Upgrade to Win7 RTM

[iainsmith 9]

Wrong. There will be upgrade and full install versions (full install is for those who don't own either XP or Vista licence). Upgrade is possible from Vista directly ONLY, and from XP, one has to do a clean install but CAN use the Upgrade Version (an existing XP licence is required).

Ah! Thanks for putting me straight. My XP is an OEM which doesn't qualify for upgrading so I have to do a clean install. I'd forgotten that difference, so apologies.Iain Smith

[dragonflightdesign 99]

I don't know how you did that, being in Europe. It's my understanding that due to an EU ruling, Win 7 RTM in Europe comes without IE and any e-mail client and upgrade versions will not be available. All European versions being sold from 22 October require a clean install according to MS.Iain Smith

If I can clarify this, Iain - Microsoft's initial reaction to the EU ruling about IE was 'in that case, there will be a Europe-only version and you'll all have to re-install from scratch. No upgrade path for you lot'. Since then, they have modified their stance somewhat and are awaiting the EU's response to their proposal of an install screen which appears to show the ability to select IE, Opera or Firefox. The EU reply may have already been given but I've seen no trace of it yet.-Dai

[Kosta 122]

I have been at Microsoft Windows 7 Training in Vienna 2 days ago. They said W7 will not be available without IE, they threw away that version. And they said Upgrade will be available, both in stores (for only one PC or more) and from OEM vendors (as an upgrade over vendor website, like Acer, Sony, HP, Fujitsu-Siemens etc...).BTW. Upgrading to Win7 x64 today. XP64 backed up. Let's see how it goes! Looking forward :-)

[tfm 192]

... I've got a hugely complicated FSX install and really can't afford to spend days recreating it after a reinstall. But conventional wisdom has been that a clean install of Win7 is the only way to go. So - no performance problems at all after the upgrade? Alan

The method to upgrade from RC to RTM is the same as the one to upgrade from Beta to RC. In my case, the upgrade from Beta to RC did not affect FSX performance adversely, so far as I can tell.Hitherto I have always believed in "fresh" OS installations. If nothing else, they're an opportunity to tidy up the PC. But installing OSes and MSOffice/Photoshop etc is pretty easy. Installing FSX and its add-ons is miserable. Life is just too short if the upgrade option actually works.My personal advice would be to back everything up and try the upgrade route first. What have you got to lose? If you don't like it, you can do a fresh installation later. Two other tips. First: using the upgrade option can (in my experience) cause increased hard disk fragmentation compared with a fresh installation on a clean hard disk. I strongly suspect that this, rather than esoteric problems with the registry or whatever, is the usual culprit for people feeling that their computers have "slowed down" compared with fresh installations. If you find the hard disk seems to be working harder than before the upgrade, try running a defragmentation tool before opting for a fresh install. While you're at it, you might even try following Nick_N's defragmentation guide and come out with better performance than before.Secondly: before you do the upgrade, take a stopwatch to your most frequent tasks: eg, starting Windows, starting applications etc. Do it a few times over a few days, and keep a note. Then do the same after the upgrade. This just might save you from acting on a false impression.Tim

[Guest ziporama]

From a prior experience, disk fragmentation is usually increased if there is little space left on the hard disk which prevents the installer from finding a large enough continuous block for the new files being loaded. By large enough I'd say about 40 Gb (not a scientific number but 4x the size of the DVD + 20Gb for a copy of your current install). Before the install, run a defrag, especially on the available space as that makes it faster to dump new files on the disk. After the update setup, you may consider doing a boot time defrag if your utility supports this. Just make sure the defrag utility works on the new O/S :)Cheers,Etienne

[DAD 2,661]

My personal advice would be to back everything up and try the upgrade route first. What have you got to lose? If you don't like it, you can do a fresh installation later.

Tim and others who upgraded. My 7-64bit comes these days to replace Vista64. Usually I started from scratch in the past when updating the OS. This time I'd like to save time and efforts and might try the upgrade. However, my fear is that I keep many old OS files which just block my hard drive. So the real question I have is: can I upgrade to Win7 into a new OS folder like c:\win7 (so I can then just delete the old Vista folder) or do I have to upgrade into the old Vista folder?Phil

[Guest bertvankampen]

Hi all,I would like to report a successful upgrade from Vista x64 (enterprise) SP2 to Windows 7 x64 RTM (enterprise). Before I started the procedure I made images from both system drive and FSX drive. The whole procedure took me about one and a half hour and four or five restarts.The only incompatibility was acronis image which I had to uninstall first. After the Windows upgrade I checked all my drivers which were fine. No additional updates were necessary. After configuring the display settings with nhancer (which needed a reconfiguration and a restart) I deleted the fsx.cfg file which then should be newly generated at the first run of fsx. Don't get impatient, it took at least 10 minutes before the fsx opening screen appeared. Some adjustments in the configuration menu and later in the fsx.cfg and the upgrade was complete.Some system and fsx restarts later the system was ready for my first flights. FSX meanwhile started within 30 or 40 seconds. I made several test flights with addon aircraft (PMDG, Real Air) at several locations (Seattle, Tongass Fjords Aerosofts Venice, FTXAU area) all was fine.I hope this information is useful for those who, like me, have a bunch of addons installed, which would have required at least 4-5 days if had made a "clean" installation procedure.Harry (LOWW)sys: i7-920 @3.8, 6G, 285GTX(190.62 driver)

hi Harry,Did you have any problem using the FSX scenery library? I have a problem with win7 32bit/FSX SP2.RegardsBert (EHTW)