The Hard Upgrade Path From XP To Vista To Win 7

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft executives have been telling the tech industry that if hardware supports Windows Vista, it will support Windows 7, but it now looks like that may not entirely be the case. According to CRN: 'But after a series of tests on older and newer hardware, a number of noteworthy issues emerged: Microsoft's statement that if hardware works with Windows Vista it will work with Windows 7 appears to be, at best, misleading; hardware that is older, but not near the end of most business life cycles, could be impossible to upgrade; and the addition of an extra step in the upgrade process does add complexity and more time not needed in previous upgrade cycles.' And here is CRN's overview of the difficulties Microsoft faces in asking enterprise users to walk this upgrade path: 'Across the XP-Vista-Windows 7 landscape, Microsoft has fostered an ecosystem that now holds out the prospect of a mind-numbing number of incompatible drivers, unsupported devices, unsupported applications, unsupported data, patches, updates, upgrades, 'known issues' and unknown issues. Sound familiar? That's what people used to say about Linux.'"

Comments

It may make sense just to get new systems....

[nweaver]

It may make more sense for many businesses to just forklift-upgrade their desktops.

EG, a Intel Atom dual-core, dual-thread-per-core motherboard should be just fine for most business desktops. Yeah, the graphics aren't great, but at 2GB, an 80 GB disk, and a price of a hair over $300 for a complete system, the hardware costs are so dwarfed by software and support costs that just throwing all the old systems out may be cheaper.

Stupid

[Idiomatick]

Same with the vista-ready label/lawsuits. And no, i'm not talking about microsoft. What kind of stupid company running older machines would bother upgrading OSes? What would be the point? To make the machine run slower and cause compatibility issues? Let home users work out all the bugs over a year or so and then upgrade AS you upgrade machines. I never upgraded my old dos machine to windows when it came out because even if it could run it would run slow as shit. Same reason i wouldn't install KDE on a netbook. New OSes shouldn't HAVE to explicitly support old hardware. People on old hardware should use the OS that they had when they bought it, maybe the next gen.

I know Linux is pro and can support like every part made but is there a requirement to do this? No, its the same as putting linux on a toaster. Windows should be keeping minimal winXP support for a few more years and have win7 be for only new machines, fuck supporting outdated hardware. This is one of the reasons ps3 games suck, because they are supporting xbox, pandering to the lowest common denominator.

I salute both the pro and anti MS crowds who shall soon mod me troll.

Re:Tested on a beta...

[je ne sais quoi]

Seriously, I'm as rabidly anti-windows as they come, but isn't this a little unfair?

Well, has Microsoft ever released something with poor driver support before? NVIDIA and Vista come to mind.... But check this out from TFA:

We've almost lost count of the number of blue screens we've seen in the CRN Test Center during the Windows 7 evaluation process. In some cases, PCs we've used just won't upgrade at all to Windows 7. In others, important functions have to be disabled or eliminated to get it to install as an upgrade. While Microsoft has assured the world that if the hardware works with Windows Vista it will work with Windows 7, the reality is that is misleading at best. We've seen with our own eyes in the Test Center lab that systems we could upgrade from XP to Vista refused to upgrade from Vista to Windows 7.

That's a real problem, from that it sounds like Windows 7 is a pig. However, if Microsoft would be honest about the situation they might be able to save themselves. E.g., Apple has no qualms about dropping support of their newest software on older machines. However, what happens if they lie about it and say that older machines are supported and they aren't? (As they are apparently doing.) You can say that's unfair too, but again Microsoft when and lied about what computers Vista would run (well) on, so I'd say that experience teaches us that a little healthy skepticism is warranted.

Re:But should it be that way?

[Lonewolf666]

That's the consequence of hardware costs often being lower than the cost of wages (and licenses) to upgrade the old systems. I suspect the $300 GP cited are not unrealistic, especially for a company that buys dozens of computers at once. Now calculate the cost of having your support guys reinstall the old machines, possibly do a few hardware upgrades along he way, and buying your licenses separately from hardware (hint: there is plenty of evidence OEM licenses are MUCH cheaper).

Of course the license part is Microsoft's fault, but the rest just follows out of an unemotional cost calculation. The best the company can do with the old computers is donate them to nonprofit organizations who can use them and have volunteers who reinstall them as needed for free.

Re:crazy

[RobBebop]

If it isn't 99.99% compatible, it isn't getting on my machine.

Your statement assumes that you require an OS to be compatible with at least 9,999 out of every 10,000 components in your system. Between my keyboard, mouse, harddrive, monitor, usb slots, firewire, ethernet card, wireless card, motherboard, and power adapter (ten components)... I'd say the OS should be 100% compatible. Beyond that, I'd blame device manufactures and software development companies for not provided me with the right code to use their products. But 99.99% is simply a fun number you pulled from your ass, because even if you did have 9,999 completely functional components in your computer, if there was no compatibility for a mouse, you'd be pissed off.

Re:Tested on a beta...

[Jumperalex]

Well the US Military for one. Every computer is imaged from a tested image for that particular hardware baseline. We do not allow a vendor install, with all the crapware no less, on our networks. And for anyone out there who wants to chime in with an anecdote of when this did happen ... yeah no kidding, it CAN happen. Fortunatly if the network admins did their job right the machine won't be allowed to get an IP address and the person who did it got fired after it was discovered.

Any sufficiently large IT infrastructure such as the military networks would not just buy their boxrn with W7 installed. And I'm not talking about our secure side (SIPR), I'm talking about the unclass side (NIPR).

Re:crazy

[Blakey Rat]

Wait... you think that, and you use a MAC?!

Here's a challenge: try to run a MacOS 9 application on your beautiful, shiny Macintosh. Can't do it? Hm. Weird, I can run like 95% of apps that old on Windows. Heck, try to run a MacOS 6 application on MacOS 7 and odds are good it wouldn't even come close to running right. (Yes, I'm still bitter about System 7.)

I mean, the funny thing is that I basically agree with you, but you holding that position and then using a Mac as your main computer is pretty mind-bendingly oxymoronic.

Re:Tested on a beta...

[sortius_nod]

I call bullshit on that dude.

I've worked for some large companies that supply services to large corporations, ALL of them had their own specific versions of windows, and yes, they did upgrade with the times if justified (2k to XP). These were corporations like banks, supermarket chains, telcos, universities, the list goes on. They REFUSED to go to Vista, all new machines were shipped with it, but got reimaged to their own corporate versions of XP.

I don't know where you've worked, but it sounds like they are small companies, not corporations. Either that or you're blowing it out of your arse.

Slipstreaming your own version is quite common practice, and to justify ANY change in your image as it will impact the company - whether positive or negative. I have yet to see a corporation move to Vista, the cost is too high and the risks too great to justify it. If they are going to sell 7 to corporations they are going to need to fix this mess they call an OS, and fix the upgrade path. Why buy a new machine and 2 OSs when you can buy 1 machine with 1 OS (Mac), or even just 1 OS (Linux).

Re:But should it be that way?

[Kneo24]

Time is money. You can either wait five to ten minutes for everything to load once you've hit the power button, or you could wait a couple of minutes. Imagine 50 people having to wait an extra five minutes. That's a total of 250 minutes per day, or a little over 4 man hours each day being lost.

VISTA & Server2008 lose 2 important GOOD featu

[Anonymous Coward]

"Because Windows 7 is a much better OS in so many different ways" - by Burnhard (1031106) on Tuesday February 24, @06:06PM (#26976299)

Well... 2 things BOTHER me about Windows VISTA, Windows Server 2008, & doubtless their offspring in Windows 7 (unless you can tell me otherwise on the latter):

----

1.) The removal of being able to use 0 as a blocking IP address in a HOSTS file (vs. 0.0.0.0 or 127.0.0.1, which are bigger, slower on load into the local DNS Cache (as well as slower flushes via ipconfig /flushdns) & also occupy more RAM once loaded, for NO GOOD REASON - 0 blocks as well as the other 2 do, & is smaller + faster!)

In this case, this happened on 12/09/2008 Microsoft "Patch Tuesday" updates, it wasn't LIKE that before then!

E.G.-> Here, using 0 as my blocking IP address in a FULLY normalized (meaning no repeated entries) HOSTS file with nearly 650,000 bad sites blocked in it, I get a 14++mb sized HOSTS file... using 0.0.0.0 it shoots up to 18++mb in size (& even worse using 127.0.0.1, to around the tune of 24++mb in size)... semseless & bloat creation is the result!

&

2.) The removal of IP Port Filtering GUI controls for it via Local Network Connections properties "ADVANCED" section (this is up there w/ when MS removed the GUI checkbox after NT 4.0 for IP Forwarding, only, this time, the difference is (and, it's a PAIN) is that it is NOT a single 1 line entry to hack via regedit.exe, but FAR MORE COMPLEX to do by hand)... port filtering is a USEFUL & POWERFUL security (& to a degree, speed also) enhancing feature!

Afaik, on THIS case (vs. #1 above)? It has always been that way in VISTA &/or Windows Server 2008... & not just the result of a Patch Tuesday modification.

----

Ordinarily, I wouldn't post anything that "puts down Windows" here, ESPECIALLY THIS SITE (since it's KNOWN to widely be a more-or-less largely "Anti-Microsoft" type of news website, lol, & facts like these give the 'antimicrosoft' faction here ammo to use), but...

Facts, are facts.

APK

P.S.=> MAN, all that said & aside? I had to post those 2 objections I have to newer MS OS' - I mean, hey:

Doing both of those alterations (crippling ones imo) on MS' part? Dumb...

So, unless someone can show me a GOOD solid technical reason (because I have YET to find any reasons WHY both of those things were done) on why these cripplings were implemented in VISTA/Server2008, vs. Windows 2000/XP/Server 2003??

I will stick by that statement! apk

Re:Linux updates were at least upgrades

[Anonymous Coward]

MS upgrades are just ... reinventing the wheel.

How dare you, we implemented WGA, to protect you, and all our customers from non-Genuine(tm) copies of Windows! We even implemented a DRM layer, so you know you're watching GenuineHollywoodCruft(tm) instead of that evil media from the Pirate Bay, or smelly-hippy havens for non-mainstream entertainment.

upgrades with progress, without pain

[v1]

My take on that is a properly designed and planned out OS shouldn't have to break half the planet on each upgrade cycle to make progress.

Considering how hard it is to predict the future, I expect OSs to occasionally have to make a major change. DOS to windows 3, 3 to 95, somewhat 95 to xp, but I don't see a distinct major change since then, so why do things have to break in vista and then again in 7? At least give us some sincere major improvements for the headache, and space them out a bit will ya?

Ideally, OS upgrades should be a major pain once a deckade, and smooth in between, without sacrificing added functionality and progress.

Linux and Mac OS both seem to have a much better track record here. Heck, Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X happened in what, 2001? OK that was a major breaker for software and hardware alike, but we haven't had to suffer it in 8 years and there's no threat looming in the future. Why can't MS work this way?

Re:upgrades with progress, without pain

[igb]

Short answer: it would break their business model.

So long as people behave in the way they expect, yes. The problem now is that their business model is essentially boiling down to ``give us a lot of money, or give us nothing''. Five years ago they could rely on ``a lot''. Now they're getting nothing. By ``us'' I don't mean Microsoft alone, by the way, I mean them and their partners: the Wintel ecosystem assumes that each upgrade is so compelling that it drives not just OS but also application, hardware and infrastructure change. It's not just about a recession: I think Wintel has the same problem in any economy, because XP+Office2003+2GHz+2GB+200GB (ie the computer you bought two or three years ago) is ``good enough'' for most purposes, and today's equivalent isn't compelling in any substantial way.

Apple's in a slightly better place for a recession because it's shipping incremental change, so all an upgrade costs you is the price of the upgrade. But even for them, iWork '09 and iLife '09 look like marginal changes of limited value, and Tiger to Leopard is hardly an introduction to a new world. But at least in Apple Land you can run all the new stuff on all the hardware of the past five years, which is more than can be said for Wintel.

Re:upgrades with progress, without pain

[Splintax]

It may be worth using Vista for a while rather than blindly accepting the Slashdot hyperbole. UAC is not as annoying as you're implying, especially now that Vista's been out long enough for most of the troublesome apps to work out their issues. I don't see UAC prompts on my Vista machine much more frequently than administrator password prompts on my MacBook.

Regardless, the point is that even though the user might still have administrative privileges, they don't run with them. I think you'll find most people who use OS X at home are administrators, and most people who use Linux at home are sudoers - but they don't run as root, which is what most Windows users were effectively doing prior to Vista.

The result? Many programs that wouldn't run without (unnecessary) administrative privileges now work fine as a limited user, thanks to UAC making it obvious when the privileges are needed. The number of programs that trigger "unnecessary" UAC prompts is reducing all the time.

Security is improved, because programs are no longer able to silently perform administrative tasks just because you have administrative privileges.

I've got it installed on 3 configurations.

[Gldm]

#1: Acer Aspire 6930 bought on post-xmas sale from Staples. Core 2 Duo T5800, 4GB DDR2 667, 250GB SATA HD, Integrated Intel 4500MHD, Intel 5100 wireless.

Problems: Sometimes audio driver doesn't automatically detect headphones plugged in and switch speaker output to headphone jack. Oh and HDMI audio may have the same issue if turned on while hooked to a TV that's off.

#2: Piece of Junk (literally) desktop. Core 2 Duo E6300 @ 3.63GHz on Asus P5B, 2GB DDR2 1066, ATI HD4850, 400GB SATA HD.

Problems: None.

#3: Toshiba Portige 4010 (So old it came with Windows 2000 installed because XP wasn't even out yet): Intel Pentium III mobile 933MHz Low Voltage, 512MB RAM, 30GB IDE HD, Intel 2200BG wireless, Ali integrated video and MB chipset from hell.

Problems: Newest Video driver for integrated Trident Blade3D (DX7 class) video is circa 2002. Windows 7 build 7000 automatically detects the install issues and retries with compatibility settings and succeeds . The driver works, except when it tries to create an overlay surface it locks up. This is not a bluescreen, the chipset actually freaks out because it's crap and the driver is badly written. Same issue under XP (which the driver was written for) on this machine. Using the video in SVGA mode solves the crash problem but is too slow for video playback. Fine for browsing and word processing though.

Performance is slow, but usable on a 9 year old laptop. Checking memory usage with the default install of "Ultimate" edition using Win7's Resource Monitor shows it defaults to only using about 300MB of RAM, leaving about 200+ free for apps and cache. This is with all the bloated defaults running like Homegroup services etc. Despite the fact that it's still beta, it fares much better than Vista and I say even on par with XP in terms of running within limited resources, while delivering more features than XP.

So yeah, color me impressed. No it's not going to render Toy Story in realtime on a 386 with EGA while making toast and finding Sarah Conner, but still that's a decade old laptop (which means it's a steaming turd of proprietary crap) and Win7 is still usable on it, without a week of fiddling with settings first. Considering MS is talking about "Netbook versions" of Win7 I'd say there's definitely a chance of them producing a contender for the lower-spec hardware out there that fares much much better than Vista did.

Re:crazy

[bitrex]

Shuttle GNC engineer Phil Hattis stated that it cost NASA around $1 million in 198x dollars for each line of code they wanted changed by IBM in the Shuttle's AP-101 programs after the codebase was set (coding wasn't done in house, but done by IBM based on specifications). After a line of code was changed, the entire program had to be hand verified to make sure that no bugs were introduced.

Re:Hardware works

[Silvrmane]

Sheepshaver works just fine on Intel Macs for your crappy old OS 9 software. Runs just fine on PCs for that matter.

Not mentioned is 32 - 64 bit frustrations

[hklingon]

FTA: A testing of XP to Vista to Windows 7 on a custom-built desktop ... went smoothly.

This is a bit of a lie. They are keeping 32 bit versions the whole way through. There is NO upgrade migration path across major architecture boundaries as there was with Windows Old (tm) to Windows 386/3.1 to Windows 95 to Windows XP. To go from 32 bit to 64 bit is just not possible, and with a lot of oems STIL selling 32 bit Vista.. WTF.

I guess 32 bit makes sense with the whole netbook/reduced footprint PCs but for those of us with a "serious" workstation budget, that are spending money on IT, Windows is looking more like a toy/pretend OS than ever. We need a serious OS that does complicated things fast and without a lot of headache in a business enviornment. Businesses like us are probably driving the upper end of the market because We Have Things To Do that need the horsepower, but Microsoft I guess is focused on the low end now?

In retrospect it makes a bit of sense if you think of it like this: If you have a 75 year old grandma computer illiterate type (that has never used XP), with The Ultimate Rig, Windows Vista probably is great. It probably does everything they want, and this description certainly fits the description of those "Mohave" folks in the MS ads..

Unfortunately for those of us that depend on our PCs for our livelihood, and enjoy heavy lifting with our Rigs.. Vista is not the best choice for a variety of reasons I'm sure everyone already knows. Those of us in need of more than 4gb of ram-- hell! a reliable OS that can be up for more than a few days!-- are feeling a bit left in the cold with Vista. I don't think it is possible some theme tweaks and bundled programs would please both me and grandma (vista home vis a vis vista business)

We did (attempted) some test migrations from 64 bit vista to 64 bit seven and.. well.. the installer made no attempt to do anything upgrade-like. In fact it moved all profiles, windows folder and program files folders into windows.old and that is about it. It is likely they expect mass deployments in this type of enviornment... but it would be nice if they were up front about that sort of thing.

Incompatible drivers are just the tip of the iceberg. I don't think these people did anything with 64 bit windows. Maybe 64 bit is not meant for any home user?

Smart people should be working at Microsoft. This whole situation is astonishingly dumb. They are one of the few companies on earth with the resources and expertise to make driver problems like this a non-issue. How many hundred man-years of compatibility work for dos apps/older apps went into windows 95? This is no different now.

Who, that knew what they were doing, retired? (lol)

Re:crazy

[Christophotron]

99.9% of recent name-brand components will work flawlessly.

Counter example: HP Multifunction devices.. XP software and drivers for these devices provide functionality that does NOT work in vista and is NOT duplicated in the Vista drivers/software. Even if you bought a top-o-the-line HP Multifunction within ±1 year of Vista coming out, you are _STILL_ S.O.L. if you want your "scan" button to work properly to scan documents. You also cannot scan documents directly to PDF (without multiple conversion steps) like you could in XP and you are stuck using the craptastic built-in scanning functionality in Vista (that scans multi-page documents at a snail's pace).

I like Vista and all, but that's pretty shitty. Ask my Mom if she's willing to buy a new printer/scanner/copier because HP doesn't properly support Vista.

Re:Tested on a beta...

[adolf]

I've had Linux installs fall flat on their face after a few years of not being kept current followed by an attempt to upgrade the system to current-spec code.

Generally, I can revive these systems, given enough time. But lately I find it's easier to start them over with a fresh install.

It's possible, though obviously insane, to do the following:

Install Windows 3.1. Upgrade to Windows 95. Upgrade to Windows 98SE. Upgrade to Windows ME. Upgrade to Windows XP. Upgrade to Windows Vista. Upgrade to Windows 7.

But that's just retarded, as anyone here (with their blinders off) should be able to recognize. Real men don't upgrade operating systems -- they just buy the upgrade kit (because it's cheaper), and Google a good method for doing a clean install with it.

In my own experience: I bought a laptop with XP, almost four years ago. It's a good machine, and was pretty quick at the time. I kept XP around because most of the stuff I need for my daily work needs Windows, though I'd really be a lot more pleased to see Slackware, Gentoo, or FreeBSD on the machine. When Vista was released, I upgraded (er - I did a fresh install). Vista worked fine, though I also doubled the RAM to 2 gigs and gave it a bigger, faster hard drive at the same time. A year or two later, the hard drive crashed -- probably from being used too much outside in sub-zero Ohio winters. I had a choice: Reinstall the backup DVD of a fresh, clean, working Vista install in less than an hour, or download Windows 7.

I decided to see what Windows 7 was all about.

Spent a day or so shoving my usual software back into the machine, and it all works fine. The box suspends, hibernates, and resumes faster than it ever did with XP or Vista, both of which had occasional issues. Performance once it is running is good. I haven't been tempted -- yet -- to disable the Readyboost service, as I often do on Vista machines to improve speed. It bluescreened exactly one time, while copying files from the old (crashed, littered with bad sectors) hard drive over a cheap IDE-USB adapter, and I don't think it's been rebooted since (aside from updates).

It just works. So far. I hate Windows, but 7 seems to be OK.

Re:Hardware works

[CAIMLAS]

People are still bitching about the PPC emulation layer and the Classic environment?

That was 5 years ago. They provided that 'bridge' from the old to the new so people would cross it. The reason for doing this is not "none" it is "because perpetual support of old shit would get us into the same mess MS is in now, and we have to design our OS to plan for the future, not let it grow organically with slipshod additions".