Preparing for your Windows 7 Upgrade This guide aims to help you prepare the necessary records and data backups prior to the Windows 7 upgrades which will be taking place soon.

Share Drives These are the folders where information that is shared throughout you department is stored. To find which shared drives you have: From your desktop click on “My Computer”.

Under Network drives you will see a list of all of the shared drives that your computer connects to.

Write on a piece of paper the names of all of these drives, changing the format slightly. For example (K): Bigtemp on ‘Ness’ should be written down as \\ness\Bigtemp , (H): ea7 on ‘ness\is’ should be written down as \\ness\is\ea7 . When the upgrade is complete follow this guide to re-map your drives, http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/docs/software/MapNetworkDrive-Staff.pdf .

Save local files Any files saved on a network drive are not stored on your computer, and will be unaffected by the upgrade. Any files stored on your desktop or C drive will be deleted forever with no possibility of recovery. It is therefore very important to copy any important files from your C drive to your home folder. Click on “My Computer”.

Click on your H: drive

Now click on “File” then “New”, then “Folder” to create a new folder. Name this folder Data Transfer, then open it and keep it at one side of the screen.

Now all that remains is to copy any files from your desktop or C: drive to this new folder. You can do this by simply dragging the file and then dropping it into the Data Transfer folder. Anything copied into this folder is stored on the network, and will be safe during the upgrade. Please note that anything on your desktop with a small black arrow in the bottom left hand corner is just a short cut. Copying these shortcuts will not copy the file or program associated with the shortcut. For example, below we can see a shortcut for “Adobe Acrobat X Pro”. Copying this shortcut into the home folder will not copy the program; all you will have is this little picture.

Non-standard software After the upgrade your computer will have Microsoft Office 2010, Microsoft Forefront antivirus, Flash, Adobe Reader 10 and Java installed. Any other piece of software is classed as non- standard. Any non-standard software or software that you have installed from run advertised programs will need to be re-installed after the upgrade. Please write down the names of all software that you have installed from run advertised programs. When the update is complete you can re-install these programs by going to Start >Control Panel > Run Advertised Programs. Highlight the relevant piece of software and then click “Run”. It may appear that nothing is happening, but the program should be installing in the background. Where software has not been installed from run advertised programs, make sure that you have the media and license codes at hand, if the media is a .exe file save it to your home folder, prior to the upgrade. When the upgrade is complete simply re-install the software using the disc or installer file under a local admin account. To create a local admin account Click on Start >Control Panel > Run Advertised programs, then select Create Local Admin Account. This will generate a user name and password with admin privileges which will last for 1 hour. Use these details to log on to your machine and install the software. If you have iTunes installed please save your iTunes folder, this can be located at My Computer > C: > Program Files > iTunes. As these folders tend to be quite large I would not recommend that you save this file to your home folder, a memory pen or other offline storage may be more appropriate. When the upgrade is complete just install iTunes again and replace the standard iTunes folder with this one.

Outlook archive file This file will be permanently deleted during the upgrade. It is therefore important to save this file to your home folder prior to the upgrade. When the upgrade is complete move this file back to the same location on your C: drive. To find the location of your outlook archive file open outlook locate the folder called archive, right click on it and then click on properties.

Now click “Advanced”.

In the field next to file name you will see the path to your archive file.

Go to this location and copy the file to your home folder. When the upgrade is complete, copy the file to your H: drive, in a folder called “Outlook”.

Network printers Write down on a piece of paper the addresses of all the printers attached to your machine. To find these paths click on Start > Settings > Printers and Faxes.

This will open a window which will give you a list of all printers installed on your machine.

Much like the network folders we need to change the format of these names a little. So mplib25 on print 1 becomes \\print1\mplib25\. When the upgrade is complete just click on start then type, one at a time, these print names into the search bar and press enter. This will add the printer back in again. A guide can be found here http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/docs/software/AddPrinterWindow7.pdf . Internet Favourites You will need to export your internet favourites, and save them on your home folder. This guides refers to Internet Explorer, the same applies to any other browser. Open internet explorer then click on “Favorites”, the little arrow next to “Add to Favorites”, then click on “Import and Export”.

Click on “Export a file” then click “Next.

Place a tick next to the items you wish to save, the most common is “Favorites”, then click “Next”.

Select the items that you wish to save.

Now select a save location for the exported file, it is best to choose a location on your h: drive, then click “Export”.

This screen will confirm that the process has completed successfully, click “Finish” to end the process.

When the upgrade process is complete you can import the file to re-instate your favourites by going through the same process, this time choosing “Import from a file”.