If you are manage to get your hand on to the new release and ready to install it to your new PC or old PC we’ve got few tip for you, that will save you hell lot of problem later on.
Before you install Windows 7
Knowing your hardware
make a decision on weather to install 64 bit or 32 bit. It is totally up to you to decide. But long term speaking 64 bit is always a better option.
Install 32 bit only when you have old hardware. Things like your mother board won’t support more than 2G of ram or your CPU doesn’t support executing the 64 bit instruction. Or some hardware say wireless adaptor doesn’t support 64 bit Windows 7 because there is no Windows 7 64 bit driver for it.
Anyhow you should definably check your CPU. See what kind feature it supports. Most CPU I’d say even 3-5 years back have already had 64 bit architecture. (For folks has old Pentium 4 ONLY some will have the 64 bit support, but for people who have old AMD athlon, they should have full 64 bit support)
For Netbooks, some Intel Atom CPU do however have 64 bit, but the most common N270 does not have 64 bit support. Also check make sure before any attempt.
Other things you might also want to take into account is does all your hardware have the driver ready for Windows 7? Things like old printer, wireless adapter, TV tuner etc. Microsoft has a fine list of library that contains almost ALL hardware and software that listed for you to check whether it compatibles with Windows 7.
If you are all set with the above, go ahead and install Windows 7 If you want to install it on your netbook, we have a complete guide on how to do it yourself.
While and After you install Windows 7
Few things that I personally like to do when I install Windows 7 or any new OS.
1. Create a small partition for your Windows 7. Why ?
There are many good reasons why you want to split your personal documents and programs aside with the OS. (do this before you install Windows 7)
- Easier to manage in the future if you want to upgrade, or restore, or delete an OS
- No need to reinstall all your programs, personal setting is also kept same as before (things like your desktop icon, wallpaper, firefox plugins, iTunes play list, etc) will all remain same as before, even tho you reinstalled the OS
- If used wisely, and you don’t mind to install windows 7 every 4 month, then you can basically use it for FREE. How ? (google it 120 days windows 7) And after your last day you can simply reinstall windows 7 overwrite the partition and you get IT FOR FREE for another 120 while have all your personal setting keep intact.
So all those kinda good stuff you are getting, all you need to do is to create a small partition roughly around 25 GB to be safe.
You can do this by go to Disk Management (Start menu and type the those word)
Right Click your HDD to Shirnk Volume …
Here I just put 2500 MB which roughly around 24.42 GB I’m getting which is enough for both Windows 7 32 bit and 64 bit OS
Click Shrink to create a new partition.
Now when you install your Windows 7, put all your file into this partition. So what about all my personal documents ? Well we have a tutorial that shows you how you can move your user profile onto another partition.
2. Get your hard drive space back.
You can create even smaller partition for Windows 7 since the minimum is 16 GB. But there is a problem, if you have super large RAM. Because there is a file called Hiberfil.sys that will have the EXACTLLY the same size as your RAM. and stored in your %SystemRoot% What’s that for ? Discover more here. Put it into one line, if you don’t use hibernation then you can disable it and get all your hard drive space back.
3. Tweaks your Windows 7 to meet your personal requirements
Now after all the stuff you are doing, feel free to discover more tweaks with use, and stay turned as we will have more and more tips tricks and how-to coming on its way! Also make sure to follow us, if you have any questions just leave us a tweet we will check and reply every comment and tweets when we got time