Readyboost issue

Chappy · 25 Apr 2009

Hi Jimbo

I've heard that the upgrade process is disabled in these latter builds, and for the first time my upgrade from 7068 to 7077 failed (as expected but I wanted to make sure). MS has done this before on past beta's because of the under the hood changes that clash with upgrade installs on pre-release builds, and I heard the same is true with W7 Escrow & RC branch builds.

Now this is still up to debate I guess as some have reported that they are able to upgrade and others can't. I also know that some 7077 and higher builds available thru torrents are pre-modified to bypass the version check on the installer and allow upgrade installs.
Did you check the hash of your iso against the known value for an unmodified build if you did this successfully? Or could you open the "cversion.ini" file from the iso and see what version the MinClient line reports please?

Thanx bud, I'm trying to figure out exactly what the upgrade situation is with these builds. I still don't recommend doing one from another pre-release build and nor does MS due to the possible problems but I want to get the facts straight as there's too much conflicting stuff out there on it.

jimbo45 · 25 Apr 2009

Hi
I'll check in the morning

going to bed now

Did install 7100 on a laptop via SETUP.EXE from the DVD ISO. I had a problem with "O2 MMC XD" card reader -- uninstalled the driver (via control panel -- note not DELETE software just uninstall driver) ) and then I could upgrade from build 7077.

I'll check hashes / SHA1 etc in the morning.

ISO I used was the torrent from "The Green Devil" which I'm still leaving seeding for others until the morning.

AFAIK it's 100% genuine and has been used by others on this Forum.

Cheers
jimbo

Chappy · 25 Apr 2009

Thanx Jimbo, look forward to the info.

AlexRD · 25 Apr 2009

Well, i don't think i need upgrade.
I'm happy with my OS the way it is

.

But, then again the Flash Drive problem, what can i do about it to diagnose the problems? Or the 32 GB Version is known to not run Readyboost?

Thank you,
Alex.

ikilledkenny · 26 Apr 2009

Well, what is the speed of the flash drive? I'll do some searching and see what the requirements are.

Also, I was unable to upgrade from 7000 to 7100.

swarfega · 26 Apr 2009

jimbo45 said:

Hi there.

Actually why would you need readyboost anyway?

Even with small amount of RAM I think the Jury is still out on whether Readyboot is actually any good - especially if your primary hard disk(s) are reasonably fast.

On a 64 bit build it could even theoretically make things worse as the OS paging algorithim would have to do more work -- the "Page fault" generated by the OS in searching for memory that's not in real RAM would have to determine WHICH device the required data was on and if it was on the USB device then create another "Interrupt" to handle I/O to that device (usally by an IRQ in the BIOS), pause any pending I/O's on your disks (unless you've got SCSI in which case Readyboost is a total waste of time), and move the data to RAM.

Meanwhile you might have had another "Page Fault" for the same application wanting a chunk of memory from the paging disks. - Everthing has to wait again for this to be moved to RAM to be available again.

Of course a lot of this stuff is "theoretical mathematics" based a lot on "probablity theory". The OS tries to maximize paging efficiency based on well known algorithms such as LRU and MRU ("Last recently used" and Most recently Used").

When your system isn't under load the computer will page some of these "segments" back into main RAM if it's available ready for a possible "future" request for those chunks of memory. Now if this stuff is residing on a slow USB device it could really hamper the speed of the OS.

I'd really avoid Readyboost if I were you especially on the later Windows build -- I've even got a 1GB RAM small 11 inch laptop running W7 build 7077 X-64 and provided I don't go bonkers with running very much at the same time then it works just fine -- even photoshop CS4 (64 bit version) -- OK making multiple layers etc on a HUGE RAW file is a bit slow but I really shouldn't be using that piece of kit for such types of work.

For gaming you are unlikely to see ANY peformance whatsoever -- you need the best Graphics card you can get,a decent amount of RAM, and VERY IMPORTANT - FAST DISKS. -- I doubt that on most games whether you'd actually get much improvement by just "upping" the CPU to say a QUAD unless the other components where changed as well -- but a topic for another post.

Hoped you enjoyed the "Before Breakfast" introductory course on "OS Paging 101" - especially on a Saturday Morning.

Cheers
jimbo

You do actually notice a small increase in some application load times (which is its main purpose).