Installing Windows 7

Besides requiring lesser human intervention to install, Windows 7 also gives the option to install from a USB drive, which can be useful for machines that don't have a DVD drive

Tuesday, October 06, 2009

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Installing Windows was never a rocket science and Windows 7 furthers this notion. Its installer is very simple and has been modified quite a bit. Now you have new installation options as well---add native USB installation to the existing list. In this article we check some of these enhancements.

Installation time
The installation time and number of clicks are significantly reduced in Windows 7. In our tests we were able to install Windows 7 from a DVD drive in less than 15 minutes on a high end machine. A similar installation on an old P-4 took around 25 minutes. The other thing you will notice while installing is that there are lesser number of screens which reduces the number of clicks required. You will also notice that only one reboot is required during installation.

The other new feature you will find is related to creating or joining a new home group. If you were connected to a network while installing Windows 7, the installation will detect the connection and ask you to select the connection zone such as Home, Work or Public. This is similar to Windows Vista but if you select the Home zone then it will either connect you to a homegroup or will create a new home group. And if you are creating a new home group it will create a password for you and will also ask you which libraries you want to share over this network. Sharing your media library over the home network will let you access your media files across other Microsoft devices such as other Windows machines, Xbox 360, etc in the same home group. You can at any point of time add or remove a machine from a home group by just going to the Network and Sharing center.

After Windows 7 has been installed, the security wizard asks you to select the security settings you would like to configure.	If you select the network zone as 'Home', then the installation automatically starts a wizard to let you configure your home network for sharing multimedia content.

Installing from a USB drive
You can install Windows 7 directly from a pen drive and the process of creating this installation USB drive is also very simple. It's still not graphical and you need to run some commands but it's not that difficult either. The benefit you get with native support for USB installation is that you can easily install Windows 7 on ultra portable machines and netbooks which don't have optical drives and at the same time, the speed you get while installing from a USB drive is much faster than installing it from an optical drive.

It also notifies about devices that would require driver updation, post upgradation.

To make a Windows 7 installation USB drive you will need an empty pen drive with 4GB (or higher) flash drive. Plug this drive into a Vista or Win 7 machine. Now open the command prompt with admin rights by right clicking on the cmd icon and selecting “Run as Administrator”. Type in Diskpart and hit Enter. Then type 'list disk.' This will show you the number of disks connected to your machine. See which is the one with 4GB space. Now run the following commands assuming that the disk name is disk 1, else replace disk 1 with the correct number for your disk.

Diskpart>Select disk 1
Diskpart>Clean
Diskpart>Create Partition primary
Diskpart>Select partition 1
Diskpart>Active
Diskpart>Format fs=ntfs
Diskpart>Assign
Diskpart>Exit
Now, all you need to do is copy all the content from your windows 7 DVD to this pen drive and you are all set to start the installation from the pen drive.

Using the upgrade Advisor
If you've made up your mind to upgrade to or install Window 7, then you would need to ensure that you have the right wares in place, ie your system should be ready to take the load that Windows 7 shall put on the existing hardware. The Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor tool from Microsoft, does a detailed check on your system and gives you a consolidated report on whether your system is capable of handling the new OS. It also tells if there are any compatibility issues that can be resolved or whether an upgrade of drivers if not some hardware component is required. While running this tool do make sure that all accessories you use on regular basis, such as printers, scanners, external HDDs, etc are attached to the computer, You can download it from the following website. http://tinyurl.com/ mnmj8u. Once installed, the software starts testing almost immediately. all you need to do is to follow the wizard and you will get a nice report.

Next - Tips and tricks for using Windows 7

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