Abort, Retry, Fail?

NTDEV
1

I fetched the Win 7 RC over the weekend, intended to overwrite my beta
this morning. I noticed that the MSDN description said “if you are
running a beta, we recommend you do a fresh install”, which is pretty
much standard language.

When I went to do the installation today, it did offer me the choice of
“Upgrade” or “Custom (advanced)”. Being adventuresome, I decided to try
for “Upgrade”, which was the default choice. It then told me that
“sorry, but you can’t do an upgrade to this RC” and aborted the
installation.

Now, I understand what’s going on here, but it just struck me as funny
that it presented a default option that was not actually available, and
the only option really available to me was the “(advanced)” option…

I do have to say that, overall, my Win 7 experience has been
significantly better than my Vista experience. My primary test box is a
multiboot machine with 4 different OS partitions, and I find that I’m
CHOOSING to boot Win 7. That never happened with Vista – I only booted
Vista if I absolutely had to.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

2

The UI is geared towards the 99.99% scenario of someone upgrading from a supported OS. The version checks to block upgrade from beta -> RC are done as part of the overall compatibility testing which runs when you choose to upgrade.

I hit the same thing on one of my machines at home last night.

See http://windows7news.com/2009/04/09/windows-7-beta-to-rc-upgrade-instructions/ if you really want to do the upgrade.

-p

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Tim Roberts
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:05 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Abort, Retry, Fail?

I fetched the Win 7 RC over the weekend, intended to overwrite my beta
this morning. I noticed that the MSDN description said “if you are
running a beta, we recommend you do a fresh install”, which is pretty
much standard language.

When I went to do the installation today, it did offer me the choice of
“Upgrade” or “Custom (advanced)”. Being adventuresome, I decided to try
for “Upgrade”, which was the default choice. It then told me that
“sorry, but you can’t do an upgrade to this RC” and aborted the
installation.

Now, I understand what’s going on here, but it just struck me as funny
that it presented a default option that was not actually available, and
the only option really available to me was the “(advanced)” option…

I do have to say that, overall, my Win 7 experience has been
significantly better than my Vista experience. My primary test box is a
multiboot machine with 4 different OS partitions, and I find that I’m
CHOOSING to boot Win 7. That never happened with Vista – I only booted
Vista if I absolutely had to.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

3

Remember that this is not an experience that a normal customer would encounter (upgrading from an interim build to the RC). As such, it is a lower priority issue for the setup team to handle. Yes, ideally the upgrade button shouldn’t have been presented, but it did gracefully fail before it actually started to do anything.

d

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com [mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Tim Roberts
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:05 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: [ntdev] Abort, Retry, Fail?

I fetched the Win 7 RC over the weekend, intended to overwrite my beta
this morning. I noticed that the MSDN description said “if you are
running a beta, we recommend you do a fresh install”, which is pretty
much standard language.

When I went to do the installation today, it did offer me the choice of
“Upgrade” or “Custom (advanced)”. Being adventuresome, I decided to try
for “Upgrade”, which was the default choice. It then told me that
“sorry, but you can’t do an upgrade to this RC” and aborted the
installation.

Now, I understand what’s going on here, but it just struck me as funny
that it presented a default option that was not actually available, and
the only option really available to me was the “(advanced)” option…

I do have to say that, overall, my Win 7 experience has been
significantly better than my Vista experience. My primary test box is a
multiboot machine with 4 different OS partitions, and I find that I’m
CHOOSING to boot Win 7. That never happened with Vista – I only booted
Vista if I absolutely had to.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

4

Peter Wieland wrote:

The UI is geared towards the 99.99% scenario of someone upgrading from a supported OS. The version checks to block upgrade from beta -> RC are done as part of the overall compatibility testing which runs when you choose to upgrade.

Absolutely. I didn’t really intend to complain, and I understand the
situation. It just struck my funny bone.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

5

I’m sad to say that my experiences with Win7 have matched Tim’s exactly. It’s good looking, modern, relatively fast, and rather stable. Even on my older generation laptop.

Sigh… I’m going to miss bashing and carping about Vista.

Peter
OSR

6

Peter Viscarola wrote:

I’m sad to say that my experiences with Win7 have matched Tim’s
exactly. It’s good looking, modern, relatively fast, and rather stable.
Even on my older generation laptop.

Haven’t grabbed it yet … is the hard disk always accessing even though you’re not doing anything?

7

> -----Original Message-----

From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of
xxxxx@gmail.com
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:52 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: RE:[ntdev] Abort, Retry, Fail?

Haven’t grabbed it yet … is the hard disk always accessing
even though you’re not doing anything?

No. It is one of many small advantages over Vista. My experience is the
same as Tim’s and Peter’s and I will probably install it as main OS
after RTM. Something which would be the worst nightmare considering
Vista…

Best regards,

Michal Vodicka
UPEK, Inc.
[xxxxx@upek.com, http://www.upek.com]

8

Michal Vodicka wrote:

No. It is one of many small advantages over Vista. My experience is the
same as Tim’s and Peter’s and I will probably install it as main OS
after RTM. Something which would be the worst nightmare considering
Vista…

Wow – a three-curmudgeon recommendation. That might be worth more than
a 4-star Michelin rating.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

9

> [quote]

I do have to say that, overall, my Win 7 experience has been significantly better than my Vista
experience.
[/quote]

I’m sad to say that my experiences with Win7 have matched Tim’s exactly.

+1

–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Windows DDK MVP
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

10

I’ve been using Vista for well over a year, I’m still waiting on people to
tell me what the “REAL”
problem is… UAC?? - disabled, easy thing to do…

Regarding all of my incompatible devices, most of which were USB, well,
manually installing the drivers
worked just fine. My only issues were with .exe’s. Those I
decompiled and grabbed the
.sys and .inf files from.

Other than UAC and hardware compatibility, what has changed between Windows
7 and Vista. They have basically the same
damn architecture, the ONLY difference from what I can tell is people NOW
have newer hardware. Those that
have upgraded after Vista are now pro-claiming “no problems”, “works
better”… That is just silly…

If Windows 7 was released two years ago, it would have the EXACT same
reputation as Vista. I find it a little
disturbing that some of the best developers in the world would share the
same unfounded opinions as some
‘journalist’ from PC MAG that has little too no experience in anything other
than writing dramatic literature.

I’m tired of the Vista bashing. While using it, I’ve yet to have a single
Virus, worm, Trojan, or any other form
of malware infect THIS system. Then again, perhaps that is because I don’t
use IE… ?

My point, if Win 7 works fine - Vista did ALSO!

-----Original Message-----
From: xxxxx@lists.osr.com
[mailto:xxxxx@lists.osr.com] On Behalf Of Maxim S. Shatskih
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 2:55 AM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Subject: Re:[ntdev] Abort, Retry, Fail?

>


>
> I’m sad to say that my experiences with Win7 have matched Tim’s exactly.

+1

–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Windows DDK MVP
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

—
NTDEV is sponsored by OSR

For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
http://www.osr.com/seminars

To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer

11

As compared to what… Solaris?

Both Win7 and Vista, basically, have “the same damn architecture” as Windows 2000. Does that mean that Win7 is a fast as Windows 2000?

This is just a pointless statement.

Nonsense. Do your homework before spouting off, please.

All below from external (non-confidential) sources:

The Windows OS, while changing in the usual evolutionary fashion, was significantly reorganized for Win7. The dispatcher spin lock, which has been the “hot lock” since the invention of Windows NT, was “dismantled” thanks to Arun Kishan’s work. This is what allows Win7 to support as many 256 processors, and increases dispatcher efficiency.

In fact, there’s been a LOT of lock refactoring… both in kernel mode and in user mode.

The graphics subsystem, and especially the desktop window manager, was SIGNIFICANTLY changed between Vista and Win7 to reduce memory consumption. Win7 does away with Vista’s nasty practice of allocating memory and doing a memory copy for each Window opened on a desktop. This results in significnatly less memory usage.

The number of services that are started by default is smaller in Win7 than in Vista. The boot-time is shorter, as well. This is the result of the work of an entire team dedicated to just boot-time performance.

The Beta of Win7 benchmarks faster than Vista SP1 (one source: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/how_fast_is_windows_7_faster_than_you_think)

So, PLEASE. Before you assert that Vista and Win7 are the same OS, at LEAST Google around a bit. There’s a reason that so many experienced engineers have testing Vista and found it sadly lacking, and are now trying Win7 and finding that it does not suck.

Peter
OSR

12

> have newer hardware. Those that

have upgraded after Vista are now pro-claiming “no problems”, “works
better”… That is just silly…

Win7 is really perceived to be faster on the same new hardware as Vista.

But Vista is OK. For me, the drawbacks of Vista are a) spoiled counter-intuitive control panel b) spoiled “find file by name” feature c) some similar ones.

The memory consumption raised from ~150M by XP to ~500M by Vista, to major perceived value.

–
Maxim S. Shatskih
Windows DDK MVP
xxxxx@storagecraft.com
http://www.storagecraft.com

13

xxxxx@osr.com wrote:

The Beta of Win7 benchmarks faster than Vista SP1 (one source: http://www.maximumpc.com/article/news/how_fast_is_windows_7_faster_than_you_think)

Then, a question: is Win7 positioned to completely replace Vista?
Will there be any reasons to keep Vista - except for those folks that
just never upgrade?

That’s, can I build one driver package for Vista SP1+ and Win7 using
Win7 environment, and adapt to Vista in runtime?

Thanks,
– pa

14

Hi, Will Vista users get a free upgrade to Win7 now? With all those fixes it
would be sensible path for MS to follow as a contribution to users suffering
from the global economic woes. Also it would save MS a fortune if they don’t
have to maintain Vista, with all its issues, and it would thank the world
full of beta testers whose Vista experiences led to a better solution. M

15

I don’t really understand the question. In general, version x+1 of Windows is intended to “completely replace” version x, except for machines that can’t run version x+1 and CAN run version x. This restriction might be due to having older peripherals (no longer supported in x+1) or different base hardware requirements.

Yes, but this applies equally to Windows operating systems since (and including) Windows 2000. You can quite easily write a driver that runs on Win2K and have that same binary “adapt to Vista” dynamically during execution. This is the purpose of IoIsWdmVersionAvailable and MmGetSystemRoutineAddress (I THINK those are the currently approved functions to use).

Peter
OSR

16

You should warn people before writing stuff like “free upgrade” and
“MS”. My keyboard has once again been showered in coffee.

Mark Roddy

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Mike Kemp wrote:
> Hi, Will Vista users get a free upgrade to Win7 now? With all those fixes it
> would be sensible path for MS to follow as a contribution to users suffering
> from the global economic woes. Also it would save MS a fortune if they don’t
> have to maintain Vista, with all its issues, and it would thank the world
> full of beta testers whose Vista experiences led to a better solution. M
>
> —
> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>
> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>
> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>

17

xxxxx@osr.com wrote:

I don’t really understand the question. In general, version x+1 of Windows is intended to “completely replace” version x, except for machines that can’t run version x+1 and CAN run version x. This restriction might be due to having older peripherals (no longer supported in x+1) or different base hardware requirements.

Well, MS wanted Vista, and now Win7, to completely replace WinXP, but
this probably won’t happen as soon as they wish.
So, for example, our company does not plan to phase out
supporting WinXP - but would like to skip Vista.

Yes, but this applies equally to Windows operating systems since (and including) Windows 2000. You can quite easily write a driver that runs on Win2K and have that same binary “adapt to Vista” dynamically during execution. This is the purpose of IoIsWdmVersionAvailable and MmGetSystemRoutineAddress (I THINK those are the currently approved functions to use).

More precisely - are drivers built for Win7 environment loadable on
Vista (of course if they don’t directly link to newer DDIs and so on)?
Does Vista accept binaries signed for Win7?

Regards,
–pa

18


More precisely - are drivers built for Win7 environment loadable on
Vista (of course if they don’t directly link to newer DDIs and so on)?
Does Vista accept binaries signed for Win7?

Presumably when the signature is obtained the platforms requested should
include all platforms that the driver is intended to run on (and have passed
the WHQL criteria).

-dave

19

Pavel A. wrote:

More precisely - are drivers built for Win7 environment loadable on
Vista (of course if they don’t directly link to newer DDIs and so on)?

This has ALWAYS been the case for versions N and M where N >= M.

–
Tim Roberts, xxxxx@probo.com
Providenza & Boekelheide, Inc.

20

We want video. :slight_smile:

On 5/5/2009 4:43 PM, Mark Roddy wrote:

You should warn people before writing stuff like “free upgrade” and
“MS”. My keyboard has once again been showered in coffee.

Mark Roddy

On Tue, May 5, 2009 at 10:33 AM, Mike Kemp wrote:
>> Hi, Will Vista users get a free upgrade to Win7 now? With all those fixes it
>> would be sensible path for MS to follow as a contribution to users suffering
>> from the global economic woes. Also it would save MS a fortune if they don’t
>> have to maintain Vista, with all its issues, and it would thank the world
>> full of beta testers whose Vista experiences led to a better solution. M
>>
>> —
>> NTDEV is sponsored by OSR
>>
>> For our schedule of WDF, WDM, debugging and other seminars visit:
>> http://www.osr.com/seminars
>>
>> To unsubscribe, visit the List Server section of OSR Online at
>> http://www.osronline.com/page.cfm?name=ListServer
>>
>