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General discussion

A bug in Windows 7 Upgrade?

Oct 24, 2009 12:44PM PDT

I bought the Windows 7 upgrade program from Staples. Beings they had the free install Deal, I took my computer to them yesterday morning to have it installed.
After many failed attempts they could never get the upgrade to install so I picked up the computer tonight still with Vista Home Premium.
The tech there said that Microsoft told him there was a bug when doing the upgrade and they would release a patch to fix the problem.
What it was doing was getting to 62% of the install then going into a loop and it wouldn't go any further. He said it didn't effect clean installs or full installs, only the upgrades.
The Windows 7 update advisor was followed so there wasn't any conflicts.
Has anyone else had or heard of this problem?
Thanks
Wayne

Discussion is locked

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Nope
Oct 24, 2009 1:06PM PDT

Nope, but on all three of my systems, there were LOOOOOONG periods of time where it just seemed to sit at the same spot. Best as I can work out, the upgrade will take a copy of your hard drive, compress it, and then once it's installed Win7, it will decompress those files and put them back where they were. All of which takes a great deal of time, because it's a very disk intensive task, and compared to everything else on a computer, the hard drive is thousands of times slower.

In my case, I had anywhere from about 20-60GB of stuff to back up, so it took me a good couple of hours to install.

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Thanks Jimmy.
Oct 24, 2009 1:34PM PDT

The first tech said he let it run 4 1/2 hours the second time he tried and it still never got past 62%
The last guy said they started it running last night before closing, come in at 8 this morning and it was still at 62%
They restarted it again at that time and called me at 3:30 and still at 62%, so I went and picked the computer up.
They said it always hung up the same place.
I have photo stuff so I probably have about 60 gig used on the hard drive.

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Honestly
Oct 25, 2009 12:18AM PDT

Honestly, I just tend to have a low opinion of people who work at the support desks of places like Staples and Best Buy. Granted with the economy the way it is, some people may be doing what they have to, but generally those places don't pay nearly well enough for someone who can find their backside without a map and guide, to even waste their time.

My guess would be that they're just idiots who don't know what they're doing, and so they blame their own incompetence on some mysterious bug in the Windows installer that no one else has ever heard of. Seems a little too convenient if you ask me. I do the same basic work, and I consider it only professional to tell people I have no idea when I cannot find any explanation for their problems. Not everyone is of the same mindset.

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Think over all the old stories about prior upgrades.
Oct 25, 2009 12:06AM PDT

If you don't remember think about how we would uninstall all the old antivirus and any program we can reinstall later. Just one of hundreds of examples is Norton. It's product protection may be stepping in.

There are some hundreds of these items so it is up to those that install Windows to hunker down and find it.
Bob

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Thanks Jimmy and Bob
Oct 25, 2009 6:59AM PDT

I agree with both of you.
I am sure the tech at Staples was yanking my chain a little and didn't really know what he was doing. Them doing the installs as a freebie made me wonder.
Bob,I went to the Dell site and they recommend doing a clean install just as you said.
I should have known better as I did 3 or 4 Vista installs and all but one had to be a clean install.I thought maybe Microsoft had learned something since Vista.
I guess I was just too lazy at the time.
I have been backing up the important stuff on my computer and will do a clean install next week.
Does anyone know if Windows 7 will give me a windows.old file on the computer with a clean install?
Thanks for all the help and comments, they are appreciated.
Wayne

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Windows.old
Oct 25, 2009 7:46AM PDT

I did a clean install from XP to Windows 7 and it did give a windows.old file. As a safeguard don't forget to use Windows Easy Transfer.

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Thank you
Oct 25, 2009 8:18AM PDT

That is good to know about the windows.old file.
I will also do the Windows easy transfer to my 120gig external hard drive.
Thanks again.

Wayne

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62% problem
Oct 26, 2009 6:25AM PDT

I guess the guy at staples was right about the Windows 7 upgrade stopping at 62%.
Microsoft has found that the iphlsvc will hang it up at that point and has given a fix by putting in a variable name of MIG_UPGRADE_IGNORE_PLUGINS and a variable value of IphlpsvcMigPlugin.dll
It goes on to say this is ONE that has been identified for this problem.
I tried that twice and it still hangs at 62% so I guess there are more problems than one.

Wayne