Comments on: Can’t Get Windows 7 RC To Install? Try 64-Bit

By: Matto

Matto — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:55:55 +0000

Just another plug for the ever-helpful Jeffa. I pinged him a couple of weeks back about an issue I was having with Win7 Media Centre. He got back to me within a couple of days with some really good suggestions based on his own personal experience.

So far I’ve had a pretty good run with Win7. I first loaded up the Beta on a 6yr old Dell laptop, and it picked up all the hardware, and ran like an absolute dream. I’m now running the RC (x86, for reasons which will soon become apparent) on my media centre machine, and it’s running well. Is it perfect, well, no, it’s not. But after talking with Jeff, I believe that the vast majority of my problems are currently stemming from the very old (almost 8 years old now, actually) hardware that it’s running on. The fact that it loads up at all is pretty amazing, and that it runs reasonably well is unbelievable. I can confidently say that it runs faster than XP did on the same hardware (although 7 does take longer to boot – a trade off I’m happy with). For those interested (and so as not to clutter up the comments section here), I’ve got more detail on my work blog as linked above.

Have been toying with installing the x64 RC on my main home machine, but have yet to take the plunge. I’ve been doing more video editing over late, so the benefits of x64 are pretty obvious. Will be interested to see if any problems crop up in your daily usage – it certainly seems like most of the initial issues surrounding x64 have been ironed out by now.

But basically, I can’t wait to get my hands on the RTM, and will be loading it up on my work laptop as soon as I can. Unfortunately I’m limited to x86, as Cisco don’t offer an x64 VPN client at this point, but I can live with that.

Good luck with Win7!
Matto :)

By: A pc user

A pc user — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 10:51:52 +0000

Got to admit, i didnt think much of the w7 beta version.. but win 7 rc1 in 32 bit is quite good,
although, yes i get the occasional boot hang,
and some programs dont work in it, I can tell this if i install something and it wont boot for love or money, so i do a safe mode start and delete the prog i just put in and presto..
I actually havent tried the 64 bit version, even though my pc is fully 63 bit compatable.

By: Stephen Ridgway

Stephen Ridgway — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 08:29:16 +0000

Yeah I can’t bring myself to reinstall it either!

By: vandozza

vandozza — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 06:53:51 +0000

I fought with a 32bit 7 install all weekend, the actual install completed, but 7 was slow and unusable (slow boot, laggy and hanging post-boot.)

I found an interesting solution somewhere on the net.

If your 7 install HDD is NOT the drive attached to your FIRST SATA port, then on some chipsets, 7 will not work properly. (The HDD that I was installing onto was using my 3rd SATA port.)

I changed the drive from SATA port 3 to SATA port 1, and it’s been working perfectly since.