Prev: 2nd linksys WAP54G wireless access point?
Next: Looking for New Monitor this Season
From: Gary Baldi on 21 Nov 2009 10:56
Finally got around to installing Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium on my
Inspiron 1750.

Booting from the Dell-branded upgrade DVD, I selected "custom install"
and chose to wipe the previous Windows partition to enable a clean
install; all this nonsense about giving existing directories an .old
extension is too messy for my tastes.

The install went smoothly enough although the wireless key bug that
was present in the Beta version of Win 7 has annoyingly made it into
the RTM version; do I win a prize for finding a Win 7 bug before I'd
even got as far as completing the installation?

(For those curious about this bug, during the install Windows finds
available wireless networks and asks if you want to connect; my
network is secured and entering the password generates a "incorrect
passkey" message, exactly as it did in the Beta version. I even
dropped my router password down to the letter a and the error message
was still present! Annoyingly enough, once at the desktop, an orange
star in the system tray indicates that wireless networks are available
and re-entering the exact same password that failed 45 seconds earlier
now allowed me to connect).

I was somewhat surprised that activation went smoothly; there are a
couple of websites detailing that activation will fail if you attempt
a clean install of an upgrade DVD and giving instructions on how to
edit the registry and then execute commands from the c:\ prompt. In
my case, I activated and expected to be told to go away but everything
went flawlessly.

Windows Update instantly wanted to download 9 important updates, plus
1 optional update (a driver for the ethernet card) and upon checking
device manager, I was impressed to see Win 7 has managed to find all
hardware in my machine (no annoying yellow exclamation marks).

Lots still to do here but first impressions are good.
 | 
Pages: 1
Prev: 2nd linksys WAP54G wireless access point?
Next: Looking for New Monitor this Season