Treachery on the 7 Seas

Recently, through a very lucky set of conditions, I was able to obtain a version of Windows 7 Professional 64-bit. I am currently running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit, and I was actually pretty happy with it. But times, they change, and so must I. I wanted to have the 64-bit capability so that I could expand to more RAM, and be on the curve of 64-bit programming. What I learned may startle you.

YOU CAN'T JUST TRANSFER OVER 32-BIT FILES AND PROGRAMS TO A 64-BIT SYSTEM!!! Who knew?! Not this guy. So here I am, I have cloned my whole full hard drive to one twice its size. The end result I desired was to have a Windows.old folder on my bigger hard drive, not just on my old hard drive. This Windows.old folder would have all my old settings, all my old programs, even all my old music and libraries! I could simply copy and paste those all onto the same drive, and be done with my upgrade. I. Am Stupid.

I went ahead and tried to do most of this. About the only thing that wound out working was transferring my steamapps folder over to the new steam folder. With that setting the precedent, I decided to copy over every program file in it's like program file. Windows 7 64-bit has a special Program Files folder for 32-bit programs. Cramming files like I did messed up a LOT of things. I guess you could say it'd be like trying to cram a Neon onto a V8 engine, even if you get it to friggin' fit, how in the snot will you make it run? Not very well.

So I decided to try and go back and delete these files. This is the most annoying thing about Windows 7. Just because you put a file somewhere, or install a program, doesn't mean that 7 will let you remove it. It's not enough to be the Administrator. You need to have the permission of Trusted Installer. Who the hell is Trusted Installer, and when did he touch my PC?! This probably applies only to direct Windows features though. Still, quite confusing.

The best thing I wound up doing was formatting and starting from scratch. That works well. I'll be careful this time, and copy over My Documents one folder at a time. Then, fresh installs of all my old programs. The most convenient discovery so far is a site called Ninite. It's a site that allows you make one massive download of all the common applications you would want on a new PC or OS. Pretty nifty.

This is going to be a long voyage. All ashore who's going ashore!

-The0