Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion

windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

<< < (20/33) > >>

Carol Haynes:
On the MS forum they report it installs correctly (with graphics drivers) for VirtualBox and VMWare 6.5

There seems to be the suggestion that you install it as a Server 2008 machine (or otherwise Vista) in the new machine profiles.

I posted a query about the problem I had with Win7 not installing properly and there have been quite a few responses which seems to suggest it might be integrated NVIDIA graphics related or otherwise just MS's NVIDIA graphics drivers.

See: http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7itproinstall/thread/2664066a-242b-43ad-ad97-1a84fae53295

nontroppo:
Are the old school classic themes and taskbar available in Win7?  :tellme:
-app103 (January 10, 2009, 09:02 PM)
--- End quote ---

The classic look is still there if you mean this:



You access it from Control Panel > Change the Themes > Ease of Access themes.

You need to set small icons on the taskbar to look more Win9x like. But the cool thing is that the taskbar still retains the benefits of the new unified launch/manage interface. So you get classic look but better functionality. Except for the fact the best new features (aeropeek, thumbnails and window visualisation are all locked into aero as I keep moaning about).

You can also turn theming on/off as in previous windows from the display performance dialog:



Win 7 is starting to play up a bit, I've had Windows activation reset itself with no changes to virtual hardware or software. And on startup today it has sat telling me it is configuring windows software whatever that means for 5 minutes instead of, you know, starting.

Windows activation is such a horrid system, I wish they'd remove it once and for all. It doesn't affect pirates one bit, but does annoy everyone else...

Carol Haynes:
I have had another crack at installing the 32-bit version.

Many people suggested it was a graphics issue so I installed a GeForce 7300GT OC PCIe card and disabled onboard graphics.

Win7 then installed - however there were some motherboard devices not recognised (SMbus was one).

I went to nvidia.com and ran the driver ID tool and it appears that Win7 incorrectly identifies my nForce 630MA motherboard as a 570.

There are no other Win7 drivers available at NVidia so I downloaded the Vista motherboard driver (which includes onboard graphics).

Installing the Vista driver for the correct motherboard and then restoring the onboard ghraphics adapter got my system working (at least in 32 bits - I haven't retried the 64 bit version). All devices were installed and working correctly.

As soon as the system booted up Windows update offered my the nvidia 630MA Win 7 beta driver. I let it install it and this killed my system again back into the reboot scenario.

I have now restored the vista drivers and told WUpdate to ignore the beta driver update in future.

It would appear that Win7 has problems identifying some motherboards correctly and also the nvidia beta motherboard/graphic drivers available from MS seem to be the problem - even when you do install the correct ones manually.

Hope this is helpful to others - how do I report this issue to MS ?

For future reference it would be really useful to know how to install Win7 with basic VGA support to be able to bypass these issues in future installs.


I have another issue now - I installed this in VMWare 6.5 but there is no Aero interface available (And without it it looks horrid - especially the Taskbar is grim). I tried running the system performance routing to see what level the system was running at and I can't get that to complete at all - it just hangs trying to optimise media decoding ??

Anyone using VMWare 6.5 got past this - or managed to get Aero working?

nontroppo:
No, neither VMWare nor Parallels can run the windows experience index to completion, and hang in the same place you found. I tried editing registry values to force aero to show, but it didn't work. I know VMWare are working on getting aero supported, don't know why they find it so difficult as they are DirectX 9c compliant.

Eóin:
Since I installed on a HD and it detected my 3d card fine I can post some Aero screenshots. I knocked the resolution down to 1024x768 because there was no need for massive captures I felt.

As you can see there are ribbons everywhere, but think they work really well myself. They especially adapt very intelligently to windows being resized. I can't see myself playing with it too much, Vista is running rock solid and I'm very pleased with it as my main OS. But when 7 is officially released I can see myself switching over almost instantly.

windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

windows 7 beta available for free Jan 9 (!)

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page

[*] Previous page