Number 319 - December 2009

Installing Windows 7 on a Vista Laptop
by Carl Tenning, Tacoma Open Group for Microcomputers
I pre-purchased the upgrade to Windows 7 in the early summer of 2009 for the special price of $49.95 and received it on October 26. It came with two DVD's's, one for 32-bit operating systems and one for 64-bit operating systems. You are instructed to right-click on Computer or My Computer and select Properties to determine whether your system is 32-bit or 64-bit. Mine was 32-bit, so I loaded the 32-bit DVD in the drive. The DVD does not auto-run so I opened it and double clicked on "setup.exe".    Two options come up: (1) Check for compatibility with Windows 7, and (2) Install program. I selected (1) Check for compatibility with Windows 7. This option downloads and installs the compatibility checker. Running it, I found that my installation of Windows One Care was not compatible with the new operating system and needed to be uninstalled before installing Windows 7. Uninstalling Windows One Care also required a re-boot, so after uninstalling and re-booting, I was starting from scratch again.    After starting the install, it determined that one of the currently installed drivers might not be compatible with Windows 7 and recommended uninstalling it before proceeding. I thought I'd take a chance and proceed anyway without doing the uninstall. It was a driver for a USB video capture device that I wasn't likely to use anyway.    There are five steps to the upgrade process:       1. Copying Windows files	2. Gathering files, settings, and programs       3. Expanding Windows files       4. Installing features and updates       5. Transferring files, settings, and programs    During the upgrade, it states that Windows will restart several times. The process took around two hours. After the installation was complete, it reported that I had no anti-virus installed. That's true of course, because I'd been using Windows One Care as my virus protection. Fortunately I had Symantec Anti-Virus 10 for Vista which installed without problems.    Prior to installing Windows 7, I had been using Windows One Care to make my computer backups. The backups were written to an external USB hard drive. Now, after the upgrade to Windows 7, I no longer had Windows One Care and could not use the backup files on the USB hard drive. I discovered, however, that Windows 7 had it's own backup utility. So I immediately created a backup using Windows 7. The backup utility is located at Control Panel > System and Security > Backup and Restore. It also provides an option to create a system repair disk.    Another alternative to Windows One Care anti-virus protection is Microsoft Security Essentials. It is free and can be downloaded at: http://www.microsoft.com/security_essentials/resources.aspx    Next, after checking several of my installed applications, everything seems to be working.
Number 319 - December 2009