On Friday night, I upgraded my system to Windows 7. I paid NZD 495 for a full retail Windows 7 Ultimate. The upgrade was more eventful than I expected. I realise there are going to be problems being an early adopter, but the stories I’ve heard so far had been reasonably positive.

I’m concerned with the fact that the upgrade instructions ask the user to leave the machine connected to the internet, but disables the antivirus software. I can understand the potential complications that the security software may cause, but the internet is a hostile environment where machines can be infected within minutes without the user doing anything. I reluctantly followed the instruction.

The first time I ran the upgrade, it ended up with a compatibility error. The Asus Security Protect Manager is not compatible with Windows 7. Several other applications are flagged as potentially problematic. I uninstalled the Asus Security Protect Manager and re-ran the upgrade. This time it ran successfully. It took a couple of hours to upgrade my Asus F8VA.

The first problem I had was that Gadgets wouldn’t load. I also had some data in the Notes gadget that I hadn’t saved. Luckily, the Notes data can still be found in C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Settings.ini. To reset Gadgets, load the file up into Notepad and delete its content.

The webcam on my laptop has also stopped working. It’s identified as a USB2.0 1.3M UVC WebCam. To be more specific, its a Chicony CNF6150 (USB\VID_04F2&PID_B033). There is no Windows 7 driver available for it at this time. However, Microsoft includes a generic UVC driver (usbvideo.sys) that seems to work just fine. To update the driver, I had to uninstall the existing ones; with the ‘Delete the driver software for this device.‘ option selected. Then, perform a scan for hardware changes. The generic UVC driver should be installed automatically. If the existing driver software was not deleted, they will get reinstalled instead of the generic UVC driver as the old drivers are considered a better match.

Virtual PC is now integrated into Windows 7. It has improved functionality but is missing the folder sharing feature that I used quite a bit. It supports drive sharing but I didn’t want that. I resorted to manual file sharing configuration.

iTunes was identified as potentially problematic but I do not have any problems with it. I upgraded it to the latest version and it ran quite happily.

These are early days yet. I’ll keep you posted if I come across any other problems.

Problems aside, I quite like Windows 7. I love the new taskbar; it changes the way I use my computer. The search feature also seems to work better; a feature that I avoided using in Vista.

This morning, I was having trouble uploading photos onto Flickr. It looked as though the photo was transferred successfully, but then it reported that the upload failed. My mind kicked into troubleshooting mode, trying to work out what could be wrong. Windows Live Photo Gallery has never been very robust when it comes to publishing photos onto Flickr. So, I tried Flickr Uploadr instead. Same problem. I started to think it’s a server side issue. Attempting to upload from the web interface produces the exact same symptoms, confirming my suspicions. It became a waiting game. I retried several times, but the situation remained the same. It got me extremely frustrated. I had wanted to get all the photos uploaded by the end of the day.

Rather than continue waiting, I decided to go play badminton instead. There is no telling when the problem will be sorted.

After I got back from playing badminton, I retried the upload. No change.

I started thinking if something else could be the problem. The help listed a corrupt photo as a potential cause for a failed upload, amongst others. At first, I didn’t think much of it as I could view the photo just fine. However, after reconsidering all the symptoms, a corrupt photo seems like a possible explanation. I skipped that first photo, and voila. The other photos uploaded just fine.

Taking a break can sometimes be the more productive option. It helps clear your mind so that you can see things in a different light. I frequently find myself in similar situations at work. Faced with an impossible problem, having exhausted all possible solutions I could think of, I would simply leave it. You might be surprise how you will start to see the problem differently when you come back to it.