Austin360 blogs > Digital Savant > Archives > 2009 > September > 28 > Entry
Overprepared or just smart upgrading? Prepping for Windows 7
I have come out the other side of the Windows XP-to-Windows 7 transition unscathed, happy and completely safe.
This might not seem like a big deal to Windows power users who routinely tweak their systems for maximum performance and regularly perform hardware upgrades or clean installations of Windows every few months to make sure things are running optimally.
That’s not me. My wife and I both use our desktop computer and though it’s been three years since we last upgraded the hardware on the machine, it was still running like a champ at speeds of 3.2-Gigahertz (via a dual-core processor) using Windows XP.
I approached Windows 7 cautiously, installing it first as a Boot Camp partition on my Apple Macbook. It ran smoothly and I liked it so much I decided that I would make the leap to it on the desktop machine, something I’d resisted during the long, dark time PC users call the Windows Vista era.
When Microsoft sent me an early copy of the final software and I decided to review it for work (I’ll be writing something up closer to the October 22 launch), the die was cast. It was time to upgrade. I was terrified.
Installing Windows 7 on a Windows Vista machine is simply a matter of upgrading. But coming from Windows XP requires a completely fresh installation (if you want to make sure you don’t run into major problems down the road), something Wall Street Journal tech columnist Walt Mossberg called “Frustrating, tedious and painful.”
So I prepared for pain. Over-prepared, perhaps. Here’s what I did:
Clear out the deadwood: The first thing I did was start uninstalling old video games and applications I haven’t used in ages. Some programs were so old they wouldn’t even uninstall properly, so I just deleted folders and did my best to get rid of anything that wasn’t vital and that wasn’t going to get reinstalled in Windows 7.
Do a full backup: Once I got my computer to a state relatively close to what I wanted on Windows 7, I used my backup software to do a complete backup of my computer’s hard drives. Only the C: drive would be wiped out in my migration, but I backed up everything anyway just to be safe. Everything was duplicated in full file/folder structure to my Drobo backup device. Some backup programs compress your files, but I wanted complete access to all the files and folders in case anything should go wrong.
Make a list: I made a list on a sheet of paper of every program that would need to be re-installed in Windows 7, from Microsoft Office 2007 to iTunes to games. The list took up almost a whole page. Some programs — like Studio 12, a video-editing program I use — allow you to find an activation number of product key in their help menu. For any numbers like that, I wrote them down on the paper. After Windows 7 was up and running, I crossed off each program as I reinstalled them one at a time.
Backup to the backup: Some programs, including iTunes and Google’s Picasa photo software, allow you to make a backup of your program’s library. iTunes 9 allows you consolidate all your music, TV shows and other files into one big iTunes directory. Once you’ve done that, you can backup that entire library to a CD or DVD. If your library is bigger than what will fit on one of those devices (mine was), you can just copy the entire iTunes directory to an external hard drive. I used such a drive (separate from the Drobo) to backup iTunes, my playlists and iTunes library files. I also did that for my Picasa photo library and for a few other programs that create their own database (like the program I use to scan in business cards, NeatWorks.) I also backed up browser bookmarks, e-mail and any other files I thought I might need right away to that second external drive. Overkill, maybe, but I was making sure I had a plan in case anything happened with the Drobo (say, if Windows 7 had trouble recognizing it).
Uninstall/deactivate more programs: I deauthorized iTunes on my computer, uninstalled Office 2007 and cleared out any other program I could think of that might have a licensing issue upon reinstallation. This process took a while and was the point of no return.
Use the Windows Migration Tool: The Windows 7 disc comes with a very handy application called Windows Easy Transfer (it’s “migsetup.exe” in the support\Migwiz directory). Using that program, you can transfer Windows profiles, data files, program settings, browser bookmarks and other information. I used this to transfer just my basic settings and user profiles to the external drives. It worked well. Once Windows 7 was up, even my desktop wallpaper was back, along with my desktop files, browser settings and my wife’s separate Windows account. This might have been overkill given the other steps I’d taken, but it made me feel better to have those files and settings available.
Take a deep breath: Once all that was done, I took a long, deep breath, slipped in the Windows 7 disc and installed. I cleared out the entire hard drive (you can choose to let the old files co-exist with Windows on the drive, but it’s not recommended) and waited. Just 30 minutes later, Windows 7 was up and I started putting everything back in place.
And… it wasn’t a disaster! I’ll go into more detail about my experiences with Win7 in my full review, but I can report that the steps I took were more than adequate to get everything back in order. My wife’s Thunderbird e-mails and account were restored without fuss. iTunes re-imported all my music and files. Picasa didn’t lose any vital family photos and the Windows Easy Transfer program worked a little too well — it restored some clutter I probably should have left behind in Windows XP.
Yes, it was a little painful. Yes, it was time consuming. I’d say the whole process took several days of off-and-on work.
But so far, I can say the effort was worth it. Nothing was lost, things are working better than they were before and most importantly, all the work I did on the front end eliminated some major stress I might have faced later if anything hadn’t gone completely according to plan.
I’m sure there are simpler ways to do it and many people wouldn’t hesitate to wipe their main drive since they keep most of their files online, but that wasn’t our situation. Maybe I worked too hard to do something pretty basic, but I’m happy nonetheless with the results.
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By Bill
September 28, 2009 3:55 PM | Link to this
Yeah, a little over prepared, but better safe than sorry. Windows 7 Easy Transfer (and its enterprise class sibling, USMT 4) have greatly improved how user states are "migrated" in that it only uses megabytes vs. gigabytes to get teh job done. Basically, it never really moves your data, just scans where it is and tells Win 7 the location. Very, very cool. I've seen USMT move data from one physical XP machine to a new Win 7 machine as well, with only passwords needing to be re-entered.
I tell people to skip Vista - Win 7 is the real deal.