Windows 7 Release Canidate This Week!

[Kimiko]

Windows 7 Release Candidate will be available Tuesday, May 5th for download to the public according to a Microsoft press release.

Source here:
Windows 7 Release Candidate Is Available From Microsoft: Industry experts advise partners, companies and developers to preview Microsoft’s next operating system.

[Epical]

Yay finally I'll put my W7 partition to use! I was waiting for a stable, non-beta release to come out.

[virusiidx]

The RC1 has been out for about week already for MSDN and technet subscribers. Just gotta search for release 7100. It's actually been pretty stable for me so far. I've been running it on my laptop since 7077 and had no problems so far. It recognized all my hardware right away. An RC is still technically a beta btw.

[Kryssan]

I had my fun beta testing Vista through all of it's stages, I'll be waiting for Windows 7 to be a full release before I do anything with it. Honestly probably not going to touch it for a while though because I have no issues with my Vista setups.



Out of curiousity has anyone tested 3rd party/unsigned drivers in Windows 7? Are we still going to have to use a program like Readydriver because they disabled the BCD edit (at least in the 64 bit versions since SP1, anyway~ why I dunno)...

[Surealistic]

windows 7 takes vista and bends it over backwards

vista i had to fight to get it to go online cause i needed motherboard drivers, network card drivers, some other drivers, and then some other crap

windows 7 was downloading my video card drivers on its own before i knew what was going on

as for unsigned drivers, i was able to use some vista drivers for some things like my logitech dinovo keyboard set with no issues at all, and was using vista nvidia drivers for windower support in ffxi (worked better than the actual win7 drivers)

only issue ive had so far is with my audigy 2zs sound card, i have to use my onboard sound as creative sucks ass with driver support, so yeah


ill say it now, microsoft can basically open my wallet and take whatever they want, i will pay it gladly for windows 7 the day its released

[Ratatapa]

need technet + to download?


i am a technet member and the download button is greyed out

[Tythera]

I'm thinking about giving it another try come Tuesday. When I tried...7052 I think it was most of the drivers for my PC worked but I had one ? device that I never did figure out what it was. From what I can tell it was the HDMI support on my video card because the box wasn't there on the Win7 install. Maybe it'll work this time around.

The only other thing I don't like is the gay start menu, they got rid of the good one

[izembo]

it wouldnt recognize my speakers, so hoping that is fixed <_<

[Furtwangler]

so 3 questions,

1) I'm not a member of Technet, when/where else can I get this?

2) I have a laptop with XP that badly needs reformatting, The manufacturer's(sager) website has vista 32 and 64bit drivers because it was an option when I bought it to get vista, can I install 7 and use those drivers?

3)I have a Geforce7950 GTX vid card, will it just use DX9?

[Tythera]

1) Somewhere on MS's website on Tuesday the 5th

2) Maybe, some work and some don't

3) I assume so

[Epical]

so 3 questions,

1) I'm not a member of Technet, when/where else can I get this?

2) I have a laptop with XP that badly needs reformatting, The manufacturer's(sager) website has vista 32 and 64bit drivers because it was an option when I bought it to get vista, can I install 7 and use those drivers?

3)I have a Geforce7950 GTX vid card, will it just use DX9?

1) On May 5 W7 will be available to everyone via the Microsoft site.

2) Not sure, I haven't used W7 extensively myself, but I do remember something about successfully being able to use Vista drivers?

3) Yes.

[Quixotic]

To answer 2, yes you can use vista drivers. Been using W7 since beta 7000 came out and the only real problem I've had was that iTunes runs kinda funky but it's not that big of a deal to me since I only use it to update my phone.

[Furtwangler]

cool thanks fellas

[octopus]

need technet + to download?

i am a technet member and the download button is greyed out

I have a subscription with my visual studio professional and I can download it. Also, maybe this is obvious to you, but just in case - you have to use IE to download from MSDN...

[Ratatapa]

well doesn't mather much cuz i'm not MSDN or technet + hehe so i'll wait tomorrow

[Furtwangler]

this may seem like a dumb question but I don't need any kind of serial or registration code do I? My situation is I have xp and it needs a reformat bad but I don't have my XP Disc (its a sager so I need a Sager/Midern CD to use the serial I have) so I want to just give 7 a whirl. I don't feel like paying for another OS and want to stay windows so I can just use the 7 RC until they cut it off next year right? Edit: also, I just read on wiki that the beta had disabled using other codecs through WMP, think that the RC will do this as well?

[Ratatapa]

RC is suppose to be a like 85%-90% of full version so i doubt it will be locked

As for the reg key, Windows 7 will be free to use until June 2010 (the RC1 version)

After that you will have to buy the real version if it's out or downgrade to vista or XP.

Now i hope (pretty sure it will be) that if Real version gets out while RC1 is on or quickly after, that you can upgrade RC1 to full version without formating

I don't see why they wouldn't do that but meh never know with M$

[Epical]

It's up. Windows 7 Release Candidate Customer Preview Program

[Kimiko]

Yeah, problem is in order to install from XP. You have to clean wipe the OS then install from that point. Way to fail M$...

[aers]

I wouldn't want to do an upgrade from XP > 7 anyway, too much potential for things to break. Been running the RC for a week now, it's been solid.