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Windows 7: Thread for sale, two previous owners, apply within...
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Oh, and Microsoft's site says that the upgrade path of Vista 32 -> Win7 64 is unsupported, but apparently some people were able to bypass this by booting from the Win7 Upgrade disk and doing a custom 64 bit install which activates just fine (and is a clean install). Does anyone have any experience with this? It sounds iffy to me and it's unclear if this is an intended feature.
Upgrade install license media works on the assumption that you own a legitimate license to a prior version of windows. Using upgrade install media, you are able to either perform an upgrade install (which attempts to maintain as much of your prior install as possible, like installed programs). You can also do a custom install with upgrade install media, which blows away the current installation of windows (and copies some of it to a Windows.old folder), installing a completely fresh copy of windows in its place. Programs and stuff must be reinstalled there.
You will have to do a custom install when moving from a 32-bit installation to a 64-bit installation, because the architecture is different enough that it would be extremely spotty with regard to maintaining currently installed programs. You can't do an upgrade install from vista x86 to 7 x64, you can do a custom install from vista x86 to 7 x64. Upgrade or full install licensed media both would be capable of performing this.
Alright, thanks. What got me confused was the reports that you couldn't "upgrade" from a 32 bit edition to a 64 bit one unless you bought the appropriate disk. This is apparently true for an "upgrade" type install but overall the Upgrade disk can still be used regardless of which edition I owned previously, is what you're saying (custom install).
Many articles actually suggested that my only option was to buy a full version of Win7 64 because my existing license was for Vista 32, and therefore could not "upgrade" to 64 (implied that Upgrade disks were useless for me), neglecting to mention Upgrade media's clean install capability.
Looks like I'm going to be using an Upgrade disk to perform a clean install of Win7 64 then. This leaves my other question: my Vista was OEM licensed, would my new Win7 not be OEM?
Just wanted to confirm that you can use the upgrade to go from Vista 32 to Windows 7 64. I did it with the download install which requires you to boot from a USB or DVD because vista 32 can't open the installer properly, but worked absolutely perfectly. If you buy a disc, it should work with no hitches.
The thing is, though, that DX10 support has really been kinda meh. Wikipedia says that there've only been 38 games (if I can count) that have some semblance of DX10 support.
It just doesn't seem worth it at all right now to dive in for DX11 when 10 hasn't really been fully tapped yet.
it may also have something to do with the fact that I bought a 4890 back in April, and I don't want to buy another card yet.
I suspect DX10 will be pretty much skipped over for DX11 at the end of the day.
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I agree and also suspect this to be the case. It seems that just too many people, particular ones interested in gaming, are just moving straight from XP to Win7. But even that is going to be a drawn out process over the next few years. Vista seems to have had a relatively short and meager life span.
Win7 also has the advantage of coming out right at a time when upgrades are cheap and having 4 gigs of Ram is fairly common. Before, it didn't matter much if you went with XP or vista if you had less than 4 gigs of ram (like 2 gigs, which was common). Given that choice most went with or stuck with XP. Now that 4 gigs of Ram and massive video card ram numbers, coming in at extremely affordable prices, people are now looking towards 64-bit OS's. Windows7 has just come out, and with the only alternatives being XPx64 and VIstax64, I think the choice is obvious.
As a side note, of the games I've run in DX10 now on Win7 as compared to running the same games on my system with DX9 on WinXP, it's hard for me to really spot the differences. I thought Resi5 would look noticeably different, but running in DX9 and Running in DX10, I really can't tell a lick of difference. Just as an example. I don't see much difference in Crysis or Lost Planet either.
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This is what I figure as well.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Same with DX11 tbh
The lack of serious DX10 adoption by game developers can be chalked up to gamers refusing to upgrade to Vista for whatever reason. Hopefully everyone buys Windows 7 and we can finally move forward with this shit.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Yeah, but the cheapness of parts/upgrades means people need 64-bit whereas most didn't before, and if you had to choose between Windows 7 and Vista, 7 is gonna win.
Exactly. There was no "need" to upgrade to Vista in the past because the average gamer was still only running 2 gigs of Ram and 256 megabyte video cards. XP was more stable and leaner than Vista and there was very little practical reason to upgrade.
Now gamers are upgrading to hardware with 4 gigs of ram and 512 to 1 gigger video cards. Now there is a need to upgrade, at this point, where there wasn't one before - because now, gamers need a 64-bit OS, and the only practical choices that are now available are Vista x64 or Win7 x 64, because everyone knows XPx64 is a joke.
So yeah actually there is suddenly a need to upgrade where once there was none. The need was created once hardware upgrades to 4+ gigs of ram and 512+ meg video cards became relatively cheap.
And the choice is of course obvious; everyone's going with Win7 x64 over Vista x64
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
I agree. I hope so too. I'm ready for a new "default OS" to assume the throne of XP.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Is it a full copy of Pro or just the upgrade, for me in Australia it looks like it's just the upgrade edition.
Every now and then it sort of locks up, then the screen flashes and things go back to normal. A message at the bottom pops up with something like "Display driver Radeon has encountered a serious error and has recovered." I'm using a Radeon 5770. I updated to the latest drivers from ATI's website almost immediately after installing Windows. Anyone know what's causing this? I hope my video card isn't bad.
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edit: and in that case, sending back the video card and getting a replacement fixed that problem.
W7 had better last a long time.. because if Microsoft follows the cycle, the next consumer release of Windows is gonna suck shit.
For those of us with the hardware, yes. But a bunch of people tried to stick it on their 'only just strong enough to run XP' machines and then shit a brick when it sucked. Also shitty driver support than xp.
I loved Vista, but then again I have a machine that was beastly enough to handle it.
I have it on my 2.33 Ghz Core 2 Duo laptop with 2 gigs of ram and I can tell that it runs chunky.
Plus I prefer to run my laptop at low performance settings most of the time to save battery life (and I use it mostly for office apps), and that accentuates the chunkiness of the experience.
Otherwise I liked the little neato additions to the OS and I'm glad they carried over the useful stuff to Win7, but I'm certainly glad I have Win7 on my home desktop as opposed to Vista.
Steam ID: slashx000______Twitter: @bill_at_zeboyd______ Facebook: Zeboyd Games
Which is why I used to giggle inside whenever someone with better specs whinged about Vista.
After a while of reading everyone else's experiences, of course, I soon realised that some miracle had happened and Dell had somehow made me something with hardware that loved Vista (or vice versa).
Similar experience here, I ran Vista fine on an old P4 box. In fact my PC ran better under Vista than XP because Vista was actually able to make use of my CPU's hyper threading. I've run Vista on many older PCs just fine. I think many people just don't have a damn clue how to actully get drivers installed or tired to use old XP drivers and killed their PC. The later happened many times and were even mentioned in newpapers a few times. Of course nVidia was also a big contributer to crashes because they couldn't be bothered to writer decent drivers for their video cards let alone mobos.
Well, things do indeed start downloading before you pick the actual folder where you want it. That's why downloads sometimes seem to start out so fast. It's odd it's actually downloading the entire file that quick, though, assuming it's not really small.
Also, damnit, it's NOT WINDOWS 2007. That bugs the hell out of me for some reason.
Anyone found an Ultramon replacement for Win 7 yet? Taskbars on both screens, wallpapers different?
Is there anywhere you can get it for direct download online?
I'm seeing a whole lot of Upgrade signs here, and while technically I have a copy of Vista Business for my laptop, I don't think I have any of the installation disks and I nuked that service partition long ago.
I just need the simplest way of getting W7 home premium 64-bit onto my new machine; I have a brand new valid XP-32-bit key and disc, which is 100% unused so far. There's just dozens of people on forums who can't properly download the .iso they released for 32-bit users, and seemingly no straight answers to a host of questions.
If I buy the upgrade, and I have to do a clean install from 32-bit XP, then why should I have to install XP first? Why can't it just ask for that cd-key, before asking for the one I buy with the upgrade...