What made this complicated is that I was not completely sure that Windows 7 would run on this somewhat antiquated HP Pavilion DX5126 laptop, so I needed to install it on a second disk drive. What's the easier way to do that? Repartition the existing hard disk (which had 300 GB free at least) into two drives, and install Windows 7 on the second drive.
Theoretically, Windows has a way to do that with Windows XP. But even after adding the needed program to the Windows Firewall exception list, and running Disk Management as admin, the "Shrink Partition" menu choice was not appearing. Hmmm.
So I hunted around. Partition Magic is supposed to do this. I was having trouble finding a copy that I was sure was a legitimate version, and not a version that would turn my PC into a hacker battle station. I ended up downloading EaseUS Partition Master Free Edition from cnet.com. It claimed that it could repartition my XP hard disk without damaging anything, and I must confess, this was the most worrisome part of the operation. But it worked -- I now have a 100 GB Windows 7 partition, which should be sufficient to verify that everything works. After rebooting, Windows XP was still there and running.
I am now installing Windows 7 Professional to the 100 GB partition. So far, everything looks good.
UPDATE: I am now blogging from Windows 7 Professional. I will install a few other programs before getting over confident about this.
UPDATE 2: Disappointingly, the one program that stopped working on Windows XP -- Corel VideoStudio X6 -- still won't work under Windows 7. I'll make another attempt at getting some support from them, but their technical support is essentially useless, except for the 90 days after you buy the product -- at which point it usually stops working. You almost get the impression that they really want you to buy the latest version.
Windows 7 does seem a good bit faster than XP, but that may be because my version of XP is so jacked up at the moment.
UPDATE 3: Now Corel VideoStudio X6 is working. I don't know what changed.
UPDATE 4: How to mix Windows XP and Windows 7 PCs together on a single home network. You need to download one program on the XP boxes, and then do a reboot. (They don't tell you that you have to do a reboot, but apparently, you do.)
That was the major difficulty during the construction of the Gates mansion: installing windows.
ReplyDeleteCheers
Have you ever considered Ubuntu?
ReplyDeleteI actually have Ubuntu 12.04 on a dual boot PC. But i am becoming increasingly enamored of CentOS 6.4, which I use at work under VirtualBox.
ReplyDeleteIn any case, I need Windows 7 so that I can run Office for compatibility with faculty and students at school. I will almost certainly install CentOS 6.4 as a virtual machine under Windows 7.