Windows 7 Has Very Long Installation Time (3-4 Hrs.) Want to update to Windows 7? Be warned-youll need 3-4 hours of ti

[Dak1ng 0]

If you're planning to upgrade to Windows 7, a word of caution. It can take as long as three or four hours, depending on what OS you're upgrading from. So before you attempt the upgrade, check whether you and your computer are ready for it.

 

First off, if you're running XP, prepare to scrap your computer. Most XP computers won't have the power to run Windows 7. Plus, you've got an unbelievably long process ahead, and you'll have to erase everything on your drive. On the plus side, if you have Vista, your life just got easier, but there are still some hiccups along the way.

 

On October 22, Windows 7 was released with different versions (Home, Pro, etc.) that come in two types: 32-bit and 64-bit. 64-bit can be faster, but you'll need some major hardware. Below are the requirements for Win 7.

Windows 7 32-bit Requirements:

 

1GB of RAM

1 GhZ processor of better

16GB of hard rive space

Windows 7 64-bit Requirements:

 

2GB RAM

64-bit microprocessor

20GB of hard drive space

Many XP computers won't be able to handle Windows 7, as XP is much less demanding:

 

233 Mhz processor

64MB memory

1.5GB hard drive space

Microsoft has a program on it's site called the "Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor" that will check if your PC is capable of running the OS. If you pass the test to see if your PC is good for the upgrade, plan to get at least four hours for the job.

 

Upgrading from Vista can be easy, if you already have all the updates including SP! and SP2 service pack updates. If you do, then the process is a simple upgrade, which can take 45 minutes to an hour. If you don't have an updated version, then you'll need to get the service pack updates from Microsoft's website, which can take 30 minutes to an hour each.

 

If you're planning to upgrade from XP, then you're going to need quite a bit of time (3-4 hours.). Users are required to do a clean install. So before you star, back up all your data (or not).

 

Some experts advise doing a clean install even if you're running vista. Even though it's time consuming it can help speed up your computer by making sure that it's running only the programs that you currently need.

[rayzoredge 2]

I think that this is very subjective to your hardware, considering that my install of Windows 7 x64 Ultimate took less than half an hour, if I remember correctly, on an Intel dual core 2.13GHz processor and 4GB DDR2 SDRAM.Upgrading was never really the way to go... just for people that wanted to keep everything without having to back up and install everything all over again. From the sounds of this, it doesn't save you any time to do it this way, but again, it's all subjective to the hardware that you're working with.Always wipe the hard drive clean and start anew when you can. Yes, it might be a pain to back everything up and to install all of your software again, but it's always best to do it that way to start off of and work off of a clean slate.Also, I wouldn't put off XP machines as being inadequate for Windows 7. I've successfully run Windows 7 pretty well on a piece-of-crap work laptop spec'd with an Intel Pentium 4 1.3GHz and 1GB of RAM, and Windows 7 is supposed to work well with Netbooks, which boast similar, "low-end" specifications.

[The Simpleton 2]

I beg to differ with this thread too. I have an even slower computer with just 512MB of RAM and I upgraded to Windows 7 (RC) from XP. Of course, upgrade meant formatting the XP drive and installing afresh, but the process hardly took more than an hour to complete. Installation was one of the matters Microsoft took care of, to reduce the time it takes to install. So I guess in your case you were just a bit unlucky?

[Dak1ng 0]

Ok, i guess i just am unlucky. It only took my 2 hours to install Windows 7. It took my friend 2 days to install it because he had to back up and install. He just backed up his drive the first day and installed on the second

[shadowx 0]

First off, if you're running XP, prepare to scrap your computer. Most XP computers won't have the power to run Windows 7

Untrue, any machine you bought within the last 3-5 years (new) should run Win7 fine, thats virtually all XP machines still in use today.

Also the upgrade time for me from Vista was probably less than 2hrs, and i sat downstairs so a few of the prompts went un-answered for some time before i went upstairs and noticed.

All in all i like it a lot. And i usually hate MS... Though i have to admit XP and Win7 are very good operating systems. I have yet to use Win7 to its full capabilities but it runs games nice and smoothly, starts up reasonably and seems to be a lot more stable

[Tramposch 1]

it took me less then 30 minutes to install it on two of my desktops!One quad core and one dual core.

[shadowx 0]

I dont actually know the time it took for mine, it wasnt very long at all considering the licensing screen had been waiting for me to check in on it and continue. It idles at less than 1gb RAM with most of the features running (i turn off things like indexing to get top performance out of games) while Vista was idle at about 1.25+GBI can also multitask on it, something Vista had issues with, if i tried opening a folder and a browser at the same time it would take ages for both to open and run smoothly, Win7 handles it much better. It's a good compromise of the relative speed and stability of XP and the features of Vista, and i really like the "action center" collating all the notifications in one area rather than be bombarded with 10 notifications saying my AV was off when the PC had only just powered on -.-

[jlhaslip 4]

Four hours??? It took less than that to install Ubuntu, including the time to download the iso file.Actually, the torrent download for Ubuntu 9.10 was fairly quick. 690 megs took under an hour with the actual install about the same. Full Install, not an update. The balance of the time was to do an update and add a bunch of applications, drivers, testing and checking stuff, so 4 hours is a terribly long time.Maybe I should set up a virtual machine and see how that goes with a Win7 install.

[mahesh2k 0]

3-4 hours is too much time. Even WinME, Vista don't take that much time. And in my opinion it's always better to fresh install than upgrading. There remains many remain-ants of old OS when upgrade is done. I'm not aware how win7 behaves after upgrade. I'm planning for fresh install instead of upgrade.

[Dak1ng 0]

Well, even if it doesn't take too long, it still takes quite a while...

[The Simpleton 2]

I don't know about the final version, but the RC version has slowed down considerably after using for two months - I've removed almost all the programs which might make it bloated but even after doing so the speed refuses to increase

[jlhaslip 4]

An install of XP on a Linux Virtual mschine took 32 minutes to complete.I'll install Win 7 when I get a chance and report back with the full install time and use this posting as a reference.

[Dak1ng 0]

What's a Linux virtual machine?

[truefusion 3]

What's a Linux virtual machine?

A virtual machine is a program that tries to emulate a computer. You can use virtual machines to test out other operating systems. Installing operating systems through this method tends to reduce the amount of time it takes to install an operating system, as you are not necessarily installing the operating system through a CD, as virtual machines tend to allow you to mount an ISO file as a CD to the virtual machine, therefore you would be installing the operating system from your hard drive which is faster than a CD drive. Virtual machines do not need another partition to work, as they create their own virtual partition on your hard drive (a specific file they read and write to). This spares you the inconvenience of partitioning any of your hard drives and from buying any new hard drives.
Popular VMs are VirtualBox and VMWare, though there are others. I use VirtualBox and mostly for testing out any customized Linux distribution i tried to make.

[The Simpleton 2]

I tried using Virtualbox sometime ago but since I have very little RAM (512MB) all it could emulate was XP and that too at a slow speed. But I agree it's a great way to test out new OSes