Under device manager the 1394 net adapter is enabled and "working properly".

CPU-Z was very interesting and listed the net adapter and "from Texas Instruments". I tried to find drivers from them but failed to find any for Ethernet devices.

In the Network Connection in the control panel the 1394 connection is working and connected online. But Firefox can't get online with that connection, only the local connection with USB.

I have e-mailed Gigabyte about this problem, but have yet to hear from them. It's a GA-MA78GM-S2H motherboard, installed in January.

Did you get a disk with your motherboard? That's where all the onboard device drivers were for the Gigabyte motherboard I used last February.

For what it's worth I'm playing Sacred 2 on Windows 7. It has "issues" mainly with dropping back to desktop without warning after about an hour of playing (found out the hard way when I lost a quest item because of it). Never had that problem with Vista. I also had to uninstall and re-install the game after I upgraded. The save I had while playing with Vista became unplayable after installing Windows 7 - which meant I had to start over - not necessairly a hardship but I did have some pretty neat armor and weapons with the old save - sigh.

I can't see any difference between Vista and Windows 7 to tell you the truth - still takes forever to boot up and I still can't find anything without hunting forever for it. Not all that impressed with this latest wonder child from Microsoft. Maybe it'll grow on me but right now I feel like I've wasted my money.

There's always that learning curve to deal with. Don't feel bad, it took me nearly a year to get warm and fuzzy with Vista. Once I got the hang of it and stopped trying to make it act like XP it ran just fine.

I agree that it takes awhile to get the hang of a new OS. I went straight from XP to Windows 7 and was completely lost at first!

One of my favorite things about Windows 7 is that it boots up in just 65 seconds. And that's counting about 30 seconds while the BIOS does its thing. When I run one of my XP hard drives (same system, same hardware) it seems ponderous and slow. Maybe going from Vista to 7 isn't that much of a sea change.

Ignore the 1394, that is just your Firewire. Look on the back of your PC. Is there a jack that looks like an extra wide phone jack?

Sarahandus, here is a picture of the I/O panel for your motherboard. As Collector says, 1394 is your Firewire port. In this picture the ethernet/LAN/RJ45 port is right above the 2 e-SATA ports.

Sarahandus Motherboard I/O

Syd,
Did you do a clean install or did you do an upgrade of Vista?
The clean install might be faster.

Jenny I bought the upgrade. Just don't have the time nor the energy to reformat my hard drive and start over. I use my home computer for work and right now I have way too much stuff on it to risk a disaster

I'll deal with the slow startup etc. I'm used to it after having Vista for a year now.

Besides, won't I have to buy the full version in order to do a clean install?

Absolutely. An upgrade carry over all the accumulated detritus from your old system; all of the things that can grind a system down to a crawl. You end up with all the same needless garbage in your start up, disk fragmentation, left over registry entries, no longer used system files and drivers, etc. By far, most people's experience with Windows 7 is that it is less of a resource hog and more responsive than Vista.

Another thought, do you have enough RAM?

Hi, Syd!

I just installed Windows 7 this afternoon, and the process is effortless. All you do is start the install and then you can pretty well walk away until it's time to input your product code. I have the upgrade, but I chose "custom" (or clean) install. As long as you already have a valid copy of WinXP or Vista, you don't have to buy the full version.

Personally, I prefer to start off with a clean slate rather than simply upgrade from one operating system to another. That way, if there were any problems, they're gone!

Susan

I'm totally with Susan. When I do my upgrade, I have to do a custom/clean install as I'm upgrading from XP. But if I had a Vista machine, I'd be backing up and doing a clean install there too.

But at least if you have Vista, you have to option to do a clean or upgrade install to suit your needs.

It is common for many users to occasionally do a clean reinstall, even when not upgrading their OS as a kind of maintenance. Starting with a fresh clean install fixes a myriad of problems and makes for faster, leaner machine. The only time that I don't do a clean install is when all I am trying to do is a repair install.

It's good to have confirmation that the upgrade from Vista without the clean install doesn't improve the startup time (for those who aren't sure whether to do a clean install or not).


No. As long as you already have a valid Windows license for your computer, it's both legal and possible to do a clean install. There's an article on doing it at Paul Thurrott's website
http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/clean_install_upgrade_media.asp

So if you ever you have the time, energy, and inclination, the option is there for you.

Oooops! Oh am I embarrassed. In trying to fix the damage done by the Texas Instrument driver I read all the list in the BIOS. Lo and behold the LAN was disabled. Enabling that got the Ethernet working just fine. However the damage done by the TI driver was so extensive I spent the weekend re-installing the OSes again. Also I installed the new Ethernet adapter, it has compatible drivers and I surely don't want to deal with TI again. So far I have XP fully working, but 7 still has drivers and programs to install.

Thank you all so much for all the help and instructions, really learned a lot of new things.