Windows 7 RC Installations: 1 Fast, 1 Slow – No Idea Why
I installed Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC) on two computers so far.
The first was an Asus Eee PC 1000HA netbook that had Windows 7 Beta installed on it. I performed a clean non-formatting installation where the Win7Beta and associated directories were moved to another folder that RC does not look at. This installation took, perhaps 30 minutes including moving the old Beta related files to an archive folder.
The second was an old desktop PC with an AMD Athlon processor. It too had Win7Beta installed. The Beta installation took about 30 minutes. The move to RC, however, took hours. It took so long that after about 90 minutes I had to leave to run some errands and simply left the PC on to continue the installation process. The update had finally completed while I was out running my errands.
Here's another oddity. Win7RC seems to be running as fast as Win7Beta on my netbook (Eee PC 1000HA with an Intel Atom N270 processor). However, Win7RC seems much slower on the AMD Athlon based desktop PC. I haven't run any benchmarks to compare the two yet. However, tasks like starting the Firefox browser seems much slower on the desktop running Win7RC compared to the same PC when it ran Win7Beta.
Will There be a Windows 7 Release Candidate 2?
I recall reading statements from Microsoft that there would be one Windows 7 Beta and one Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC). So, why does this Microsoft On10.net blog item...
Top 7 Things to Check Out in Windows 7 RC1
...mention "RC1". Is it a simple typo? Or will there be an RC2 that pushes Windows 7's release date a bit further out. I sure hope not. I ran Windows 7 Beta from January through the end of April. And, I downloaded and installed Windows 7 RC last week Friday (May 1). These installs were on the netbook I take nearly everywhere with me including two trips to Seattle and New York in March. It is a "production" machine and, quite frankly, has been running a lot better than the "production" version of Windows Vista on my quad-core desktop.
Windows 7 Release Candidate Clean Install Does NOT Involve Reformatting
I'm a bit behind in listening to the Windows Weekly podcast by Paul Thurrott and Leo LaPorte. So, I just listened to WW #104 a few hours ago. During the course of the podcast, Paul and Leo discuss Windows 7 Release Candidate and commented that the best way to install the RC is a clean install because it does not support upgrading from XP or 7 Beta (all true).
However, they then mention that a clean install involves reformatting the drive. This is not true for the RC or the previous 7 Beta release. Here's what happens.
If you are performing a clean install for the first time on an existing Windows XP installation, the XP folder is moved to Windows.old. If you, like me, are performing a clean install on a PC that had XP on it first and currently has 7 Beta, the old XP files remain in the folder Windows.old while the 7 Beta files are placed in Windows.old.000.
However, the former version of Windows is not the only thing placed in those .old folders. You can see that the Program Files, Perflogs and Users folders along with autoexec.bat and config.sys files are also placed there. The new Windows 7 RC files completely replace those folders and the files in them to create a clean install. So, you won't see your old software or configuration. But, they are all there in the old folders until you delete them.
I actually looked for an option to either low-level format the partition or simply format the existing NFTS partition but did not see it during the Windows 7 RC installation process.