About a week ago I decided the time was right to move from my 5 year old installation of XP to Windows 7. This is on my production computer, so I wanted to be sure to have a fallback position in case something went wrong with the Win7 installation. I was both thrilled and horrified by the process, but at this point, Win7 is doing what I want it to do.

First of all, there is no 'upgrade' process from XP to Win7. It's necessary to do a clean installation. For systems like laptops and smaller desktops, that means ridding your computer of everything you hold dear, and starting anew... software, data, etc. A scary proposition any way you look at it. My PC has 3 SATA drives in it, with plenty of room for more drives, though only 1 open SATA port.

I decided to replace the boot C: drive with a brand new SATA drive, and install Win7 on the new drive. This way, if everything failed, I could simply swap the SATA cables and let the old C: drive take over as the boot drive again

This whole process was made easier by the fact that I keep nearly all my data (photos, videos, text, and other application data) on drives #2 and #3. So installing a new C: drive with Win7 meant only reinstalling the applications, then pointing to the data files that never actually moved. Again, if the entire Win7 install crapped out, I could just swap the cables and boot up in XP mode- right back where I left off.

I installed the new (small) 160GB/7200rpm drive in the computer, unplugged the SATA cable from the XP boot drive, and connected it to the Win7 boot drive. I also unplugged the other 2 drives, so that the only active drive was the new one. I popped the Win7 Ultimate 64 into the DVD drive and booted the system. The complete install process took just over an hour. And to my amazement, all my hardware attachments worked when I rebooted for the final time.

So, for the installation process on a clean install, I give Win7 high marks. My existing dual video monitor setup came up with the right resolution on each display. My USB speakers, mice (3 of them), and even my off brand web cam worked without adjustment. I added my 2 printers simply by selecting them, and drivers were installed automatically

Not content, I shut down the machine and popped in a second graphics adapter so that I could add my 3rd monitor. When I rebooted, monitor #3 was live and ready for action. I did then add the specific drivers for the adapter controls, but it was not a necessity. So far, I'm a happy guy

Not all good...

I installed Microsoft Office 2007, then Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, and Adobe Master Collection CS4. I had some video that needed editing, so I would need to get Premiere Pro CS4 up and running on Win7, or restart the system with the XP drive boot. I was able to start Premier Pro, but after a few minutes editing, it was obvious that something wasn't right.

Response was much slower than it already was, and eventually stopped altogether. I used the task manager to kill the associated processes, but the Importer process refused to die. And even the main Premier Pro process took several minutes to disappear from the list. And software shutdown didn't work at all.

In addition, shutting down Win7 simply didn't / doesn't work. The Logout process displays, but Win7 refuses to shut down or restart. This is a widely discussed topic online, with no known resolutions so far. To make this short, after researching more than I wanted to (including the Adobe site and forums), I discovered the Win7 Compatibility function.  (Start / Search for Compatibility)

The Compatibility tool lists all your installed applications, from which you pick the one you want to apply the 'compatibility settings' to. I haven't bothered to explore exactly what this tool does... at the time I ran it I was pretty frustrated with not finding answers. I simply selected Adobe Premiere Pro from the list and let the tool do it's magic. I would have selected the entire Adobe suite, but the tool only allows selection of one application at a time. In addition, it doesn't seem to offer any intelligence about which programs are/ might be in need of the fix. That's something that could be improved upon.

But the good news is that applying the fix to Premiere Pro and Media Encoder did the trick. Both apps run at least as well as they did under XP, and the fact that I'm running the 64 bit versions now, rather than the 32 bit versions under XP seems to make a difference in the overall performance

My XP boot drive is now connected as just another drive, along with the other 2 data drives, making a total of 4 drives. I haven't moved the My Documents contents to the Win7 boot drive yet, but that's a task that will come along soon. Overall the new configuration runs nicely, I have all the connected devices running properly, and my 3 (soon to be 4) monitors look and work great. I'm sure there are more issues to come, but for now, all is well.

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