Windows 7 public beta release

[tornado33]

Hi all
Well Ive downloaded and tried both the x32 and x64 bit versions of the sucessor to Vista. Installating was very easy. The documentation says about 1/2 hour, took about 20 mins on my quadcore system.

32 bit version even picked up my usb TV tuner and installed the correct driver. I fired up Media center and it scanned the channels and then I was watching DTV :) Windows 7 ran without a hitch. Interestingly it repoprted all of my 8gb ram despite being a 32bit o/s, however task manager saw only about 3.5 gb

64 bit version of windows 7 didnt have a driver for the tuner, but using the 64bit xp/vista driver downloaded from its website, it worked fine. It too installed without a problem in about 20 mins.

I didnt need to install any motherboard drivers, both versions picked up my lan ports and I was able to go online immediately the install was finished. AVG antivirus 8 works fine in both versions. I tested Photoshopcs4 64bit trial in the 64 bit version, it works fine.

Now for the downside. I cound NOT get windows 7 to install on an older system with a Nforce 2 chipset (amd athlon cpu). Install went fine till it needed to restart, I briefly saw a BSOD, then it kept continually rebooting, even in Safe Mode. That machine has 3gb ram and runs xp just fine

On a 3rd machine with a SIS chipset, Windows 7 installer wouldnt even boot from the dvd. I got a "cannot boot error code5" error and that was that. Nothing more I could do.

So on newer systems with up to date chipsets it installs easily and runs great. On older systems even if they easily meet the system requirements, no luck at all. If MS can fix that, they will be on a winer for sure.

I did try and install motherboard drivers on my current system, but installs aborted saying "operating system not supported"

I should point out that I did NOT install it on my system drive. I had an old first generation sata1 drive lying around, so I put it in a sata box and plugged it into my Esata port, then set the system to boot from the DVD drive in order to install windows 7. To avoid accidents I even unplugged the system drive. I recommend you install windows 7 on an drive other then your system drive. Even with activation it expires later this year.

If youre keen and have plenty of download quota available, you can get the beta here
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-download.aspx
Have fun with windows 7!
Scott

[Omaroo]

Thanks Scott. Very keen to test drive it under vBox. :thumbsup:

[leinad]

Tried it out on the weekend too. Some features nice, other features not so nice. I wasn't able to get Creative Soundblaster Xi-Fi Extreme Gamer soundcard drivers and software working.

I also didn't like the KDE feel to the desktop. Much prefer Vista now since Ive had no problems at all and become used to it.
one option I did like was the Desktop Taskbar preview window and the ability to flick between browser windows with ease. Very cool.

[netwolf]

One more thing I would actually stronlgy reccomend you remove your System Drive or drives and do on a spare drive. If another Active Partition is find Windows often installs its bootloader on there instead of the drive you want it to go on.

[Omaroo]

Just use vBox or VMware for what it is intended Fahim.:thumbsup:

[toryglen-boy]

Thats probably a fault of the Creative, rather than the O/S, Vista and XP drivers for the Xi-Fi are notoriously pony as well,

I have used it here in the lab, and i think its very good, almost just like a logical progression from what Vista should have been.

:)

[MrB]

Just out of interest, how big is the DL?

[tornado33]

around 3Gb. Both 32 and 64 bit around the same size.
BTW, Star Atlas pro software works fine on Windows 7

[Omaroo]

Download page doesn't work any more. I believe that MS were flooded with requests well above and beyond their expected 2.5 million test activations.

Don't know if they;ll fix the page or not...... !???@???@!!!:shrug:

http://www.realtechnews.com/

[DJDD]

and you cannot download it with Firefox only IE! :lol:
or is that just me? :shrug:

[Omaroo]

... and only 32-bit IE at that. I was trying to use IE64 and the Akamai download manager wasn't installing. No error or anything - it just didn't work. Tried 32-bit and I'm now downloading it pretty quickly. :thumbsup:

[MrB]

3Gig eh?.... so me with dialup.... hahaha
Was never intending to get it anyway.

[turbo_pascale]

I downloaded virtual box, and tried to install the 64-bit version of Vista inside it. Doesn't get very far at all before it has an error.

Can you load this in VirtualBox? When setting up the VM, there is no "Windows 7 beta" option (not surprisingly). I tried both Vista 64 and "Other Windows" version as options, but no dice.

Anyone else tried this combo?

I'm about to rebuild a PC that has a dead motherboard in the next day or so, which I'll install it on for testing anyway, but was keen to try VirtualBox anyway.

Turbo

[Omaroo]

Hi Rob

Yep - I have it running within vBox on a Vista64 host. Runs well. You'll have to tweak network functionality by setting the network driver to XP compatability mode, but other than that it's good.

[Tandum]

Does this version browse to XP machines on the network?

They crippled networking in the earler versions :(

[turbo_pascale]

Did you install from the mounted ISO image, or burn to a DVD and install that way?

I've been wanting to try 64 bit for a long time, but have been scared about the driver issues (I have a hard enough time with some of my old gear getting it to work under vista32)

Mine gets the attached message after the "Starting Windows" graphical screen. If you hit enter, the next screen comes up, which then causes it to restart and get the first error again.
I'm running a Quad Core 9650 in a P45 chipset under Vista 32.
The VBox settings are set for Vista-64, and I mount the downloaded ISO directly

Any tips most appreciated.

Thanks.
Turbo

[turbo_pascale]

For what it's worth - the 32-bit install is nearly complete and have had no headaches whatsoever......

New motherboard should arrive tomorrow, so will install 64-bit clean on the spare PC!

Turbo

[Omaroo]

Rob - I always install directly from the downloaded ISO, but just remember to re-point your virtual CD to your real CD drive afterwards. LOL!

I actually stumbled across this today - it's a step by step guide. Works very well because they essentially found what I did.

http://twoguystech.com/blog/art/installing-windows-7-beta-suns-virtualbox

[turbo_pascale]

Thanks Chris.
I effectively did all that (in fact, outside of forgetting to turn the sound on before I started), I had enabled the network card before I installed, and as soon as the 32bit install was complete, it had already gone to the internet, downloaded 2 patches and rebooted. Very cool.

I'm going to try and see if the ISO I have of the 64bit is dodgy. That might explain it a bit. It will become apparent when this replacement motherboard actually arrives, and I can try it without the virtualbox complexity in the middle.

Although, staying up until 4am playing with Windows 7 in a virtual machine (it was cloudy after all!) has elevated me to a new level of geekiness that I had not thought I would reach, and I'm pretty geeky already..

Turbo