Winextra » upgrade

Microsoft Security Essentials updated – get it now

Steven — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 14:31:56 +0000

Microsoft Security Essentials - Upgraded

I am a strong advocate of using Microsoft Security Essentials not just because it is from Microsoft but because it is a damn good antivirus and malware security program.

While yesterday was a big update day with Office 2010 SP1 hitting Windows Update along with a few other needed updates there was apparently an update for Microsoft Security Essentials that didn’t show, and still didn’t this morning, so you will have to head to the MSE page itself to grab the upgrade package.

Numbers wise Security Essentials part of the package sees an upgrade from 2.0.657.0 to 2.1.1116.0 and the Antimalware client goes from 3.0.8107.0 to 3.0.8402.0

Microsoft Security Essentials updated – get it now is a post from: winextra
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Upgrading through every version of windows

Paul — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 16:07:37 +0000

YouTube user TheRasteri takes us through an experiment to see the effects of installing every major upgrade version of windows, in order, on the same machine.

The nostalig trip begins with an installation of MS DOS 5.0 in VMware and moves draws us through down memory lane.

Upgrading through every version of windows is a post from: winextra
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Windows 7 continues to impress and shines through my hardware upgrade

Steven — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:56:11 +0000

There’s been a lot written about how much of an improvement Windows 7 is over previous versions of the operating system but after just completing a fairly major hardware upgrade I thought I would throw in my two cents.

Now prior to Windows 7 RTM coming out I had already upgraded my motherboard, along with a few other things, but when I went this past month to upgrade my RAM I found out that the motherboard I had wouldn’t support DDR3 memory. So I decided to bite the bullet and pick up a new motherboard that would at least survive one or two more upgrade paths.

As well I picked up some new RAM and a new case to put it all in. Here’s what I ended up with:

AMD Athlon II X4 640 processor (actually picked this up a month ago)
8GB Kingston DDR3 1333 RAM
Gigabyte GA-880GM-US2H motherboard
Coolermaster GLite 335 case

To this I added my already in use ATI graphics card and 2 SATA hard drives.

Even though I wanted to get down to putting it all together once I got all my new parts home I had to make sure that Daily Brief got done and posted,which means it was already late in the evening by the time I actually did get down to gutting the old case of the parts I wanted and start working on the new beast.

Amazingly the actual putting of everything into its new home went really smoothly but I should have taken that as an omen of how the rest of my evening and much of today would go.

You see in previous versions of Windows the idea of doing a major hardware upgrade usually meant that your chances of just slapping in the hard drives that held your install of Windows and booting up was next to a dream.

With Windows 7 this was suppose to be a much smooth process and being able to do major component surgery and booting up without any problems was a real possibility. This possibility didn’t stop me from backing up my data with Easy Transfer – just in case.

So once everything was put together and with some major hesitation I hit the power button but before I could exhale my held breath the dreaded startup beeps sounded. As my anticipation of seeing the Windows boot screen was dashed I powered down and started checking everything. After a quick check on the web via my trusty laptop I found it had to most likely to do with memory and after fiddling with the RAM sticks I made it through to the Windows 7 boot screen.

And it froze.

Shit.

Now what?

My first response was to let Windows try to repair itself by running Startup Repair but after several attempts at that, which didn’t work, I tried to use the System Restore option to roll back to a previous working time only to have it not work either.

By this time I’d had enough computer crap for the day and called it quits for the day because I knew that my morning was going to involve doing clean install of Windows 7, or rather a clean install of Vista and then use my Upgrade disk for Windows 7. That of course would be followed by the inevitable update dance, installing of my normal run of programs, followed by restoring their settings via Easy Transfer.

Then as I was having my morning coffee, while trying to get a little ahead of my news feeds, and planning out my route of attack for the day something occurred to me. You see this being a new motherboard it had obviously had some new features included with it and it was one of those ‘features’ that I remembered checking off when I started up the machine for the first time after its surgery.

The feature came with a message on the screen that went like this:

SATA Mode Message:
“SATA is found running at IDE MODE!”
When then motherboard is set to default values, the monitor will display a message during POST, telling you the SATA controller is running at IDE mode. The message that follows asks if you want to change it to AHCI mode and enable hot plug functionality for the SATA connectors.
Press to enable AHCI mode or to continue IDE mode operation and stop showing this message again.

My error was in not totally understanding exactly what this option meant but figured that since I was running SATA drives, and this was anew motherboard with new features,that it couldn’t hurt to enable the option.

Once I realized that I had enabled the option my thought was that this could be the reason that Windows was freezing up during the boot up. I should also say that one clue to this was that during one of the ‘rescue’ attempts the previous evening I had tried starting up with logging enabled and once Windows had reached the point where it was loading drives.sys it froze.

So in light of this thought I went back into the BIOS and set it back to the defaults and rebooted. This time when the SATA message came up I selected and thankfully away Windows startup went.

Granted I still needed to install the motherboard drivers and such but the point is Windows 7 is one of the first versions of the operating system where doing hardware surgery hasn’t meant you will also need to reinstall the OS and all that that entails.

Once again Windows 7 has shown that finally Microsoft has come out with a version of the Windows operating system that just works, once you make sure that what ever is going wrong isn’t because of something you have done.

So thanks Microsoft, and here’s hoping that you build on this success and make Windows 8 a killer OS, in all ways.

Windows 7 continues to impress and shines through my hardware upgrade is a post from: winextra
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Pulling the plug on the XP to Windows 7 upgrade argument

Steven — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 16:24:19 +0000

There are a lot of people out there who decided to never make the jump from XP to Vista for a myriad of reasons. Instead they decided to stick with a good rock solid version of Windows which is fine except now that Windows 7 has arrived to great reviews some have decided that it is time to go down that perilous upgrade path.

The problem is that there is no real easy way to upgrade a computer to Windows 7 from XP. This has created a bit of a PR problem for Microsoft with a lot of people complaining about the trouble they are having, or going to have, moving to Windows 7. IT is especially a fun topic among Apple fans who slyly suggest that the easiest upgrade path is by getting yourself a Mac (gee who woulda thunk huh).

The best response to all this stupidity has to come from James over at Smalltalk Bits, Industry Rants when he writes

Which takes me to an oft heard complaint – why not allow an upgrade from XP? Well, consider that XP came out in 2001. Tell me, does Apple allow an in place upgrade to Snow Leopard from Cheetah or Puma to Snow Leopard?

A most excellent point. Chew on that you complainers.

Really folks why do we think that just because for whatever reason you decided to stick with XP that Microsoft is obligated to support upgrading from an almost 10 year old version of Windows.

Get a grip.

Pulling the plug on the XP to Windows 7 upgrade argument is a post from: winextra
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Plan on doing the XP to Windows 7 upgrade dance?

Steven — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 23:22:56 +0000

It’s getting to be that time folks.

Windows 7 will soon be available for you to get in your grimy paws and while it won’t be much of a problem to upgrade from Vista the same path from XP isn’t going to be so easy. Now I could make this a post a whole bunch of quotes but instead I’ll give you one and pass you the link to a really good post on upgrading from XP.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has not made it easy for XP users to move to Win7. You won’t be able to slap in the upgrade disk and have Win7 install on top of XP, leaving your data and programs in place.
Instead, you have two options:
1. You can do a clean install, in which you wipe the hard drive clean and install virgin copy of Windows 7, then reinstall your software and copy your data back to the drive.
2. You can do a custom install, in which your older setup is squirreled away in a folder called WINDOWS.OLD. This will include your program files, though you won’t be able to run your software from there. It will also include data files, but you probably shouldn’t rely on this as your backup strategy prior to upgrading.
Because you can’t upgrade directly on top of XP, there are some steps you’ll want to take before you install Windows 7 to make the process easier. This game plan also works if you plan to do a clean or custom install on a Windows Vista system.

For the full, and good, post head over to TechBlog where Dwight Silverman will give you the complete lowdown.

It might not be pretty and it might be painful but it’ll get the job done.

Plan on doing the XP to Windows 7 upgrade dance? is a post from: winextra
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Moving up in the world – migrating from XP to Windows 7

Steven — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 01:44:04 +0000

With the full release to retail of Windows 7 just around the corner there are a lot of people who have stuck with XP but are now seriously considering upgrading to the new release of Windows. Unfortunately the move from XP to Windows 7 isn’t going to be as easy as the one from Vista. In order to help the folks facing this upgrade path Microsoft has put together the Windows XP to Windows 7 Migration page on their TechNet site.

This guide provides assistance on migrating from Windows XP to Windows 7, all the way from gathering information about your environment to deploying the operating system. As you move through each step in the process, you can leverage deeper resources by clicking on the individual icons. With this content, you can make the best decisions and learn about the tools available from Microsoft.

Moving up in the world – migrating from XP to Windows 7 is a post from: winextra
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