Starting Monday Feb. 24th 2009, updates are available for those lucky souls using Windows 7 Beta. The updates can be found by going to Start/All Programs/Windows Updates, as they are not being announced or installed via Automatic Updates. It must be done manually.
Reports that the updates don’t change anything and are only a “pseudo-refresh†seemed somewhat inaccurate. â€Starting February 24, we will be releasing up to 5 test updates to PCs running the Windows 7 Beta (Build 7000) via Windows Update. These updates allow us to test and verify our ability to deliver and manage the updating of Windows 7. We typically verify servicing scenarios during a betaâ€, said Brandon LeBlanc. Instead of the “up to 5†announced updates, I was presented with 35 suggested updates which downloaded and installed in approximately 25 minutes.
Maybe the additional updates came after the initial 5 on the 24th. I didn’t check for these until Feb. 25th. There seemed to be additional steps being taken during the reboot after the updates were installed. Windows threw up a warning to “DO NOT TURN OFF THE COMPUTER†during the configuration stage before rebooting and again after rebooting. I don’t remember this being a part of previous MS updates.
After the initial suggested updates, there were the usual “optional” updates which I also choose to install. I was surprised to see two suggested driver updates, one for my Nvidia 8800GTX video card and another for my secondary Acer monitor. Both of these drivers installed without incident and were confirmed in Device Manager. I had some trepidation during the Video driver installation as I was running 64 bit Windows.
For confirmation I went to my device manager after the installation and choose to “roll back†to the previous driver. This also went without a hitch. The important part of this is that everything proceeded without trauma. Updates installed, drivers Installed, restore points were created, drivers rolled back.
Keep it coming MS, it’s all good.
*I ‘m happy to confirm real updates and driver updates on the Microsoft Update Product Team Blog.
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