Officially Windows 7 hasn’t supported upgrading Beta and RC builds but that hasn’t stopped people from doing it anyway. Now that Windows 7 is released to RTM, and was published to TechNet and MSDN yesterday, millions of users around the globe are starting the migration to this latest and highly anticipated iteration of Windows. Officially Microsoft says you will need to reformat your drive and start from scratch, using Windows Easy Transfer to migrate to a new version of Windows 7 (official guide here). However, some users may not want to reinstall their old programs even though Windows Easy Transfer is said to migrate your settings for these programs.
I’ve created this simple guide on how to upgrade Window 7 RC to the RTM build without using Windows Easy Transfer, but rather the upgrade option that is normally not available in this scenario. Read more…
In a move not expected any time soon, Microsoft has released Windows Vista SP2 for public download. Commenters on Engadget claim there are noticeable performance gains and improvements made to the OS after installing this. If this is true, this should keep Vista users happy until Windows 7 is released – or longer.
Download links here:
32-bit (x86) download
64-bit (x64) download
[Source: Engadget]
Over the weekend AVG pushed out an update to their client. This update breaks Windows 7 by causing a Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) after 3 – 5 minutes of using the machine. While I haven’t done extensive research on the issue, removing AVG seems to have fixed the problem. During the uninstall I got the BSoD error, which caused the process to be incomplete. Luckily it removes enough of AVG to have it show disabled when the PC is rebooted. Running the uninstall again makes sure it’s completely out of the system. I’m hoping AVG gets this problem fixed ASAP so I can re-install their virus protection on my PC. After recently having to fix Kaspersky’s BSoD on my system, I really hope I don’t have to install Norton by default.
More to come!
UPDATE: Looks like this issue isn’t only related to AVG.
So I have found the solution to the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and it had nothing to do with nVidia’s Windows 7 pre-release driver. When I first installed Windows 7, it notified me that I had no anti-virus software (obviously) and listed three recommendations, one of which was free: Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7 technical preview. I’ve heard many good things about Kaspersky and decided to give it a try.
Kaspersky Lab releases technical preview of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7
After installing it seemed like it was working OK, but after a while it would generate a BSOD with the error pointing to kl1.sys. A quick Google search revealed that this file belongs to Kaspersky AV. I uninstalled it, installed AVG Free and I’ve been error-free since.
Now Windows 7 is running completely stable and fast. For being a beta release it runs pretty much like an RC, except for the recent MP3 corruption hotfixed they pushed out yesterday. Great job so far, Microsoft.
After much anticipation from the tech community, last weekend Microsoft released Window 7 Beta to the public – initially with a 2.5 million download limit (which was removed today). Being the geek that I am, I decided to download and install it and see if the next iteration of Windows lives up to the hype. I was delighted to know that the beta ISO was available on TechNet, which I am a proud (and paid) an member of. Not having to deal with the public download frenzy, I painlessly downloaded the 3+ GB Windows 7 64-bit ISO and began the install process. Here’s my breif review and initial impression of the OS. I will be going in to more detail in future posts. Read more…
