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Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe
jbeale53 writes "It seems that to install Windows 7 in Europe, you'll have to wipe the system and start over. There will be no ability to upgrade. From the article, 'The unfortunate side effect has been caused by Microsoft's decision to avoid any further EU censure on Windows 7 by removing Internet Explorer 8 from the OS. Because Internet Explorer is so deeply integrated within Vista, it's not currently possible to perform an upgrade that removes IE.' Why would Microsoft cripple it this way? Just to try and point fingers at the European Union? Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup."
EXACTLY. You'd have to be seriously dumb to "upgrade" a Windows box. I have never once seen this go well. Between Vista and 7 maybe it will be better because they're so alike, but I doubt it. I don't see the big deal with upgrading anyway. What's the point? So you can save 5 minutes backing up your stuff? (assuming that like much of the general buffoonery you don't have it already backed up) It takes about 10-15 minutes to install Vista from start to finish on a blank, modern machine. Judging from the totally inexplicable timetables involved in Microsoft's Windows Update, it probably takes ten times as long to perform an "upgrade." Even on a Linux system like Debian with a good package manager you will have some slight inconsistencies between releases that can foul things up if you perform a straight dist-upgrade. I can only imagine the things that go on behind the scenes in a Windows upgrade.
They did exactly the same thing during the antitrust trial. In December 1997 (or thereabouts), Microsoft responded to Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson's order to provide a version of Windows 98 without a browser by offering up a version of the OS that wouldn't run.
You don't have to reinstall every year. My main rig has been running the same, non-reinstalled copy of XP for over 3 years. It's fast and stable.
As far as upgrading though? That's dumb.
Gone!
I learned to image a long time ago, makes things much faster.
I get the base XP install with ALL the security updates. *snapshot*
Next time it's time to do it again, I start from there, install all the security updates. *snapshot*.
Quite a bit faster.
I would agree that doing an OS upgrade by doing a backup, saving off data, low level formatting all drives (some SCSI drives allow a true low level erase of every sector and relocate any bad blocks they find, others just do a read across all sectors and call it done), then a complete OS rebuild is a good idea, regardless of OS, be it AIX, Solaris, Windows, BSD, or Linux.
However, even though this is a good thing in principle, it is tough to do in practice. A lot of Windows machines have apps which the install media (or CD keys) are unable to be located, or have some licensing system which charges per reinstallation. Reinstallation from scratch also takes a lot of time. An upgrade may leave a lot of cruft behind, but when under strict deadlines, it might be worth the risk as opposed to the time it takes for a complete rebuild of a box from the OS on up.
PS: Reinstall Windows yearly? Maybe back in the Windows 98 and ME days, but unless its some specific app that causes damage over time, Windows versions including and more recent than XP are stable enough to last a lot longer than that. I'd highly recommend taking a look at one's antivirus utility which may be eating excessive CPU cycles (some are said to be FAR worse than others), and perhaps running a utility like CCleaner periodically. If malware is a chronic problem, consider running your Web browsing as a limited user or inside a virtual machine that you can rollback when done. Of course, there is always the Firefox/Adblock/NoScript trio.
If you have >1gb ram, i highly recommend giving the RC a go and see for yourself. Of course a heap of people on /. will bitch about it because of the DRM, activation, cost, etc - but as a usable product its actually quite neat.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
Why would Microsoft cripple it this way? Just to try and point fingers at the European Union? Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup.
Actually the EU has not ordered MS to take any specific action. They do seem to favor multiple browsers installed by default as a remedy, but haven't "told" MS anything other than that they think MS is committing a crime and are looking into it. MS's announcement that they are excluding IE in Windows 7 was a preemptive strike by MS in the hopes the EU would not order a more effective remedy, but the EU basically told them they weren't dropping the case and were going to investigate and determine the most effective remedy regardless of what MS does at this point.
Assuming all the above premises hold, it seems likely this is just MS being lazy and incompetent and not wanting to expend effort to write an upgrader for Europe that won't install IE.
Because when Microsoft includes a product on its Monopolistic OS, they are leveraging that Monopoly in order to gain one in another market. When Apple does it, it's business as usual. Different rules apply to Monopolies. Thems the breaks kiddo.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
What browsers don't auto-update in the default configuration these days?
Browsers being run by non-administrators.
Seriously, this is a big deal. One of the nicest things about IE is that it gets updated as part of Windows/Microsoft Update which means even if you don't have an admin log in to the machine for a year, that browser will be up-to-date. Of all the other browser authors, Google is the only one that I think might also do this (via the Google Updater service that is installed with their stuff). For Firefox and Opera, unless you log in just to update them it never happens.
It might be nice if there was a way for applications to hook into a global OS framework that allows them to check for and apply updates, but I suppose that itself would be a security nightmare. If you aren't careful it would be really easy for slightly knowledgeable users to use the update mechanism to run any program they want with admin rights. Probably need some kind of private/public signing of the executables like MS does for Windows Update.
For apps with such a significant Internet surface area, all browsers should be able to update themselves without requiring the user to be an administrator.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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A monopoly is defined by the amount of control over a market as a whole, not the amount of control over the products offered up in that market. For example, IIS could never be an example of a product with a monopolistic hold on a market as long as Apache maintained significant market share, no matter how tightly IIS was locked down.
I currently run Windows XP and Debian with KDE 4.2.4 and I love them all. Could someone tell me why I should care about Windows 7? Heck...the need for its activation too keeps me far from even trying it out.
Because you don't need to activate XP? Besides, you don't have to activate Windows 7 if you want to try it out...
This might be news to you, but back in the Netscape days, pre-Windows 98, Microsoft had a very small market share in the Browser market. The original browser wars, in which Microsoft "coupled" Internet Explorer with the GUI before shipping Windows 98, is what resulted in Microsoft gaining such a high share of the browser market. Essentially, they used their monopoly on desktop OSes in order to gain that monopoly on browsers. The original anti-trust charges in the US were followed shortly.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
There's a solution. It's called Mac OS X.
You really haven't been paying attention, have you?
Vista doesn't use IE for updates. It has a stand-alone application. Windows 7 is the same way.
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If I install Firefox as a non-administrator I can't update it if I'm running Windows?
If you do not have administrative rights, you cannot install Firefox on the machine in the first place. You can, however, extract the files to a location you have rights to and run it (just like on *nix). My point was that if a computer has Firefox installed in the traditional way (via the installer program), a non-administrator cannot update the application since they do not have write-access to the Program Files directory. Updating manually or automatically requires administrator access.
This has actually been a problem for us in our computer labs in the past. Firefox will check for updates and download the updater, then prompt the user (who is not an administrator) to restart Firefox to install the update. Since they aren't an admin the update will fail, and then every time they launch Firefox from them on they will be prompted to install it, over and over again. Very poor programming, I think, and very much falling into the faulty and dangerous "everyone runs Windows as an admin" mindset.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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My what an ignorant jerk you are. The EU and the European market represent a huge share of Microsoft's profits, how likely do you think they are to screw with that? How stupid can you get?! If Microsoft wants to play here they have to follow our rules.
I'm so tired of hearing fools like you talk about how Microsoft should just "pull out" of Europe. When are you going to get it? They don't want to! They can't unless they want to lose markets all around the world! European international corporations would move to European Linux distributions (in all the countries they operate in around the world).
The EU asked them to include more options for browsers, do you even know how to read? They did not ask them to remove IE, but that's fine too. After all it's not a problem since manufacturers can add whatever they like OEM-style.
The EU is a massively powerful entity and Microsoft has no power to "lobby" their way out of this or any other issues unlike in the US. So you better get used to having your "American" corporations "screwed" over by us Europeans! Don't worry, the EU screws European corporations exactly the same way!
I can imagine something else, if your profile is on D: (like all the other data) you don't loose the HKEY_CURRENT_USER so a lot of settings should be preserved.
New things are always on the horizon
It is shitware (aka a lot of "shareware") installers, viruses, spyware, internet toolbars and other associated crap that messes them up.
For those who haven't heard, CCleaner ("Crap Cleaner") is a very good utility that removes that crap left behind.
I think reasonably careful Windows users (don't run as Administrator all the time or install mysteryware without Googling it first) should be able to keep their system snappy with CCleaner.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
The MS Office 2010 videos put out by MS a couple of days ago include Firefox accessing Sharepoint and the narrator emphasizing the "full experience." Your need for IE may be short-lived,
If you find the Sharepoint video, look at the 10 or 11 minute mark.
Put identity in the browser.
People should reinstall their Windows from scratch at least once a year.
Glad you have the time to waste reinstalling from scratch once a year. Some of us have other things to do with our lives. You go around calling people who don't do this an "idiot" but I'd call anyone who spends several hours once a year on each machine they own an idiot. This is NOT the only way to get decent performance out of windows, even if it is the only way YOU know how to do it.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
As a software engineer who tried out ubuntu I can very much relate to the above. It is not a system that works out of the box. It took me several days of working shit out until I was able to use it as a download box. Although if you take the time to learn how to use it you also learn a lot more about how computers work.
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
I don't just think there aren't any viruses out there that can infect Linux, I know it. I don't think there aren't any trojans out there that can damage my Linux box, I know it. I don't think that any site that tries to run a drive-by download on my box will fail, I know it. As long as the above statements are true for Linux out-of-the-box and aren't for a clean install of any version of Windows, I'll continue to consider Linux better than Windows. YMMV, and obviously does. If you're happy with Windows, stick to what you like, and I'll do the same.
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That is a good question, and in my case things usually go this way:
One more detail - ever since I moved to Windows 2000, I rarely had to reinstall my OS. From my last two Windows machines, one worked for about 4 years (until I sold it), and the other one continues to work to this day (an XP laptop, at least 3 years old).
My trick is to disable the Windows update feature and not click anything stupid; I don't even use an antivirus. Today the system is as snappy as it was on day one.
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So that's great news for all you folks running Windows 3.11 on at least a 1 GHz CPU and 1 GB RAM ;-)
Seriously, Microsoft has generous upgrade paths. Upgrade editions of Windows 7 will even work on Windows 2000.
TO START
PRESS ANY KEY
Where's the 'ANY' key? I see Esk, Kitarl, and Pig-Up...
Yeah, you don't "need" to reboot after glibc updates. It's just that you should in order for all programs to get the fixes.
That's the smart way to do it.
Right-click on "my documents" to move it to a folder on D:
Unfortunately, quite a few applications don't bother checking for the location of "My Documents" and go ahead and recreate it on the C: drive if it's not there, leading to user data being split between drives.
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And it what must be completely unrelated, Linux seems to be much more widely used here. In Spain, we have about half of our technical users using Linux ONLY, the other half run both. The non-technical users are still mostly on windows, but some run linux at home. I see a lot more linux on the desktop in Europe than in the US, and also, with the exception of Microsoft Exchange and the odd MS SQL server here and there, ALL the other servers are Linux. I haven't touched a server running microsoft in years now. Not because I really have anything against them, we just don't need Windows servers for anything.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
The summary is misleading. The EU hasn't told Microsoft to do anything. They are still investigating but Microsoft decided to remove IE perhaps in the hope that the EU will be pressured into asking them to do that. But so far the EU has not asked them to do anything.
I'd love not to run as an admin. But the Microsoft software I need for work requires it. Running as a restricted user, then running the one program as an admin works for about 90% of the functionality I use, but that's still not good enough. I've taken to running as admin using a VM (which is much easier to 'reinstall' seeing as I can just revert to a snapshot).
Yes, although my approach is usually to do a clean install and then use the OS X migration feature to bring the applications and files over. And, I have to say, in my experience so far this works perfectly - every file, every setting, desktop background, application settings, everything. I can walk up to a new Mac, set my MacBook into Firewire target disk mode, and have that Mac as a perfect clone of my MacBook within a couple of hours, no user intervention needed. The advantage of this approach is that it's stepwise - if there is an issue with the new OS, I can go back to the older install on the other disk or partition. If I desperately need to use the machine in the meantime I can abort the transfer and reboot, then set it going again when I'm ready. It totally avoids that panic that things just might go wrong .
Don't be hatin'! There's all kinds of great stuff in the default Windows install. Notepad, minesweeper, Solitaire, Wordpad. Ummm... Calculator. Did I say Notepad? That's really great.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
While I agree that upgrading a windows install is not a good idea, this notion that XP needs to be reinstalled every year is a myth. the notebook I use at work (company owned) is running with the very same XP install it had when I got it. 3 solid years. no reinstalls.
I give you that it's running a little slower today than when I got it, but this has nothing to do with microsoft, patches or anything. it was because of a brain dead decision from upper management a year ago of deploying mcafee antivirus to everyonee. while the corporative version of mcafee is far better than the consumer version, it still hoses the system. BUT, wipping windows and doing a fresh install in this case would solve NOTHING. after reinstalling I'd still have mcafee running and hosing the system.
here's the tips to avoid this fabled windows "aging" proccess:
- don't install crap all the time. stick to the basics. office suite, browser, e-mail app. everything else, run in a virtual machine. hardware today is powerfull enough so you wont notice it's not running nativelly. - don't install and unistall stuff frequently. only install nativelly stuff you want to keep that you tested on a VM - don't install games. full stop. buy a PS3 or Xbox360. if you want casual games, there's lots of them on the web, run them on your browser. - keep your files separate from your software. a 20-30GB partition for windows and apps, everything else on a secondary partition. configure the system so "Documents and settings" reside on the second partition (usually D:\ ) - disable every crappy service you don't need from control pannel.
this worked for me for the last 3 years. i'm the only guy in my work group who didn't have to completely rebuild my machine in all this time.
What ? Me, worry ?
Question: Modifying a Linux hosts file requires SUDO, right? After all, you don't want anyone/anyprogram redirecting certain names to some fake site in China.
Same thing in Vista. You just need to learn which things are administrator-based, or need admin rights to edit. You ARE running your account as a non-admin, right?
And if you need to take 5 minutes for EACH changed line, EACH time you touch the hosts file... well, you're doing something wrong. Or you're an idiot. And that's an OR, not an XOR.
Or 'ftp ftp.mozilla.org'. As I recall, Windows Explorer includes an FTP client, so you should just be able to put ftp://ftp.mozilla.org into the address bar and grab it (you can do this with the finder in OS X too).
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