Windows 7 Catch-All

ok, i've got my legit keys... here's a post on Lifehacker that explains the process...

http://lifehacker.com/5128018/windows-7-product-keys-available++for-some

1. Login in you Passport account, for example, here.
2. Without closing the Passport page, open one of the following in a new tab:
Windows 7 Beta 32-bit
Windows 7 Beta 64-bit

The 32-bit link may need to be refreshed many times, about 15 for me until it worked.

Both links worked for me, printed both pages with the keys.

But i'm downloading the ISO off bittorrent... It's a comfirmed match to the MD5 so it's completely legit =D

If you can't get keys you can go with the 30day 'trial' like Vista and then use the known techniques to keep extending that up to 3 or 4 times. But once you get your key you should be good to go too and not need to extend.

All that key trick does for me is redirect me to the base Windows 7 page. According to LifeHacker, it may only work if you were able to register for the beta before it was taken offline, even if the servers prevented you from actually downloading it. Oh well, 30 days should be enough for me to play with it.

Parallax Abstraction wrote:

All that key trick does for me is redirect me to the base Windows 7 page. According to LifeHacker, it may only work if you were able to register for the beta before it was taken offline, even if the servers prevented you from actually downloading it. Oh well, 30 days should be enough for me to play with it.

New article from Lifehacker today, it JUST worked for me.

Apparently it doesn't matter what key you use, for which installation.

I don't know if this matters, but just for kicks I logged in as another ID, and every 64-bit key is identical for me, while the 32-bits differ.

FYI MS seems to have brought more servers online. No problem at all getting a key.

I just tried it and it actually worked! I am surprised.

Next time MS should contract with Blizzard or Valve. They understand what it means to provide on line stuff.

Ha, Blizzard? Their web farm chokes and dies every time there's a real server problem. Even their "Realm Status Page", which should be the single most reliable page in their entire web farm, goes down faster than a cheerleader on prom night.

I just read on Digg that there is only 5 unique keys per edition (32 and 64)

The system seems to just give everyone the same five keys if you keep refreshing, so here you go:

32bit:
QXV7BK78W2QGPR69FWH9KGMM7
6JKV2QPB8HRQ893FW7TMPBJ73
GG4MQMGK72HVXFWKHCRFKW6KY
TQ32RWFBDMGFHD2QGVMH3P9GC
4HJRKX6Q28HWRFYWDYHJK8HDH

64bit:
RFFTVJ6K7WMHBQJXYMMJQ8DCH
482XP6J9WR4JXT3VBPP6FQF4M
JYDV8H8VXG74RPT6BJPBX42V4
D9RHVJG8XCC77H23YF6DRYRJ9
7XRCQRPY28YY9P8R6HD884GH3

Installed, testing it out...

So far, very impressed. Everything seems to work nicely. =)

More thoughts to come

installed it this morning with no problems. Everything was detected correctly with no need for me to do anything. Appears to use less RAM then Vista although I'm seeing a consistent use of one of my CPU cores (20% utilization) but nothing in the process display that would indicate what program is using it. I can also hear the HDD being accessed but no indication of what's going on there. Perhaps this is a preliminary indexing of some sort after the install or it might be related to the gadgets but if it IS the gadgets in win7 then that means they are using more processing power than vista's version.

Seems to be slightly faster than Vista when it comes to pulling things up and switching windows. I like that the gadget bar is gone completely now and everything is on its own so to speak.

My Eye-fi manager doesn't like IE8 but that's no big deal just need to figure out how to get it to use firefox as default as that's my primary browser anyway

They're expanding beyond the 2.5 mil cap until January 24th, so that should give everyone who wants a chance to try it out. No need to panic anymore.

Which is good, it'll give me time to clear up space for a partition. Just in case W7 isn't out by the time the beta expires.

So now that people have it installed; How are your games running? Is anyone running benchmarks with it?

I managed to find the beta and have it running in VMWare. Is it me or does that new taskbar look an act an awful lot like KDE's?

TempestBlayze wrote:

So now that people have it installed; How are your games running? Is anyone running benchmarks with it?

They run the same for me. I played CoD4 last night after upgrading and noticed no difference.

I only played with it for an hour or so but it appears snappier that Vista but that might be my imagination.

So far I like it quite a bit. I will be happy if I have to move to this after XP is EOL.

Ok I have taken the plunge! I'm going to download it and wipe my box and load it as my primary OS! Wish me luck! I got to pickup a DVD to burn too on the way home

Pharacon wrote:

Ok I have taken the plunge! I'm going to download it and wipe my box and load it as my primary OS! Wish me luck! I got to pickup a DVD to burn too on the way home :)

Don't do that. It expires in August, and I don't think they're guaranteeing the ability to upgrade from the beta to the final. It'd be a lot safer to make a 20gig partition to install Windows 7 Beta on, unless you don't mind backing up your data all over again or don't care if you have to wipe your system again.

Edit:
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/beta-installation-instructions.aspx

What you need to know before installing the Beta wrote:

The Beta will stop working on August 1, 2009. To continue using your PC, please be prepared to reinstall a prior version of Windows or a subsequent release of Windows 7 before the expiration date. You won’t be able to upgrade from the Beta to the final retail version of Windows 7.

My problem is that i've installed all my games onto a seperate data HDD (as well as steam) so to run them, i need to reinstall/get the registry values into the registry...

Usually a game will re-initialize its own registry values if you run them and they can't find them.
At least they used to behave that way.

AP Erebus wrote:

My problem is that i've installed all my games onto a seperate data HDD (as well as steam) so to run them, i need to reinstall/get the registry values into the registry...

You could do the following:

1. boot to Vista
2. run regedit.exe and locate the registry key belonging to the game
3. export it with all its sub-keys to NT4-format .REG file
4. if necessary to correct the paths, load the file in notepad.exe and run a wholesale search-and-replace
5. boot to W7
6. import the file into W7's registry by double-clicking it in Explorer
7. wallah!

for those that are using this as their primary OS make sure you pull down the media player fix so that your MP3s don't get corrupted. Requires a restart

32-bit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=a754008b-d574-4e39-b4ba-67b859a242b7&DisplayLang=en

64-bit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=0c56bf3c-9370-4fda-b4c8-5dc63d55626d&DisplayLang=en

From Gizmodo on how to run Chrome in Win7:

Just right click on the Google Chrome Icon, modify the Chrome Properties window so the target looks like this, click on apply and enjoy.

IMAGE(http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2009/01/google-chrome-windows-7-64-bit-version.png)

Also, for those considering getting a new PC or laptop, if you wait until after July to purchase it, you will get a voucher for a free Win7 upgrade.

Basically, from what I'm gathering, Win7 is Vista with the Mac's quick launch bar and a better networking protocol for home users.

Oh, and it's got several small but nice UI improvements; dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes it, and dragging it to the left or right side resizes it to take exactly the left or right half of the screen. And shaking a window while dragging it does something, but I forgot what -- it might collapse all other windows.

It also uses hover to show you windows -- if you hover over a program group in the taskbar, it will turn all other programs transparent, and just show windows for that one. If you hover over the show desktop button, it turns all windows transparent, so you can see the desktop, but can't click on things unless you click on the button first.

Nobody has linked this yet?

IMAGE(http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/windows_7.png)

How much of a system hog is Windows 7 being so far? Are we likely to see three sets of system requirements for games on boxes, or is it comparable to Vista?

Edit: broken link

From what I've been reading, same or better than Vista. Nobody has yet tested it as being significantly inferior to Vista, and frequently a bit better.

I still think that Windows 7 beta tes... er... Vista users should be able to buy Windows 7 for 90-95% off the retail price.

Windows 7 Secrets. Interesting read at some points.

NSMike wrote:

Windows 7 Secrets. Interesting read at some points.

That black box recorder looks fantastic. Too bad it's only an html slide show, but hey..

ISO burner built in. About darn time.