonoid.

So when running the program I assume that when it shows up highlighted in green that the hash has been confirmed.

That probably works, but I manually confirmed the hash number.

In case anyone was wondering, the leaked 7100 is exactly the same as the RC 7100, already released to Technet and MSDN subscribers, and available to public on May 5th. Hash for both 32 bit and 64 bit match perfectly. So there will be absolutely no need for any of us to fight the MS servers on the 5th. That's good!

Intel CPU's that can do VT for XP Mode in Win 7:

Desktop CPUS
Core 2 Duo
E4300/4400/4500/4600/4700 NO
E6300/6320/6400/6420/6540/6550 YES
E6600/6700/6750/6850 YES
E7200/7300/7400/7500 NO
E8190 NO
E8200/8300/8400/8500/8600 YES
Core 2 Extreme
QX6700/6800/6850 YES
QX9650/9770/9775 YES
X6800 YES
Core 2 Quad
Q6600/6700 YES
Q8200/8200S/8300/8400/8400S NO
Q9300/9400/9400S YES
Q9450/9550/9550S/9650 YES
Core i7/Core i7 Extreme
I7-920/940 YES
I7-965 YES
Pentium D/Pentium EE
805/820/830/840 NO
915/925/935/945 NO
920/930/940/950/960 YES
955/965 YES
Pentium for Desktop
E2140/2160/2180/2200/2220 NO
E5200/5300/5400 NO

Link: How many Intel CPUs will fail the XP Mode test in Windows 7? | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com

---------- Post added at 03:55 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:56 PM ----------

Nice write-up of Win 7 from Anandtech:

Welcome to AnandTech.com [ Article: Windows 7: Release Candidate 1 Preview]

---------- Post added at 05:09 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:55 PM ----------

Anybody using Win 7 RC 7100 probably knows this, but just in case:

Watch the calendar. The RC will expire on June 1, 2010. Starting on March 1, 2010, your PC will begin shutting down every two hours.

Windows will notify you two weeks before the bi-hourly shutdowns start. To avoid interruption, you’ll need to install a non-expired version of Windows before March 1, 2010.

You’ll also need to install the programs and data that you want to use.

Little late, but used to just edit boot.ini file.

tooth, thanks. After a clean install of Win 7 that problem, of course, went away.

I was searching for info on Virtual PC 2007 today but everything on M$ site pointed to the new Windows Virtual PC and the XP mode for Win7. It looked very nice (as most M$ products do on paper) but this limitation (cpu list) will not go down well.

Yours
ZB

ZB, I agree. But we can't really blame MS here. It's all Intel, and their stupid marketing.

Don't bother with Virtual PC.

Virtual Box from Sun is a much better application.

Everything Default will work fine for Win 7 RC, just change the network adapter to the Intel Desktop.

Thanks for suggestion. What I was looking for has nothing to do with Win7 (hence I was searching for info on Virtual PC 2007) and I prefer VMware when I have a choice of virtual enviroment.

And back to the topic (Win7).
Has anyone tried to install Win7 so that the system drive isn't C: ?
I once installed XP on hardware were the number of removable drives (floppies etc) were so great that the first HD was labeled F: . The install completed ok but that was more or less end of use of that installion since most applications failed install and changing the drive letter for the system drive caused series of problems. I had to reinstall XP again, this time with all the removable drives disconnected during install.

Yours
ZB

ZB, never have had to do that kind of install, and I think I would really try to avoid it. Just not worth the stress.

Have the RC. It was kind of a risky thing, since it's unfinished and all, but I just installed this OS as my only OS on this fresh build. Built the beast yesterday, and figured I might as well try a free OS.
It's great. All my games run perfectly, and it's gorgeous.

biznatch, Win 7 might have been a risk back in January with Build 7000. I had some weird issues for the first couple of months. But the RC is pretty safe. Barring any last minute major problems, the RC is the build that will become the final product, or RTM. I started with Win 7 in a dual-boot environment with XP Pro SP3, but soon realized that I wasn't using XP at all so nuked it. After using Win 7 for a few months playing with XP feels awkward at best. I'm very happy with Win 7. Were you running XP before?

I downloaded this on the 5th but have yet to have time to install it. can't wait though. XP needs a refresh anyway and I might as well replace it.