Last year…when I upgraded to Windows7…before the PC Crash of 2010, this was in my journal and it needed to be posted…
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So the computer I blog from and surf from and do most of my geeking and gaming on….it’s fast approaching a deadline for a new OS.

Actually. My release candidate is expiring today. In non-geek terminology, my pc will become such a pain in the ass to use that I am forced to either reinstall Vista, or reinstall a licensed version of Windows 7.

This kind of sucks. My PC is so frickin enabled that power users would need like 2 years of classes to put this kind of thing together.

The hub of all this installed ability revolves around a capable OS.

Which again. Is not expiring.

So far here’s how it’s been going:

(Old encryption program doesnt like W7, switched to bitlocker last summer, just to test it out.)

Get nastygram telling me my version of W7 is about to go belly up.
Audit everything installed on this PC.
216 applications that would have to be reinstalled.
Looked for alternatives.
Alternatives would involve incompatibility for roughly half my apps, and half my games would no longer work.
Not an option. More research.
Audit necessary free memory to upgrade to W7. 2TB.
Because you cant just install over a release candidate, you have to wipe it out and install clean. This requires the data on the boot drive to be migrated.
Because I am NOT paying a gazillion extra bucks to continue using Bitlocker, I have to decrypt externals before migrating data off the boot drive.
Decrypting drive 1, cleaning up apps installed.
App cleanup forces reboot before I can stop decryption. very. bad.
drive recovery successful, 8 hours.
Continue, decrypting drive 1, cleaning up apps installed. 6 hours.
Decrypting drive 2 will take …heh…48 hours. Tony not happy. migrating data off drive faster than decryption.
Migrating data off drive, 6 hours.
Decrypting of drive 2 now only 8 hours, acceptable. Not a happy Tony, but the alternative wasnt an option.
Drive 2 decrypted, migrating data back onto it. 4 hours.
Initial setup for primary drive W7 install, 2 hours. Only because I have to decide what apps to keep etc. make a list. etc.
W7 setup.

All in all. W7 has been good to me, but simply isn’t as “secure” as I’d prefer. Not everyone knows this but any kid with a little USB drive and a few brain cells can waltz into almost any Windows driven machine and crack open the password locked
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I have LONG since moved to bigger and better setups. But this needed to go in the journal.