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Evaluating Win 7

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donki

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Posted July 22, 2009 at 1:59PM

Hi guys,

My current set up is has 2 HD's one is 250GB which has my XP on it with a recovery partition and a basic one. The other HD is 500GB and is not partitioned and stores all my music, films, media etc, can I download an evaluation version of Win 7 to try it and if so can I install it on my 500GB HD if I partitioned it in half, how do i do this? This may seem a stupid qustion but I know very little of partitions or installing operating systems.

If I like Win 7 and go ahead and upgrade to it alone removing my XP completely is there anyway of gettign it back in the future, I have no disk as it was already installed when I got the computer.

I have a 4200 dual core, 2 gig of ram (which I would upgrade to 4 if i go for win 7) and a 8800 GTS 640mg will i notice much of a performance drop as my XP runs like a dream and all the games/applications I use run well.

Thanks in advance.

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dth

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Posted July 22, 2009 at 3:53PM

If everything is running well I wouldn't bother with Win 7. General feedback so far for Win 7 has been positive and I would agree with that - as I have be using the Release Candidate on my laptop.

But since everything is working well on your computer - I would suggest that it wouldn't be worth the trouble.

If you do decide to give it a try - you should install it on your first drive (Windows does not like being installed on a second drive - as it gets a bit confused). It makes sense to leave your second partition alone regardless - since it has all your data on.

If you look through the Windows 7 forum you will find a guide on how to set up a dual boot system - so that when you switch on your computer you will get a menu to choose whether to start XP or Win 7.

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donki

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Posted July 22, 2009 at 3:59PM

Thanks for the reply I will look for the dual boot thread, I have 2 sata drives so none is really the second drive if i undertsand correctly.

There is alot more space on my 500GB drive, it shouldnt need to be formatted before I install it should it? I think I will just partition the "Media" drive in half keeping my media files in one half and install Win 7 on the other..... does that make since? Then I will have an operating syatem on each drice and I can pick between the two.

I just want to try it really, see what it looked like, I wasnt that impressed with Vista and soon reverted back to XP.

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dth

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Posted July 22, 2009 at 5:01PM

You will only need about 20 gb to install Win 7 - personally I would be a bit reluctant to do anything with the main media drive on a just 'in case' basis.

If you weren't that impressed with vista - I would guess that you will like Win 7. Many comments have been along the lines of 'what vista should have been' and I wouldn't disagree. Although whether it offers that much more than XP the jury is still out. On the other hand with the current offer of £50 for Win 7 - it is difficult to argue against it.

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donki

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Posted July 23, 2009 at 10:11AM

Thanks,

From my understanding the "trial" of windows 7 will be unavailable for download after July so I might as well give it a go. As you say its a snip at £50.

Last question, if I did chose to install win7 on the media drive, or another internal blank drive will i still get the option of picking what OS to boot up with, or do they both need to be on the same drive?

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donki

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 12:37AM

Well i had another HD lying about the house so installed the evaluation copy on it and I have to say I am impressed, very smooth and very fast, so I may purchase.

One thing Now I have 3 HDs in my case but only have 2 free power cables ( I will buy a spliter), my questionis whoever whn I have my XP drive in and my media drive in, the Win7 drive isnt, I still get asked which version I want to boot up in :S. I thought I would only get this option if the Win7 drive was installed? Is it because I im using the same sata pot on my mother board for both the Win7 drive and the Media drive? I have 2 other free port but thought Id aks first before trying.

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donki

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 1:13AM

ok guys I have made a booh booh pls pls healp, for sum reason I went in and deleted files from my C: drive (files which were put there for duel boot i presume) and now I cant boot onto XP only Win7, I know I am an idiot but can this be fixed?

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donki

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 8:15AM

Booh booh fixed, why am i still getting an option to duel boot when the WIN7 Derive isnt installed?

Thanks

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Pine Man

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 9:14AM

'why am i still getting an option to duel boot when the WIN7 Derive isnt installed?'

Because when you installed Windows 7 on your secondary drive the boot sequence was modified on your primary drive.

To change the boot sequence you need to carry out a 'repair' using your XP disk in the primary drive.

I also have two HDs with Vista on one and Windows 7 on the other BUT I have a boot manager which allows me to select which drive I want to use at startup up. This way neither drive is dependant on the other.

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Quiet Life

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 11:02AM

click here
This free utility is good for adjusting the boot sequence. When installing W7RC it would not recognise my second internal drive so I partitioned my first drive which had XP on it and installed it there. No problems at all and is certainly a big improvement on Vista.
W7 will still not see my second drive and I do not know why. Nobody seems to have an answer to this problem.

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donki

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Posted July 24, 2009 at 11:10AM

Now that I have installed WIN7 on another drive is there now way 2 fix the boot sequence? My XP is OEM so I have no option to repair or even reinstall. What happens if I want to remove WIN 7 from the sencond drive completely??? Please tell me I havn't created a huge problem for myself.

Quiet Life

Thansk for the link, I use XP thou not vista, will it still work?

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