Last weekend, I installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my Dell 630i desktop machine. I choose to upgrade the machine rather than do a “clean install” because, frankly, my Dell has an nvidia motherboard and I wasn’t confident that I could find a Windows 7 compatible motherboard driver. It turns out that I didn’t need to worry about that because Windows 7 did have the drivers, but more importantly doesn’t need them or use them.
A clean install of Windows 7 takes about 15-20 minutes, an upgrade can take several hours (mine took 57 minutes). There were a couple of programs that I needed to uninstall and reinstall after the upgrade was completed (yes I’m talking to you Flight Simulator X), but on the whole everything worked with minimal problems. But more importantly, everything seemed to work faster and that, to me, validated the decision to move from Vista (which I really liked) to Windows 7 (which I am falling in love with).
Have enjoyed success on my machine, I proceeded to upgrade my wife’s Dell 530i machine to Windows 7 Professional. This attempt at goodwill turned out to be a mistake. In fairness, the compatibility program the installer runs first told me I was in for a world of hurt with one devices, but apparently it didn’t know about the other one until it got crushed. The upgrade took 75 minutes, the repair of the two problem took almost 7 hours.
The first problem I blame on Linksys-Cisco. About two months ago, I installed the Linksys EG1032 gigabit adapter on the Dell 530i. Well, there are no Windows 7 drivers for this device, but I discovered, thanks to the internet, that the card is a rebranded Realtek card and will use the Realtek RTL8169/8110 drivers built into Windows 7. This is why Linksys has said it won’t develop Windows 7 drivers for this card which frankly makes me angry because Linksys is still selling the card as being compatible with Windows 7 when it is not when it uses Linksys drivers. Once the card is up and running, Windows update installs the Linksys XP driver for the card and you are off and running – just not happily.
The second problem I blame on Apple. After installation, the network icon reported that I had local LAN access, but no internet access. Well, I’m hear to tell you that no internet access is reason enough to head to divorce court for my most significant other, so that became my primary mission. Windows 7 reported the card was working, but it wasn’t able to get DNS service. It could see the router and get a DHCP address from the router, but it couldn’t get out. I looked at the network connections and saw that it was showing two networks: my private home network and a unnamed public one. After much gritting of teeth, I discovered that the public network was Apple’s Bonjour, which was apparently installed as part of my iTunes installation. Needless to say, I uninstalled that piece of (expletive deleted) software and a miracle occurred: I had my network (and internet access) back.
The verdict? This was a good and impressive upgrade. Those moving from Windows XP will go “Wow”. Those moving from Windows Vista will be slightly less impressed, but will still like what they see. I know I do.