Datasheet

20 Chapter 1
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Installing Windows 7
installed, the hardware items and their confi guration, the services that are running,
and any profi le and policy settings.
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Back up your data and confi guration fi les. Before you make any major changes to your
computer’s confi guration, you should back up your data and confi guration fi les and
then verify that you can successfully restore your backup. Chances are, if you have a
valid backup, you won’t have any problems. Likewise, if you don’t have a valid backup,
you will likely have problems.
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Delete any unnecessary fi les or applications, and clean up any program groups or
program items you don’t use. Theoretically, you want to delete all the junk on your
computer before you upgrade. Think of this as the spring-cleaning step.
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Verify that there are no existing problems with your hard drive prior to the upgrade.
Perform a disk scan, a current virus scan, and defragmentation. These, too, are
spring-cleaning chores. This step just prepares your hard drive for the upgrade.
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Perform the upgrade. In this step, you upgrade from the Windows Vista operating
system to Windows 7.
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Verify your confi guration. After Windows 7 has been installed, use the inventory to
compare and test each element that was inventoried prior to the upgrade to verify that
the upgrade was successful.
Handling an Upgrade Failure
Before you upgrade, you should have a contingency plan in place. Your plan should
assume the worst-case scenario. For example, what happens if you upgrade and the
computer doesn’t work anymore? It is possible that, after checking your upgrade list
and verifying that everything should work, your attempt at the actual upgrade may not
work. If this happens, you may want to return your computer to the original, working
confi guration.
Indeed, I have made these plans, created my backups (two, just in case), verifi ed them,
and then had a failed upgrade anyway—only to discover that I had no clue where to fi nd
the original operating system CD. A day later, with the missing CD located, I was able to
get up and running again. My problem was an older BIOS, and the manufacturer of my
computer did not have an updated BIOS.
Disk Partitioning
Disk partitioning is the act of taking the physical hard drive and creating logical partitions. A
logical drive is how space is allocated to the drive’s primary and logical partitions. For example,
if you have a 500-GB hard drive, you might partition it into three logical drives: a C: drive,
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