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Surprised by Win7

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Stoic Joker:
I remember in the past having setups where one Windows could not see the other and juggling partition settings on boot. It turned into a real nightmare esp. if you try to install some software on a non system partition that can run on both OS, such as Visual Studio.
-MilesAhead (November 02, 2009, 02:16 PM)
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Granted I did the same thing (and got the same result), but Microsoft did warn against that type of setup in a KB article written back in the Win2k days.

Carol Haynes:
The entire business with drive letters is a kludge. It will never be a real OS until they do away with it.  There needs to be standardized storage identification that allows a user assignable alias for a friendly name.  If all the stuff is moved to another storage location the friendly name should just be associated with the non-volatile ID.  Anything less is just hobbyist crap.

-MilesAhead (November 02, 2009, 03:09 PM)
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Win7 goes some way towards that by the use of Libraries. No real need for users to even be aware of drive letters.

MilesAhead:
I remember in the past having setups where one Windows could not see the other and juggling partition settings on boot. It turned into a real nightmare esp. if you try to install some software on a non system partition that can run on both OS, such as Visual Studio.
-MilesAhead (November 02, 2009, 02:16 PM)
--- End quote ---
Granted I did the same thing (and got the same result), but Microsoft did warn against that type of setup in a KB article written back in the Win2k days.
-Stoic Joker (November 02, 2009, 04:44 PM)
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I did that before Win2k. I had NT 4 server and Win98 both booting as C:
Most 3rd party apps worked with it fine.

afa the drive letter issue goes, until it is totally transparent, it's broken.  IOW, if I want to move all my stuff from partition D: to F: the registry entries should still be valid since it will just map to the other device or partition with no intervention by the user other than a command similar to "move apps from (source partition id) to (target partition id) and the friendly name, even if the user wanted to use D: or F: for some stupid reason like backward compatibility, would map to the proper place.

J-Mac:
I just installed it (boot directly from the DVD rather then inserting the DVD when Vista is running as you normally do for an upgrade) and chose the customised install options. It installed fine alongside Vista. Just make sure you rejig partition sizes to leave either blank space or a blank partition for the new OS to install on.

One point to note is that if you install Win 7 as a dual boot it will more than likely put all its boot components on the existing partition. Don't be tempted to simply delete the Vista partition in the future as it will mean your Windows 7 install won't boot afterwards!

One good thing about the BCD boot management is that you no longer have to worry about drive letters - each operating system boots in as drive C once installed.
-Carol Haynes (November 02, 2009, 05:17 AM)
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Thank you Carol! I missed the email for this and just saw your post. "BCD boot management" - Is that the EasyBCD software? I've never used that. I'll give it a try. First step is to purchase my Win7 upgrades! Did anyone here perform the custom (full) install using the upgrade disc yet?

Carol, you mentioned booting from the DVD. Does the Win7 upgrade come on a DVD? Or did you download it and burn it to a DVD?

Thank you.

Jim

Carol Haynes:
I have the full version on DVD. If you want to do it as an upgrade from Vista boot into Vista as normal and then insert the disc and follow the prompts.

You can buy upgrades online with a download. Personally I think they are to be avoided as the DVD acts as a rescue media in case of problems. With the download you don't get that - although you can no doubt find instructions via google on how to produce an ISO file from the MS WIM file.

PS: Beware EasyBCD is buggy as hell.

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