Windows 7: My First Install (Episode C of 3)

“So Kevin.. in part 2 the upgrade to Windows 7 was complete.  Did everything just work for you after you upgraded?

Almost.  Remember in part 1 I mentioned that I was upgrading a Vista machine that was only really being used as a host for a virtual machine running under Virtual PC?  Well.. Virtual PC didn’t like the upgrade all that much.

  

The virtual machine ran just fine.  Except that it didn’t have any connection to my network.  (Usually a domain controller is only useful if it can be seen.)

The good news, though, was that once I reinstalled Virtual PC, everything worked just great.  The Remde.home domain is back in business.  There is only one other “gotcha” that I’ve noticed so far.  More about that in a minute.

 

“What about devices?  Were they all working just fine?”

That’s the best news.  Check it out.  Everything works as it did before.

“How’s performance?”

By default it hadn’t done a rating, even though the AERO UI came up beautifully right away.  I ran the assessment…

And here is the result.

Like many other reviewers, I’m finding that things are plenty snappy.  But I haven’t really put it through major paces yet to say more than that.

”Antivirus?  Did you have any installed?”

Nope.  I didn’t.  Still don’t.  And I got the appropriate warning for it.  Interestingly, it also said it wanted to do an overdue Windows Defender antispyware scan.  I ran it, and of course it came up clean.  I have read that there are some vendors out there who already have Windows 7-ready products. 

“Okay.. what other problems do you have?”

Well, another thing I was running on that system was the RSAT (Remote Server Admin Tools) for the sake of doing administration of the domain, and particularly for Group Policy administration for my Vista settings.  Those tools are installable on Windows Vista SP1 installations. 

“But.. you’re not running Vista SP1 anymore.”

Bingo.  Look at the Windows Components available to me now.  And note the lack of any Remote Server Admin Tools.

And I did try to install them again anyway, but…

So, the moral of that story is: Do NOT upgrade to the Windows 7 Beta any machine that you’re using for remote administration of domains or hyper-v.  Those tools won’t be there, and to my knowledge they’re not available yet.  (It’s beta, remember?)

UPDATE: A beta version of the RSAT for Windows 7 is now available.  You can get them here.  I tried ‘em, and other than one minor glitch I saw while rendering one Group Policy Object “settings” tab, they work great. 

A couple more good items: I was happy to see that it includes IE8 beta; a newer “8.0.7000.0” beta build.  And it also installed an RC of PowerShell V2.  Nice!

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Well.. that’s all I’m going to say about my install experience.  Hopefully many of you will also be giving it a try very soon. 

What do you think?  Do you like the new UI tweaks?  Is it running well for you, too?