[dsmith402]

wannabe, i must say sir you are a god. went to the store picked up a new optical drive, worked like a charm. did a clean install and wiped out my old pirated version of windows xp... now i just have to decided if windows 7 will be worth all this trouble because i did love my xp. once again thanks for all the help

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Outstanding!

Give yourself some time to learn your way around Windows 7. It's quite a jump forward from XP, but once you get used to it...I think you'll like it.

Always glad to lend a hand...

[wannabe1]

Outstanding!

Give yourself some time to learn your way around Windows 7. It's quite a jump forward from XP, but once you get used to it...I think you'll like it.

Always glad to lend a hand...

[dsmith402]

thanks i'll be sure to do that... just a couple questions about windows 7.... i have a 2 bay external hard drive and now it'll only read one side if both are in both i can change in out the hard drives to either side but only one will show up in my computer, any ideas if this has something to do with windows 7? also, do i have to use the windows terminal to use microsoft office? or is there a windows 7 version?

[wannabe1]

Is the same drive showing in the external when installed in either side? Or does it make any difference in which drive is installed?

The first thing I'd do is get Windows 7 all updated. It may be that it's lacking a compatible driver. The Win7 updates have managed to clear up nearly all the driver issues I've had. Sometimes it takes a day or two to get everything squared away.

There's also a pretty decent free AntiMalware/AntiVirus available from Microsoft. Microsoft Security Essentials

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Office is a stand alone application and is a little on the spendy side. However, with cloud computing becoming all the rage, you can do a lot of stuff online. Office Live (Note that there is a download for the Office 2010 beta at that link...it's a pretty slick program suite, though it's time limited and will eventually expire unless you decide to buy it.)

Open Office is an open source alternative to MS Office. Some folks like it better.

[dsmith402]

to get windows 7 completely updated do i just visit microsoft's website? heh, its been a very long time since i've had a legit copy of windows, heh oops

i think it only mattered what side the drive was in IF both were in the external case. however, if only one drive was in the external case it did not matter which side it was on

[wannabe1]

See if both drives show up in the Computer Management Console. With both drives installed in the external and with the external connected to the computer, click the Start Orb, right click on Computer, and choose Manage.

In the management console, expand Storage (if it isn't already expanded), and click on Disk Management. Once the virtual disk manager loads, are all your drives shown?

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Yup...just keep updating until it can't find any more. If you have Automatic Updates enabled, it will get all the updates it needs in the correct order over the next couple days.

[Pawanhammers]

I've installed Windows 7 over XP and it saved everything from the C drive in a folder call 'Windows Old'. And the other partitions were un-touched.