Windows 7 Install Log

I've given in. I'm going to give Windows 7 another try. We get the RTM free through the MSDNAA. The last time I tried, I was using the RC and couldn't install a HP Laserjet 4100, the most standard laser printer in the world. So I gave up, but now I'm back.

Here's what happened so far:
Backup: I wanted to install Win 7 at the beginning of a my RAID 0 array for maximum speed. I took all the data on my storage drive, and distributed it across my XP array and an old IDE drive that I keep around for times of need such as this. Total time to backup ~120 GB: a couple of hours.

Next, I needed to repartition my storage array. I found a pretty nice, free tool (EASEUS) which allowed me to place a 100 GB partition at the beginning of my storage array. I made another partition out of the other 260GB in that array to use as storage. After deleting partitions, reformatting, and moving all of my storage data back to my new storage partition, I was ready to install Windows 7 several hours later.

We get images from Microsoft over the local LAN. Download time for the 4 GB image of 7 was only a few minutes. Then I realized I didn't have a DVD to burn it on to. I scalped a DVD from a kid down the hall. Burning the image with ImgBurn took a while. I took a few days off at this point.

This morning, I woke up, placed the DVD in the drive, and restarted. I had to change my boot order to boot from the CD first. The installer opens up and begins extracting. I wait. A little less than an hour later, it claims that it needs to restart. When XP restarts during install, you are ready to boot off of the hard drive. Apparently, you must boot off of the DVD again with 7. It finished installing and then restarted again. This time I was sure it would use the hard drive. But alas, NTLDR was missing. I tried to boot from the DVD again; it loaded NTLDR from the DVD and proceeded to boot me to 7. (As of this writing, I still have to use NTLDR from the DVD, I can't boot directly from the hard drive).

First thing I did when I got into 7: open up IE 8. After blowing through some initial setup, I promptly went to getfirefox.com and downloaded the real web browser. Next I got some essentials: Notepad++, Daemon Tools Lite, FoxIt PDF reader, Pidgin, Java, Flash Player, and Eclipse. For some reason, flash player doesn't seem to be taking well. I also had to get some sound drivers since 7 didn't install a default one.

Here goes my restart after install the drivers, see you on the other side!