Vista Ult x64 SP2 or Win7 Ult x64 RC to Win7 Pro x64

[Bmidbar]

First, I am NOT part of the "install from scratch" crowd. I have a LOT of application software and development tools and it takes me literally DAYS to install, configure and tweak my development machine.

Config - Lenovo ThinkPad W500 w/500GB Seagate Momentus drives internally and in bay caddy, space is not a problem.

What I have - Dual boot Vista Ultimate x64 SP2 OEM on 396GB primary, active system partition with Win7 RC (build 7100) on 70GB boot/page file/crash dump/primary partition with AppData under Win7 pointing to Libraries/My Documents data back on the Vista partition. I have media for the Vista Ultimate.

What I've bought - Win7 Pro Upgrade.

What I want to do - In place upgrade of either Vista or Win7 RC to Win7 Pro x64 and NOT re-install my applications.

Can it be done? I know my first problem is for both OS's I'm downgrading from Ultimate to Pro, but I really don't have the time, desire or inclination to spend 2-3 days heads down re-installing all my software.

Ideally I would like to keep the dual boot (I've had Win7 RC flake out one me once and it was painful) and do the in-place upgrade on the Win7 RC partition. I'm thinking the cversion.ini trick on the Win7 partition may work, but if it has to be the Vista partition so be it.

Any advice appreciated in advance.

 

[Lee]

Doing a upgrade with Vista could be a problem for you. Now if you install Win 7 over Vista, 7 will setup a folder "Windows.old" this folder will contain all your user data from the Vista install. Now for the problem, you would need to reinstall all your applications. The reason the new OS isn't going to move the old .ini files over to the new OS. Hope this helps.

Oh, BTW, Welcome to the "Seven Forums."

 

[Bmidbar]

Think I found a solution

Bingo - UNAWAVE - Downgrade Ultimate to Home Premium or Professional.

Looks like I may not need to do either of the ei.cfg or cversion.ini hacks. Will report back mid-week on whether this worked for me, particularly regarding NOT having to re-install my apps and their stability post-upgrade as well (e.g. Visual Studio 2005 and 2008, VMWare workstation, etc.).

Fingers crossed.

Doing a upgrade with Vista could be a problem for you. Now if you install Win 7 over Vista, 7 will setup a folder "Windows.old" this folder will contain all your user data from the Vista install. Now for the problem, you would need to reinstall all your applications. The reason the new OS isn't going to move the old .ini files over to the new OS. Hope this helps.

Oh, BTW, Welcome to the "Seven Forums."

 

[Bmidbar]

Success!

As I wanted to do an in-place upgrade from Win7 RC (7100) Ultimate x64 to Win7 RTM Pro x64 both the Current Version registry change documented from UNAWAVE link above and the cversion.ini modification were necessary, but I am very pleased to announce after 3.5 hrs and 859,165 files, settings and programs transferred later that the in-place upgrade worked and all my programs and their settings are intact, including my dual-boot with Vista x64 Ultimate.

Buon apetit.

 

[gregrocker]

Sorry I only saw this now that you've done it. Hope it works out. I would have urged you to Upgrade the Vista, because of this post that's been up for months on Technet from a Win7 Team member's blog:

Harold Wong's Blog Site : Can I do an In-Place upgrade from Windows 7 Release Candidate To Release Code??

Would be interesting to hear back from you on how it works out, as others want to do this.

 

[Bmidbar]

See my response above. Yes, I've done it and it went without a hitch. Writing this from my new Win7 RTM Pro x64 now.

<snip>
Harold Wong's Blog Site : Can I do an In-Place upgrade from Windows 7 Release Candidate To Release Code??

Would be interesting to hear back from you on how it works out, as others want to do this.

 

[Dave76]

See my response above. Yes, I've done it and it went without a hitch. Writing this from my new Win7 RTM Pro x64 now.

Glad it worked for you.

Let us know if there are any issues with your new Win7 Pro. It's always good to have info on how these installs perform. Hope it's all good news.

Thanks for the update.

 

[Lee]

Glad to see everything is up and running. Enjoy.

 

[Bmidbar]

Harold Wong's blog & statements about in-place upgrades

Yeah, while researching this issue I reviewed a number of links and bookmarked about six, and Harold's comments were amongst the numerous articles I read and reviewed.

All I'll say is this "different strokes for different folks." I've been an IT guy for over twenty-five years and have been doing the Windows thing since 1990. Knew full well what I might potentially be getting myself into by taking this path, but it was my decision and my risk.

So far the only things I've had to do was a repair on my VMWare Workstation 6.5.3 for VMNet and grab IntelliPoint 7.0 64-bit. All development software (NetBeans, RAD, Eclipse, VStudio 2005 and 2008, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition, etc) is working flawlessly and a couple of problems I had under Win7 RC (POWER_STATE_DRIVER_FAILURE on Verizon [Qualcomm] mini-PCI EVDO card at shutdown/restart, Verizon Access Manager not able to recognize or power up EVDO card) have gone away much to my pleasant surprise; thought I'd have to wait 'til December for a version of VZAccess Manager that would work correctly.

Cheers.

Sorry I only saw this now that you've done it. Hope it works out. I would have urged you to Upgrade the Vista, because of this post that's been up for months on Technet from a Win7 Team member's blog:

Harold Wong's Blog Site : Can I do an In-Place upgrade from Windows 7 Release Candidate To Release Code??

Would be interesting to hear back from you on how it works out, as others want to do this.

 

[gregrocker]

When you get ready to dump the Vista, it would be interesting to see how an in-place Win7 Upgrade done on Vista compares to the one you did on RC.

You could compare the two for the 30 days your activation counted down on the Vista upgrade, then switch your final activation to upgraded Vista if it is a better install.

I ran RTM upgrade from RC side by side with clean installed RTM for a month and the clean install was snappier by comparison.

The 7 RTM was a great improvement over RC, much snappier without the monitoring software. I wouldn't settle for any less than that, and certainly no hangs ever!

 

[Bmidbar]

I'll keep Vista as long as I can, as I have the disk space and like having the option of (short of a kernel corruption) of dual OS's for redundancy while on the road, in addition to multiple ISOs to re-install in worst case scenarios.

My W500 is a Core 2 Duo 2.53 GHz and I've previously upgraded the DDR3 RAM to 8GB and, along with the 7200 RPM Seagate Momentus drives, this is already a pretty snappy machine.

The thing I was curious about and noticed is that with all the backing up and restoring that went on with the upgrade, along with its length, is if the Windows.old thing is still going on in some manner during the upgrade. Reason I ask is I noticed after upgrade the partition was heavily fragmented. I use IOBit's SmartDefrag and like it a lot. Ran a deep optimize and then Wise registry cleaner and this thing is very peppy.

I'll do that though with Vista when the time does come and maybe snapshot the registries before and after and poke around a little.

When you get ready to dump the Vista, it would be interesting to see how an in-place Win7 Upgrade done on Vista compares to the one you did on RC.

<snip>

I ran RTM upgrade from RC side by side with clean installed RTM for a month and the clean install was snappier by comparison.

The 7 RTM was a great improvement over RC, much snappier without the monitoring software. I wouldn't settle for any less than that, and certainly no hangs ever!