Windows 7

UlfLaursen wrote on 10/22/2009, 2:09 AM

I would do that. Best if you can make an image of your current OS before wiping the drive if all goes wrong (hope not though, but better safe than sorry).

If you have another harddrive spare you could also install on that.

/Ulf

ushere wrote on 10/22/2009, 2:35 AM

echo ulf - definitely clean install (have to if you were on xp).

alternatively, as a safety measure, dual boot. i have xp pro 32 / rc 7 64.

since everything's going fine with rc 7 i'm going to erase xp and install 7 rtm.

when i'm absolutely confident all's well, i'll simply erase rc 7 and either repartition the drive, or use the 30gig as storage space.....

JJKizak wrote on 10/22/2009, 5:05 AM

Paper this morning is gushing over Windows 7. One of the items is if you have old software under XP without Windows 7 drivers W7 has a troubleshooting section to operate the software without a problem.
JJK

jabloomf1230 wrote on 10/22/2009, 8:00 PM

I've got Win 7 x64 Ultimate installed and other than that the annoying UAC nagging is back by default (but easy to turn off), here's what I've noticed that's Vegas 9.0b related:

1) Previewing frame rates are a bit faster in both Vegas 32 bit and Vegas 64 bit.
2) BMD Intensity Pro capture doesn't work in any software (Adobe PP CS4, VirtualDub or Cineform HDLink, using the most recent driver. I may have to reinstall the driver, as everything looks okay in the Windows Control Panel.
3) Win 7 "hates" VirtualDub 32 bit, but it doesn't care at all about VirtualDub x64. Both versions work fine.
4) New Blue Video Essentials, Magic Bullet Looks, Neat Video and Mercalli plug-ins all seem to work okay with 32 bit Vegas. Frame rates don't appear any different than under Vista x64.
6) I seem to have "lost" Ultimate S from Vegas, but I'm still working on that problem.

Else, I can hardly tell the difference between Win7 and Vista, but that's not a shock, because I think that I posted the same comment when I was testing the Win 7 betas and RC. Contrary to press accounts, Win 7 doesn't boot any faster on my PC and it doesn't seem any faster for anything, other than the Vegas preview rate (which is a big plus).

Edit: I got the Intensity Pro working. I forgot to check that all the input and output settings were reset, during the OS installation. Else, the upgrade went smoothly. I've also gained about 1 GB of free physical RAM, with just the OS at idle and nothing else running.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/23/2009, 10:30 AM

If you live in Japan and worry about getting seriously hungry during the lengthy installation process, this should help:

vtxrocketeer wrote on 10/23/2009, 10:51 AM

Can anyone translate that ad?! It sure isn't suggestive of less bloat, for instance. ;)

Steve

ddm wrote on 10/23/2009, 11:03 AM

I've had no problems with Ultimate S in W7, it shows up in both 32 and 64 vegas, although I used to get an error when opening vegas 64 about some "bulletpaks" not being found. I clicked thru it and everything worked fine. I've been too lazy to post a question about it, and now, I just opened V64 and, lo and behold, no error message. Heal thyself oh strange and wonderous computer.

jabloomf1230 wrote on 10/23/2009, 3:37 PM

I think that if I reinstall Ultimate S, it will probably work fine. I did an in place upgrade from Vista x64 to Win 7 x64, which worked remarkably well. But the Win 7 installer is pretty clever. It not only salvages any 3rd party software's registry settings, but if it thinks that there still might be a problem, it reinstalls certain programs. Now it doesn't really write over the program's files to the hard drive. It just uses the program's installer to rewrite the registry values correctly to work properly under the Win 7 kernel. Ultimate S is hidden from the Windows installer routines, so my guess is that some registry setting is now fafoozled and a manual reinstall will fix it.

John_Cline wrote on 10/23/2009, 5:01 PM

"worry about getting seriously hungry during the lengthy installation process"

The Windows 7 installation is surprisingly quick.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/23/2009, 5:38 PM

The Windows 7 installation is surprisingly quick.

So you're upgrading from Vista (my Win 7 upgrade box even says "Designed for Windows Vista").

I'm upgrading from XP, and have to do a clean install followed by a few days of reinstalling all applications and restoring all settings.

I know there are some tools to automate the process, but I'm not sure they can be trusted to give full performance and reliability.

On a related subject, I have also been surprised to again see experienced tech journalists write about how much faster their old PCs ran after upgrading from Windows XP to Windows 7. Must be way faster code!

I suspect that if they keep running Windows 7 for a year or two in daily use and then install Windows XP, they'll be greatly surprised to find that "everything runs much faster on Windows XP than on Windows 7!!!"

But one of my great hopes for Windows 7 is that it will suffer less from the classical "Windows rot" that makes machines run more and more slowly over time, boot more and more slowly, and even shut down more and more slowly, all of this without any cure other than a bare metal reinstall.

This rot doesn't happen on other OSes, and I'm really hoping that Windows 7 has finally gotten rid of this scourge.

John_Cline wrote on 10/23/2009, 7:21 PM

Blah, blah, blah... there you go again. We get it, you hate Windows.

warriorking wrote on 10/24/2009, 6:48 AM

I had Vista Ultimate and just ran the in place upgrade, (No clean install), took about 1hr 30 Minutes at the most, no problems whatsoever, all programs are running smoothly, no big difference in peformance thus far but if your currently running Vista you really don't need to do a clean install...

Vfontjr wrote on 10/24/2009, 10:49 AM

I also did an in-place upgrade from Vista Ultimate to Windows 7 Ultimate. It took over three hours. The first time it didn't work and I need to uninstall the Broadcom Advanced Cntrol Suite. Once I got rid of that program, the install ran fine. I had some minor issues after the upgrade, but nothing that I haven't been able to fix yet.

My machine is much snappier with Win 7.

Coursedesign wrote on 10/24/2009, 12:09 PM

Blah, blah, blah... there you go again. We get it, you hate Windows.

John, did someone hurt you recently?

I was being very specific about my problems, and they are not unique to me.

Just practical considerations.

I don't hate Windows. If I did, I sure wouldn't be using it every single day.

I had the same problem when upgrading from Windows 2000 to Windows XP: days of reinstalling all applications. For people who use their computers a lot, I don't think there's another way.

Much of the Windows hassle is caused by the architectural decision to use a registry instead of preference files.

But a registry has advantages too, and in practice it's six of one, half a dozen of the other, overall.

I have to say I'm looking forward to upgrading from XP to Win 7 though. XP is really getting a bit long in the tooth, and I don't like having to use so many third party hacks to get basic functionality (such as for example quick file searches).

darg wrote on 10/24/2009, 1:48 PM

Since I'm still on XP (Vista just crapped up too much for my taste!) I have the issue that I don"t see the advantage when using W7 for video applications. All reports and computer magazins show that there is not really an advantage by going on W7 in regard to render speeds or playback performance. It would nice to see here maybe some comparison from people who are doing the change before and after install. Especially playback frame rates are of interest.

darg

DGates wrote on 10/24/2009, 2:26 PM

I suppose an in-place install would be more attractive to me. I don't really want to wipe clean my hard drive and install everything again. I'm on a month-old PC using Vista so that's an advantage over having XP.

And yes, you'd be amazed how much I've put on my PC in one month.

PeterDuke wrote on 10/24/2009, 5:46 PM

"Since I'm still on XP ...I have the issue that I don"t see the advantage when using W7 for video applications"

It seems to me that the one big advantage in going from XP to Win7 will be a better supported 64 bit O/S. The 64 bit O/S will permit more RAM (eg 8GB) for hassle-free editing AVCHD natively.

DrLumen wrote on 10/24/2009, 10:54 PM

Win7 = Rebranded Vista service pack.

Tossing $.02...

darg wrote on 10/25/2009, 12:02 AM

"It seems to me that the one big advantage in going from XP to Win7 will be a better supported 64 bit O/S. The 64 bit O/S will permit more RAM (eg 8GB) for hassle-free editing AVCHD natively."

That might be one thing BUT my Vista-tests were done with 64bit and I have never seen that Vegas 8.1 would realy use more RAM than in a 32bit XP. It might be now better with VP9 but I still have to test this on Vista before I can say more. The Vista installed harddrive is sitting since months in the shelf and is not used :-)
Do you guys see really more RAM used in the Task Manager?

John_Cline wrote on 10/25/2009, 12:05 AM

It isn't a contest to see how much RAM gets used, it's a matter of an application having all the RAM it needs.

Chienworks wrote on 10/25/2009, 6:49 AM

How do you determine how much RAM an application needs other than by seeing how much it uses? If it never uses anything above X amount, how do you know it needs more? What benefit is there to having more available?

craftech wrote on 10/26/2009, 7:32 AM

From the article at Anandtech:

7 vs. XP

John

jabloomf1230 wrote on 10/28/2009, 1:39 PM

So true. I just got my cheapy, pre-order Win 7 upgrade disk in the mail from Best Buy and I did a clean install of Win 7 x64 Pro on a PC running Windows XP SP3. Of course, unlike my Vista --> Win 7 upgrade (see above in this thread), I had to reinstall all software. But in the case of XP --> Win 7, what a difference! Boot and shutdown times are noticeably faster with Win 7 than XP. Maybe it's just me, but everything seems more snappy.

Win 7 was installed on a 4 year old PC. Even so, it installed in ~30 minutes and found all the hardware properly. I hate to say it (for fear of touching off a fanboi flame war) but Win 7 is now every bit a match for Apple's OSX. The desktop is intuitive and the hardware realm is painlessly invisible. The real test will be whether the big corporate and government users switch en masse or whether they will wait, like they did with Vista. Win 7 is a real plus for Vegas users, who have been hesitant to move over to Vista and/or x64.

MPM wrote on 10/28/2009, 4:37 PM

>Since I'm still on XP (Vista just crapped up too much for my taste!) I have
> the issue that I don"t see the advantage when using W7 for video
>applications. All reports and computer magazins show that there is not really
>an advantage by going on W7 in regard to render speeds or playback
>performance. It would nice to see here maybe some comparison from
>people who are doing the change before and after install. Especially
>playback frame rates are of interest.

FWIW [as always :-) ]
Working with 7 this year, right now I'm in XP Pro SP3 32 since I needed it to do some vid work earlier. That should tell you something. 7 is nice, allowing me to use the extra RAM & more of the CPU. Almost all of the (too many) video, audio, & image apps I use work fine in 7. The main handicaps I've found in 7 are it's still faster to move around in XP, audio drivers are still nasty (since Vista really -- lots of gear still lacks Vista support), and video (not graphics) display can have problems -- in a worst of all worlds sort of thing, developers mastered XP, stumbled in Vista with it's new display code/methods & no overlay, & now 7 adds overlay back to the mix, along with new renderers that have been back-ported to Vista & XP. Add in that a lot of developers never really went for Vista in the 1st place, so it's a bigger jump from XP to 7. In a nutshell, if it displays your video, it might do better in XP or 7, & that varies from app to app -- in my experience it even varies with the version of video card driver.

Actual performance?... For apps that work just as well in each OS, they come out about equal in my personal experience. 3 extra GB of RAM in 7 64 make a difference in P/Shop, but not too much anywhere else that I can tell, & there the increase is because the OS is 64 bit, not because of 7. Several encoders that use 1 core in XP, report using 4 in 7, but the encode times are roughly the same. That's actually pretty good for a new version of Windows -- every other upgrade actually slowed things down at 1st, then apps adapted to the OS & it didn't matter since they wouldn't run in the old OS any more [with the notable exception of Vista, which many never used].