If you haven’t heard about Windows 7 yet it is time to take note. 7 is the next iteration of windows and it appears that, unlike vista, its going to be a worthy replacement for XP. Those of you who have had to down(up?)grade from vista to xp are probably skeptical, but personally, from what I’ve read I think its going to be the next XP (in the sense that it will be a success, not the sense that it will be around for a decade before something better comes along… I hope).
You don’t have to take my word for it though. So long as you sign up before January 24th (exactly 2,647 days since the release of XP) you can try out the beta of Microsoft’s next OS:
Windows 7 Beta Information and Download
Be Warned! You’ll read on the website that it is not such a great idea to install 7 on your primary machine. I brushed off this warning without much thought and happily decided to install 7 alongside XP. And so begins the (notso) epic tale of how my Windows 7 beta test failed to get off the ground…
Downloading the installation DVD took me just over an hour, which for me is not bad for 2-3.5 GB depending on which flavor of 7 you decide to download. As soon as the dvd was done burning I quickly made a roughly 40GB primary NTFS partition on my hard drive and launched the installer. Unlike XP, which requires you to install by booting from cd (ie furiously tapping F8), 7 is smart enough to begin the install from XP while you sit back and enjoy the progress bar. Law and Order happened to be on TV at the time (There’s a 23/24 chance of that occuring as you are aware if you have basic cable) so I left the room.
A while later my progress-bar-nearly-full sense kicked in and I sprinted into my room to check the install. I caught the computer in the middle of a reboot. After the (new and shiny) load screen every step except was complete except for the very vauge “Completing Install…” step. I sat and watched the trailing dots come and go (. .. … .) until yet another reboot. Thinking its competely done now I watched the boot manager flash by, displaying “Windows 7″ and “Earlier version of Windows”. It defaulted to windows 7 and the low res but still new and shiny background appeared. Distracted, it took me a moment to notice the text “Installation was not successful”.
After this I made my critical error. I rebooted into XP and formatted my testing partition, then rebooted to try another install. If you haven’t realized I missed a step you will soon. After the install (and more Law and Order) I recieve the same message. This is, however, not the problem. Another reboot reveals the options “Earlier version of Windows” , “Windows 7″ , and… “Windows 7″. Thinking Oops I try to boot back into XP (forgetting that Vista and 7 don’t use the boot.ini) to fix the problem. This usually takes about 45 seconds. Three minutes later the screen was still black and I was thinking about the warning on the download page:
“Don’t install the Beta on your primary home or work computer. Microsoft is not responsible for downtime stemming from the Windows 7 Beta.”
A full day of debugging later I managed to get back into XP (thank you bcdedit).
That’s my story. For those of you who still want to do a side by side install here’s a link to a guide on how to do it:
You’ve been warned.
My old laptop is most likely going to be my new test subject. I’ll write again when I have have some first hand experience to share.