Windows 7 Professional vs. Home Premium

[noyb]

There was some excitement in my neighborhood about the ability to get a free copy of XP to run in W7 Ultimate.

The question was … If this was running in W7 ultimate 64 ..
Would it be as fast as XP 64 and have ALL the features of XP that are missing in Vista or W7.

My Neighbor did some looking in to this ..
But he was running W7 within a virtual environment in his XP pro 64 ..
And he didn’t think this would be a suitable test to run XP in a Virtual environment within in a Virtual environment.

His final conclusion .. Install a copy of XP pro 64 and forget it.
His XP pro 64 looks just like Vista with some of the Vista Toys n Gadgets.

He was a little excited when he found the XP Msi installer and the product code ..
I wish I could understand more than 1% of what he told me.

 

[juron99]

noyb,

I see you are from my old hometown. I read where you mentioned something about imaging Windows 7 with Acronis. I tried it twice and both times my hard drive crashed. I read somewhere that you couldn't ghost Windows 7 just yet. If you know of a way, I would appreciate the info as I would like to do it for a client. I consider myself an advance user as I have been building computers for friends and family for about ten years but am by no means an expert. Thank in advance.

Ron

 

[noyb]

Kokomo is a good place to be from ..
Too bad I didn't get out while the getting was good.
Had a Condo on the St Johns in Astor Fl for awhile.

Haven't tried lately .. but I was able to get an Acronis recovery to work ..
after two repairs with the W7 DVD.

My problem is that I like to add a third Data partition after the C:System then just restore the system partition.

As long as the HDD has this 3rd data partition .. my computer is dead.
It will not even boot from the ATI boot CD or restore from the W7 DVD .. nothing runs.
Figure this one out ???

I have to remove the 3rd data partition ... via USB enclosure ..
then restore with Acronis - fix twice .. then put the data partition back in.

I don't know if this is something weird in W7 .. Or maybe because the trials are designed to drop dead.

I wouldn't get to worried about it till W7 is officially released and Acronis has a chance to catch up.
Actually .. It looks like it'll be a very long time before I'm convinced to leave XP behind.
Jay

 

[juron99]

I built a fast computer for my nurse buddy that does my infusions. 3D Mark 6 had it at 16913 stock. I installed XP Pro x64 and Windows 7 x64 and tried to clone it to the second hard drive. I had 100GB partition for XP and 800GB partition for Win 7. I downloaded the latest version of Acronis but it didn't do the job or I overlooked something. When I selected the drive to copy from it showed the proper partitons and and capacity. The other drive was identical but it was new and empty. After the clone process it seemed to wipe out the primary drive as if it was doing just the opposite as it was suppose to be doing. I did it twice just to make sure I was doing it right. However, there was nothing on the new drive either. I thought maybe Microsoft didn't want us to clone Windows 7 yet.

Ron

 

[noyb]

Haven't tried Cloning ... only did this once in XP.
I usually like to rebuild from an image and partition it as I like it during the recovery...
or just recover specific partitions.

From what I'm seeing .. I think there's a lot that M$ doesn't want us to do anymore.
My list keeps growing.

I've heard that Macrium works in W7 .. Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

 

[juron99]

Thanks for the link. I'll download it and see if it works.

Ron

 

[DJG]

There was some excitement in my neighborhood about the ability to get a free copy of XP to run in W7 Ultimate.

The question was … If this was running in W7 ultimate 64 ..
Would it be as fast as XP 64 and have ALL the features of XP that are missing in Vista or W7.

My Neighbor did some looking in to this ..
But he was running W7 within a virtual environment in his XP pro 64 ..
And he didn’t think this would be a suitable test to run XP in a Virtual environment within in a Virtual environment.

His final conclusion .. Install a copy of XP pro 64 and forget it.
His XP pro 64 looks just like Vista with some of the Vista Toys n Gadgets.

He was a little excited when he found the XP Msi installer and the product code ..
I wish I could understand more than 1% of what he told me.

I used XP x64 until Win 7 came out. You couldn't pay me to go back to XP, but I have an XP image to restore in case I need it for my Oct 22 upgrade. I'm guessing he has some critical legacy code that only runs under XP?

 

[noyb]

I'm guessing he has some critical legacy code that only runs under XP?

Don't think so.
He did go to a lot of trouble to get a HP business refub Laptop with XP to avoid Vista ... Then he upgraded it some more.
He was just messing with W7 cause I asked some questions.

Old software is not a problem to him .. He can run anything in a virtual mode ...
He was showing me some games written before Windows.

 

[MrAleX]

Don't think so.
He did go to a lot of trouble to get a HP business refub Laptop with XP to avoid Vista ... Then he upgraded it some more.
He was just messing with W7 cause I asked some questions.

Old software is not a problem to him .. He can run anything in a virtual mode ...
He was showing me some games written before Windows.

don't you guys find it a bit STUPID to avoid vista? get the laptop with win 95 and n-joy then if you are AFRAID OF SMTH NEW

 

[noyb]

NO ..
There are many things that Vista or W7 cannot do .. If you know how to set up and use XP.

 

[harpua]

I haven't had any problem using Acronis TIH 2009 "utilities" to "Clone" (not image/restore) my entire hard drive in W7. Works great. I always keep a fairly recent clone of my system around in addition to doing regular image backups. I haven't tried to restore from image backups of W7 yet, but I don't really trust or like to rely on only them, hence why I always do regular clones of the entire primary drive. Takes me just a couple of minutes to physically swap in a cloned disk into my laptop with no worries about restore from image failing.

 

[juron99]

Peter,

I haven't been able to figure it out. I have a dual operating system; XP x64 and Win7 x64. After run Acronis twice making sure I copied from the primary to the backup, both times I lost everything. Like I said is was if I was copying from the wrong drive. Because I got tired of reinstalling the operating system I gave up on Acronis.

Ron

 

[harpua]

I can certainly understand your frustration with it if something like that keeps happening. All I know is it works for me in a single OS boot situation. I don't know why it doesn't for you.

Something like that happened to me one time with an earlier version of ATIH2009 where it appeared to clone but completed way too quickly and did not actually clone anything. But at least it left the source drive intact, afaicr. I haven't had any problems like that with the latest version which has been reliably making clones for me without any problems.

 

[juron99]

I've used Acronis in the past with XP and usually was successful with it. This time it appeared to go through the cloning process but after rebooting, I came up with a black screen. When I booted to the CD it showed my primary drive with only a small partition and a backup file that I had created under Windows7. This partition was supposed to be on the second hard drive. The second hard drive was empty. Like I said it was as if it copied the second drive to the primary drive. Yes, I know it sounds like I messed up but that is why I did it a second time and had the same problem. I could try it a third time and reverse the order of copying and see if it works correctly but it takes me about four hours to re-install , add apps and tweak. Maybe I don't understand what source drive and destination drive means anymore. I am getting older.

Ron

 

[juron99]

After posting above, I got to thinking that maybe my problem is the Boot Manager. Windows 7 has its own and XP also has its own. When I formated the second hard drive it asked if I wanted to make it bootable and I said yes. If I remember right it seems like I got the message NTLR not found when I rebooted. I assume Windows 7 copied over the old MBR during the clone process. Not sure why Bios was looking for XP boot loader instead of Windows 7 Boot manager.

Ron

 

[harpua]

I believe Acronis copies the mbr from the source and after the cloning is completed it puts a little utility on the target drive that only runs the first time you attempt to boot from the target drive and this utility writes the MBR so the drive becomes properly bootable the first time you try to boot from it. This makes it possible to use the target as a secondary drive without there being two drives in the system both trying to boot. At least this is my theory. I'm not sure if this has anything at all to do with the problems you're experiencing.

Actually, I suspect your problems may stem from a corrupt installation of Acronis or perhaps using an earlier buggy version. The version I'm using that is working on my x64 system under W7 build 7600 is Acronis v. 12.0.9796.

 

[juron99]

I'm more apt to think my problem has something to do with the way Windows 7 installs its boot manager. The problem probably started with me having two hard drives connected when I installed Win 7. The installation may have put the boot manager on the second hard drive to protect it. Somewhere I read it may do this during install. I don't know if I'll be able to figure it out but my client already messed up the installation and is bringing the computer over this morning for probably a clean install. I'm not giving him XP as a dual anymore so Acronis may work this time. I'll disconnect the second hard-drive until I'm finished installing then do the clone.

Ron

 

[DJG]

NO ..
There are many things that Vista or W7 cannot do .. If you know how to set up and use XP.

Can you elaborate? I'm curious. Thanks!

 

[noyb]

This attached list keeps growing ...

 

[noyb]

More specificaly ..
I like to do image editing and may have several image files on my desktop ..
some with the same file name, but different file types.

In XP, I can customize my Desktop Icons so I can easily see the file type.
These are a customized Irfanview Icon set
Vista or W7 will not let me use Icons for images on the desktop.
Stupid Thumbnails are all you can get.

I also customize my file type Context menus so I can quickly open the image in Photoshop or any alternate program.

For example .. In the attached W7 desktop …
find the animated clip.gif file .. and open it in Photoshop’s Image Ready .. With Two Clicks.

It’s just too much work to try to work with images in Vista or W7