Adventure with Windows 7 continues

My notebook (Dell M1330) had been acting up.  I basically took the easy way out and blame Windows Vista.  It could be the case or not.  It could be the hard drive.  But in any case, I’d have to rebuilt it.  So blaming Windows means I don’t have to go buy another hard drive… for now.

After using Windows so many years, it wasn’t a big deal to back up what I need to keep.  It just took some time.  While it was going I was contemplating whether to stay with Vista or take the plunge and go with the Windows 7 Release Candidate (7RC).  After playing around with 7 beta for so many months, I’ve decided I just couldn’t go backward.  Charge!!!!

Well… it wasn’t as smooth as I thought it would be.

First of all, the trick of using a bootable USB stick with 7RC on it didn’t work.  I think it is a problem with the M1330 itself.  Even though there is an option to boot from USB device, there was no power hitting the stick on boot.  After 3 or 4 boot, it was apparent that I’d have to do it the old fashion way: burn the ISO to a DVD.  Bleh… An hour later, I have the DVD in hand.  In it when and bye bye Vista.

The installation was fairly straight forward even though it took longer that expected to transfer the system files.  That is definitely the DVD drive problem.  (It would also explain why it took forever for me to rip DVD.)  I blew the old partitions away and 7RC made new ones.  From that point, it is no different from any other OS installations: patch the OS, tweak it, install drivers, install software, get the data back, at the mean time praying the whole time.  Here are some highlights.

1. When 7 tells you you have no hardware issue (remember the yellow triangles in Device Manager?), it is lying.  Whatever it can’t install, it does not show up.  I had to think through what hardware were actually on the machine and installed the ones not showing up manually.  More on that in a bit.
2. The primary hardware got detected and configured properly without any input from me.  After it was done, I could get on the LAN and the web and grab everything else I need.
3. 7 patched readily, no problem at all.  It took 3 or 4 reboots but all went well.
4. Next up was Norton.  Norton Internet Security 2009 needed Adobe Flash Player for some of its UI.  Okay okay okay, that first.
5. Adobe is Adobe, everything was easy to find online, downloaded, installed.  Done.
6. Back to Norton.  As it turns out Norton Internet Security 2009 is not compatible with 7RC.  Surprise surprise.  Symantec does have a beta version for 7.  So I grabbed that and installed it.  All is well, I feel safer already.  Just gotta remember to turn off idle scan… what a horrible feature.
7. The first hardware that I noticed that wasn’t working was sound.  Most of the recent Dells uses Sigmatel sound chips.  The Vista driver list on Dell’s site confirmed it.  Since nothing is available for 7, I took a chance.  The Dell driver worked.  This is looking good.
8. The Synaptics touch pad lost a couple of features using default driver from 7RC.  Since Dell’s version is actually a cut down version, I opted for the real thing from Synaptics itself.  It worked like a charm also.
9. The integrated camera (Creative Labs) wasn’t working either.  Tried the Vista driver from Dell.  Worked.
10. Most of the drivers seem fine so software is next.  The Roxio that came from Dell also worked.  No issue.
11. Next up: MS Office Pro.  Installation was as usual, clicked on the button to check for updates… everything went haywire.  Nothing ran afterwards.  Office thinks there is a patch running.  The patch didn’t complete.  It was a mess.  *sigh*  Uninstalled everything, tried again.  This time no checking online.  Instead I ran Excel and got Office activated.  All was well.
12. To patch Office, I let Windows do the checking, that worked much better.  A couple more reboots later, Office is working.  I did skip SP2… not going to beta test that one.
13. Started Outlook to re-establish a new PST and connected to my email.  Opened the old PST from the backup and dragged what I want to keep over.  Mail, calendar, contacts, notes.  All done.  Email is up!  I felt civilized already.
14. Wifey has a Xerox Workcentre on the network so I installed the driver for it.  Again, Vista drivers worked.
15. The Canon Pixma Pro9000 didn’t fair so well.  It was shared off of her desktop but 7RC couldn’t connect to it… ah well, one down… not that I use it in the past 6 months so I skipped it.
16. Next up is Visio.  I only have the 2003 one and that installed and activated.
17. Adobe Photoshop Elements was fine.
18. So was Adobe Acrobat Reader.
19. The Canon camera was another story.  While the software (Zoom Browser, EOS, and Photostitch) installed fine, 7RC can’t detect the camera.  Online research shown this to be the case across the board for all Canon digital camera.  Epic failed MS/Canon!  Nothing I can do, skipped.
20. Beyond Compare worked.
21. WinRAR worked.
22. PDF Creator worked.
23. Quicktime worked.
24. iTunes took a bit of time.  My music library was already on the NAS, just had to repoint the new installation to it and rescan the library.
25. Divx, Xvid, DVD43, Handbrake, Audacity, Google Earth, Google Talk all worked.

Total work time about 12 hours.  It would have been quicker if I wasn’t playing Star Ocean at the same time.  The only casualty seems to be the Canon camera.  It has to be fixed.  MS is pointing finger at Canon and Canon, as usual, doesn’t say anything to consumers.  Very disappointing.  I bet the Canon printer will follow shortly.  Oh, and I didn’t install the biometric software (M1330 comes with a fingerprint scanner) and the remote control thingy since I don’t use it.

In any case, I’m blogging this on the newly installed notebook on Windows 7 RC.  So far so good…