Vista Home Basic Workaround Lets You Keep Vista Drivers

Second Upgrade Option For Windows Vista Home Basic

That’s actually one of two things you can do, if you’re intent on getting Windows 7 onto your computer. While it’s true that there is no upgrade path for Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows 7, there is an upgrade path from Windows Vista Home Basic to Windows Vista Home Premium, and if you purchase that upgrade now, you will get a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it is released on October 22.

What does that get you? It means that you’ll get to keep the Vista hardware drivers you have loaded on your computer right now. That may not seem like a big bonus, but it could turn out to be, if Windows 7 doesn’t have the driver(s) you need. You may spend significant amounts of time locating, re-installing and troubleshooting drivers if you install Windows 7 on top of your existing Windows Vista Home Basic installation.

If you decided to take advantage of Microsoft’s sale on Windows 7 earlier this month, the upgrade to Vista Home Premium will mean that you’ll have shelled out about $240 to get to Windows 7 from where you are. A new copy of Windows 7, which assumes a fresh install, is expected to hit the shelves at $199. If you passed on the sale, the $183 upgrade price to Windows Vista Home Premium with a free Windows 7 upgrade will save you about $16 over buying new.

The free upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows-Vista-Home-Basic-turned Vista-Home-Premium will only last until January 2010, so you’ll have to think about this and come to a decision quickly. After January, Windows Vista Home Basic users will need to pay to upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium, and then pay again to upgrade to Windows 7 in order to keep their stuff intact.

That’s bound to downgrade a few users to “unhappy” status. The other, less costly alternative at that point is to bite the bullet, upgrade to Windows 7 with a clean installation and re-install your applications and drivers. Driver Detective can also locate and install drivers to replace those that are missing, corrupted or incorrect.

Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy of Microsoft

Downloads Show Strong Interest In Windows 7

Know What You’re Getting Before You Install Windows 7 RC

The freebie isn’t without some issues, however. If you want to install Windows 7 RC, you’ll need to give up the operating system you have. Installing the release candidate isn’t a matter of installing it on top of whatever you’re running. The required “fresh” installation of Windows 7 RC means that you’ll lose all of your applications and settings.

You’ll need to reinstall everything once you’ve got the new OS loaded.
Microsoft also says that there will be no “upgrade” from the release candidate to the actual release, meaning that you’ll have to do another install. Windows 7 RC has other potentially irritating “features” you’ll want to be aware of. The release candidate license expires on June 1, 2010, and when Microsoft says “expires” it means “expires.” Your system will no longer boot on the release candidate after that point, and you’ll need to upgrade or revert to a licensed version of the OS.

Beginning on March 1, 2010, installed versions of the Windows 7 release candidates will start to reboot every two hours. By itself, this will be a tremendous nuisance, but it should also assure you that Microsoft plans to have a fully operational version of Windows 7 on the market by that time. If you plan to purchase the actual licensed version of Windows 7, this shouldn’t be a problem, but if you were planning to use the freebie release for a long time, think again.

For the most part, you should be able to use Vista drivers with Windows 7 RC. Windows 7 is built on Vista, so there should be a high degree of compatibility between the release candidate and the final version. Don’t expect manufacturers to release much in the way of drivers prior to the actual release, but rest assured, they’re working on any updates that need to be made to enable their products to work on Windows 7.

If you’re concerned about the Windows 7-readiness of your computer, check out the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor, preferably before you download the release candidate. The Upgrade Advisor will let you know exactly what you need to do to your computer to get it ready for the Windows 7 product. Microsoft hasn’t yet announced a firm release date, but many analysts believe that the fourth quarter of 2009 is a good bet, and Windows 7 on store shelves in time for the Christmas holiday almost a sure thing.

Photo Credit: Raul P.

Speeding Up Windows Vista: Indexing

Searching Affects More Than The Search Command

Don’t mistake what I’m saying here. There’s more to the term “search results” than the computer’s ability to locate last year’s tax returns efficiently. To be sure, your tax “papers” are files as far as the computer is concerned, but so are the application you use to do your taxes and the drivers to run your computer hardware. “Search results” aren’t just applicable to files you happen to be looking for. Mostly, they’re files the computer is looking for!

Is there a happy medium? Maybe. If you want to tweak Indexing, you’re going to have to get comfortable with waiting a bit for file system search results. The other option is to settle for faster searches and slower performance, so if you’re willing to be patient when searching for files, you can have faster performance when you’re doing other things.
In earlier versions of Windows, Indexing was pretty much off the table. That is, you the user couldn’t adjust Windows’ indexing behavior. Vista has done away with that and now you can tweak Indexing to suit your personal tastes.

For maximum performance, you’ll want to disable Indexing for all areas except the Start Menu. If you turn Indexing off, you can expect better overall performance, but slower response when you (or the computer) are looking for files (including applications). Leave Indexing turned on for the Start Menu, and you’ll at least have the benefit of faster application response.

To modify Windows Vista’s indexing options, choose the Start button and select Indexing Options. Click Ok. Choose Modify > Show all locations. Uncheck all areas in the tree except the Start Menu. You can make your own personalized adjustments here if there are other areas you use frequently. You can also personalize the Indexing behavior by file type and other options, using the Advanced button.

If you don’t like the way Vista behaves after these changes, you can go back and tweak your indexing options further to suit your tastes.

Removing Old Drivers From Vista

Windows Driver Secret

Once you install the upgraded driver, you may think that your problems have been solved. The new driver works, the hardware or software behaves like you think it should and life is good. (Except for one small detail that you may not even be aware of.)

Windows Vista keeps the old driver. On the surface, that may not seem like a dirty little secret, and if that’s the worst thing that Windows Vista does behind your back that’s probably OK. Unfortunately, a collection of old drivers can make life tough on your computer. The truly unfortunate thing is that “old driver problems” may not crop up right away, and it can become difficult to trace exactly what might be causing your troubles.
Fortunately, there are ways to manage your drivers, new and old. Driver Detective can automate the task of managing your drivers. It will search for and install new drivers, and remove old drivers so they’re not able to cause problems later on.

If you want to take a look at your collection of old drivers, Windows Vista gives you a way to do that. You’ll need to get to a command prompt to start.

From the Run box, type

devmgmt.msc

This will open the more user-friendly Device Manager. From the View menu, choose Show hidden devices. You’ll get an expandable tree-branch diagram showing the devices attached to the computer. Unused device drivers should be grayed out in the branch diagram.

Select the grayed out driver(s) and right click to pull up a contextual menu. You can either update the driver or uninstall the old driver. Before you decide that every hidden driver is unnecessary, understand that some hidden drivers belong to devices that you may plug into your computer only once in awhile. If you still plug the device in (could be a USB drive or a removable drive, a MP3 music player, etc.) you’ll want to keep the hidden driver! Using this method, old drivers can be safely uninstalled manually, preventing future problems and conflicts.