Upgrade To Windows 7 Might Take 20+ Hours (Worst Case)
Isn’t it frustrating to reinstall all your favorite and perfectly working applications after upgrading or installing an OS on your PC?
Reports confirm that it took more than 20 hrs to upgrade Windows 7 on a machine of 650 GB data and 40 applications in a mid end hardware configuration and in case of high end hardware it takes around 10 hours. However, you can have a clean install with no application in 30 minutes in a high end hardware and 50 minutes in case of low end hardware (further analysis here). So, if you really want to install Window 7 quick and fast, first you need to uninstall all your applications and store it in some place, then install Windows 7 and then probably you can go about reinstalling all your applications one by one. That looks like a tedious job.
In Windows Digital Lifestyle Consortium in Japan last year Gates talked about the performance of Windows 7 and suggested that it will take less memory and will be more efficient. More than one and half year has passed and after all the regression testing this is something that comes out on the up gradation of windows 7 on a high end hardware configuration.
Data profile
Mid End Hardware
High End Hardware
650Gb of data and 40 applications
32-bit: 1220 minutes
64-bit: 675 minutes
32-bit: 610 minutes
64-bit: 480 minutes
Just think about the low end hardware user, how much time will it take to install windows 7 in their system? My wild guess says around 2 days (just kidding). Microsoft has already confused users by giving phantom promises on the efficiency and performance of Vista over XP in past. Just more than a month left before the official release of Windows 7 on October 22nd. Lets hope it doesn’t disappoints us again like Vista.
Follow-Up
Arstechnica : Microsoft: Windows 7 upgrade can take nearly a day by Emil Protalinski
Msblog : Gates: Windows 7 will “take less memory, be more efficient”
Gizmodo : Worst Case Scenario: Windows 7 Upgrade Can Take 21 Hours by Dan Nosowitz
CrunchGear : Windows 7 upgrade time tops out at 20+ hours by Doug Aamoth
Image Credit : Support On Click
Table Source: ArsTechnica
Data profile
Mid End Hardware
High End Hardware
650Gb of data and 40 applications
32-bit: 1220 minutes
64-bit: 675 minutes
32-bit: 610 minutes
64-bit: 480 minutes
Follow-Up
I am currently using a HP TC1100 tablet laptop with 800mhz Celeron CPU, 1.2GB RAM, 80GB HDD. I partitioned the HDD into 2 with the C drive loading Windows XP Tablet edition and D drive loading Windows 7 RTM version. I did a full, clean install of Win7 on the D drive and it took me about 45 minutes. The install was smooth and uneventful.
Note that because this tablet is a very old model – I’ve been using it for 5 years now – and HP has stopped development work on it, I don’t have some of the drivers – specifically the built-in sound card. When booting up on Win7, there have been occasions when it would stall – this usually happens if the soundcard drivers are active (I think the new drivers that Windows automatically installed are the culprit). Otherwise everything including the pen input features are running smoothly. I’ve installed a free office suite software and FireFox 3.5 to test the OS. Works fine with me.
(Twitter: @ mayank25may )
says:
Perfectly put Allan. For clean install it is quite smooth even on a low end h/w.. But if you are upgrading it with things still inside you harddisk then… ummm u might have to spend way tooo longer than usual.
@Allan
Clean install with no apps is perfectly fine , lets consider this case when 50 apps r running on ur pc and u wanna update win7 in the same drive then hw much time it takes that is the point here…. i m pretty possessive about my apps and would never like to reinstall them one by one just for the sake of OS upgrade…. it will be a hectic job dude …
It is always good to do a clean install than upgrading. I dual booted my Inspiron 1525 with Vista and 7 and most software I use in 7 are from the Vista Porgram Files folder…
A clean install of a Win7 guest OS via Virtualbox took about 12 minutes on my fedora box with a quad 2,6ghz Phenom with 4gb Ram.
People need to stop bitching about their 6 year old POS store bought systems having poor performance with a modern OS.
I don’t see Chitty Chitty Bang Bang showing up at the Indy 500 – Upgrade your shit or stick with WinME.
lol is all i have to say. why would you ever do an upgrade, its best is you have one drive to do 2 partitions, one you os and the other your data. and if you hate having to reinstall just image you install with all your apps so you can restore your stuff quickly if something goes wrong