We upgraded our computers to Windows 7 and Microsoft Office 10 this weekend. It was really a pain but it made finally back up all my files. Which is very important and I've put it off for a very long time. We bought an external hard drive a year ago and it't been in the box ever since. So I finally took it out and connected it to my laptop. It was amazingly easy to use and it made me wonder why I didn't take it out of the box sooner.
The plan of attack was a bit complicated since we were going from 32 bit to 64 bit version of the operating system. That meant all files supposedly would be lost. So I did a full back up of all the files and made a list of all the software I would have to reinstall and made sure I could locate it. Since some new software was in a link in my email and I would lose email access after the new os install, I emailed the links from my Outlook account to my portable Gmail account.
The file backup took 4 hours. We went out for a fish fry while it was running. After it finished, I made sure the files were really on the drive then I loaded Windows 7. It took about an hour and was uneventful. So I upgraded Internet Explorer to version 9 as well. It got late so I figured I would finish in the morning.
When I got up I immediately opened IE and downloaded MS Office 10 from my Gmail account. It went a lot faster than when I loaded it on Jeff's PC. I don't know if it was because it was early in the morning and the internet connection was speedier or what. I finished with Office 10, loaded Quicken, Paint Shop Pro and iTunes. Then I discovered that Windows 7 made a file called Windows.old that contained all my files that I backed up. This will be easier than I thought.
It wasn't easier. Between reloading music, photos, and my quicken data, it was time consuming and boring. It got annoying when I discovered that my .pst files weren't there. At least I had my external drive back up data to draw from. But when I went to reload the files from the back up, it was impossible because the hard drive was fill. I had to get rid of Windows.old. That was scary since it contained so much that I needed. So I backed that up to my external drive before I deleted it.
After two days and lots of computer time, all I had left to do was re-load my MS Frontpage software. Only I couldn't find the software. I looked for the whole weekend and gave up. Sadly, I needed that more than the rest.
A week later I still didn't have my Frontpage software so Jeff got me the new Web Expression 4 that replaces Frontpage. It looks a little intimidating but I look forward to learning it when I'm not sick of looking at my laptop. I also discovered that my iTunes playlists are gone. Now that will be fun to rebuild since I wanted to do that anyway.
All in all, it wasn't terrible to upgrade, it just took time and some planning. Everything seems to be running ok now.
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