More Win 7 Halloween Fun
CNN has a link to a blog at Fortune: Windows 7 student upgrade hell. It turns out that the student Vista to 7 upgrade for $29 doesn’t actually work, as it wasn’t packaged properly.
The site has some instructions that can get it to sort of work, possibly, if you’re lucky.
Dave Johnson of Seeing the Forest was so frustrated that he wrote a geek post: Windows 7 Nightmare.
But the real problem for Dave is that he sought to simplify his life by using all Microsoft software, hoping to avoid conflicts. Of course, Microsoft doesn’t really bother to check its own software for compatibility.
One of Dave’s problems is dealt with at Softpedia: Windows 7 Incompatible with Windows Live OneCare
Microsoft is advising users to completely uninstall Windows Live OneCare prior to upgrading to Windows 7. No word yet from the company whether it plans to introduce Windows 7 support, but such a scenario is highly unlikely, seeing as OneCare is a case of a “dead antivirus walking.” Back in November 2008, Microsoft announced that it was discontinuing OneCare as of mid-2009, and that it would introduce a free security offering, codenamed Morro in its place. The software giant revealed at the time that codename Morro would be tailored to Windows 7.
“Backups created with OneCare cannot be used with Windows 7. If you currently have data that only exists in a backup created using Windows Live OneCare, you should restore that data using Windows Live OneCare and then backup or copy that data to another location using Windows Backup or another backup utility,” the Redmond company added.
Apparently those notified of the passing of OneCare didn’t include the people who were actually paying for it. Dave indicates he is on an annual subscription for the software and has time left, which means they accepted payment, knowing they were going to kill the software in the middle of the subscription.
If you weren’t aware of this problem and started the upgrade, you would have to get back to Vista to restore the backed up data. The chances of actually having the resources to do this are minimal to non-existent, given the way Microsoft distributes software.
This is why you should only get Windows on a new computer and never upgrade your old machine until we have universal health care that includes mental health benefits.
4 comments
But the real problem for Dave is that he sought to simplify his life by using all Microsoft software, hoping to avoid conflicts.
Oh Geez, Bryan!! I’d just taken a gulp of coffee, and almost killed myself trying not to spray it all over my wonderful 21″ trinitron!!! Don’t, *DO* that!! Now I have to go clean myself (and my KB) up!
Biggest. laugh. of. the. DAY!!! PMSL
It is always amazing how many people naively believe in the propaganda put out by large companies. The number of conflicts I have had with clients over broken hardware and software that include the comment from the client along the lines of “but they’re a large, established company” would be touching in its innocence.
Some just seem to believe that a large company won’t throw you under the bus if it suits their purpose.
I’m probably going to install Windows 7 under Boot Camp at some point in time to run some software that only runs under Windows, but I’m dreading the experience. At least I have the luxury of waiting until there are actually Boot Camp drivers out for it, I pity those who are forced to run it ASAP for software development / compatibility reasons…
.-= last blog ..And I’m BAAAACK… =-.
When I was involved in major development work, I always used a spare box to test anything from Microsoft, it was just too dangerous, and most of that was Dos, which is relatively easy to recover from, as backing up and restoring was so simple, time consuming but simple. Dave Johnson’s 28 hour install is pretty scary. I haven’t had waits like that since my days working on Novell, and “big iron” before that.
I haven’t had the heart to call the guy who administers the MS network for a local college to see if they are upgrading. I assume that if they upgrade, it will be when the college is on break.