Fun question, I am about to put a fresh install of windows 7 Pro on a laptop that has windows 7 h...

[G+_Jason Perry]

Fun question, I am about to put a fresh install of windows 7 Pro on a laptop that has windows 7 home.

 

I have done fresh installs of windows before. So I know how big of a pain it is to trouble shoot problems such as, no network drivers.

 

Does anyone have tips for doing a fresh Windows install on a computer that is currently running Windows?

 

And can someone explain why I never have problems when I am installing Ubuntu?

[G+_Dan Baldwin]

Copy c: windows/sys32/ drivers folder to a thumb drive before upgrade so you won’t have to go hunting for the proper ones later or go to manufactures website and download all of the drivers onto a thumb drive before clean install. These will have all of the drivers and software compatible for your laptop. Also don’t forget to copy any other important files/folders you may want to put back after upgrade.

[G+_Akira Yamanita]

A full backup is always nice to have to ensure that you haven't missed anything important.

 

As for the drivers, I just download the NIC/Wi-Fi drivers to make it easy to grab any other drivers that I need. The chipset drivers are also good to have on hand. After those, you can just grab anything else that you need. Some manufacturers have a tool to update all of the drivers and even Windows can pick up many of them for you.

 

Windows has historically used make/model information to load the correct drivers. Linux distributions only look at those for special configurations when loading generic chipset drivers. A good example of this is back in the FastEthernet days when the Realtek RTL8139 chipset was used in just about every generic NIC. You had to load the model specific drivers in Windows XP but Linux would see the RTL8139 chipset and just work. There was also the hyped news about one person writing drivers for 200+ webcams, but it was actually a single driver for similar chipsets used in over 200 models of webcams. Windows 7 seemed to have a much larger list of drivers than either XP or Vista, but considering how much more Windows 10 seems to identify, it seems like they have either packed it with tens or hundreds of thousands of drivers or they've taken a similar approach with generic drivers for a better installation experience.

[G+_Paul Hutchinson]

IME, usually the reason someone never has a problem installing a particular Linux distro is because their hardware is old enough and popular enough for all the community created drivers to be included in the distro. It's usually only when the hardware is too new to have good Linux drivers that people have problems installing Linux.

 

Ubuntu also has a little edge on other distros because, IIRC, they will provide non-open binary blob drivers and other distros will not.

[G+_Jeff Smith]

I moved to the Linux world several years ago and never looked back, but I do seem to recall there was a Windows utility that you could download that will make a backup of all of your existing drivers. Run it on the Win7 Home, throw all of the drivers on to a USB stick, then refer to that stick when you do the Win7 Pro install.

[G+_Jeff Gros]

Jason Perry I think that the Linux experience now is pretty good for the Linux newbie. I think Ubuntu and Raspberry Pi have helped this a lot.

 

I remember trying Ubuntu 10 years ago, and I had a lot of trouble. I did a dual boot, saw that there wasn't support for my printer or any other device, and said, "Wow, this isn't fun. Why do people like Linux?".

 

I came back 5 years ago and had a better experience. Although still not perfect. I struggled to find drivers for the ancient copy printer at work. And struggled to find an application to use with my inkjet scanner. I solved most problems I came across. Eventually.

 

The one problem with Linux is that most of the productivity programs I use on windows aren't available on Linux. You have to find replacements. Software compilers is also another big problem. This has got better since a lot of the vendors are switching to eclipse (java based), but there are still a lot of holdouts.

[G+_David Simmons]

Why 7? If the laptop can handle 7 it should be able to handle 10.

[G+_Darryl Gibbs]

macrium Reflect has a free edition that makes a perfect backup image. I've veen using it for years now and can't recommend it enough.

[G+_Ben Reese]

Like Akira Yamanita I usually make sure I have the network drivers downloaded then install the rest after Windows is installed. A backup is nice to have and I have used tools to backup the existing drivers, but it's a good opportunity to look for updated drivers too.

[G+_Jason Perry]

David Simmons i have a volume licence for 7 and not 10.

[G+_Dan Baldwin]

Jason Perry once done you still may be able to do a free upgrade to 10, I think there are still work arounds available.

[G+_Jason Marsh]

PPL, Plz...

If there's not a generic driver for your NIC in the install iso, you don't want the machine anyways. Just send to me ;)

 

...Or you d/l the driver to usb for use after the dban, Spinrite, install routine. Problem solved.

 

When I could only get 1.5Mb dsl I was keeping a trove of drivers for this purpose but decided space was more valuable when I was able to get 40Mb and the trove got close to 1TB. I was having to manage space on my server and I prefer a hands-off approach to my server, so I deleted most of the drivers and kept only the NIC drivers.

 

It's pretty rare that I even have to bring the NIC drivers to a machine, though. If it's a major brand pre-built system it's probably going to be covered by the drivers Win7 has on-hand. If it's an el-cheapo BTX mobo you got a good deal on or some chipset that was short-lived, you will probably have to bring the drivers along.