Windows Vista x64 to Windows 7 Beta

With the new Windows 7 beta out from Microsoft, I decided to try to upgrade an existing Windows Vista x64 which has been very stable and not had a problem, has a fair few applications installed and lots of documents.  I wasn’t putting up much hope, but backed up all the Documents and proceeded to upgrade the Vista installation as opposed to a new installation.

The installation started properly with no issues from within Windows Vista, then the PC required a restart, so restarted and the installation continued.

A message then came up during installation that “a required driver could not be found”.  This could be a problem, once the error had been closed, the window on screen said that all changes made would be reverted to how they were.  So my thoughts here were that it would restart back to Windows Vista like it was before with a heap of temporary installation files on the C drive.

On restarting, Windows failed to boot.  The error message was a simple “BOOTMGR cannot be found” (something like that can’t remember it off by heart).

So I took the 7 DVD out and put the Vista DVD in to do a repair, although I am sure the 7 DVD would of been able to do it.

Upon booting up using the Vista DVD I selected the repair option at which stage it prompted me that there was a problem with the installation.  Well I knew that, so I decided to try it and pressed the Repair and restart button and let it load up from the hard drive. After the restart the same message appeared.

So I booted back to the Vista DVD and selected repair again.  This time I wasn’t asked if I wanted to repair automatically.  I then chose the repair start up errors option (the one at the top).  After this had completed (took around 10 seconds), I restarted and left it to it’s own devices.  This time the computer went past the error message and I was greeted with Windows 7.  It had installed properly despite the error, although in all likeliness that is what caused the BOOTMGR problem.

Windows 7 finished configuring itself and eventually asked me for a username and password.  I thought this was a bit strange as it should of pulled out my previous accounts, but carried on with the instructions anyway.

Long story short, Windows 7 installed, but without any of the applications installed or documents.

But the application files and documents were present but had been moved in to other folders.  I can only assume that the files would of been moved back in to the main folders rather than the newly created folders if the installation had completed successfully.

Graphics drivers were already installed as was the network drivers. The only drivers that weren’t installed were the X-Fi drivers from Creative.  So I went to their website and downloaded their latest drivers for Vista.

On attempting installation I was greeted with a message saying that the OS was incompatible with the drivers and that I would need to upgrade my OS. Obviously a bad search within the drivers installer, so I set the installer to run in compatibility mode for Windows Vista. This time the installation proceeded without a problem.

I deleted the old application files which weren’t needed any more and was able to back up all the documents back to the rightful place.