Windows 7 Clean Install Only In Europe 803
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the start-all-over dept.
from the start-all-over dept.
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."
OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I would like to find fault with Microsoft here...
Anybody that "upgrades" a Windows operating system in place from one version to another is an idiot.
People should reinstall their Windows from scratch at least once a year. Any less frequent than that and the successive patches to patches to patches become too much for the system to bear. The successive software installs and uninstalls leave hanging dependencies that slow the system to even worse of a crawl than it was at first install. An "upgraded" system drags with it the legacy rootkits previously installed, and those cause issues even in the best case. In the worst case the malware and crudware bog down the system so much you're lucky to get any work done at all.
A fresh install of XP on modern equipment is almost as snappy as Linux. After a year you're powering up and going for coffee while it "wakes up". After an "OS Upgrade" you don't dare power the thing off unless you're going on vacation for a week. Patch Tuesday has spawned "Team Building Wednesday".
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
The only problem with this once-good advice is that in a world of DRM-restricted ****, a complete wipe and reinstall of your system almost guarantees you'll lose something, even if you think you've backed everything up.
I suppose this is what we get for using an operating system that doesn't clearly distinguish between data that can change (real or configuration metadata) vs. fixed code/data for the OS and applications that changes only if and when you install a different version. It's also what we get for using an OS that lets applications mess with things like your boot sector to implement DRM (I'm looking at you, Adobe) and provides separate storage for configuration that isn't in the main file system at all (registry), so there are all sorts of places for vital information to hide and avoid being backed up in the first place or easy to restore even if it is saved.
Unfortunately, until Microsoft grow up on this front or someone writes software as powerful as Creative Suite to run on Linux, this is the world many of us are stuck in. :-(
Re:OOh (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
Whilst I agree that upgrading the OS is a bad idea the suggestion that one needs to reinstall every year is just plain wrong. I have 200 systems that have been running the same image for 5 years with no slowdowns or problems. You must be doing something wrong.
Oh and creating a ghost image of your fresh install is a much better option than reinstalling
timewise. I have not needed to install for years.
Having the patches to make XP loaded drive boot in any machine you like helps.
I don't blame them. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bracing for modded down... but here goes.
There was really no reason for them not to be able to bundle their own software in their own OS. Why isn't Apple being told not to include Safari and iTunes and iCal and iWhateverthefuck in their OS? A software company should be able to include whatever they want, and if people don't like it then either don't buy it or stop complaining. But the fact of the matter is... anybody who currently uses Internet Explorer either likes it better than everything else, has no clue of the difference between it and Firefox and whatever else, or the more likely reason that their company forces them to, and that is not going to change no matter how many browsers are included in the OS.
But anyway the point of this comment is to say that of course Microsoft is going to do their best to make sure they meet all of the requirements and then some, because they are pissed. If Microsoft were a sole proprietorship and I was the sole proprietor, I would certainly tell the EU to fuck off by making things as hard as possible for them as a result of their stupid decision.
Also, great work on the unbiased summary there jbeale53 and samzenpus.
Re:OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
Anecdotal, but...
My PC is an Athlon 64 3200+ running XP SP3. Before that, it was an Athlon XP 1800+, and a PII/450 before that. I upgraded from a botched Win98 install on the PII to XP RC1(!), and haven't done a clean install since. (I've done repair installs with each CPU/mobo upgrade.) My PC has always been as snappy and responsive as I could hope for; the only problem is an occasional machine check exception which may be due to hardware. (Diagnostics say that the error occurs on HyperTransport 0, which connects the CPU core to its on-chip memory controller.)
Maybe the stability is due in part to avoiding crap and bloatware; I use FF, Thunderbird, and Pidgin, and disable most unnecessary services and the startup apps that some programs try to install. I also do clean uninstalls when I remove programs and generally try to trim the fat.
However, I do see less experienced users' PCs running slowly and unreliably...sometimes it's a clearly defined spyware problem and sometimes it's "Windows bloeat" or whatever you'd like to call it. I can't say what they do differently because I'm not looking over their shoulders.
Re:Bureaucracy cannot fix monopoly (Score:3, Insightful)
Erm, since when can one be a citizen of the EU?
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
"So you can save 5 minutes backing up your stuff?"
Hell, I don't even worry about that anymore. Partition for Windows on C:, partition for all my data on D:. C: gets wiped, D: remains untouched.
Re:OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed. If you keep the systems free of spyware, viruses, and lock them down enough so users don't mess with them too much (i.e., they're set up as a work machine, and used only for work), Windows is as easy to keep "clean" as any other OS.
It is shitware (aka a lot of "shareware") installers, viruses, spyware, internet toolbars and other associated crap that messes them up.
If you deploy Linux, OS/X or any other operating system and hand over the root password (or sudo access) to a typical *user* it will get messed up too.
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't make me laugh.
A fresh install of XP (sin Service Packs) doesn't even support WPA security. A friend of mine brought his computer over and wondered why he couldn't connect and I almost died of laughter. Once we updated it and installed all the upgrades, it was just as slow as Vista.
Now compare to a clean Linux install. Updated and cleaned quite often, it doesn't require installing half as many updates compared to a clean XP install. Furthermore, it comes with all modern tools that you need, including that WPA security support that drove us up the wall. The Linux kernel is far more modern than the one equipped in XP, and that will cause lightyears of difference between the two systems.
There's a huge price to pay when you use something that outdated. Once you bring it up to speed, it's all for naught. You might as well use something modern if you want things to work without bringing your system to a crawl.
Re:I don't blame them. (Score:3, Insightful)
There was really no reason for them not to be able to bundle their own software in their own OS. Why isn't Apple being told not to include Safari and iTunes and iCal and iWhateverthefuck in their OS?
Because Apple is not convicted of abusing monopoly powers to control a market.
Next strawman, please. This one is getting old.
If Microsoft were a sole proprietorship and I was the sole proprietor, I would certainly tell the EU to fuck off by making things as hard as possible for them as a result of their stupid decision.
It's generally a very bad idea to piss off the people who can confiscate considerable parts of your property. The EU is a larger market than the US. Telling the EU to "fuck off" is the dumbest business decision a multinational corporation could possibly make.
Re:The last thing we need ... (Score:3, Insightful)
> A competent user will have to download the latest version anyway,
And the less than competent?
With no browser installed at all, you better hope Microsoft puts some automated Install scripts in or your Aunt Edna will insist you come over an fix her brand new machine.
Try explaining FTP to your Aunt or your Grandmother.
Re:Same old crap (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem was, you could still access the internet via explorer, just by typing a URL in any windows explorer window. Further, deleting iexplore.exe means you couldn't get updates. I'd call that a big repercussion.
The point was not that Microsoft couldn't create a version of Windows without a browser, obviously they could. They couldn't simply remove it instantly without basically creating a system that was non-functional.
The judge gave them 30 days to remove IE. Not enough time to re-engineer the OS without the browser in a way that wouldn't break things.
Re:OOh (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Slightly Wrong Summary (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, I wouldn't call it a pre-emptive strike. The fact of the matter is, Microosft can't wait for the EU to make a decision. They have a product ready to ship. They seemed to have decided that rather than risk further issues, they'll just remove IE for the EU so that they can ship the OS on time.
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Any corporate IT worth its paygrade will be using disk images for refreshing an installation.
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
When you're comparing it to Linux, you're comparing it to a version of Linux from 2002, right? That's when XP with no updates is from.
If you have to do a clean install anyway... (Score:1, Insightful)
Why not put yourself out of your misery and upgrade to Mac OS X?
The MSHTML is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
The MSHTML is the issue. What's the point of saying you have removed the web browser, when you really haven't? If you want to remove the web browser, the HTML rendering engine has to go. Otherwise, anyone could wrap a simple browser wrapper around IE's rendering engine and still get the effect of shutting out browser competitors. Microsoft is completely right in this, and the EU is simply wrong. A modern operating system includes a bundled browser.
Re:OOh (Score:2, Insightful)
What happens to your registry? Is it wiped and recreated from scratch, or is it preserved, or is it backed up and restored?
I can imagine problems with all three scenarios. If wiped and recreated, you are likely to lose application settings. You have to essentially reinstall a lot of your applications and manually set your settings back the way you like (or need) them.
In the second scenario, your registry may well be retaining cruft from the previous installation. So, although you reinstall Windows "from scratch" in order to clean the system of accumulated cruft, you are retaining some in the registry.
In the backup/install/restore scenario, you run the risk of losing any important new registry settings introduced by the new version.
It seems that your least-risk option is to preserve the registry and allow it to be modified by the new install process. My understanding is that a lot of Windows configuration and customisation resides in the registry though; I think whatever it is that prior posters said you would be preventing by doing a fresh install (like slow boot times) would be controlled principally by registry settings.
It also seems possible that slow boot times are caused by the amount of software you have installed (i.e. the software wants to run something at boot time) and if you do a fresh install and your boot times are faster, that's because you don't have all that software installed any more. After you install all your desired software again, your boot times will be as slow as before.
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:If you have to do a clean install anyway... (Score:2, Insightful)
Why not put yourself out of your misery and upgrade to Mac OS X?
You now can install OS X on non-Apple hardware?
Monopolies get special treatment (Score:4, Insightful)
Monopolies get special treatment as far as the law is concerned, and for good reason.
Microsoft, if given freedom to trade as it pleases, is in a position to stifle competition by making interoperability impossible and by not allowing competitor's software to work on its systems. This is great for Microsoft shareholders in the short to medium term, but it is terrible for society as a whole. That is why anti-competitive practices are regulated and prosecuted, especially when it comes to large monopolistic corporations.
As a side note, I believe anti-competitive behaviour is bad for shareholders in the long term too. It is no guarantee against failure, but more likely when a monopoly really doesn't innovate its products and services, then the inevitable failure will come along in a catastrophic way. Also, shareholders being members of society should want progression for society as a whole, not just a progression of their net worth relative to everyone else.
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
XP 2001 vs Linux 2009? (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing the original XP release without Service Packs (circa 2001) to a much newer Linux install (2009) is a cheap argument. Next you'll tell us that nVidia's GeForce 256 is trash next to an ATI Radeon HD 4000.
An XP CD with SP3 slipstreamed is slightly faster than earlier versions, if reports are to be believed. If you manage to make an XP system as slow as Vista on the same hardware you're doing something wrong.
"Only" told them to bundle other browsers? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because the EU didn't tell them to remove IE, they only told them to offer other browsers to be installed during setup.
Saying "only" doesn't make that statement any less absurd. How is the selection for these browsers to be made? Because you know the moment Microsoft announces they're to put "select few" browsers in Windows 7, everyone will want theirs in.
;)
Opera says "top 5" browsers, but picking browsers by market share, in order to promote less popular competitors results in a bitter irony. Not to mention the magical number "5" comes from Opera being 5-th in desktop browser market share. If it was "top 3" they wouldn't even be in that list, depriving them of the purpose of their own lawsuit. Have you seen what YouTube says to IE6 users? Please upgrade to a modern browser: Chrome, IE8, Firefox. Opera's nowhere in that list. Should they sue YouTube?
What the EU commission wants from Microsoft is a solution that can't be carried out in any sensible manner. But maybe that's exactly what they want, have you seen what EU charges Microsoft for failing to abide? To paraphrase another euphemism, let's call it "surprise tax"
Re:OOh (Score:1, Insightful)
I was with you until this point:
It takes me about 30 minutes of work to clean up the worst infected windows computer I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot).
I'm sorry, but apparently you haven't seen very many.
Re:OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
That's the smart way to do it.
Right-click on "my documents" to move it to a folder on D:
Also, well-programmed apps (World of Warcraft comes to mind) are actually self-contained: everything they need is in their own directory, so if you put them on D:, they'll run right of the bat after a reinstall. One can't help but wonder why all apps are not that way.
Re:OOh (Score:1, Insightful)
MOD PARENT UP (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't worry about registry settings. I set them once before, I can set them again after I reinstall. For me, It's not worth the hassle and problems of trying to save a registry that has an unknown amount of baggage/crap in it.
Re:The MSHTML is the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Removing IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Alright, here's where I'm confused:
In Windows Vista, you cannot remove IE. You can upgrade from 7 to 8, of course, but there's no way to remove it, and things will break if you try, because it was never designed to operate without IE present, although it's certainly better than XP was in that respect.
In Windows 7, you can remove IE. Control Panel, Programs and Features, click the link in the sidebar to "Turn Windows features on or off", uncheck Internet Explorer 8, click Yes to the warning that this might break stuff, let it reboot, wait a few extra seconds while it "configures" things, and it's gone. The rendering engine is still there, of course, but the application is gone.
Presumably, after you have upgraded from Vista to 7, this is still true; you can still remove IE by following the above steps.
So how hard is it to just automatically add the uninstall to the upgrade process? Make it optional: after completing an upgrade, ask the user whether they'd like to remove IE or keep it.
And hey, if I recall correctly, they were planning to offer two versions anyway: you could either have IE preinstalled, or not. So, they could make the no-IE version clean-install-only, and the with-IE version could be clean-install or upgrade.
This is definitely not a technical problem.
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
You've never come across some of the viruses I've seen then. Ever seen one that still loads, even in Safe Mode? How about the one that disables system restore, regedit, task manager, msconfig, *and* still ran in safe mode? That little bugger could lock down the computer better than most IT admins I know.
Thankfully it was only a single process virus. The ones that run as a linked set of 3 (randomly named) processes are the worst. You can't kill any process individually, you have to get all three at the same time, before they can re-launch each other.
The last time I attempted to clean a PC was a year ago, it took 6 hours to get all the viruses. There were at least 6 strains on there, three of which weren't identified by any virus scan (neither Sophos, Symantec nor AVG found them), and were subsequently identified by Sophos as being new.
It was pure luck that I spotted the one that still ran in Safe Mode, and it was an absolute swine to remove, even with all the tools and experience I have at my disposal (and I've been manually removing viruses for 6+ years).
I would never try to manually clean a system these days, there is no way to guarantee you found everything, and there are too many 'stealth' viruses out there that infect small numbers of computers in an attempt to fly under the AV companies radar, and with the viruses that sit and harvest bank details, the risk is just too great.
These days I would always advise to backup your data, wipe, and re-install. It's the only way to be sure.
i represent burger king and wendy's (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OOh (Score:5, Insightful)
I have installed Ubuntu on a bunch of machines lately, and on all of them it worked straight out of the box with no tweaking required...
2 Dell laptops, a C610 and (i believe) a D800
An eee 901
A custom built box with an asus motherboard and quad core cpu
A fujitsu lifebook e-series (old, p3/700)
An HP workstation, not sure of the model
An older custom built box with a single core amd64
It supported wireless out of the box on those machines that had wireless, and it came with a set of apps ready to run... On the machine which used proprietary graphics drivers, it told me i needed them and i just had to confirm i wanted to install them.
A windows install is a lot more hassle, if the machine is especially new it wont have drivers and you might be forced to load them manually... I have seen lots of windows installs running with generic vesa graphics (ie extremely slowly) because people didnt realize they had to install proper video drivers.
And once you have got windows and all its various drivers installed, you still have a pretty useless system that can't do very much until you install some applications (which you have to do manually).
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, for my laptop with failed HD, Knoppix live CD "just works". And that includes Wifi (using a PCMCIA wifi card) that I can connect using just a few clicks on the GUI. It even works if I don't boot with the PCMCIA card installed and then plug it in after the system has started. For me, that's "just works" on an impressive scale. :)
Re:cleaning windows (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:2, Insightful)
I love vista. There's a lot more hacking to do. What should be a quick fix is now a marathon hack session.
adding a line to the hosts file:
linux: 1 second
vista: 5 minutes of wondering what the UAC will allow you to do and figuring out how to bypass it.
I think it's obvious which OS is the best .
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Where was your BartPE / Linux LiveCD? If you can mount NTFS and the registry, you can remove pretty much anything you want on the partition. Hell, download ClamAV and create a new repair disk every week; Most readers will boot from CDRW now. Once you've cleaned it out, run a Windows repair from the installation disk if it won't boot, check if the processes return, and you're done.
Re:side effects (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:OOh (Score:3, Insightful)
Whenever I do aptitude install packagename I also do touch ~/Documents/Config/Installed/packagename . If I need to reinstall, I obviously don't touch the /home partition. I can then do cd ~/Documents/Config/Installed; aptitude install *.
(The last time I had to reinstall was because I accidentally rm -Rf'd /var. The time before that I deleted everything in /sbin. I'm not sure if I could have recovered from either situation without a reinstall, but it was quicker not to bother trying.)
Re:OOh (Score:4, Insightful)
Hmm...I've never really ever kept anything in My Documents. I generally don't like to put everything in a default folder the OS chooses.
Re:OOh (Score:1, Insightful)
This does not apply for all Windows users, only the vast majority. And as
Re:MOD PARENT UP (Score:3, Insightful)
You do realize that we compare Linux to XP because XP is widely seen as BETTER than Microsoft's latest offering? If you really want to we can have a field day tearing Vista apart comparing it to the latest Ubuntu. The fact that the most fair comparison between Linux and Windows is to compare the latest Linux distributions to a fully patched XP does say something about how Microsoft blew it with vista.
Re:But without Internet Explorer... (Score:3, Insightful)
How do most people download IE? How do they download windows without an OS at all?
Answer: They don't, the OEM takes care of it for them. If you're the kind of person who installs your own OS, then you can either buy the "Windows + IE" package, or buy the "Windows Only" package then take care of a browser yourself.
Re:Macintosh ? says who (Score:3, Insightful)
Having done 1000+ upgrades to Macs, and 500+ to Windows, I'd say you're so dead wrong that you're drunk and confused.
I've seen an occasional hardware issue on the Macs, and stuff like Unsanity's APEs aren't allowed on our systems. But it pales in comparison to the pain of installing windows.
But, yes always back up your home folder. And if you're on windows, make sure you also copy the registry, and the invisible settings folders that MS apps seem to love, and if you're in an AD environment, you might not be able to copy everything.
Re:Removing IE (Score:1, Insightful)
I think the problem is that if Microsoft shipped Windows 7 DVDs with Internet Explorer installed by default, a few years down the road there is a greater risk tje EU could come back and say they were still in violation and need to pay x number of bilions in fines for trying to trick consumers into installing IE.
Microsoft is literally an ATM machine for the UE, they will just dig up something whenever they need money, whether it's relevant or not.
with IE being completely gone from the gold disk, there is no way that the UE can halt the shipping of Windows 7, force microsoft into recalls, etc.
Re:The more I hear about it... (Score:1, Insightful)
Spot on, and rightly so. I'm in the EU and all I see is the EU trying to rip off the richest company on earth. My question is, where the hell are the millions Microsoft are being fined going? To the people that have had to "suffer" this egregious use of Internet Explorer? Not likely.
I wonder, if the EU decided to fine Microsoft another exhorbitant amount of cash and MS told EU to "go forth and prosper" would the EU have the stones to attempt to ban the import of Microsoft's operating systems when probably 95% of the EU's governments use their software?
How quickly would they have to reverse their decision I wonder?