Installing Win 7 for first time -- tips?

[guncrasher]

man, I am glad nobody asked if the beer taste great or is less filling.  imagine the fights in here?  you guys gotta stop trying to up each other and actually help whoever is asking.  when I first joined here there was lots of good help, now lots of people wont post due to the never-ending arguments that help no one.


semp

[Skuzzy]

ink, standard versions of windows xp will only recognize up to 3gb of total system memory (including the video card)...without tweaking anything.<snip>

No, that is not quite right.  Windows XP does recognize all 4GB of system RAM, but the 32 bit version of the OS can only *directly* address 4GB of RAM.  In order for all the other RAM in the computer (video card, sound buffers, any other hardware buffers, system BIOS and other BIOS's...) they have to be mapped in the 4GB address space, thus reducing the physical amount of system RAM as all the other RAM overlaps that space.

You can directly subtract the amount of video RAM your video card has from the 4GB limit and this gives you an idea of what the absolute amount of system RAM the CPU will be able to use for programs/data.  All the other bits and pieces in the computer will normally take away about 300MB (+/- 128MB) of RAM.

The reason Windows 7 32 bit will allow all 4GB of RAM to be used is due to Microsoft finally using (the standard is over 10 years old, for crying out loud) the Intel PAE (physcal address extension) instructions to allow a 32 bit kernal to physically address up to 64GB of RAM.  However, the access speed to the addresses above 4GB is much slower than the addresses below 4GB.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

corporate world is different...for the most part...and it depends on the company, as well as a person's position within that company...try telling your ceo that he can't install something he wants on his company owned computer.

You claim I'm clueless only to proceed to talk from non-corporate examples out of nowhere. Perhaps you should re-read the original question. Everyone knows that schools are like night and day compared to a corporation.

Of course corporations as themselves are no guarantee of best practises, far from it. It still doesn't mean they wouldn't shoot themselves in the leg by letting users install random crap.

Restrictions applies naturally to people who the IT administration administers, not their own superiors lol! If the corp administration chooses to install non-secure or non-relevant software they do it at their own risk. They have only the shareholders and a bunch of angry clients to answer to if they manage to infect the company network and corp secrets ooze out to wrong hands

[gyrene81]

You claim I'm clueless only to proceed to talk from non-corporate examples out of nowhere. Perhaps you should re-read the original question. Everyone knows that schools are like night and day compared to a corporation.

Of course corporations as themselves are no guarantee of best practises, far from it. It still doesn't mean they wouldn't shoot themselves in the leg by letting users install random crap.

Restrictions applies naturally to people who the IT administration administers, not their own superiors lol! If the corp administration chooses to install non-secure or non-relevant software they do it at their own risk. They have only the shareholders and a bunch of angry clients to answer to if they manage to infect the company network and corp secrets ooze out to wrong hands

i came from the corporate i.t. world...as did a large number of my current co-workers...in my department (i.t. services) we follow best practices for enterprise application and network security...we're so tight about it even people within our department need to ask permission to do some things.

my first 2 years in an academic i.t. department at another university had me pulling my hair out...no firewall, no front end virus scanning, no spam filtering...it was all reliant on the end users to use common sense which didn't exist...i actually had staff and faculty forwarding virus infected files to me asking if they were viruses after i sent out multiple highly descriptive emails of what practices needed to be followed for all email... 

[MrRiplEy[H]]

i came from the corporate i.t. world...as did a large number of my current co-workers...in my department (i.t. services) we follow best practices for enterprise application and network security...we're so tight about it even people within our department need to ask permission to do some things.

my first 2 years in an academic i.t. department at another university had me pulling my hair out...no firewall, no front end virus scanning, no spam filtering...it was all reliant on the end users to use common sense which didn't exist...i actually had staff and faculty forwarding virus infected files to me asking if they were viruses after i sent out multiple highly descriptive emails of what practices needed to be followed for all email...  

Lol! That's hilarious with the forwarded files  

At least you don't have to work with the kids that are just getting to puberty. Those critters will find a way to destroy any computer no matter what you do. I've seen boxes booted to linux just to cause havoc - or just random vandalization of hardware.