• Home
• About
• Advertise
• Contact
• Search

Reviewing Microsoft Windows 7 on a Lenvo X200s

by Mats Hellman on 10.Jul, 2009 under Windows, Windows 7

The time has come for me to take a look at Microsofts brand spanking new operating system Windows 7. Yesterday I decided to take a look at Windows 7. Since my experience with Windows Vista hasn’t been a good one, and reading about Windows 7 has given me some hope that this might be the one to finally replace Windows XP in our corporate environment. Windows 7 is still in RC (Release Candidate) status so you should not expect a fully working operating system.

First of all I ran the Vistas answer to XP’s Files and Settings transfer wizard, the Easy Transfer. I’m used to do this with User State Migration tool but for a user Easy transfer is really what the name says, it’s easy. And the options to select what you really want migrated so you can save some space is a great new feature.

After migration I rebooted my Vista 64 Enterprise and slammed in the Windows 7 installation DVD. The installation kicks of and if you’ve done a Vista install this is no different. It’s not fast as many Linux installations but I don’t find it slow either, compared to a full Windows XP installation. After about 20 minutes I had my Windows 7 desktop in front of me. Looking at the standard desktop makes me think of KDE I’ve used so many times in my Linux computers.

Adding to domain

Next I had to add my laptop to our corporate domain, and this wasn’t a problem. I was amazed to see all our default software policies like Adobe Reader, Java, Flash and antivirus getting deployed when the computer rebooted. Wow! And everything even works. So next I imported my settings with Easy transfer and after the reboot I had my documents and settings back. Everything fine so far.

Hardware and drivers

As I said, Windows 7 is still in RC status so getting drivers isn’t a walk in the park. I also chose a not so compatible computer to install it on. I went to Lenovo’s site to get some Vista 64 drivers and they seem to work fine. My Ericsson F3507G HSDPA card works like a charm, the fingerprint reader software works and I have no exclamation marks in device manger. All to god to be true? Well actually it isn’t. I’ve been struggling with Vista for 6 months now and it has never worked as good as the RC of Windows 7. The only Lenovo software I use and can’t get working is Access connections but I’m sure a working version will soon be released.

Looks

As I said in the beginning of this post, the desktop reminds me of KDE. Any way there are some really great improvements.  The taskbar for example, programs are now organized behind their icon which results in a less cluttered taskbar. Also the function to see and select your preferred window on hovering the icon is useful.

Performance

What interested me most in all the articles I read about Windows 7 was that it performed better than Windows Vista. It does, but at standard settings the result isn’t as great as all the hyped articles tell you. It does boot a little faster and getting to the stage were you can start working doesn’t take over a minute anymore. I won’t say it’s not good because I already prefer 7 over Vista and I’ve been using it for a day now.

Security

In my quick trial with Windows 7 this is where I noticed the biggest difference. UAC was a good idea that became an annoying function in Vista. Most users probably shut it down as soon as they installed Vista, it didn’t bother me that much but compared to the way Ubuntu or OS X handles the same functions it was not good either. This has been upgraded in Windows 7, UAC doesn’t jump in your face every time you want to change something and that’s an improvement.

BitLocker

I never tired BitLocker in Vista because I always forgot to partition my hard drive to support it. I was happy to see that I didn’t have to partition my drive in the install process to get BitLocker running in Windows 7. I activated Bitlocker and the encryption process does take forever, so if your in a hurry do it later. One cool new feature is BitLocker ToGo, it supports encrypting your USB drives, and this really makes us corporate administrators sleep better at night. We can now get an easy to use encryption software out to our users and that is something I look forward to.

Conclusion

Running Windows 7 has been a good experience for me. You might argue that using Vista for 6 months can make a man weird in ways hard to imagine but Windows 7 does feel like a step in the right direction. It performs better and handles better in every way in my opinion than it’s predecessor Windows Vista. It’s been a long time since I’ve looked forward to a Microsoft OS release but this time I am.

1 comment

Setting up Windows Deployment services environment part 2

by Mats Hellman on 09.Jul, 2009 under Windows, Windows Deployment

Well it’s been a while now since I wrote the first article on this topic. I’m really sorry this blog has been quiet for quite some time now. The reason is quite simple. The early morning of May 11 I got the privilege to watch the birth of my daughter. Since that day everything else has been on a second place and not really important. I’ve returned from my father leave now so I’ll try to get the articles coming in a normal timetable again. Once again, sorry about the delay but the follow-up articles are being written right now.

In the last article we installed Windows Automated installation toolkit on the technician computer and setup a master installation and we used sysprep to prepare the computer for imagex.

In this article

We will create a WinPE image we can use imagex from to create and deploy our image to the Windows Deployment server. We will also modify our WinPE image to contain the drivers we need. Remember the latest WinPE is basically Windows Vista so when you download the drivers take that in consideration.

First of all download and extract the drivers you need. Make note on where your .inf files are located.

Using the WinPE command prompt

Since we already have our master installation it’s now time to start creating a WinPE CD to use for capture. If you want to save the image directly to your WDS server you need to include the network drivers in this image also.

Start up your WinPE command prompt. First and foremost we need to get an working PE directory so running the command

Now that we have an PE folder on the drive we can modify it to contain programs we need. Like ImageX.

Adding drivers to WinPE 2

Before creating the ISO image we can burn we need to add the drivers we need to the WIM image. You have your drivers downloaded right? If you need a network connection you’ll have to provide the network drivers. Note that you really don’t have to use the network, you can import the image to the master installation computers hard drive also and after you boot it up move it across the network (I use this if I forget to add drivers). Anyway this is how you add the drivers.

First of all let’s say, for simplicity, that your network drivers .inf files are located in C:\Drivers\Network\WinALL\ and your WinPE .wim image as above in C:\WinPE_X86\winpe.wim. What you need to do first of all is mount the wim image to get it in read/write state so here is how you do it

Once that’s done we need to create our ISO image. So back to the terminal and run the following to create a ISO file using the winpe.wim and the content of the ISO folder.

Now you have a ISO file you can burn to a CD and boot from, the CD contains ImageX and the necessary drivers.

Follow Up

What we have done in this article is creating an WinPE 2 disk to use for capture, we added some drivers for networking and possibly chipsets to our image so it will recognize the hardware.

In the next article of this series we will capture our master image and import it to Windows Deployment server. Hope to see you next week when the series continues.

Leave a comment