I had my first run-in with Windows 7 today... and it wasn't a pleasant experience.

I was tasked with assembling a PC for a friend using a pile of run-of the mill parts from the local cheap computer store, MSY. It was all pretty typical stuff, E8400 CPU, ASUS PQ5 motherboard, 4GB of RAM, 1TB hard drive and a Thermaltake extra-fancy case.

It went together without too much trouble, apart form the heat-sink pins not locking into place, requiring application of more force than I'd like... eventually they locked in.

Then it came time to install Windows. The prospective owner had originally intended to buy an OEM license, but due to a lack of them so close to the launch date, an upgrade edition of Home Pro was acquired.

So, once the shiny new PC had posted and the CPU tempts were steady, in went the Windows CD. Clean install was selected, and after about 15 or 20 minutes of the computer sitting on a "please wait" screen doing what appeared to be nothing, it was finally time to click next, enter the user details and hit install. Another 20 minutes passed and it was reboot time.

Invalid key?

Once the computer had come back up, it asked for the license key, which we dutifully entered it from the card inside the Windows pack. OK was clicked, and a few seconds later we were informed that the license was invalid.

Invalid? It was a brand new copy!

Googling the problem found many other people with the same issue. It seems that the upgrade version of Windows Home Pro should not be installed on a freshly formatted hard drive, despite the installer allowing just that. The only way the Home Pro installer will work is if it is started from within a logged-in version of Windows.

Did Microsoft actually test the installer?

Apparently not, or the installer wouldn't have allowed the installation to proceed in the first place.

I took a look at the Microsoft's help forum, which had many similar complaints, interspersed with a repeated, cut-and-paste solution from the harried help desk staff that informed the unlucky PC owners that their best solution was to shell out for another copy of Windows, this time with a license key that would actually allow them to install it.

That's some real helpful advice there. Too bad, so sad.

Some people have more recently posted a "workaround" on the forum. If you've experience this problem, then you can bypass the issue by installing Windows 7 twice.

Seriously.

Do a clean install the first time, then boot into Windows and kick off an upgrade install, it doesn't matter if you've tried to put the key in or not. The Windows installer just checks that you've already got Windows, not that it's licensed, so it'll meet the requirements of the upgrade edition and install, then when logging in, the supplied license key will actually work.

Update 03 November, 2009: Since writing this, I've found out that it installing a Windows PC this way probably isn't legal, and what to do about it if you are faced with this situation.

The problems continue...

More than four hours into the install, with the machine finally booting, a new problem appeared. We were trying to copy the World of Warcraft install off of the old hard drive from the broken machine onto the new one (both plugged into SATA) when some very strange behaviour appeared.

The total size of the copy was about 15GB, and as it proceeded the progress bar crept across the screen. Once it had gotten pretty close to 100% the machine started asking if we wanted to overwrite the files.

Overwrite files? An entire file structure was being copied from the old drive into a new folder created on the new drive! There was nothing to overwrite!

Calling the bluff, we clicked yes. Then yes again when the second request appeared, then yes again and so on, eventually ticking the box to automate the process.

The copy, which had been nearly complete, continued for another 15 minutes before we cancelled it, wondering what on earth Windows 7 was up to.

Comparing the source and destination folders showed that the destination drive had only received 12GB of data spread across more than 4,000 files. The source folder however only contained about 3,500 files, totalling 15GB.

Somewhere along the line Windows 7 was manufacturing lots of extra files...

Conclusion?

The system was up and running but alas, my worst case time allocation of six hours to install Windows 7 had expired and it was time for me to leave, despite the Windows-7-can't-copy-files-properly mystery.

The PC owner, someone who had seen Linux, but barely used it, had, near the end of our saga, suggested wiping Windows 7 and just going with Ubuntu. After all, there wasn't really anything they were doing with Windows that Ubuntu couldn't do. In the end Windows was saved by the bell, when the license key finally took.

As I walked out the door, Windows 7 seemed to be hanging together, but I suspect it should remain on best behaviour from here on out...

If you've had a run-in with Windows 7, then maybe you'd like to check out my impressions of Ubuntu 9.10, Karmic Koala, both good and bad, as an alternative.