Hi everybody - I have a question that I hope someone can help me with.

When I got discharged, one of the first things I did upon getting home was t buy a new PC (I got tired of using a lap top)

When I bought the PC - an Acer - they offered me a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it came out. So I opted for it.

The CD arrived yesterday. Is it worth installing it or not? I really do not care for Vista at all, I much preferred XP. I have read both good and bad about Windows 7. I guess I'm scared of the unknown basically.

The CD I got will upgrade me to Windows 7 Home Premium. If I do decide to upgrade, do I stand a chance of losing any data during the upgrade process?

Any advice is appreciated. I miss the days of when the computer manufacturers included the OS disc with the computer. At least that way if something went haywire you could easily reformat the machine and reinstall the OS rather easily.

Thanks in advance - I'm off to see if I can read up some more on Win 7.

I saw a good article on Win 7...will look for it tonight.

Hey Warvet - Yes, upgrade. I'm assuming your upgrade version is "Home Premium" right? In any case, you have Vista and Vista is crapp so its worth upgrading. Since the CD came from the OEM (Acer) it should have included any drivers that need to be upgraded along with 7 so you shouldn't have any issues (keyword = shouldn't). Good luck and make sure you back up your profile, data etc. before you begin.

Wof..

Warvet,

There are tons of articles here on Win 7 (good, bad, how-to-upgrade, etc.).

http://search.techrepublic.com.com/index.php?q=windows+7&t=0&go=Search

I just upgraded mine from Vista the other day. Worked like a charm and I didn't lose anything even though I was prepared. It took a couple of hours to install but well worth it.

Windows 7 is a cross breed between XP and Vista. Best of both worlds. Ordered my CD 3 months ago and got it in my mailbox on the 23rd. I have been using the beta version anyways. I love it. So much more that you can do with it.

Thanks. Looks painless enough. I might do it later on tonight (been a bad day here today). Just one more question if anyone should know.

Hardware/software compatibility. Are there any known conflicts? It's bad enough that my printer software isn't compatible with Vista. I don't want any other surprises if you know what I mean.

I thought one of those articles said that Win 7 has an "XP" mode that allows older software to run OK.

Windows 7 w/an XP downgrade was the term I heard. What the heck is a downgrade? An inadequate upgrade?

I developed software for the fed govt for years. Downgrade is not a term I have ever heard anyone use, except as a joke.

New software should always be compatible at least one version back, if not more.

Microsoft is really starting to lose it. I have been a pc person for decades and I am starting to lose respect for them.

Its called "compatible mode" No such term as an XP downgrade

On the Dell website (purchase business laptops) one of the operating choices is called Windows 7 w/an XP downgrade. Maybe it's a Dell mistake. Who knows. I am not making this stuff up.

I think what the chatter is about, is OEM's like DELL, HP, Lenovo for example that will ship Windows 7 with an XP downgrade should you want to run XP instead of Windows 7. You are right with the terminology. They are even talking about a Windows 7 to Vista downgrade. Who would want to downgrade to either Vista or XP given the good reviews so far with 7? I wouldn't, but that's just me.

I thought you referring more to software. For example IE8 will run in "compatible mode" and Office 2k7 has a compatible mode feature.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=2456

almost every company i have worked with that bought new systems with batch licenses did the same with vista, they had to purchase a vista license and downgrade to XP, because vista SUCKED. so it looks like W7 wont be any better if microsoft is already giving consumers the option to downgrade to XP. (that is no longer sold OEM or retail) sad, sad, sad...

XP is not supported. I do not believe it is offered. If so, I would wait until Win 7 SP2.

Well I confused some of the terms, that I admit, but the message is clear. Microsoft stinks.

So our choice is an OS that does not work well (based on the fact that they are still offering the downgrade) or one that does work that is not supported. Pathetic.

And at this point, we don't even know what the compatibility issues may be.

Old, read the link I posted a couple of post's up. According to a MS rep, it is or will be.

Yep, and thank God it does or I would be out of work.

I heard the Windows 7 was built on/from the XP code. Microsoft just skipped over the Vista code.

Boy I hope the Vista Project Directors lost their jobs. Talk about a waste of money.

Your absolutely right, Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate editions comes with a built in "Windows XP Mode feature" which runs a fully fledged version of Windows XP SP3 in a virtual machine. You will need a CPU that can run in virtualization mode or the virtual machine wont start. This is good for companies that have software that wont run in native windows 7 and will need to run in a familiar environment like XP

sounds like the REAL upgrades are in the latest hardware....not the operating system.
vista what?

Now I'm nervous lol

I remember the XP downgrade. I was active when Vista came out and alot of the guys that were getting lap tops got them with Vista installed. If I remember right so many people hated it or had issues with it, M$ offered to downgrade their machines to XP free of charge.

As far as I know, I think that Dell is the only manufacturer that still offers machines with XP pre-installed. A very smart move by them I think.

I really like the machine that I have, but now I wish that I would have went with Dell, just for the option of getting XP. I'm sure that I could downgrade myself, but I just can't be bothered.

What I hate is that I just start getting a feel for Vista and now Win 7 is here. The more that I see M$ products FUBAR, I now understand the Mac people more and more.

While alot of people complained about XP, I found it to be pretty darn dood. WAY better than 98, Win 2000 Pro was maybe a bit better, and XP was damn sure better than Win ME.

Even though I preferres Win 200 Pro, I found XP pretty easy to live with, and never had any major issues with it. I find Vista to be a bit too controling. Is this the issue with Win 7 also?

I really want to try it, but I guess I'm afraid of the unknown.

It's bad enough that I have to do a BIOS flash on this machine - something that always scares the heck out of me regardless of the machine. I have a small issue of the machine hanging during booting. I will get to the ACER screen and it will stop there. Then I have to turn off the power and reboot - then it will boot without issue.

I guess I could pay and have Plum Choice do it, but I would really prefer to save the $$ if I can.

Myself and some of the other guys found PlumChoice to be a lifesaver while we were deployed. We could get an appointment anytime 24/7, and we found them to solve any problems we were having rather quickly.

I know that some people probably frown upon such services, but when you're thousands of miles away from home and need something taken care of - it was nice to know they were there to help us.

Everyone knows that soldiers are always looking to earn some extra scratch, and the computer guys were no exception. They would have gladly worked on our machines - at a premium price (and of course when their time allowed as Uncle Sam's work came first - which of course is 100% understandable). PlumChoice was cheaper in alot of instances - especially for a troublesome virus. I only used them for a tune up once and a spyware problem that I couldn't get rid of. They did good by me, so I'm not complaining at all.

Warvet,

Where did you buy the PC? Places like CompUSA and others will load the software for you free. Also, I read it's a good idea to partition your hard drive into C: and D: partitions and load the OS software to C: and put all your other personal files on D:. That way, if you ever have to reload your OS software for any reason, you don't wipe out your personal files.

I bought mine through NewEgg.com.

You're right about the partitions. Whenever i buy a new machine, I always say that I'm going to do that. Do I? Never. I just get too lazy, or whatever else.

Then of course the inevitable happens.

At least I'm taking small steps. When i bought this machine, I also bought two 1 TB external hard drives to back up important files on. Bought two because they were on special for $80 a piece.

One I keep totally offline - I only hook it up when I have files to add to it or have updates to files that exist. Personal information mainly.

The other I keep hooked up to store different things that I come across - whether it be funny pics, shortcuts to interesting websites, downloaded files, personal pictures, etc.

One of these days (probably after the next catastrophe) I'll learn and keep one partition exclusively for the OS.

it is not sold retail or OEM anymore, but you can downgrade to it IF you pay for a vista or winblows 7 license. as i have stated before, i am in the structured cabling business and do some IT consulting. my wife is also a microsoft partner. (although i make her use my macs at home, bwaa haa haaaa, if she wants to run that clunky [censored]] she can go out and buy her own laptop and give me the MacBook Pro back that i bought her although i will admit we do dual boot OSX and XP on most of our machines at home) every customer they have, when getting a new machine, has to buy a vista license then they downgrade to XP. i am talking enterprise customers, not home users. (vista is that bad... not one customer out of hundreds that they manage uses vista, literally 100% of them buy the vista license and downgrade to XP)

microsoft stopped selling XP commercially and OEM in Jan 09, but you can still downgrade to it. once a product is officially taken off the market, a company still has to support it for 5 years by law. so even though you cant buy XP, but downgrade to it, it will be supported until 2014 per microsoft.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-xp/end-of-sale.aspx

i take that back, they stopped selling XP on June 30 2008, but OEMs that sold PCs were allowed to sell machines with XP pre installed until Jan 2009

I prefer Macs they are much easier to work on and they do a lot of neat stuff. They just look better also.

hmmmmm....then how is Dell still offering XP? New Old Stock maybe??

Ugh.....wouldn't you know it - one of my 1TB external HD's that is less than three months old took a dump.

Started off with a knocking noise - then the beep beep beep beep beep of death.

What really sucks is that I just transferred gigs of files onto it over the past couple of days.

I could get it replaced under warranty, but that can't replace the files that I lost.

Hopefully it is just the controller thats's shot and the HD is still good. Going to try and swap it out into the other enclosure tomorrow.

Ugh....what's next????

There's something odd about those external drives. I've had two fail and I didn't use them more than about 30 minutes each. CompUSA somehow retrieved my files though.

What I do now is buy a second internal drive and connect it as a slave drive and use the "disk clone" software that came with the new drive to make an exact copy of the first drive. When my main drive finally died, I just connected my clone drive as the master drive and booted right up.

I opened it up and swapped it out ith the one that does work - no dice. I hokked it up via a portable cable - no luck. I kust keep getting the damn beeb beeb beeb beeb beeb.

Oh well. Guess that I have to start all over again, finding as many of the files again that I can. Thankfully nothing too important was on it.

Now to get the info off the other drive and put it onto DVD.

exact same thing just happened to me, lost years of stuff.
I have read that if you put the drive in the freezer for 24 hours then hook it up to your pc it can fire up for s short period of time, maybe enough to get some data off.

I know it sounds daft but google it, it has worked for some people. Not for me sadly. And you have to be careful about condensation forming when the drive comes out of the freezer. (i packed mine in a freezer tray with loads of frozen stuff surrounding it.)

i also got my Acer disks today, gonna update my laptop soon.