Tag Archives: Windows 7 RC

How to Overclock an ATI Radeon Card on Windows 7

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When you install Windows 7, the driver for ATI Radeon card is installed automatically. With the default driver, you cannot overclock the card. You need the ATI Catalyst driver. The download web site is here.

Once you have downloaded and installed the package, follow the steps.

  1. Press Start (Windows key) and type CCC. CCC – Advanced will be shown in the program list. Click on it to invoke it.
  2. Click on ATI Overdrive.
    w7-ati
  3. Overdrive is locked by default. Click on the padlock to unlock it.
  4. You can now overclock the card manually or click on Auto-Tune and let the program select the best settings for you.

On my Radeon HD 4830, I can overclock it to 680MHz GPU clock and 1135MHz Memory clock.

Running XP Mode and VirtualBox Simultaneously Causes BSOD on Windows 7 x64 RC

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Ok, this is a precaution if you have installed XP Mode (Virtual Windows XP) and VirtualBox on Windows 7 x64 RC. I was testing XP Mode and I wanted to do a side by side comparison and guess what. BSOD!

My workstation is a Core i7 machine that I built myself. It’s running the latest Windows 7 x64 RC. The VirtualBox version is 2.2.2 which is the latest at the time of this writing. Further diagnostic shows that it’s probably caused by ntkrnlmp.exe. The file is part of the Windows 7 kernel.

There is no fix for the problem now, but I found that both programs still run fine. Just do not run them at the same time.

Do you experience the same problem with 32bit Windows 7 RC? Please share your experience.

How to Change Settings for Virtual Windows XP (XP Mode) for Windows 7

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When I first heard about XP Mode or Virtual Windows XP for Windows 7 RC, I was curious about what it is and what it can do. I followed the instructions on this site to download and install it. To my disappointment, the so called XP mode is just a pre-packaged Windows XP virtual machine running on top of Virtual PC. I already have an XP virtual machine for Virtual Box, therefore the XP Mode does nothing new for me. The only big advantage is that you don’t have to install Windows XP by yourself. This might be handy if you do not have an installation media for Windows XP and you also do not need to worry about the license.

By default the Virtual Windows XP is allocated with 256 MB of RAM. This is way too little for any practical use. When I tried to change the settings, I found that you cannot change it while the virtual machine is running or in hibernation. The GUI also doesn’t let you turn off the virtual machine. You can “close” the virtual machine, but it puts the machine to hibernation and you still cannot change the settings. Luckily, you can still turn it off using command line. Follow these steps to shutdown Virtual Windows XP and change the settings.

  1. Do this inside Virtual Windows XP. Click on Start -> Run .
  2. Enter shutdown -s and click on OK.
    xpm-run
  3. Do this under Windows 7. Click on Windows button and then click on All Programs -> Windows Virtual PC -> Virtual Machines. This brings up the Windows Explorer with the Virtual Windows XP.vmcx file.
  4. Right click on Virtual Windows XP.vmcx file and select Settings.
    xpm-settings
  5. Make the necessary changes and click on OK.

The next time you start Virtual Windows XP, the new settings would be used.

Windows 7 RC Installation Resources

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Every tech blog has this, it’s like a mandatory post. So, here you are. Microsoft has made Windows 7 RC download public. Point your browser to

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

and get your copy. There are some resources on my site to help you with the installation.

Installing Windows 7 x64 RC on a MacBook

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After installing Windows 7 x64 RC on my Core i7 workstation, I got to try it on my MacBook (early 2008) today. The installation procedure is similar to the procedure of installing Windows 7 Beta. Here is my notes about the process. The only thing different is the installation of drivers.

When I inserted the Leopard installation DVD, the setup.exe on the root of DVD automatically ran and notified me my MacBook is not supported for the 64bit installation. The installer did not continue. To force it to run, browse to the folder D:\Boot Camp\Drivers\Apple (D drive is the DVD drive for my system) and double click on BootCamp64.msi to install the drivers.

w7-bootcamp

After the installation, reboot the machine. The microphone still doesn’t work after driver installation. You have to enable the microphone boost to use it properly. Please see this post for details.

img_01531

SHA1 Checksums for Windows 7 RC

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Windows 7 RC is available on the MSDN site today. Here are the checksums for the iso files.

File Name: en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x64_dvd_347803.iso
Date Posted (UTC): 4/30/2009 6:00:41 AM
SHA1: FC867FE1AB2E0A9796F9E4D155B44EA6998F4874
ISO/CRC: 58FB2BE0

File Name: en_windows_7_ultimate_rc_x86_dvd_349010.iso
Date Posted (UTC): 4/30/2009 6:00:41 AM
SHA1: 7D1F486CA569EFFFFB719CFB48355BB7BF499712
ISO/CRC: E8A1C394

Here is the link to the official MSDN download site.

If you don’t know how to check the SHA1. Just download the free utility fsum from SlavaSoft. Open up a command prompt windows and type.

fsum -sha1 downloaded-filename

Replace the downloaded-filename with the name of file you downloaded.

w7-sha1

Windows 7 RC Migration Options

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My colleague forwarded an email  from a Microsoft employee to me. It’s about Windows 7 RC news. It is confirmed that Windows 7 RC will be released in just a few weeks. It can be downloaded from Windows.com, TechNet and MSDN when it’s available. The downloads will be available at least through June 2009.

If you have installed Windows 7 Beta before, you know that there are two kinds of installation: clean install and upgrade. Here are the recommendations for different OS.

  • Windows XP: Clean install.
  • Windows Vista: Upgrade.
  • Windows 7 Beta: Clean install (Upgrading is possible, but new features of RC will not work if you choose to upgrade from Windows 7 Beta to RC).

Even though you can upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 RC, I’d suggest that you do a clean installation instead. Windows Easy Transfer can help you transfer files and settings from the old OS to the new OS. However, the Windows Easy Transfer do not transfer settings for 3rd party applications by default. Please refer to this post about how to customize it to transfer those files.