Win7 vs WinXP install time

[andyofne]

I know this isn't news to anyone but I had to load a WinXP Pro SP3 box and a Win7 Pro 32bit box today at work. The hardware was almost identical, same basic config. The biggest difference I'd guess would be the size of the hard drives. The XP box has a 320gb primary drive while the Win7 box has a 160gb drive.

I started the install at 4:33pm, I started the clock timer after sticking the CD/DVDs in the drives and waiting for the first dialogue boxes to appear.

At 443pm the WinXP machine estimated that it had 39 minutes left. Meanwhile, the Win7 box was restarting after 'completing' the install.

At 445pm the Win7 box was prompting me to create a user name and a computer name. The XP box was still saying it estimated 34 minutes to finish the install. Just as I clicked to the next window on the Win7 box the XP box prompted me for settings. Interestingly enough, both computers prompted me for the activation code at the same exact time: 447pm.

After setting the clocks, windows XP was still estimating 32 minutes while Win7 was preparing my desktop.

At 449PM, I was completely logged into the Win7 box and could start using it. Meanwhile, WinXP wanted me to pick network settings.

Remember, both computers had the same motherboard, RAM, and video card (a shitty PCIe Radeon X700).

The Win7 box had all the hardware drivers already installed and was ready for action. I then started the Windows Updates on the 7 box.

At 456pm, the XP box finally rebooted itself. At 457pm, I finally got into the Windows desktop and checked the hardware driver situation. I needed to then load the Audio, video, and network drivers off CDs. After that, I had 65 'express' updates to download and install.

By 5:35, I was still running 'express' updates on the Windows XP box. I gave up watching the clock at that point. I had already installed some apps on the Win7 box, configured it to access my 7TB ISCSI target and started populating data into the DB on the machine.

I left the office at 605pm and had just finished the final download / install of all updates for the XP box.

I thought it was kind of interesting how some of the events were time coincident during the install but in the end, even if you don't want to run updates, Win7 (with a bigger footprint) installs so much faster than XP.

I have no idea why I'm posting this. It isn't news. lol I just thought it was interesting.