They dropped the limited downloads. Now it is unlimited until (I think) Jan 24.

Thanks

thank you carguy, i had kinda thought that, but obviously it works for you, same situation, i am gonna give it a try this weekend, i dont really see a worse case scenario, if it doesnt run,then just do a format, its gonna be xtremely cold this weekend, so a good reason not to go outside at all

Ok, guys. I have a problem I have been talking to others about on this forum but getting nowhere. I want to dual boot with Vista already installed. I can't get 7 to see my F drive, which is my second internal drive and where I want 7. Could it be because the first drive , the one containing Vista, is a SATA drive, and the F drive is an IDE drive?  I was told to format F and not to make it active. No good. I was told to make C inactive, can't figure out how to do that.

Peter us this as a good config for your partitions and you should be able to change them from here also [right click]

PuterDudeJim how big is your sata drive....?

if it's a big drive and have a lot of free space on it just use vista to partition off 25-30 Gigs and put it on there.......

Also you have to install to the partition from the c drive where windows is installed and install to a partition that is a primary partition. Active means only which is loaded first up at boot - like the default OS and such...

I was wondering that, whether the most recent nVidia drivers for Vista would work in Win 7... thanks for the heads up, Aaron.

I updated using the nVidia drivers in Windows Update, but the sys tray and other elements disappeared, so I had to roll them back.  I'll try the Vista drivers and see how I go with those.

Also, whether or not it was the nVidia drivers included in Win Update or WindowBlinds, but I had issues with reapplying wallpapers after unsuccessfully trying out a WB... the screen went totally black, and when I finally got a wall of my choosing to stick it would not fill the screen until after doing a reboot.  This may have been in part the drivers and Windowblinds being incompatible at this time, but also that the WB applied the skin's wallpaper, thus changing the Windows settings for size and rotation of the slideshow feature.

I installed windows 7 and love it.  I don't see why you people hate the new tak bar, its very useful.  I have had no problems and use it for everything now.  It even makes sins run 30-50% faster!!!

Now that sounds like a personal question...lol!!  Not!  I think it is 230GB.  That may be a good idea.

Shelby GT, I think it has to do with the fact that my second internal drive is IDE, the first is SATA. Both are primary.

I did all that and 7 gives me the error that it can't create or find a partition there.

Add a partition to the sata drive and see if that makews any difference...

Jim, I had a very similar experience when installing the first Vista beta, and I think your problem lies with your F: drive being an IDE while you have a current OS on a primary SATA drive... as in the IDE does not have the appropriate drivers loaded, and thus Win 7 can not see it.  However, you can NOT disable your primary OS drive within the OS itself.  What you would need to do is open your rig and unplug the Sata drives.  Win 7 should then see the IDE drive and you will be able to install it.

This, however, would make the IDE your primary OS drive at boot when you plug the Satas back in, and (given Win 7 is still in beta) you would want to change HDD boot priorities in the Bios to make the Vista drive the primary... there's also a setting in msconfig> boot (either OS) to set the default OS.  You could also run the Vista disc and do a repair to make it first boot, though it's not overly important as setup provides the option to choose OS via the k/b up down keys.

I'm no expert, but this was my experience and your issue is much the same, so the same 'should' apply. However, somebody more knowledeable than I may have a better/simpler idea that works, so you might want to wait and see for a while.

Yup . Unlike the XP to Vista transition, they didn't change the basic driver model this time. That means less compatibility complaints .

Well, not entirely true . . . they did add some new features to the driver model to allow a unified device management center - which is intended to allow device driver makers to put all of their custom settings in one central location, rather than having their device drivers have a separate control panel. That doesn't interfere with existing drivers, however. Current drivers will work the same. It's only new Windows 7 drivers that should be using it.

Humm - I'm thinking about doing a dual boot now to have a good look at the hardware accelerated stuff. To be honest, it looks pretty crappy in a virtual machine where the fancy stuff that requires the hardware acceleration if turned off.

People that have a system that isn't capable of Aero are gonna get a pretty bad experience, from what I can tell. I've already sent a few bug reports on very obvious graphical glitches like black bars appearing when hovering over icons.

OK peeps. I got it! After shrinking my C drive and creating a new volume there, I had to run 7's install from Vista, not from boot. Booting from the disc didn't work but running the disc in Vista and telling it where to install did. So it is finally done!! I have my laptop back!!  Thanx for the help all of you.  Satas and IDEs don't mix well, it seems.