This is documenting my switch from Windows XP 64-bit to Windows 7 64-bit.  While I loved xp64 dearly and used it for years, it had gotten cluttered over the years and I’d run into a number of issues and just got fed up with software and hardware not working with it.  In it’s defense, there were no other options at the time if you wanted to use 4GB of memory, and the graphics programs I was using for most of my work (Maxon’s Cinema 4D, NextLimit’s RealFlow and RandomControl’s FryRender) all supported 64-bit software and therefore the extra memory, so it was a no brainer.  And in it’s defense, it’s been a great workhorse of an operating system and there are drivers for just about everything now, even my Line6 Pod XT Live, which didn’t have 64-bit drivers for a long, long, long time.  I think a lot of hardware will have Windows 7 64-bit drivers now since Vista 64-bit has been out a while.  Vista 64 was Microsoft’s first “official” 64-bit operating system, they still maintain that xp64 wasn’t an official release, which gave manufacturers a good excuse to not make drivers for it, but the main people who were using xp64 were the power users — the guys doing graphics, music, video and other processor and memory intensive stuff like that.

First issue I encountered with the switch had nothing to do with Microsoft — it had to do with using GParted to partition my hard drive from one 160gb drive into a 45gb drive and a 115gb drive.  I used a “LiveCD” with an issue that jacked things up.  If you’re not familiar with the LiveCD concept, here’s the short version — it’s a bootable CD with an operating system on it so you can boot up to the CD and then be running an entirely different operating system like Linux or a disc of specific recovery or partitioning tools.  But this one had a buggy version of GParted in it.  Thankfully, there was good information and thankfully, I’m handy with a hex editor all the way back to my Apple II days, so after reading a lot, making a change that I *thought* was right, saying a prayer and a few reboots, it worked fine.  My XP drive was downsized and everything was still there.  This is important in case some hardware doesn’t run (I don’t expect the webcam will) and in case I cannot re-authorize some software (I know of at least one that won’t do it), I’ll still be able to boot back into Windows XP 64-bit in those instances.  If everything had gotten wiped out, even though all my data was backed up, I would’ve lost the ability to run some programs.

After that, I booted straight to the Windows 7 DVD, picked the Custom install option, carefully chose the drive I wanted out of the list, disconnected my external HD with all my backups (just for safety) and let it run.  Went and watched some TV for about 30 minutes and came back to a Windows 7 login screen.

Most everything seemed to be recognized and working nicely, except my webcam (which, again, isn’t surprising considering that it’s old, was cheap in the first place and I had a really hard time finding normal XP drivers for it recently) and… my second internal drive is gone??  Oops.  Well, it actually wasn’t gone, it just wasn’t showing up.  A quick trip into device manager to assign it the drive letter I wanted it to have and that was that and it was working just fine.  Interestingly, Windows 7 sees the partition I told it to install on as the C: drive, even though it’s technically the second logical drive.  The other drive was D:, which I renamed to O: for OLD so that my D: drive functioned just like it had in XP, and any programs that were installed there *might* work because the paths would still be the same, or at the very least, they could be re-installed into the same directory as before so they would run in both operating systems.  In theory.  I think this is a good time for my favorite quote…. “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice.  In practice, there is.”  That’s true more often than not with computers, and is turning out to REALLY be the case with Windows 7.

Next order of business, install Google Chrome.  Then Password Safe, which stores all my passwords under the convenience of one (very secure) master password.  And I’m missing mfc71.dll — apparently, I need the Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 redistributable package for 64-bits.   That didn’t work.  Tried copying and registering the dll’s with regsvr32 — that didn’t work, either, I had to re-download and reinstall the program.  Now, with most programs that’s expected, but I’ve run Password Safe off a thumbdrive for years.  Not anymore, apparently.  What a pain.

Getting Steam installed… it kept dying saying it couldn’t connect to the network.  Apparently, I needed to right click and Run as Administrator.  Again, what a pain, but apparently one I need to get used to.

Another thing I noticed — my Windows XP isn’t showing up as a bootable partition currently, though I know that’s because I need to add an entry for it into the Windows 7 boot manager.  I’ll do that soon.  Overall, a positive experience — a lot of things are just different.  Theoretically, it’s more secure.

This will be the end of part 1, I’ll add some more details on later once I’ve spent a little more time getting used to it.