Upgrading Operating System

[Rifraf]

Why do we do the things we do? After starting the thread about People and their politeness and civility and attitude with how mean and disrespectful they can be I accepted a promotion to Customer Service Supervisor at work last week. I must be a masochist.

Anyway, I need to be able to log on to the remote server to do work at home and Vista can't do that. I just picked up a Win 7 Pro x64 and will be doing a complete fresh install wiping my HD clean. I don't really care to save anything so it's not a real issue and I got everything I wanted on thumb drives.

I have a question though with say MS3d and it's license key. Do I just reinstall it once my upgrade is complete and input the key again and I'm good to go? I've never installed a new operating system before and would appreciate the advice.

 

[Majestic]

Congrats on the promotion.

I have a question though with say MS3d and it's license key. Do I just reinstall it once my upgrade is complete and input the key again and I'm good to go? I've never installed a new operating system before and would appreciate the advice.

Yeah just re-install and put in your key. Restart the program and you're golden.

 

[CABAL]

Yeah just re-install and put in your key. Restart the program and you're golden.

It's been quite a while since I re-installed it, but I think you may also need to make sure you put in exactly the same user info so the key works properly. I'm still using a very old version, though, so that may not be relevant anymore. :shrug:

As for installing 7, it's very easy. Just boot from the disk and follow the instructions.

 

[Majestic]

It's been quite a while since I re-installed it, but I think you may also need to make sure you put in exactly the same user info so the key works properly.

Yeah you need to put in your name correctly. That is why I saved my original email info in a txt doc and make several copies at different locations.

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks guys. I've been getting my last back ups done and everything like that and I appreciate the info. Man there are a lot of steps just preparing for a new OS.

Something I've read and am toying with is to install a new HD boot up and install win 7 then once everything is complete put my old HD back in as a secondary and transfer files to the new HD. But the old one will have Vista on it. How does this work having a different OS on two drives? Is that what some of you talk about have dual boot?

I would rather wipe the second drive and have it just for games and files. I guess I could just reformat it?

 

[CABAL]

How does this work having a different OS on two drives? Is that what some of you talk about have dual boot?

The BIOS will detect whichever HDD is listed first in the boot settings (usually SATA0 -> SATA1 -> SATA2, etc.) then check to see if it has a bootable volume. If it does, it will boot from that and you won't be able to boot from the other drives. If the first drive listed doesn't have a bootable volume, then it will move on to the next drive and repeat the process.

To set up multi-boot, you need to register the other operating systems with whatever OS is on the first bootable drive. In Ubuntu and other Linux distributions, the GRand Unified Bootloader (GRUB) does this for you automatically during installation and a simple command will scan the drives to update the bootlist. In Windows, it's a bit more complicated. You need to manually edit system files, but there is a guide here, at the Microsoft site that covers how to do it in everything from XP to 8.1.

You could also just drop both drives in the system, tell the bios to boot the empty drive before the Vista drive, install 7 to the empty one, and let the 7 installer handle it. It won't detect Linux or Mac OS, but it will detect other Windows installations and automatically make a boot menu to select the one you want when you start up the computer like a less powerful version of GRUB.

Having two versions of Windows can be useful for legacy purposes, but I don't think anything that runs on Vista won't run on 7. XP with 7 or 8 could be very useful, but you would need to install XP to an IDE drive, then install third-party SATA drivers or keep an IDE optical drive installed.

I would rather wipe the second drive and have it just for games and files. I guess I could just reformat it?

My current system has Win7 and Ubuntu 14.04. They each have their own 100GB partition for the operating systems themselves and a handful of other programs and share an 800GB NTFS partition.

The shared partition is great for games. It is outside of the protected Program Files directory (even if you use a folder called Program Files in the partition) so older games function properly when you install them there. It's also relatively static so I only defrag the volume when I install something to it. Saves can fragment, sure, but they're rarely larger than a few megabytes. Fragmentation of things on the main partition, like your browser cache, will not cause game performance issues this way.

Also, if your games are installed to a separate partition or drive from the OS itself, then they are easy to recover if you need to reinstall the OS for whatever reason.

 

[Rifraf]

Thanks Cabal, good info. So let me ask you this, if I keep the existing HD and just install from scratch and choose to set up a partition and my drive is 500gb what would you say is ideal 100-150 gb for the OS and the rest for my games and music and such?

 

[CABAL]

I've got 100GB for Windows 7. It has the OS, my browser, all my utilities, most of my modding programs for various games, my main Steam installation, and a few older games that acted weird when I installed them somewhere other than the C: drive. I still have nearly half of it free, so a 100/4o0 split would probably be fine.

 

[Rifraf]

Did you create your partition after installing the OS or during? If after install did you back anything up just in case or just create it and fingers crossed?

 

[CABAL]

I partitioned it before installing with an Ubuntu disk, installed Windows, then installed Ubuntu. I was using a brand new 1TB drive so I just kept the previous drive in the system rather than back things up.

 

[Rifraf]

Have you or anyone created partitions on a drive already set up? I'm just wondering if it's worth it now that Win 7 is set up and working fine if I should create a partition for my games/music or just leave it alone?

 

[CABAL]

I've done it with an Ubuntu boot disk, but I haven't done it from within Windows. This is the first time I've set up a drive this way and while it's nice, it's not necessary. I just split it that way to make the most of my dualboot system.

 

[Hellkite]

Have you or anyone created partitions on a drive already set up? I'm just wondering if it's worth it now that Win 7 is set up and working fine if I should create a partition for my games/music or just leave it alone?

I'd just leave it alone ,unless your going to run a old game that requires a FAT32 file system or a Secondary OS you should be okay not setting up logic drives ie partitions

 

[Rifraf]

Agreed Hellkite. I've decided to drop it. Maybe I'll pick up a secondary HD later and transfer all games and data to it. Like a lot of things I want to try the idea sounds good at the time, but once I think a little on it and ask opinions of others it fizzles out. Why risk creating a mess!

 

[Majestic]

My current system has Win7 and Ubuntu 14.04. They each have their own 100GB partition for the operating systems themselves and a handful of other programs and share an 800GB NTFS partition.

Be careful with partitions I did this a few years ago on a new 2TB HD and I caught a virus (was using anti-virus software back then) and lost the drive and pretty much anything on it (inclusing a lot of the older YY files for stock A2). Since then I refuse to partition anything (if it within my power), would rather have two drives.

 

[CABAL]

Be careful with partitions I did this a few years ago on a new 2TB HD and I caught a virus (was using anti-virus software back then) and lost the drive and pretty much anything on it (inclusing a lot of the older YY files for stock A2). Since then I refuse to partition anything (if it within my power), would rather have two drives.

I just do most of my web browsing in Linux. It's a lot easier than fighting with antivirus programs. Sure, there will be more Linux viruses in the future, but for now, it's incredibly secure.

 

[Majestic]

Glad to hear it. Windows is terrible for viruses and they come out so regularly that even the best anti-virus programs have trouble keeping up with them.

I partitioned mine so I could have all my games on a separate drive to my data like my modding files etc.