The Professor's Notes

After further review it appears my initial install troubles would have been avoided had I installed the device drivers for the SATA drives that I was NOT going to use when installing Win 7.  It seems to have installed, but a brief heart-skip when I saw a “blue Screen of Death” (BSOD) with a USB error (perhaps the mouse problem?)  Unfortunately, the Microsoft tech forum I checked with made no mention of this possibility/problem.  And it wasn’t on the forefront of my thought, since I wasn’t planning to install to those drives anyway.  Make no mistake–I should have thought about it, but on the other hand, the “average” user won’t think about this either.  Read more after the break

This time, I have a clean install, and the dual boot option letting me get back to Win Vista is there.  Once again, it stepped me through setting up the user name, password, time zone and the product key (will it burp since I already tried this once?)  I paid close attention while typing the information into the computer, since it allows for the use of the mouse.

Yup.  The Microsoft USB Laser Mouse 6000 is working on those screens.

I was greeted with a screen telling me that it had recovered from a critical error (assuming the BSOD), and I was able to move my mouse pointer to click on the appropriate responses.  I was also then notified that there are system updates available.  Again, I selected those and they are installing.

Win 7 correctly identified the webcam attached to my computer, and started the update for those drivers, and installing Microsoft Live Essentials (after checking with me that I would want it–thanks Microsoft!)

I will probably write more about Live Essentials later (and definitely talk about them on the podcast).  The selection I will definitely install are the Movie Maker and Photo Gallery, as well as Silverlight.  I prefer Thunderbird for my email client so I will most likely not install the Mail app, or even MS Messenger.

So far this re-installation is going much more smoothly.  More to follow.