I've just bought (yes, bought ) Windows 7 Home. I run on a Gigabyte G965P-DS3P Rev 2.0 motherboard, with a Core2Duo E4300 CPU and 2GB RAM. From gigabyte I can get drivers for chipset and LAN for winxp and vista, but not Win7. See here: http://www.gigabyte.com.tw/Support/Motherboard/Driver_Model.aspx?ProductID=2418&ost=#anchor_os Can I use the vista drivers or am I really screwed now? (I know from Winxp experience that unless I install LAN drivers there is no network access) Any help and advice appriciated. Additional, does office 2007 work on Win7 without any major downloads/changes. And does Win7 use the C:\Documents and Settings\"Username" setup? (critical information for me because of lots of spreadsheets linked together)
Most drivers are included in the setup disc. If for chance you are missing one, I have 99% confidence you will be able to get online with the included NIC driver. Do a Windows update and let it find everything else you may need. If you have any special hardware you may want to go direct to manufacturer website and download latest specific drivers, but for the most part the generic Win7 ones will get you going. As for Office 07...i never needed to go past 03, i installed the file converter to allow 03 to read .docx files. I hate the ribbon... Can't you install to a specific directory like most programs, to insure your linked files read properly?
I like hearing that the setup disc has most drivers. Sounds really good. I hhave found drivers for my GFX and Audio card, it was the onboard Network and general MB drivers that I was worried about, but if the setup disk has most of them in generic form as a standard setup I should be ok. Only thing to worry about now is my PCI IDE controller card. hopefully that one it can recognise, or a serious internet search will be needed. I ask about the Documents and settings part because I have a system of mannaging things set up with both folders on desktop and in the My documents folders linked together five ways from sunday. If win7 does not make the Documents and Settings folder like winxp does I have a problem thats gonna take me a while to sort out. I believe Office 2007 was released alongside Vista, so I hope it runs on Win7 too, but I just wanted to check if anyone here had it running on xp and upgraded too.
I use a PCI-E RAID controller (glorified SATA expansion card) that pre-dates Win7 and it not only finds it but calls it by name, not the "generic device" label sometimes given. If it helps, you could redirect your My Documents folder to make everything work still... http://social.answers.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/w7files/thread/585565d0-70a4-4ee0-aa78-d310070f9d40 I haven't heard of horror stories aside of the ribbon...I'm sure Microsoft wants to give you a reason to continue using their product and not switch over to free competition and would be sure the bugs are worked out of their own software before debugging Win7 compatibility with other peoples...
Ah CRAP! Judging from that linked answer windows 7 uses a C:\User\My Documents setup while XP uses C:\Documents and Settings\User This mean I have to go through all my accounting spreeasheets and redo every single linked item across 10 accounts. Wonder where it stores the Desktop folder? With my luck it will be deep inside the windows system folders... CRAP AGAIN! But what you say about the PCI-IDE and Office 2007 makes me feel a little better. But what is the ribbon thing you mention? Haven't come across that before.
Create a folder that matches your spreadsheet links and redirect to that folder? the only thing you need to change is where the target folder of my documents live, not the actual documents themselves. I keep all "my documents" on a separate drive/partition than C: in case i need to format and reinstall windows. Ribbons=
Ah the tab menu - not really a bother for me, but I'm at most an intermediate user. Doing reformats/reinstalls haven't been a problem for me before, but since win7 changes the placement of my documents and desktop folder(which hasn't changed really since I started using windows) it creates this problem for me, lucky me. As is now the spreadsheets live in a folder on my desktop, so all internal links have the C:\Documents and Settings\USER\Desktop\FOLDER\filename..... in each linked line. I have considered moving all accounts into one spreadsheet. But that sheet would be over 50 pages long and giving me problems every time I need to print a section. In the long run I might be better off spending three hours redoing the links, Thank God links within a single spreadsheet doesn't use the full file adress or it meant a complete redo. Is the desktop folder still in the USER folder? Bar that, make the C:\docments and settings\USER\Desktop\FOLDER\filename... and then make a shortcut from Win7 desktop to that FOLDER might work too. Hope it doesn't distract me when installing other software btw - whanks for all the help and quick replies so far. Been great help.
