So, it turns out I have completely wasted the last three days.

I kind of got sucked into installing windows 7 on my CAD box, as I need more memory now than XP can give me. I had a spare 80GB SSD, and foolishly thought I could use that to put a fresh install of Win7 onto, with the idea of making the machine dual bootable so I could switch from one to the other until I migrated everything across. There is a LOT of specialist software on the thing, it takes a good three days solid to install everything from scratch even if there are no problems encountered.

Add to that the complexity of all the graphics cards, device programmers, serial ports, instrumentation, etc, and it's a major pain in the arse getting everything working. Which is why I have been struggling with XP for so long rather than upgrading before

I have an extremely comprehensive backup system running, so in theory the risk to my data is minimal, but I didn't want any more downtime than I could avoid. I managed to restore a full system backup into a virtualbox VM, which worked surprisingly well, and the idea was to run windows 7 with a functional copy of the old XP machine in a virtualised form, with the actual xp installation as a backup.

It went quite well, at first...

After a couple of false starts I got 7 installed on the ssd, and spend two days installing all the software I could remember from the old machine, with all the other drives disconnected. When it was more or less ready with the major stuff installed, I only had one program that wouldn't work, and one piece of hardware (see previous post ). Then I made the mistake of plugging the old drives back in so I could copy my email settings, etc across. Bad mistake.

It worked as far as that was concerned, but when I rebooted the machine into XP to get some serial numbers everything started to fall down. The XP installation started complaining about unreadable or damaged files, ones I know for a fact were fine before Windows 7 started stirring the filesystem. When I ran chkdsk on all three original drives, ALL of them have bad files, directories, and MFT entries.

So I rebooted into windows 7 to see what it's version of chkdsk would say (and yes, I know enough not to run it in write mode on an XP disk). Except it won't boot. At all.

Blue screens instantly and resets the machine. I videoed the reboot process and was able to read the message, which was, in effect, "Something went wrong but we don't know what, rebooting". It goes into the repair manager, which will allow me to repair the OS, except that it can't see one.

At all.

Completely empty list. I tried in the end going into the command prompt, and drive C (the SSD at this point) is apparently corrupt and unreadable. Chkdsk is currently chewing on it, and is apparently rewriting every attribute of every file on the thing, and will probably destroy the FS completely.

It looks to me like microsoft have produced a pair of OSes that are so incompatible with each other that they fight to the death when on the same machine. Not at all helpful.

It's possible the SSD picked that moment to have a wobbly, but that doesn't explain why the XP installation bit it as well. SO it looks like I will have to reformat the whole bloody machine, and restore the original XP installation from the thankfully very complete and recent backup, and give up on windows 7. Annoying

pca

I really don't think they could/would be that incompatible. I've certainly never had issues dual booting XP and 7.

I'm tipping something more like the SSD went out. But that probably wouldn't explain the errors you saw in your XP installation.

FWIW : I do rate Windows 7 over XP. I had been on XP on my work machine until January. New machine and Windows 7 came with it. Of course it's newer hardware, SSD etc but still I think 7 contributes significantly.

I can't possibly explain what happened in your setup. I can only think of two responses:

1- I wouldn't trust Windows with anything other than a brand new installation on a blank drive (if dual-booting, doing two clean installs). It's too messy for me to trust Windows with anything more complicated.

2- Windows 7 is without a doubt my favorite version of Windows ever made. I know others disagree, and I really liked 2000, but 7 is the one for me.

Basically, I'm saying your subject line isn't wrong, it just might be a little too unspecific

As far as I'm concerned, Windows 8 is a complete and utter failure. If Microsoft doesn't do a better job with 9/whatever, I'm moving away from Windows entirely or running Windows 7 until it stops getting security updates...

It seems Microsoft's OS's have the Star Trek Film curse, every other one is crap. :-)

Yeah, but at least with Windows ME, there was Windows 2000 as an option. With Windows 8, you've got no options (other than Linux or OSX, both of which are looking really attractive by comparison right now). Microsoft are going to have to hussle Windows vNext out of the door to get past this snafu.

Well, there's your problem. I gave up on dual booting about 12 years ago. I either use a VM or I use another computer (of which I'm not short, and -- I suspect -- neither are you).

Doesn't look like Blue will make people happy though if their main complaint about 8 is TAFKAM (the artist formally known as Metro).

I tried going to Windows 8 on my Mac Pro (on the Wintendo partition), but the upgrade failed. Still on 7 there, and at work now. I do like the under the hood improvements in 8, and I do like the TAFKAM interface when on a tablet. I just haven't spent enough time to properly judge it on the desktop.

I do get some amusement out of people warning that one day Apple was going to merge iOS and OS X, irritating millions of Mac users. Seems Microsoft rushed ahead with that plan instead.

The combination of Windows 8 (with new Windows being a primary PC sales driver), the rise of tablets, and the race to the bottom in the PC space may mean we are looking at a mini implosion here soon. The next few years are going to be interesting in any case.

For me, I have three complaints about 8.

1- "When I click this thing, where will I end up?" I can be in "Metro" or the desktop, and I'll never know if clicking on something will take me to the other interface. This is fundamentally a terrible UI design.

2- Metro is nice and frankly I wouldn't mind using it, but as far as I can tell Microsoft has made it difficult for users to replace elements with non-Microsoft pieces. Using Google products in the Metro UI is nearly impossible.

3- I cannot get used to full-screen computing. I NEED a windowed interface. Just this morning I was working between four Windows - all of which I could see at the same time on my 30" monitor. Windows 8 does not care about me in this regard. It's either full screen or a 2/3rds-1/3rds mode. Ugh.

Suggestion: maybe you could try XP 64-bit? That should give you access to all the memory you need AND keep you 'compatible' with your other software.

Unlikely: it's the 64-bit-ness that causes the incompatibility with most older software and drivers. Since XP x64 never really received any love (it was a re-tread of Windows 2003 x64) you're more likely to find supported drivers on Vista x64 or Windows 7 x64, if they've been updated at all.

It's so odd how small of a blip that version made! Seems like it was out for a second and nobody got it.

Actually, I have an install disc for it here, but I think it spent about 5 months on one system a long time ago...

It was mostly used on workstation machines that contained hardware similar to servers (and thus had drivers even dating back to 2000 era). OEMs didn't give it much attention for consumer machines because they believed the initial shipping estimates of Vista provided by Microsoft. Then Windows security became a massive internet degrading problem, and Vista was very delayed. OEMs still avoided XP 64bit and the consumer world got to experience the full pain of hitting the 4gb barrier.

Clearly I irritated the Microsoft gods with something here. Soon after my laptop went to sleep, and didn't wake properly.

It's been painful going back to such a fragile OS. I know sleep problems can occur, but it's frustrating to see work also disappear because of it. If my Mac fails in the same way (and it has), all I have to do is reboot, type a password, and all my work is back. Including unsaved work in text editors. The only inconvenience is reestablishing any SSH sessions. And this came in as part of the "iOSification of OS X". Frankly, I'll take that over the Metroficiation of Windows.