How To Safely Test-Drive Windows 7

Safely test-drive Windows 7

Here's how to try out Win7 without messing up your current setup

John in Dallas is itching to test the free Release Candidate for Windows 7, but isn't sure how to safely proceed. He wrote and asked me:

* I have an XP sp3 machine, works just fine. Also, I have an external USB hard drive, used mostly for backups. Could I download the Windows 7 Release Candidate to that drive and play with it safely? It's my understanding the d/l would be a 'file' and could be sent directly to the usb drive and run? Is that correct? Since I don't have CD-burning software on my system, I don't want to bother with that process.

If your machine meets the minimum specs for Win7 (more on that in a moment), then you can safely and non-destructively test-drive the Windows 7 Release Candidate — but not quite the way John's thinking.

The answer is to use free "virtual machine" software. With it, you can safely test the Windows 7 Release Candidate on your PC without risking your current setup.

A full explanation with links for both the free Windows 7 release candidate and to free, known-good virtual PC software are top top topic in my current weekly WindowsSecrets.com column.

The other items this week include:

* External drive format question
* Does Windows force temp files onto external drives?
* Great (free!) troubleshooting tool

Access to these items is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the paid-edition content (not just my column) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here:
http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking it out!