Your own link says the same thing. You must do a double install. The first to establish your 'previous version' and the second install on a separate partition.
I've never seen such a stupid upgrade path in all my years.
I don't think you read the instructions right. I used method 1 + 2 from the link. Install once on a clean hard drive, do a quick registry hack, run slmgr /rearm, then activate.
I definitely only did one install. I do agree that the upgrade path is pretty dumb.
I don't think you read the instructions right. I used method 1 + 2 from the link. Install once on a clean hard drive, do a quick registry hack, run slmgr /rearm, then activate.
I definitely only did one install. I do agree that the upgrade path is pretty dumb.
You do realize that in order to hack a registry you have to install Windows first? Upgrade versions of Windows since Vista will not install when an existing install of Windows isn't present on the target disks already.
The reg hack is just to activate windows, which is an entirely separate issue.
You do realize that in order to hack a registry you have to install Windows first? Upgrade versions of Windows since Vista will not install when an existing install of Windows isn't present on the target disks already.
The reg hack is just to activate windows, which is an entirely separate issue.
I'm apologize DJRrumpy, I must not be explaining it right. \
If you follow methods 1 + 2 you can do a clean install of Windows 7 without having an existing install of Windows.
I'm not just saying this, but have actually done it twice. I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a brand new hard drive on my wife's Dell laptop. It was the only hard drive installed, and never had anything on it. The Windows 7 DVD did a clean install with no problems. I then followed methods 1 + 2 from the site I mentioned previously, and then activated.
I also did the same with Windows 7 Professional with Parallels 5.
Well, 5 hours later finally got everything working. Apparently, and not really a big surprise here, Windows must have been doing mystery installation stuff in the background which hindered the usability of the computer and caused erroneous messages to be displayed regarding the status of the installation progress.
If I could offer any advise, it would be just walk away from the computer after each 'ok' click and come back in 30 minutes. If you have a lot of patience there is a reasonable chance you will eventually get a full installation - many hours later.
I had weirdness after upgrading also. I use a single XP image and it was unusable after upgrading. I rebooted the VM a few times, then opened the config and set all the resource vars to min and restarted, and it worked just fine! I tweaked things up from there, but if this is any indication, setting the VM to use less is much better than setting it to use more.
Now the Windows apps are quite snappy and I'm quite impressed. It was rough going there for a bit though.
I call "bulls**t" on the "Parallels 20% faster than competitor". On the Windows 7 "Windows Experience" mini-benchmark, the *only* benchmark on which it's faster is 3D performance. That's with an identical fresh install on both VMware 3.0.0 and Parallels 5.0. 3D performance appears to be 20% faster with Parallels, but disk performance and overall CPU performance are lower than VMware, and everything else is identical between the two.
VMware also integrates Windows 7 better into the environment. You get a menu item in your toolbar to allow easy access to Windows programs and easy switching to other modes while in Unity mode. In full screen mode you have access to a toolbar item to switch out of full screen mode -- no more remembering alt-delete-control-meta-foo-bar-enter to get out of full screen mode.
Parallels does have one other place where it surpasses VMware other than in 3D performance: It auto-shrinks your disks. That of course is useless if you have Windows 7 installed on Boot Camp, since you have a fixed size disk at that point.
My take: Run Parallels if you want to run games on Windows 7 in a virtualized environment. Run VMware if you want to get work done, the upgrade worked seamlessly and the overall VMware Fusion environment is better (especially if you are using VMware in your corporate environment and want to easily import virtual machines from your corporate environment). Since I have Boot Camp I have no need to run games in a virtualized environment, and our corporate infrastructure is built around VMware. Thus Parallels is out to pasture for me.
Comments
Your own link says the same thing. You must do a double install. The first to establish your 'previous version' and the second install on a separate partition.
I've never seen such a stupid upgrade path in all my years.
I don't think you read the instructions right. I used method 1 + 2 from the link. Install once on a clean hard drive, do a quick registry hack, run slmgr /rearm, then activate.
I definitely only did one install. I do agree that the upgrade path is pretty dumb.
I don't think you read the instructions right. I used method 1 + 2 from the link. Install once on a clean hard drive, do a quick registry hack, run slmgr /rearm, then activate.
I definitely only did one install. I do agree that the upgrade path is pretty dumb.
You do realize that in order to hack a registry you have to install Windows first? Upgrade versions of Windows since Vista will not install when an existing install of Windows isn't present on the target disks already.
The reg hack is just to activate windows, which is an entirely separate issue.
You do realize that in order to hack a registry you have to install Windows first? Upgrade versions of Windows since Vista will not install when an existing install of Windows isn't present on the target disks already.
The reg hack is just to activate windows, which is an entirely separate issue.
I'm apologize DJRrumpy, I must not be explaining it right.
If you follow methods 1 + 2 you can do a clean install of Windows 7 without having an existing install of Windows.
I'm not just saying this, but have actually done it twice. I installed Windows 7 Home Premium on a brand new hard drive on my wife's Dell laptop. It was the only hard drive installed, and never had anything on it. The Windows 7 DVD did a clean install with no problems. I then followed methods 1 + 2 from the site I mentioned previously, and then activated.
I also did the same with Windows 7 Professional with Parallels 5.
Well, 5 hours later finally got everything working. Apparently, and not really a big surprise here, Windows must have been doing mystery installation stuff in the background which hindered the usability of the computer and caused erroneous messages to be displayed regarding the status of the installation progress.
If I could offer any advise, it would be just walk away from the computer after each 'ok' click and come back in 30 minutes. If you have a lot of patience there is a reasonable chance you will eventually get a full installation - many hours later.
I had weirdness after upgrading also. I use a single XP image and it was unusable after upgrading. I rebooted the VM a few times, then opened the config and set all the resource vars to min and restarted, and it worked just fine! I tweaked things up from there, but if this is any indication, setting the VM to use less is much better than setting it to use more.
Now the Windows apps are quite snappy and I'm quite impressed. It was rough going there for a bit though.
VMware also integrates Windows 7 better into the environment. You get a menu item in your toolbar to allow easy access to Windows programs and easy switching to other modes while in Unity mode. In full screen mode you have access to a toolbar item to switch out of full screen mode -- no more remembering alt-delete-control-meta-foo-bar-enter to get out of full screen mode.
Parallels does have one other place where it surpasses VMware other than in 3D performance: It auto-shrinks your disks. That of course is useless if you have Windows 7 installed on Boot Camp, since you have a fixed size disk at that point.
My take: Run Parallels if you want to run games on Windows 7 in a virtualized environment. Run VMware if you want to get work done, the upgrade worked seamlessly and the overall VMware Fusion environment is better (especially if you are using VMware in your corporate environment and want to easily import virtual machines from your corporate environment). Since I have Boot Camp I have no need to run games in a virtualized environment, and our corporate infrastructure is built around VMware. Thus Parallels is out to pasture for me.