Jonathan's Universe

It’s been awhile since I posted last. Most of my life has been pretty mundane and nothing really postworthy has occured, aside from getting a few job interviews. Actually, shortly I should be hearing back about a second interview as a PHP developer for a fairly local eLearning company.

I have just recently taken advantage of a deal to get Windows 7 Professional [upgrade only] for $29.99. I bought it and spent the rest of the night downloading. By the time I woke up, the download was done. However, I discovered that it wasn’t an ISO disc image Like I had expected, rather it was an executable with a folder and two .box files. Is is kind of aggravating as I wanted an image so I can burn a few backup discs and all that. But, conveniently during my normal news perusal I found an article on Lifehacker which helped me convert the files into a bootable disc image. Dude, it’s like magic!

However, I ran into some issues along the way during the install/upgrade. First off, I wanted to do an in-place upgrade.. meaning I don’t lose all my data and my installed programs. Turns out, since I had Windows Vista Home Premium I could upgrade to Windows 7 Professional using this disc, however I could not do an in-place upgrade, only a custom install, which results in losing all my files, install programs, settings et cetera. This was annoying, but I backed up all my data (music, pictures, et cetera) however, I’ll still have to re install all my programs again. Aggravating.

But that’s going out of order. At first, I didn’t know I couldn’t upgrade, because I had problems getting to the upgrade screen. First, I booted up from the DVD I created, however clicking the upgrade button demanded that If i want to upgrade, I have to run the CD from within the installer. Ugh, I just wasted 10 minutes in the shutdown, restart, screen navigation just to have to go back into the OS. Ugh. So it takes me 10 minutes to reboot (Vista has been taking FOREVER lately.. gosh) back to my desktop. I run the executable provided by Digital River, and I first get a splash screen.

I click “Install Windows” (exciting!)

I get a screen that says “Copying Temporary Files…” and then “Setup is Starting…” But that’s it the screen doesn’t update for about 5 minutes. I quit, and restart. Same thing, this time I wait 10 minutes. Still nothing. Then I thought “I’m being impatient, I’ll let it sit.” So while I sit watching COPS 2.0 on G4TV, I let it sit at the Setup is Starting screen. It’s still not progressing after an hour!

I turn to my good ol’ friend google and try a few queries. I found a few people with the same problem, some unresolved, some resolved but the solution seemed irrelevant (It wasn’t a problem with my harddrive or motherboard.) Then I found an article on Microsoft’s knowledgebase. It said something about “This screen is the stage Windows is checking your hardware for compatibility.” Then for some reason, a lightbulb goes off in my head. I look down and notice how my zune data cable (with no zune attached!) was plugged into my computer. Sometimes I’m in a rush in the morning before work and I don’t unplug the zune datacable, just the zune itself.

So I remove the ‘empty’ USB cable. The moment I did that that, my install screen advanced to the “Would you like to check windows update for updates before completing install?” screen. TADAA! Three hours for a damned deviceless USB cable. I honestly never even thought it would care about a cable plugged in with no device. I take it that’s probably a bug in the installer. It’s checking for hardware components and it gets stuck in loop while it waits for a device to registered. Oh well. Good job Microsoft.

So, I click through all the screens and I see the coveted “What kind of install do you want to do, young padawan?” screen. I click upgrade, because I want to keep all my stuff intact. However, I’m immediately greeted by a message saying “Windows Vista™ Home Premium cannot be upgraded to Windows 7 Professional. You can choose to install a new copy of Windows 7 Professional instead, but this is different from an upgrade, and does not keep your files, settings, and programs.” Ugh. I spent 3 hours trying to get to the upgrade screen, only to be told I can’t upgrade. Ugh. isuehfgudehgeiuhtiuehteiutahtiuerghsgihua. Okay. I’m done.

So, I reboot, again, and boot from DVD. Then I do a custom install. The install procedure was actually fairly quick. Once I was in, I liked what I saw. Everything is cleaner and faster. When idle and not running applications (called the baseline) the OS used less than a gig in RAM. While I remember Vista using one gig when idle. It’s a nice operating system.

So I take time and copy all my backed up data back to my folders… all my music and pictures and such. Sweet. There are a few annoyances I have that I’m still ironing out, for example, everytime I enter a link in internet explorer (havent had time to download firefox yet), I get a feedback sound effect. Yeah, gonna have to disable that.

All in all, it’s a pretty good operating system. I immediately switched my taskbar back to not group similar windows into one icon. It makes it quicker to get to the exact window i want. Maybe I’ll get used to the combined feature one day.

Another thing I wanted to mention was an issue i had with DIgsby. I love digsby, it’s awesome. It’s the first thing I downloaded (yeah yeah, shoulda gotten Firefox first, oh well). However, apparently there’s this issue with Digsby when using a brand new account on Windows 7. Basically, it’s not detecting full screen applications right, so as a result, Diggsby is incorrectly hiding IM windows. To fix this, go to your preferences, and make sure to uncheck “Hide IM windows when full screen window is active.” This will fix this. From what I understand, this glitch only occurs when the windows account is brand new. How new is defined, I’m not sure. The guide  I read said “about 1 hour.” But there you go.

Over the next couple days I’ll be going through and experimenting and optimizing it to my needs and comfort.

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