Windows 7 Upgrade Can Take Nearly a Day 706
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."
FUD (Score:3, Interesting)
'Well the ferrari enzo is pretty shitty. It's 0~60 really drops when it has bare tires and is driving up a 70 degree slope in the rain.' (Car analogy just for you guys.)
If it will likely never happen that way, who gives a flying fuck?
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Upgrade FTL (Score:3, Interesting)
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...
User Profile? (Score:1, Interesting)
Who stores 650 GB of data in their user profile?
But yeah on a HD with only 42000RPM, yeah it might take awhile.
The upgrading process of win7 is completely new and it is done in this steps:
1) gathers settings and users files and moves them to a temp folder
2) completely delete all previous OS files (it saves them to be able to roll back if something goes wrong)
3) Clean install of windows 7
4) imports all the files from step 1
Mine installed in about 13 minutes upgrading from Vista with about 53GB of data in the user file, I don't think I will do an upgrade but rather a fresh install when Win7 comes out.
Re:How many times do I have to tell you, (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
It took me a day to go to to Snow Leopard! (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Why does user data make a difference? (Score:4, Interesting)
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?
Re:Only Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
Typical comments (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Only Vista (Score:3, Interesting)
Then they borked it. It dont run 1/2 my crap on Vista 64.
Have you even tried it?
Re:What's a day (Score:3, Interesting)
I know VISTA sucks hard in that regard.
That is my experience with Vista64 exactly. Nothing but pain and misery.
Re:Almost competing (Score:5, Interesting)
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*
Re:20 hours? Is it a floppy disk set? (Score:3, Interesting)
I've got a Dos disk image punched into punchcards somewhere.
I was bored in class one day and found you can hook the punchcard writer into a rs232 port. ran through the schools stock of punchcards in 1 hour.
Re:Almost competing (Score:2, Interesting)
"for some reason MS fans discount or ignore all the time it takes to reinstall all their apps."
I have to agree with that. I did a recent fresh installation of Windows 7 RTM and most of the time was not spent on the OS installation itself but all the required steps afterward:
1. Drivers (although this took waaaaaaaaaay less time than Vista. All I had to install was my sound card and video drivers, SPTD for Daemon Tools, Cutepdf Writer, and then Directx 9 (11 is installed with Win7 but Directx9 still needs to be installed separately thanks to the schism between XP and Vista), OpenAL, and PhysX (not really drivers but needed for my games). Everything else worked including all my LAN devices.
2. Settings: Tons of minor tweaks and what not which shouldn't take too long (1 to 2 hours maybe)
3. Install commonly used applications (my software base). This is the real time gobbler right here (not only installing but CONFIGURING each one as well). With Ubuntu, most of the software you would ever need is pre-bundled and configured with the Distro itself (give or take a few). Same deal with Macs (which I know Apple loves to tout). The PC I installed Windows 7 on is also a gaming PC too and those game installer's aren't exactly snappy (although most of mine are portable since I used steam and can just extract the entire steamapps directory and I'm done).
So yeah, all of that put together could easily add up to 8 hours. For a user with less to install, maybe half of that.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Almost competing (Score:3, Interesting)
The system on Linux (nvidia notwithstanding - my next card, which should be in the post by now, is a Radeon, because AMD have been nice people and released specs) where the OS generally comes with nearly every driver you need is arguably superior to the rather odd Windows system of having every hardware company (who often can't write working software) write little bits of kernel code.
Until you need to upgrade your Ubuntu repostitory servers [slashdot.org], that is.
Honestly, it's rare to find a driver that you cannot download for Windows. Very rare. Rare enough that if you can't find a driver for it, they probably have piss poor customer service and you'd be better off without them. Also, once you have the drivers, if it takes more than 5 minutes to get them working correctly I'd be shocked. 5 minutes to get -anything- that wasn't already working to work in Linux would be amazing, and I'd probably still be using it if that were the case.
With Linux though, if the driver isn't there, then you're probably shit out of luck, and every new Linux kernel release drops support for a few legacy bits of hardware to keep the kernel from becoming over-sized. Linux works wonderfully on hardware it works wonderfully on, but on everything else it sucks. Unless you're keen to write your own drivers (I actually work with a guy who writes his own drivers, he's insane) you'd better do your research before upgrading your hardware or even the Linux kernel.
It's also worth noting that BSODs are rare in Windows these days, I work with Windows for 8-12 hours every day and I've on seen maybe a dozen BSODs since XP SP2 came out, and 99% of issues that cause them (including driver issues) can be fixed with a system restore, which Windows was kind enough to save a restore point for before it installed that new driver or software for you. It's anecdotal, sure, and ONE of those BSODs was on the first boot of my brand new Vista laptop, but that was the only one I ever had in Vista (I was pissed too, but it was a one time issue).
Seriously, Linux has nothing on Windows as far as hardware compatibility goes, not by a long shot.
Re:Almost competing (Score:4, Interesting)
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.