rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Thanks for the explanation on the monitor. It certainly is a big improvement over the old backlite. Very well done.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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~Steph~
Texas Wildflower
Reged: 06/11/05
Posts: 22999
Loc: North Texas
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Quote:
A followup on my Win7 installation.
Other than the printer problem, I'm very happy with the change. My previous lockups, "blue death"screens have not reappeared.
Hubert, thanks for giving some actual info on your installation.
I had bought Win7 at the sweet pre-order price they offered over the summer, but planned to wait to install it until more real-world experience of the final version came out. Unfortunately, my XP computer got messed up over the weekend and required a re-install of XP, which I did the bare bones of last night. I'm now seriously considering going ahead and just installing Win7 now, since I have to reinstall all my programs again now anyway (my other reason to hold off on Win7 for awhile  ). Decisions, decisions....
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Steph
10" RCX400 ~~ 4" TV102 ~~ WO ZS80FD ~~ PST
Serenity Observatory 
HansenAstro | CN Member Websites
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Steph; now is the time to go for it. There are two major problems starting to crop up with Windows 7 installs (not to say it is a buggy install, just that of the problems reported there are two main ones that they seem to fall into) so you may as well go for it while you are in the mud just to see if you happen to be one of the problem children.
If not: well then, you just saved your self a second reinstall.
Link to just one article on the Win7 install problems.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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That said, it appears Microsoft is not having the install problems it had with Vista and the whole upgrade process is going fairly well. The link above just describes the two main problems of the few that they are seeing.
Which does not mean much for the poor folks that ARE having problems. It does appear that the odds are in your favour for a good install.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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~Steph~
Texas Wildflower
Reged: 06/11/05
Posts: 22999
Loc: North Texas
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Thanks, Ron, I was just reading about one of those main upgrade problems with the endless reboot thing a few minutes ago and thankfully (for me) it appears to mostly/only affect Vista users upgrading to Win7, not XP users. Not to say there aren't XP issues, also, but..... 
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Steph
10" RCX400 ~~ 4" TV102 ~~ WO ZS80FD ~~ PST
Serenity Observatory
HansenAstro | CN Member Websites
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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With XP you are forced to do a clean install so hopefully you will dodge a whole host of bullets by doing it that way.
Typically that is the ideal install anyway - if you can get away with it.
Remember back in the Win98 days and conventional wisdom said to do a clean install every so often just to keep the gramlins at bay? Oiy!
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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~Steph~
Texas Wildflower
Reged: 06/11/05
Posts: 22999
Loc: North Texas
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Just gotta see if my 500GB external drive has enough room to copy over everything from the non-WinXP partitions or if I need another one, since it sounds like the whole drive gets reformatted potentially as part of the clean install. I've got data backed up already on another external drive (I at least didn't have a data backup issue even if the computer problem this weekend had turned out to be a hard drive problem instead of a corrupt WinXP problem!), but I want to go ahead and copy *everything* en masse anyway, as much to be able to remember what programs I had as anything without writing it all down, since I now can't run any of those nifty programs that will print a list of what I had installed before doing the upgrade/install. I believe in multiple redundant backups at this point....
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Steph
10" RCX400 ~~ 4" TV102 ~~ WO ZS80FD ~~ PST
Serenity Observatory
HansenAstro | CN Member Websites
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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The big externals are so "cheap" considering the size you get (kinda have to be the way digital cameras are creating files so big and fast it ain't funny) I'd highly recommend you get one. Or three. 
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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~Steph~
Texas Wildflower
Reged: 06/11/05
Posts: 22999
Loc: North Texas
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Well, I did have room on my existing big external drive, so copied everything over on Monday night.
I got Win7 installed last night, with seemingly no trouble. Got a few programs reinstalled but still have many to go plus some tweaking and such. Haven't tried adding the printer yet, though.
One good thing -- even though it meant Monday night's copying ended up being irrelevant -- is that only the partition on which Win7 now resides was wiped, my two other partitions (where most data, programs and backups were) are still there. I've always mostly installed programs into another partition, so that info is still there, even though the programs of course have to be reinstalled. So as I reinstall programs, the old settings and info is still in the same folders where I'm reinstalling, resulting in little fuss getting them going again for the most part, so far.
I don't mind having spent the time Monday copying everything from those two partitions, though; I just wasn't sure whether the Win7 install would hose the entire hard drive or only its own partition. I didn't *want* to hose the entire hard drive, so I was happy.
The install only took 30 minutes, from putting in the disk to beginning my own tweaks and installs of other programs. That's not too bad. Just gotta finish all the reinstalls now, which will take time.
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Steph
10" RCX400 ~~ 4" TV102 ~~ WO ZS80FD ~~ PST
Serenity Observatory
HansenAstro | CN Member Websites
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Pedestal
Post Laureate
Reged: 03/11/06
Posts: 3860
Loc: Smoggy Bottom, Baytown,Texas
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I "cheated" and solved my printer problem by swapping printers with my wife. ) She had a Canon S200, which works just fine under W7. Slower than the HP, though..
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Hubert
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www.smoggybottom.org
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bigbeck
professor emeritus
Reged: 08/13/08
Posts: 582
Loc: Trenton, NJ
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Quote:
I'd believe Microsoft before I believe anyone else...
Don
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Jimmy2K63
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 04/26/09
Posts: 1193
Loc: Kentucky
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Being an IT professional I think from the sounds of it many are sweating a lot of little things about this new OS. Unless you have substantial resources and very modern hardware I would not bother upgrading, just buy a new PC with Windows 7 on it and go from there.
Our enterprise will be making a gradual move to Windows 7 with our newly purchased client machines and I'll be getting to know it's headaches soon enough. Conventional wisdom is, in dealing with Microsoft, the OS is not really worth the effort until they at least have the first service pack in place. And in Vista's case....not worth it at all.
My best advice...keep your XP box, data intact, buy a new box for Windows 7.
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http://astronomyguy63.blogspot.com/
LXD75 SN6-UHTC
Cave Astrola 10" f/5
Garrett 15x70/FarSight
Canon XS (1000D)
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csa/montana
Den Mother
Reged: 05/14/05
Posts: 40307
Loc: montana
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I've received my upgrade disc to Windows 7 from Vista; but I'm in no hurry whatsoever for it to be installed. I'm still learning Vista. 
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Carol
AstroTech 16" Dob (Thanks ASTRONOMICS!)
Vixen 80MF/AstroTech Voyager
Masuyama's 7.5, 15, 25W, 35mm,
Pentaxes; 5XW, 7XL, 10XW.
14mm Meade 4000 UWA
TV Panoptics; 22, 35
DreamCatcher Dobservatory, #2
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mclewis1
Thread Killer
Reged: 02/25/06
Posts: 3961
Loc: New Brunswick, Canada
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Carol, they are close enough so that what you've learned about Vista will be transferable to Win7. Win7 is based on Vista code, it's been optimized and added to and the user interface has been updated but under the covers it still has a lot of Vista in it. I personally wouldn't put off the upgrade too long. Basically it would be better if you didn't become too attached to Vista, that way the transition and subsequent use of Win7 will be easier.
It won't be too long before Vista is merely a footnote in the Microsoft OS history.
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Mark
C11, C6, APM/TMB115, and AT80ED - Tandem mount CGE and CG-5A, WO EZ-Touch and AT Voyager
25x100s and 8x56s, T-Mount Light, Mark 1 eyeballs - Modded 350D, DSI-P, SPC900, Mallincam
Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean that you should
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csa/montana
Den Mother
Reged: 05/14/05
Posts: 40307
Loc: montana
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I won't be doing it myself; I'll have to get the computer guy up here to do it for me. So it just depends when I can afford it.
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Carol
AstroTech 16" Dob (Thanks ASTRONOMICS!)
Vixen 80MF/AstroTech Voyager
Masuyama's 7.5, 15, 25W, 35mm,
Pentaxes; 5XW, 7XL, 10XW.
14mm Meade 4000 UWA
TV Panoptics; 22, 35
DreamCatcher Dobservatory, #2
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Scott K
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 09/13/07
Posts: 1411
Loc: Dallas, TX & Eufaula, OK
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I upgraded my toshiba notebook from Vista to Win7, Carol, and had no real issues. The notebook feels a LOT peppier since I've done this - I think you will notice a difference on your system. I think you will like Win7, I certainly do, in a way that I have never liked Vista. (I've used Vista since LONG before its release, having worked with it during its development. I never liked its UI, it just never felt natural to me. I've used it literally every day for about 3 years now - and I've really never gotten used to it.)
Best of luck with your upgrade, and I can understand squeamishness on your part about doing it yourself. Its wise to know your limits.
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~Steph~
Texas Wildflower
Reged: 06/11/05
Posts: 22999
Loc: North Texas
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Alas, I've had to downgrade from Win7 back to WinXP.  I'm sad, because I really liked Win7. It looks great, and outside of a few quirks, it has some really nice features and upgrades over XP (never had Vista, never wanted it).
But I had some major connection problems -- which I've been reading online are not uncommon and have been a problem going back to at least January with the release candidates, using all sorts of hardware and variations of systems. There are no one-size-fits-all ways to fix it, and none of the options I read about and tried have worked for me. Essentially my connection would drop every hour or so, sometimes less. I was almost ready to even live with that, as annoying as it was, but once the speed dropped also to barely better than dial-up speed, I gave up.
I'll have to keep an eye on the various fora to see if some real fix is provided for the problem so that I can upgrade again.
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Steph
10" RCX400 ~~ 4" TV102 ~~ WO ZS80FD ~~ PST
Serenity Observatory
HansenAstro | CN Member Websites
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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May take a service pack or two to do it.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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mclewis1
Thread Killer
Reged: 02/25/06
Posts: 3961
Loc: New Brunswick, Canada
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True Ron, but a lot of the issues are with device drivers and older hardware and applications. Sometimes there will be updates to handle things that the MS crew didn't get a chance to take care of when the OS was released but there will also be things that will simply get left behind. 3rd party vendors (of the problem products in question ) might find their products too tough to bring into compliance with Vista/Win7, or they may find that there is simply not enough business to warrant doing the work. Its a bit of a catch 22 that affects every OS vendor.
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Mark
C11, C6, APM/TMB115, and AT80ED - Tandem mount CGE and CG-5A, WO EZ-Touch and AT Voyager
25x100s and 8x56s, T-Mount Light, Mark 1 eyeballs - Modded 350D, DSI-P, SPC900, Mallincam
Just because you can doesn't necessarily mean that you should
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rboe
Reged: 03/16/02
Posts: 45410
Loc: Phx, AZ
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Since the basic engine is based on Vista a NIC device driver that worked in Vista (in this case it may not have since Steph went from XP straight to 7) should have worked in 7.
In any event, one would think that over the three years of the Vista release (counting betas) a vendor could have gotten a driver to work.
But like you said, maybe the number of products out there is too small.
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Ron
NS11GPS
Pronto
16" dob
15X70 Obies
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