Before
installing Windows 7 or any operating system for that matter there are some fundamental
questions that need to be answered. Such as:
- What operating system to purchase?
- Will the hardware support the new operating system?
- Will the new operating system support the existing applications?
- Should I perform an upgrade or a clean installation?
These are
just a few that need to be answered, however if you can perform a clean
installation it will achieve the best possible performance. This is because you
are installing the operating system files on a blank disk which are un-fragmented.
With the new
boot environment Windows 7 has eliminated DOS from the installation process.
The MS-DOS boot was necessary because the computer required an operating system
to run the installation program and gain access to the disk drives. However
with the introduction of Windows PE it includes Windows Preinstallation
Environment 3.0.
Windows PE
3.0 is a bare bones operating system, based on the Windows 7 kernel. The following
are distinct advantages to Windows PE 3.0:
- Native 32-bit or 64-bit support
- Native 32-bit or 64-bit driver support
- Internal networking support
- Internal NTFS support
- Scripting Language support
- Flexible boot options
Because
Windows PE was never intended to function as a full time operating system there
are some inherent limitations. Windows PE does not support the entire
collection of Win32 APIs as a full installation of Windows 7 does.
The chapter
goes through how to perform a clean installation, installing third party Device
Drivers, working with Installation partitions, and using Windows Easy Transfer.
The last portion is about Upgrading Windows 7 and performing a dual boot
installation.
I found the
chapter to have a lot of good information. The material was presented
systematically with a lot of notes and examples. It was a good foundation
chapter.
