Upgrading from Windows XP, need advice

Well as it turns out XCOM is not XP compatible. It would have been nice if someone had mentioned this to me months ago but alas... So it seems that I should finally get off my ass and upgrade to Windows 7. I can pick up an OEM disk tomorrow but I've never done this before so any advice would be great.

Here are my current PC specs:

Intel Zeon 3110 CPU (this is basically a server branded E8400 Core 2 Duo)
Asus P5k-E mobo
4 gigs of ram DDR2.
650w Antec PSU
8800GTS 640mb
1600X1200 20" Monitor

I have two hard drives, both are 250gb. The second one is partitioned 200/50 and it hosts games and music. The first one is partitioned 50/100/100. XP is installed on the small partition. The other two partitions are for storage and one of them is completely empty. Am I correct in thinking that I can simply do a dual boot (in case something goes wrong) by installing Windows 7 onto one of these storage drives? And if I do this how much can I move over?

For the games drive. I did some research and it looks like Blizzard games like SC2 and D3 just need to have the launcher run as this will rebuild the registry and recreate all the supporting folders. To transfer Steam over I should delete everything but steamapps and the client itself and let it re-install everything. Everything else would need to be deleted and reinstalled completely like the Planetside 2 beta.

I also looked into the driver issue. As far as I can tell I need drivers for:

- Chipset
- Sound
- Network
- Graphics
- Keyboard

The ones that came on my support disk wouldn't work with 7. It took a little digging around but I found 64-bit versions for each.

Next, I'm told its possible to transfer all of my settings/bookmarks and whatnot in Firefox by just copying a profile over to a fresh install. This is supposed to be as simple as moving one folder, but when I googled instructions most of them seem overly complicated. Like using line commands to generate profiles and stuff. Anyone done this before?

Another possible issue is the increased RAM footprint of 64-bit 7. It's supposed to require 2 gigs, and I have 4. But being 64-bit this means that the 640mb of my graphics card would no longer be mapped onto the 4gig limit correct? If so that should make enough of a difference. Currently the only program on this computer that can run out of memory is Tribes Ascend, and it just barely tips over the limit. So another 640mb of breathing room should make the difference.

Kind of rambling at this point but there is a lot to consider. I haven't upgraded my graphics card in a very long time. I would describe the (nvidia) 8800GTS 640 as "90% top of the line" back when it was new. Nowadays it's beginning to hit its limit with the high end games. I had considered getting a new card, but they don't make decent cards with less than 1 gig of ram these days, some of them go over 2 gigs. That would have made the aforementioned 32-bit limit even worse.

Back then the 8800gts was the balance between cost and performance. After a little research it seems that position now belongs to these cards:

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=65860&...
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=59502&...

The first one is a 550ti, the second is a 560ti. They have comparable GPU clock speeds and memory. But the second one has almost double the CUDA cores. CUDA cores ARE the GPU in nvidia cards right? I know they can also be used to perform physics calculations. Given that my monitor runs 1600x1200 natively and I drop that to 1600x900 for games that support widescreen. Do I really need that much power?

Next, I'm told its possible to transfer all of my settings/bookmarks and whatnot in Firefox by just copying a profile over to a fresh install. This is supposed to be as simple as moving one folder, but when I googled instructions most of them seem overly complicated. Like using line commands to generate profiles and stuff. Anyone done this before?

Just use Firefox Sync? It's right there in the menu. Or Xmarks. Save all your bookmarks etc to the cloud and restore them when you reinstall.

Back then the 8800gts was the balance between cost and performance. After a little research it seems that position now belongs to these cards:

http://ncix.com/products/?sku=65860&vpn=012-P3-2066-KR&manufacture=eVGA&...
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=59502&vpn=01G-P3-1557-KR&manufacture=eVGA&...

The first one is a 550ti, the second is a 560ti. They have comparable GPU clock speeds and memory. But the second one has almost double the CUDA cores. CUDA cores ARE the GPU in nvidia cards right? I know they can also be used to perform physics calculations. Given that my monitor runs 1600x1200 natively and I drop that to 1600x900 for games that support widescreen. Do I really need that much power?

550ti is a rubbish card, stay away. 560ti is much better, but if it's over budget a Radeon 7750/7770 is far better than the 550 and cheaper. Be warned AMD drivers can be spotty, still better than using a 550. For your resolution though the 560ti is about the minimum, and it's nice to run at native resolutions. Could you not stretch to a 660?

Upgrading to a 64 bit OS is going to be great for you.

For your game saves: http://www.gamesave-manager.com/ - should handle most things that bury themselves away. Everything else I've found is either in mydocuments, or manages itself within steam or the game folder itself.

For firefox, if you go help > troubleshooting information, you'll get a page with a button to show you your profile folder. If you back this up you can restore it on the new install:
-On the new install, find the (new) profile folder again, shut down firefox, clean out the folder and place your files into it, restart firefox and you should be up and running.
-Or the way I do it, place the profile folder on a separate drive to your windows install and link to it. Run "firefox.exe -P" to get the profile manager, create a new profile and when it gives you the option for where to store the folder, point it at wherever you placed it.

The only other big issue I've come across is game licenses and activations, have a look through your installed games and see how many you need to deactivate and reclaim an activation, so you don't run out and be left with a waste of bits/money.

I'm not uninstalling windows XP or touching any files on C: drive, so I should be able to just shuffle all of the My Documents stuff over directly right? I do know some of the folder locations are different between XP and 7 though.

I looked over my games. I have only two Blizzard games (and the PS2 beta) that are installed outside of Steam. And of my Steam games none of them use 3rd party DRM or have limited installs. All are CD key based or have account logins.

I found my firefox profile folder, so just run the browser once to create new profile and copy contents? Should be easy enough.

Well rubbish it may be, the 550ti is still pretty much twice as powerful as what I have now. I want to stick with Nvidia just because I am familiar with them, plus I hear more problem about ATI. A 660 is rather steep in price and almost certainly overkill for the resolutions I run at. I would love to upgrade to a 1920X1200 monitor but they don't make very many of them

Another potential issue that might come up. My XP partition is lettered as Main C:, the drive I'm going to install 7 to is called Storage 1 G:

Is it still true that the OS needs to be on C: drive or bad things will happen? And what would happen if I tried to rename the drives using 7 and go back to XP?

Regarding drive letters, you can tinker around with them after install with disc management (my computer > manage). You're going back to win9x before you didn't get any choice in the matter and it would infer letters from primary/extended partitions and order. If you're going to tinker, it's best to do it right after install before you've established locations where things are installed and shortcuts, etc.

I've got 2 installs, one each on a separate disc, so they both see themselves as C: (and all the other partitions with the same letter) but with 2 installs on one disc it should be intelligent enough to handle it and set up the multiboot. Just point the setup at the partition or patch of empty space on a disc where you want it. Occasionally you come across dumb 3rd party stuff that makes the wrong assumption that C: is always the OS drive, but those should be extremely rare.

For data transfer, you might want to try Win 7's Easy Transfer to pack up the files on the XP machine and then restore stuff on Win 7. It's worked pretty well almost every time I've used it, although it might take FOREVER. Like overnight+

It also can transfer some program settings and even give you are report of what you might not have installed yet that was installed on the old computer.

Also, www.ninite.com is your friend on reinstalling a bunch of free programs that lots of people use (including browsers, Steam, etc). It makes one big installer that just automates installing a bunch of stuff at once.

The 550 is really crap, and you don't likely want one. They're cheap, but they really suck. If you want to replace your 8800, either get a Radeon 7770, or a 560Ti. The 560Ti will be faster, so I assume it will be more expensive. I was getting pretty frustrated with the ATI drivers for my 5870, though, so you may prefer NVidia.

As I said in the X-Com thread, you'd probably find it easiest to just buy a new, gigabyte hard drive. Disconnect all drives but that one, do your Windows install, and get your drivers downloaded and working. That makes sure the boot sector and other boot files all go into the right place, onto the terabyte drive, and it makes sure the new drive is C.

Once that's all done, reconnect your old drives, and copy your data. That will keep your old XP installation preserved, in case you have a problem. It gives you a safety net if you run into trouble. Just connect your old drives the old way, and you're right back where you are now.

It does add some cost, but with 250 gig drives, it's probably getting to be time to replace them, anyway. They do eventually wear out. Once you're sure you've got all your data off, you could erase them, mirror them, and use them as a backup for the subset of data that's really important to you.

I like the Samsung Spinpoint F3s a lot. Quiet and fast, $85. It's a shame they never went over 1TB with fast 7200RPM drives.

As far as I know, by the way, your 8800 should work okay in Win7. It won't do DX10 or DX11, but there's not usually that much difference, anyway.

Malor wrote:

As far as I know, by the way, your 8800 should work okay in Win7. It won't do DX10 or DX11, but there's not usually that much difference, anyway.

Errr, it's a DX10 card isn't it?

Scratched wrote:
Malor wrote:

As far as I know, by the way, your 8800 should work okay in Win7. It won't do DX10 or DX11, but there's not usually that much difference, anyway.

Errr, it's a DX10 card isn't it?

It is.

I agree with Malor, I'd spend a few bucks on a hard drive, install W7 and then worry about a video card.

Scratched wrote:

Errr, it's a DX10 card isn't it?

Is it? That far back? Huh. I didn't look it up, I just assumed.

DX10 kind of sucks, anyway. DX11 is basically the same thing, faster, but I haven't seen many reasons to care about either.

I think I have everything figured out. One last sticking point. If I install Windows 7 to the existing partition it's currently lettered as G:

If I go into the disk management menu in 7 and change the drive letter to C: is that going to mess up my old XP install? Or would both OSes see the drive letters differently?

And Malor I don't think I really need a new disk since I have the partition ready to go. I'd rather save up the money for my next total PC upgrade (which was originally going to be my transition to 7). Then I could spring for an SSD, i7, DDR3 and all that newer stuff.

Looks like the 560ti is the sweet spot. I did a little research and the 550ti uses a lesser chip, and the 560ti with 448 cores is a "failed" chip that didn't make the cut to be made into a 570/580/590. I'll wait a little while since it is rapidly becoming cheaper now that the 600 series is out. Is there any big difference between 1 and 2gb of video memory?

Some games will use the extra texture memory, either loading higher resolution versions of textures, or just loading more textures so that you can move around more smoothly. It seems like most current games will probably take advantage, so doing 2 gigs is not a bad idea.

The 'with 448 cores' version is the fastest one, and you're driving more pixels, at 1600x1200, than the 1680x1050 that's more common these days. You probably wouldn't mind the extra oomph. That's almost enough to drive 1920x1200 well, although it will get choppy at high settings in demanding games.

If I go into the disk management menu in 7 and change the drive letter to C: is that going to mess up my old XP install? Or would both OSes see the drive letters differently?

I don't *think* it will. I think that's stored in the registry.

And Malor I don't think I really need a new disk since I have the partition ready to go.

Up to you, but doing it that way makes semi-permanent changes to your existing install, so you have no quick-and-easy safety net if you mess something up.

Well the idea is that I have an empty partition on my OS drive. Every single program on this computer except for Steam and two other games are installed on C: drive along with windows XP. So what SHOULD happen if I understand this right is that when I install and boot up Windows 7, Windows XP and everything attached to it will just be an inert 50gb partition sitting on the same drive. Right?

I should then also be able to boot back into Windows XP because from it's perspective nothing has changed at all other than Storage 1 G: having new data on it.

For the graphics card, whats the relationship between the GPU clock speed and the number of CUDA cores? The CUDA cores ARE the gpu right? So more CUDA cores, and or a higher clock speed results in faster calculations correct?

This will eventually be me one day... I'm also still back in the 2000ies running XP, so tagging for advice and reference needs!

I installed Win7 a few months back, on my WinXP machine. I have two hard drives, I formated and installed Win7 on the second, dual boot. So, whichever OS I bring up, it considers its drive as C:, handy, and it can still access the other drive. Didn't do anything special to make this happen, just used the default settings when doing the Win7 install. Overall a surprisingly painless and effective experience. I can't say what would happen if you tried to put Win7 on a partition as opposed to a seperate drive.

I handle the other half's tech support, and if it was her machine, Tamren, I'd be recommending that she get a new drive. But, that's paranoia and experience talking there. I concur with Malor's points, particularly about hard drives wearing out. How confident are you with your backup AND restore processes?

GameGuru just put two more PCs in the trading post for $900 and $1000. Both are great PCs and at that price, they are a steal.

So what's the status of SSDs now? are they affordable and spacious oor is it still a gajillion for 1gig?

Depending on the model, you can get some for $0.80/GB. I just that NewEgg had on sale the Samsung 830 (128 GB) for $112.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...

I don't have much on this computer other than games. I play and do web browsing but that's about it. Cept for some pictures I have backed up to a thumbstick.

I did some reading online and even watched a youtube vid. Getting Windows 7 to install to a partition works just fine. I'm not sure about buying another HD because a new PC isn't too far off. I am keeping all of my XP stuff so if there is a problem I can just go back. The only thing that won't work with XP is Steam once I attach it to 7.

Gameguru's deal looks nice, but that's too expensive for me at the moment. Plus shipping to Canada would be harder.

Some more stuff. When I run windows 7 I should use it with a personal account instead of an admin account right? How does that work if I need to install something or a program needs admin access?

Well the idea is that I have an empty partition on my OS drive. Every single program on this computer except for Steam and two other games are installed on C: drive along with windows XP. So what SHOULD happen if I understand this right is that when I install and boot up Windows 7, Windows XP and everything attached to it will just be an inert 50gb partition sitting on the same drive. Right?

I should then also be able to boot back into Windows XP because from it's perspective nothing has changed at all other than Storage 1 G: having new data on it.

Windows 7 will replace your MBR with a new one, and I believe it may end up making your XP installation dependent on the new installation. If you ever delete the Win7 partition, the XP one may stop booting unless you can manually fix it with an XP boot disk.

If you put it on a separate drive, and you install it when the old drives aren't attached to the computer, you are absolutely guaranteed that you won't change or damage the old install. This gives you a much better safety net.

One thing that win7 does which might change that is that is that if you just give it a bunch of empty space, it'll make a small 100mb partition for the boot files, then windows itself on the larger partition following it.

I haven't tested it, so don't try it on anything mission critical without research, etc, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that boot partition may well be independent of the win7 install, although I'd guess you need the win7 install or the setup media to manage it.

However, I would also guess that if you installed win7 as the second OS on a drive to make a multiboot (perhaps even if you just give it empty space rather than just giving it one partition), it'll put the boot files on whatever partition currently has the bootloader, or the xp partition in this case.

I do things as Malor described in his second paragraph, but if you're just running one drive that's not really an option, so work out what it is doing so you know for the future and it doesn't bit you in the posterior when you think "hey, I don't need that old xp partition any more".

Tamren wrote:

Some more stuff. When I run windows 7 I should use it with a personal account instead of an admin account right? How does that work if I need to install something or a program needs admin access?

With the way User Account Control works now, you really only need one account with admin privileges that you use all the time. By default any programs you launch will run as a regular user, and if they need admin rights you will have to explicitly give permission for that to happen. You can disable UAC to have things operate like they did in XP (all admin all the time) but that shouldn't be necessary most of the time.

For what it's worth, I run win7 with the safeties off (as admin, no UAC) and as far as I can tell I'm doing okay. I did an experiment a while back with enabling various levels of UAC and non-admin, but there was enough little annoyances to make me go back, and that's the thing with security, it's a sliding scale between convenience and safety.

Anyone else having trouble getting Firefox to sync? It gives me a "down for maintenance" error message but the status page says the sync system is up and running.

psoplayer wrote:

With the way User Account Control works now, you really only need one account with admin privileges that you use all the time. By default any programs you launch will run as a regular user, and if they need admin rights you will have to explicitly give permission for that to happen. You can disable UAC to have things operate like they did in XP (all admin all the time) but that shouldn't be necessary most of the time.

Okay correct me if I am wrong but here is how UAC and 7 work as I understand it:

1. Default program access is ALWAYS user, and not admin.
2. If program requires admin, will pop up confirmation box.
3. If account is admin, can press "OK" button and program will work.
4. If account is user, must enter the password for an admin account before program will work.

So if you are the only one using the computer, there is no downside to just have one primary admin account right? The only real difference between the two is that one can just hit "yes" when the confirmation box pops up and the other has to enter a password. Also if my research is correct admin accounts also have the ability to set a program to always run as administrator, eliminating the popup.

---

Now that I know what to look for I did some research. You guys are right. Seems like if there is an existing boot partition on the drive Windows 7 will just use that instead. Which could be a potential issue. I think I should just do a full on clean install of 7. Earlier when I said "I can just boot back into XP if there is a problem" I didn't mean I would go back to using XP. That was just in case I needed to download a driver or something.

I want to fully switch to 7 and I guess I'll have to deal with any issues that arise. So as far as my knowledge goes this is what I'm going to have to do. let me know if you spot any potential problems.

Scenario A:

Current Partitions:
Disk 1
C: Main (XP)
G: Storage 1 (page file)
H: Storage 2 (empty)
Disk 2
E: Games (Steam)
F: Backup (music, pictures, etc)

1. Transfer everything I need to back up from C: to F: and to a thumbstick just in case. I honestly don't have much apart from savegames on drive C:, what few documents and pictures that I have are stored elsewhere. Most savegames would be in my documents folder right? I can't think of anywhere else they would put them other than the steamapps folder. The only other configuration files I need to retain are my Firefox Profile and my Ventrilo settings.

2. Download all required 64-bit drivers to thumbstick, which would be:
- Motherboard chipset
- Onboard sound card
- Network card
- Keyboard
- Monitor (I looked and the only version of the driver that exists is version 1.0 and is rated for 64-bit. Though it doesn't mention Vista or 7)
- Nvidia GPU
- I checked and my BIOS is up to date, they haven't released any new versions since 2009.

3. Power off and disconnect disk 2 from the system.

4. Boot up with Windows 7 disk in drive, use windows partitioning software to DELETE drives C: and G:, reform space into new bigger storage drive (G:). DELETE drive H: and install Windows 7 to this unassigned space. This will also create the 100mb system partition at the same time.

5. Install Windows 7 which should then partition this unused space and redesignate it to be the new C: drive.

6. Boot up for first time, create single Admin account.

7. Install all hardware drivers except for Nvidia and keyboard, those can come later. Then reboot.

8. Fully update Windows 7, then reboot.

9. Install keyboard LCD drivers and graphics drivers. Install utility programs like Firefox, SumatraPDF, 7-zip etc. Then reboot.

10. Restore Firefox profile, either panic or reestablish connection to GWJ. Download and install any other misc programs I might be forgetting. Then power off.

11. Open up PC again and plug Drive 2 back in. Boot up and verify that E: and F: drives work.

12. Delete everything in Steam folder except for Steamapps and the client. Cross fingers and run Steam.exe.

Barring disaster that should put me back to where I am sitting now. Only on Windows 7 instead of XP.

Scenario B

Everything is the same except for steps 4 and 5. What I need to know is if deleting the old C: drive is an absolutely required step. If it is I will need to go with Scenario A. If it isn't wouldn't that mean I could just delete partition H:, and then install 7 onto the unnasigned space? Wouldn't create a new 100mb system partition and go from there? The leftover space would become the new C: drive and the old system partition would just be inert data.

The guides that I have read about dual booting 7 onto XP make it clear that 7 will use the old boot stuff from XP in order to run itself. But that would be installing 7 from inside windows XP as opposed to just booting up using the 7 cd.

I would, again, strongly urge you to just buy a new drive. At that point, the install process becomes:

  • Put drivers on USB key
  • Detach old drives.
  • Install new drive.
  • Install Windows 7
  • Install drivers
  • Install programs
  • Do general tweaking
  • Reattach old drives
  • Copy data

And then, eventually, you can wipe the old drives, and use them for backups.

You can reattach the old drives straight away after the windows install, as by that point windows has done all the messing around with the boot loader it's ever going to do.

It may be too late but you can save some money and buy an Upgrade version of Windows 7 and do this:
Clean Install Windows 7 With Upgrade Media

Works for me with a clean install every time.

Tamren wrote:

Okay correct me if I am wrong but here is how UAC and 7 work as I understand it:

1. Default program access is ALWAYS user, and not admin.
2. If program requires admin, will pop up confirmation box.
3. If account is admin, can press "OK" button and program will work.
4. If account is user, must enter the password for an admin account before program will work.

So if you are the only one using the computer, there is no downside to just have one primary admin account right? The only real difference between the two is that one can just hit "yes" when the confirmation box pops up and the other has to enter a password. Also if my research is correct admin accounts also have the ability to set a program to always run as administrator, eliminating the popup.

Nailed it, except for the option of always running as administrator. I don't know of a way to eliminate the popup without turning UAC off. For me, setting that option has just eliminated the need to right click > "Run as Administrator".

I don't remember where I read that but I seem to recall there being a checkbox when you right click on an .exe that you can tick to make that program automatically use Admin.

TempestBlayze wrote:

It may be too late but you can save some money and buy an Upgrade version of Windows 7

Windows 7 Hope Premium upgrade disks on newegg are 122 dollars, that's 23 dollars MORE expensive than OEM. And that's before shipping costs. I just bought an OEM disk from NCIX for 97.99. It was actually on sale for 12 bucks off which happens to be exactly how much HST tax I paid. I like shopping there because it's local and I don't pay for shipping.

Also Malor, funny how things work sometimes... Turns out I have a 500gb seagate barracuda sitting in my pile of empty computer component boxes (which are all stuffed into the box my PC case came in). I totally forgot about it till now, but IIRC I actually RMAd this drive once already because it was too loud. It sounded like coins clicking together, very bad. NCIX replaced it for me but I can't remember if I fully tested this one, the anti-static jacket is open so I must have run it at least once...

As well I did some research, this is the 7200.11 version of the 500gb drive. The 11 series is very notorious for having a problem that bricks the drive due to faulty firmware.

http://support.seagate.com/firmware/...

My model number is ST3500320AS which is not listed as one of the problematic model lines on that page but a google search turns up cases where the 320AS DID brick up. There is a new firmware out called SD1A, this is several versions beyond the one that purports to fix the problem. So updating to this should work fine.

http://knowledge.seagate.com/article...

If the hard drive doesn't have any problems then things should work out fine! I can just install 7 onto it and then plug the other two back in for data transfer. I only have 3 SATA hookups in my computer but one of them goes to the DVD drive which I don't really need except for installing windows anyway. Fitting everything into the case might be iffy though. It's pretty cramped in there.