I would like to upgrade both my Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop and my Dell Dimension E-510 desktop to Windows 7. I was not unhappy with XP, and skipped Vista all together, but I'd like to stay current. I'm eligible for a student copy, but missed out on the really reduced price by not ordering before 12/31/09. I needed a few hardware upgrades - added memory to the laptop over the summer, and also added memory to the desktop and replaced the DVD-RW on the desktop after the holidays. Like a typical home user, I hadn't backed up since my last upgrade and it was time I learned how to do back-ups. I got an external enclosure to convert an unused 80 gig internal hard drive to an external USB drive for back-ups and storage. The XP back-up utility does a pretty good job for backing up documents and settings, and I found a decent disk imaging program called Macrium Reflect - free for personal use. Once I had a handle on the back-up thing, I installed W-7 on the laptop - because it had the least amount of things to restore should everything fail. W-7 Upgrade advisor indicated that the system required a custom install, but was compatible. There were 3 yellow flags and one red flag indicated for programs, but none of them appeared to be important, so I proceeded with the install. After the install, everything appeared to be OK, except for sound, which was NOT one of the yellow flags. I went to the Dell website for a driver, and Dell indicated that the Inspiron 9100 was NOT compatible with Windows 7 and no updated sound driver was available. At this point, I chose to restore XP using the Macrium Reflect restore (which was flawless - great little program). I spoke to my son and he said that I could use the XP driver for sound. So I attempt the installation again. This time, my CD product key is invalid, so I can't complete the installation. I'm re-installing on the same computer, so I have no idea why my product key is now invalid. The support website that came with the CD says to call Microsoft. I call Microsoft, and a very nice tech informs me that since it is a student copy, I have to contact the educational distributor for a new CD key. Of course, this is a holiday weekend, so I will not be able to get any live help until Tuesday.
My HP desktop has a slot for a b/u drive which of course is mfg by HP but it works well. This computer came with Vista but I was considering moving to Win 7 even tho the Vista works fine. I've heard nothing but praise for the new Win 7 so I thought it was worth a shot.
ReplyDeleteGenerally speaking I don't like to up grade hardware in my computers because I've run into so many incompatiblity problems in the past. I "let sleeping dogs lie" so to speak. (c;
Thanks to Jeff (CompGuy), I got Windows 7 installed on the laptop. The CD key thing is a bug that happens when you format the partition. With prior upgrades, if the installation process couldn't find a previous version of Windows (like when you formatted the hard drive), it would prompt you and you could put the old CD in the drive for verification that you had a qualifying version. The fix was to bypass the key and activate later.
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