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Windows 7 Upgrade Can Take Nearly a Day
Eugen writes "A Microsoft Software Engineer has posted the results of tests the company performed on the upgrade time of Windows 7. The metric used was total upgrade time across different user profiles (with different data set sizes and number of programs installed) and different hardware profiles. A clean 32-bit install on what Microsoft calls 'high-end hardware' should take only 30 minutes. In the worst case scenario, the process will take about 1220 minutes. That second extreme is not a typo: Microsoft really did time an upgrade that took 20 hours and 20 minutes. That's with 650GB of data and 40 applications, on mid-end hardware, and during a 32-bit upgrade. We don't even want to know how long it would take if Microsoft had bothered doing the same test with low-end hardware. The other interesting point worth noting is that the 32-bit upgrade is faster on a clean install than a 64-bit upgrade, regardless of the hardware configuration, and is faster on low-end hardware, regardless of the Data Profile. In the other six cases, the 64-bit upgrade is faster than the 32-bit upgrade."
Agreed! Good job to MS for being honest in the results they witnessed. At this point I've done quite a few clean installs and upgrades to Win7 on what I would consider low-end systems (early Pentium 4's, 512MB RAM) with my slowest install thus far being around 3 hours.
And I have seen Ubuntu (one of my FAVORITE desktop OS'es) take no less than 8 hours to complete.
I have never been a fan of "upgrades" as they tend to be a bit buggy. I did a clean install of Windows 7 x64 the other day just to try it out over XP and I have to say that I am impressed (well over XP that is). It did not take too long, but then again, I would click something...go back downstairs to watch football with my tasty beverage...go upstairs at the break...rinse and repeat.
I know "upgrades" are usually cheaper - but maybe they should just give you a rebate (or immediate discount) when you send in your previous licence number - and force you to do a clean install. To help those who are not so knowlegeable - maybe you include an idiots guide to backing up files using an external HD/DVD or something like that. That should be enough for even the moderately technical person. For the idiot - maybe you include a token voucher ($20 or so) that can be used at a big box partner to help cover the cost of the upgrade for you and recover your data.
Just a thought...
1331461 is only semiprime *sigh* Alas - I am just short of 1337.
Funny? Sorry, but I am an AVID windows user and I would never ever recommend "upgrading" to a newer version. To be honest, the upgrade procedure DOES work and it works quite well, but if you're going to change your OS, you may as well start fresh and avoid the potential errors that sometimes (although rarely) do crop up.
This also applies to service packs, I learned that lesson the hard way when XP SP2 was released. I don't know if anyone remembers but a fresh, clean install of XP with SP2 slipstreamed onto the installation disk worked perfectly well, but those who installed SP2 on top of Vanilla XP or XP SP1 ran into some very strange problems with program compatibility and such.
+1 IDisagreeSoHeMustBeATrollOrAnAstroturferOrAShill
It took me a day to go to Snow Leopard
1. Back up system .1 release came out
2. Install Snow Leopard
3. Do a "migrate" of my old data to the new OS
4. Discover that all my apps crashed!
5. Restore the system to the backup I made in step 1
6. Repeat process when the
WTF? According to the referenced MS blog post, the 650Gb is user data. Why in the world would upgrading your OS and installed apps depend on the amount of per-user data you had? Why is the system updater even bothering to look in the per-user directories?
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
When I upgraded, it really wasn't much of an upgrade, cause I had XP. I used their migration tool, then double checked to make sure I backed up the right things, then did the clean install of the RC, since XP isn't upgradable in the sense that vista is. It took me about 1 hour for the full install, then about an additional 1 to 1 1/2 hours for the migration. All in all, it was very simple, straight, and to the point. My system for this box is a 3.4 ghz 32-bit P4 with 2 Gigs of Ram, and I had over 75 gigs in the migration.
Just me
seriously. i installed it on an old, old athlon xp 1700+ box and the install went fine
now, i couldnt use it, because...well it turns out none of the hardware had vista/7 drivers. id been running linux on the box so long that i pretty much forgot about needing to find drivers for things *shrug*
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
Upgrading your OS is just asking for trouble IMO.
Only when "your OS" is Windows. I've found most other OSs upgrade just fine.
It's the registry and the way programs toss libraries all over the place that really make it difficult for MS to have a reliable update mechanism.
I have to agree ironically.
Often I find that it's under Linux that you have to find the voodoo spell that'll fix your problem. Often you'll find three or four different solutions to the problem that apply to everything except you're a version too early or too late. Things are a LOT better than they were a couple years ago, but there's still a few things where the number of search terms you're narrowing down gets pretty intense. By contrast, once you learn how to fix something in Windows, it tends to be fairly consistent. Get hit with a worm in XP, for example, and the same fix that worked in NT and even to a degree in 9x will work. Get hit with a bad wlan connection in your flavour of linux, and you'd better hope someone has already solved the problem, because the way you solved it before doesn't work anymore.
It's been a long time.