Reply to: Windows 7 public beta released

[voodooflux]

Wonder if the wife would let me splash out on a newer card....probably not.

Depends how nicely you ask

[RSoles]

I should have said I had the 32-bit bersion.


Nero does the 'burn from an ISO' and I had the DVD option selected.
I've used it in the past to make customised XP installations.

Nero's objection was to any individual file being over 2G rather than the capacity of the disk itself.

Anyway, it's installed now.........all I need is a video driver.
Wonder if the wife would let me splash out on a newer card....probably not.

[voodooflux]

I had tried to use Nero to convert the Seven disk to a bootable DVD, but it complained about a >2Gfile being incompatible with the ISO standard for bootable DVDs.

Not quite sure what you mean by "convert", but are you positive that Nero didn't think you were trying to burn the ISO to a CD rather than a DVD?

I can highly recommend a Windows utility called ISO Recorder - once installed you can right click on any ISO file and burn it to DVD.

Hope that helps.

[TheFaQQer]

How odd.
My Seven disk definitely doesn't boot.
The attic pc had linux installed on it so I had to install XP (that disk booted fine)
Then Seven would auto-run (as opposed to boot) and install.


I had tried to use Nero to convert the Seven disk to a bootable DVD, but it complained about a >2Gfile being incompatible with the ISO standard for bootable DVDs.

RS

Must admit, I only tried the 64 bit version, but it worked OK for me.

[RSoles]

How odd.
My Seven disk definitely doesn't boot.
The attic pc had linux installed on it so I had to install XP (that disk booted fine)
Then Seven would auto-run (as opposed to boot) and install.


I had tried to use Nero to convert the Seven disk to a bootable DVD, but it complained about a >2Gfile being incompatible with the ISO standard for bootable DVDs.

RS

[TheFaQQer]

Anybody installed it in VMWare yet?
Anybody installed it in VMWare Fusion on a Mac yet?

Installed it on VMWare last night with no problems (apart from me upgrading my version of VMware server and then not being able to find my old machines).

Seems to work OK, if a little slow (but no more so than any other VMware image). I have no idea why I bothered, to be honest, but it's there if I want to play around with it.

Installed from scratch, so you don't need to do it as an upgrade to anything.

[TheFaQQer]

Just in case anyone's wondering......

The download manager executable downloads an ISO image.
Only seems to work for IE, not Firefox.
You then burn the DVD.
Install from the DVD.

BUT the DVD isn't bootable so you need windoze to install windoze.
AND you can't make the DVD bootable because one of the files is >2GB.

Hey hum, AND it doesn't like my Radeon 9600 (gash system from attic).

Looks very like vista..........Like the programmer's calculator though....

Worked fine for my from Firefox, and burnt a bootable DVD.

[HeliCraig]

I'm going to try it as a virtual machine and see how that goes.

Anybody installed it in VMWare yet?
Anybody installed it in VMWare Fusion on a Mac yet?

[voodooflux]

BUT the DVD isn't bootable so you need windoze to install windoze.

Oh yes it is.

AND you can't make the DVD bootable because one of the files is >2GB.

Wha...? DVD's have a capacity of 4.7GB per layer - both the 32-bit and 64-bit ISO files for Windows 7 are well below this.

[RSoles]

Just in case anyone's wondering......

The download manager executable downloads an ISO image.
Only seems to work for IE, not Firefox.
You then burn the DVD.
Install from the DVD.

BUT the DVD isn't bootable so you need windoze to install windoze.
AND you can't make the DVD bootable because one of the files is >2GB.

Hey hum, AND it doesn't like my Radeon 9600 (gash system from attic).

Looks very like vista..........Like the programmer's calculator though....

[darmstadt]

Well installed nice and quick on MS Virtual PC under Vista 64 but blew out when I tried to install the Virtual PC add-ons. Its now running pretty well under Sun's xVM VirtualBox, still to try under VMWare though.

[voodooflux]

According to El Reg...

Microsoft said earlier this week that it would limit the public beta to 2.5 million users, but it has now decided to offer unlimited downloads for the next fortnight.

[scooby]

for some reason, (and i'm not sure how!) i ended up on a MS page that gave me serial numbers. I've a spare serial for both of the 32 and 64bit...

EDIT: i believe i log in to my live account and used this link (i dont Technet or anything else...)

32bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperi...s/default.aspx
64bit: https://www.microsoft.com/betaexperi...s/default.aspx

They give me a different serial each time... i dont even think its required, so am not sure.

Again, should anyone want one and you dont have a live account, let me know.

[voodooflux]

I think the reason MS won't distribute something like this via BitTorrent (or similar) is simply security - it's way too easy for somebody to start seeding an apparently-legitimate download full of trojans, keyloggers, spambots, etc.

I think a download initiated directly via their site, via private tracker or equivalent to their P2P technology of choice, would be considered to be safe (or as safe as any other download from MS anyway )

However, I would imagine that as traffic passes through various intermediate client nodes there may be a potential vulnerability whereby the payload could be tampered with - I don't know the BitTorrent protocol well enough to determine whether this is possible (I would hope not).

On this subject, there may be a substantial risk of dodgy torrents for this particular (and probably popular) beta at the moment, given that the official download was suspended for a period, possibly leading to prospective evaluators grabbing it from wherever they can.

[NickFitz]

I think the reason MS won't distribute something like this via BitTorrent (or similar) is simply security - it's way too easy for somebody to start seeding an apparently-legitimate download full of trojans, keyloggers, spambots, etc.

We all know that, although Betas shouldn't be used for real purposes, there are still people who will "upgrade" their day-to-day machine and use it as their usual OS. One dodgy torrent, and some of those people are fscked.

And even though it's their fault for using a Beta for real-life purposes, and the fault of the people who distributed the dodgy installer, guess who gets the blame and all the bad press? Yup, MS.