The Zune Saga Continued...

Today it was Alice's turn to send me an Email and try to ensure my satisfaction as a customer.  However, she disagrees with the original email from Kyle which stated he would be able to get me the refund.  Alice instead thinks that I need to look at my network settings and that it was most likely my Internet Service Provider.  Alice says she wants to help me get to a resolution.  The only resolution that works for me is a refund of my Microsoft points but yet she agrees with the supervisor who said "NO REFUND FOR YOU".  Anyway, here is Alice's email, again, I really, really doubt her REAL name is Alice, more likely Kalpana which is a popular Indian Baby name meaning "A Fantasy" which is what me getting my refund is at this point in time.  For your continued reading enjoyment, I give you, Alice's email...

Hello Bill,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft online support for XBOX. I am Alice and I will be helping you today with this issue.

As I understand, we are having issue with the movie that you rented through Zune. You were advised by our previous Technical Support Representative to call our voice support since they have the tools to issue refunds.  However, you talked with a supervisor and informed you that there is no refund to be provided.

I understand how you feel. I am a customer like you as well, I felt the same way when I bought airtime minutes for my phone but it did not work, let me go head and help you take a solid step towards resolution.

I have read your previous email, and I understand that did not resolve the issue.  Let us try different steps this time Bill.

As a general rule, Xbox Support does not provide refunds for video content. If a customer experiences issues that involve downloading or streaming content, the customer should troubleshoot the issue by following the links below. A refund is granted only if all troubleshooting efforts have failed.

This behavior can be caused by frequent changes to the speed and the quality of your Internet connection based on network conditions that affect both your residence and your Internet service provider (ISP). If you experience reduced video quality or you receive error messages while you watch video, your connection speed has probably slowed.

The email continues with the specific steps I should take to troubleshoot my home network but I won't bore you with those details.  I especially enjoyed the story she used about her phone minutes to make me feel better about my situation. 

Enjoy this lovely weekend!

Continuing Xbox Live Zune Saga

For those of you that haven't read my initial posting on my unsuccessful attempt to receive a refund for a bad streaming movie experience through Zune via Xbox 360 please do so if you want to understand the entire story.  I am adding this information to the story partly because it is amusing and partly because I really can't believe that one hand does not know what the other does, or can do, at Microsoft in these situations.  Everyone says they are empowered to assist the customer but in fact, no one is.  The same night that I spent two plus hours on the phone with support I also fired off an Email via the xbox.com site.  Today I received a response from Kyle at Microsoft Support, here it is in its entirety...


Hi Bill,

Thank you for contacting Xbox Online Support. I'm Kyle and  I am more than happy to assist you today.

I understand how you feel. I just imagine how better it can be your guest entertained using your Xbox and you want a refund for unsatisfied quality of video. I would definitely feel the same way if  this will happen to me too. No worries, rest assured I will do my best to assist you on this.

Generally, we highly recommend you to call us at 1800-4MYXBOX so that we can process your refund. Our higher tier have the tool to reverse and refund your microsoft points for this. Since there are personal and payment or billing information that we need to verify in order for us to keep your account safe / secured at all time.

Though this will be investigated but rest assured your concerns will be covered once you call in.

Thank you so much for your understanding and we appreciate your patience.

For any issues connecting to Xbox Live, you may also use our http://support.xbox.com/en-us/pages/xbox-live/troubleshoot/connection-issues/default.aspx
 
If you need to reply to this e-mail, please reply 'with history' (include any previous e-mail) or reference to Service Request Number  so we can expedite our service to you.

Thank you for visiting Xbox.com. If you should have future questions on Xbox products or services, please be sure to revisit our Web site as we are continually adding information to enhance our service.

Best Regards,

Kyle
Microsoft XBOX Support Services

Thanks Kyle, I appreciate your support and more importantly, your excellent grasp of the english language.  Ok, that was a shot, but I am still without my refund.  Maybe Kyle will make something happen here.  A customer can only dream.  

Have a great weekend!

I'm through with the Zune Marketplace on Xbox 360

So, tonight we had a guest over and wanted to watch a movie.  Legends of the Guardians was the winner and it was listed on Zune marketplace via our new Xbox 360 console for 320 Points in Standard Definition.  As we started the streaming movie there were a few hiccups and the spinning icon came up in the middle as the picture froze and then restarted.  After a few restarts and sighs of frustration we gave up on watching the movie as it was clearly unwatchable.  We switched over to the Netflix application on the same Xbox 360 and picked out a movie there and enjoyed it through streaming technology.  The easy answer here is that the network was NOT the problem it was the Zune service.

My guest left at around 9:15 pm or so and I picked up the phone to call 1-800-4MyXbox, this was around 9:30 pm eastern time.  At around 10:00 pm a representative picked up the phone and had me give several pieces of identifying information before assisting me.  She had me look at my Zune purchase history to verify the purchase was made and took a few notes about my experience.  She was powerless to refund my Microsoft points so she transferred me to the next department which she assured me could help me.  At around 10:30 pm another representative picked up the phone and asked for my ticket number.  The previous rep had not given me one so this representative asked for my credentials again.  She then asked me if I wanted a refund for my Xbox live subscription of $19.99?!?  What, I asked?  I don't want a refund for my live subscription, I only want my 320 points back for the unplayable movie.  As she listened to my problem she quietly stated that she could not help me, she had no access to the Zune system and could only refund Xbox live subscription costs.  She then pushed a button to transfer me again.

It's 11:07 pm and I'm still on hold, by my calculation in about 8 minutes I'll be on the 2 hour mark for my $3.99 refund.  I can't help but imagine laughter on the other end of the line as they know I'm on hold and extremely frustrated.  At this point it is merely the principal of the thing.  I've been a long time Xbox Live subscriber, actually since the original service was put into place over 7 years ago.  Come to think of it I don't think I've ever asked for a refund for anything on the service and have easily given them hundreds of dollars over the years.

Ok, it's 11:09 pm, someone named Dillon just picked up the phone and says he can help me.  I have given him all my information again and explained my problem and now he has put me on hold yet again to think about what he can do for me.  I suppose he's probably laughing with his co-workers about my situation while he "ponders" whether or not he'll return my precious Xbox Live points.  You would think they would have the ability to simply refund the purchase through the Xbox system itself and not even have to employ a human in this process.  Why should my fate be given to Dillon?  I should simply be able to click something within the interface to tell Microsoft I had playback problem and would like my money back, certainly they can see that I did not watch but the first 3-4 minutes of the movie and then exited out.  I guess they don't have the ability to see the performance of the movie on my end which is understandable.

It's 11:15 now and Dillon has come back on the line to tell me the fate of my 320 points.  So now, I have been informed that there are no refunds for Zune Video purchases.  Now that I know Dillon is laughing at me I ask for an escalation to a supervisor.  I'm now on hold again waiting for the supervisor who almost certainly is at least 2 years older than Dillon (and Dillon is maybe 20).  So what shall I say to the Supervisor? I can plead my case yet again which I will most likely do but I will also tell them how ridiculous this entire process has been.  They have essentially stolen $4 from me at this point.  How can you NOT provide refunds for a service such as this?  I suppose since there is not a problem with playback now I can go back in the living room and watch it but my guests are gone so it's not much fun to watch by myself now is it?  If the Rental were for more than 24 hours then maybe I could save it till my guest comes back but he won't be back till probably next week.  This seems like a pretty good reason for a refund to me.

Ok, 11:19 now, I'm still blogging and still on hold.  Who knows, maybe someone will read this and feel my frustration and not rent from the Zune service for fear of having similar problems.  I'll bet iTunes would have played it perfectly, or even Time Warner Cable for that matter, I should have just gone to Time Warner's On Demand section to see if they had it.  Better yet, for the 2 hours I've now been on the phone and $4 I'm probably going to lose I could have driven to Best Buy and purchased the DVD or Blu-Ray.  Ok Dillon, now I know you're laughing at me over there as I sit on hold, watching the little red light.  Maybe you're waiting for me to be yelling into the phone to the elevator Music, that would probably make you extremely happy now wouldn't it?

11:22 update, Dillon just came back, it's going to be a few more minutes before he can get a supervisor on the phone.  I wonder how much money they've spent on the 1-800 call, probably only pennies.  They're already paying the customer service staff who have spoken to me for the perhaps 10 minutes of the 2 hours I've been on the phone now, so maybe it really is a game to them.  Eventually they figure I'll hang up.  I'm sure well over half the people would have left hours ago.

11:35, ok, Paul, the Supervisor has just picked up the phone.  He listens to my problem then clearly states that there are no refunds on Zune rentals.  He then offers to read me the terms of service that I agreed to when I pushed the A button on my controller.  I ask him to do so, after a few minutes I ask him to clarify a few points in the terms of service then ask him if he is empowered to help the customer, he states yes but cannot refund my points.  I ask him how he is empowered if he can't help me?  He offers a solution of disputing the original points transaction with my bank.  I explain that the points transaction was for a much larger batch of points than the 360 points that this particular rental cost me.  He offers to read me the terms of service again.  I have been polite and have not raised my voice throughout this entire conversation and once again ask if he can provide me a refund, he states he would lose his job if he did so.  He then asks me if he can help me with anything else and instructs me to have a pleasant rest of my evening.  Well, screw you Paul and screw you Microsoft.  I hope you choke on your $3.99.  I also hope all of the other Zune customers out there who have had similar nightmarish customer service experiences speak out like I am.   I will never again use this service for Movie or Video rentals or purchases again, thank you very much.

For the final record I give you the only information this Supervisor would give me, his first name and the case reference number, should I ever need it.  I have sent an email to customer support at Xbox live with a summary of this call but don't expect any resolution there.  I am hoping that as many people as possible read this and realize that when you are renting movies through Zune you have ZERO recourse for a refund should you have technical difficulties with said Rental.  Stick with your cable provider or other reliable service such as Netflix or iTunes for your rentals and good luck out there.

--  Final Call Information
Supervisor - Paul

Reference # - 1149187659

Some of the Best Android Games

You've scoured the Marketplace.  You've installed App Finder.  You've searched for reviews online.  But yet you're still not satisfied with the gaming collection on your Android device.  You might even still be carrying around an iPod touch just waiting for the day when you can ditch it and finally go full on Android.  Myself, I've had the HTC Incredible for about 6 months and even though I still usually carry my Ipod touch with me the gaming scene is starting to shape up on the Android.  So just what is it that I'm playing on the platform?  Well, for starters we've got a few really good ports from the Ipod/Iphone world that have made the jump but there are also a few Android only gems that you should check out.  This post will be about games that I already have on the platform and in the future I'll add new posts to talk about new games.

First let's start with the games that have actually made it onto one of the precious 7 screens that we have in the HTC Sense UI.  I only have games on two of my screens, the farthest left two.  I have plenty of other apps that I use on a regular basis and I figure if I'm gaming then it's not really a big deal to just go to the apps and scroll to what I want.  I find that I install a lot of demo and free games and try to clean them up as often as possible but sometimes they just hang around and take up space.  Luckily I have the 16 gig sd card and use APPS2SD to get stuff over to the SD Card.  I still have the stupid out of space error occasionally on this phone that everyone else seems to have but I have more or less traced it down to the HTC Mail app that I use for work.  As long as I periodically clean it out then I can get the space issue to go away.  Sometimes marketplace apps won't even install when the space issue is rearing its ugly head but that's for another post.  What follows is a list of the games on my desktop and in order of playability (the ones I play the most are on the top) with a brief description of each...

WordFeud (Free) - This is like Scrabble only Free and you can play online.  I usually have 5-7 games going at one time and you get 48 hours to make each move.  Sometimes you can get into almost real-time playing if you have someone who checks it a lot.  I've also made a few friends here that I play regularly with.  Great game and a lot of fun to kill time while in line anywhere.

SlotManiac (Free) - Ok so this one is sort of a vice, I like slot machines.  They are easy mindless entertainment, I play them when I go to Vegas and love them.  This game gives you certain amount of free coin each day and you try to parlay that into a lot of money.  You also level up to play better and better machines.  Game Money can also be purchased with real money but I haven't gone there yet.

Angry Birds (Free) - These games are addicting but they can also get frustrating.  It's cool they are free on the Android platform.  See if you can get three stars on every level by taking out the pigs with your catapulted birds.  If you haven't tried this one yet go get it now.

Doodle Jump ($.99) - This game is a fun quick diversion and can be addicting if you get into the high score tables.  Basically just tilt your device back and forth to make the guy jump from platform to platform.  There are a lot of clones of this game including the popular World Attack on Android but I like this one better.

Reckless Racing ($.99) - A top down racing game that reminds me a lot of the old Iron Man 4x4 racing arcade game.  It can tend to slow down but that hasn't stopped me from playing it a lot.  Very fun if you like arcade fast paced racing games (Think Super Sprint)

Tropical Fish ($2.99) - This one kind of sneaked up on me.  It's the old match 3 type game but with a cute background story about a hot girl that likes to scuba dive.  The levels are challenging and I have probably played 3-4 hours probably only 20% into the total number of levels.

Fruit Ninja ($.99) - Slicing fruit with your finger is fun.  It's even more fun with Open Feint support and a few friends to battle it out with for high score.  Send me a note if you want my Open Feint ID so we can compare.

DynamoKid ($.99) - Another Open Feint game that grabbed my attention.  I love the looks and the music of this really cool side scroller.  The character moves all the time and then you press on the left side of the screen to make him jump and the right side of the screen to touch stars and or build platforms and or kill bad guys.  Kind of hard to explain but its the closest thing to mario I've seen that is done right.

NFS Shift ($.99) - An EA Game that is actually good, I downloaded a bunch of them when they had the $.99 sale including Sims and Tetris but this is by far the best one of the bunch.  Can get tiring and make you look stupid if you play it public but it is still a lot of fun and a great time waster.

. (Dot) (Free) - Another Open Feint game, not sure how they keep the quality up but hope they continue.  In the dot game you hold your phone flat and try to pick up circles while avoiding triangles.  If you hit a triangle your dot gets smaller, hit a circle and the dot gets bigger.  If the dot disappears then your game is over, see how long you can last.

Doodle Dash ($1.99) - Ok, another side scroller but this one has blood and guts in it.  Your guy is constantly moving left to right and you either jump or shoot.  The game graphics are great and the pace is frantic.  See how long you can last, wish you could jump and shoot at the same time but that is part of the challenge.

So there are 11 games worth looking into , they will set you back less than $15 and give you hours of entertainment in my opinion.  Others that have made it to my home screens but not detailed here include Checkers Free, Tic Tac Toe Free, Chess Free, Backgammon Free, Open Sudoku, Solitaire Free, SliceIt, Jewels, Doodle Bowling, Galcon and Robo 3.  Some of these will probably age out soon as they are not being played often enough.  I'll cover some more games soon, I just picked up Rope Cut, Mini Squadron, Jet Car Stunts, Humans Vs. Aliens and Gun Bros Beta.  Till next time...

Migration to a larger Micro SD Card with Android

When I first purchased the HTC Incredible it came with a 2gb micro sd card.  Plenty of space for the time and considering most of the space would be utilized by photos and or music it really worked well for me.  Now that Froyo has come out and we can move Apps to the SD Card I decided to purchase a larger Micro SD Card.  I picked a Sandisk 16 GB Micro SD card.  While it sat next to my computer for a couple of weeks I really wanted to migrate everything over to it so I can start carrying only my Android phone and leave my iPod touch at home.  So, just how hard is this process?  Do you need special software to do it?  I decided to find out.

I popped the battery cover off of the HTC Incredible and pressed the Micro SD Card inward, out it popped.  I placed it inside an SD Card reader housing and inserted it into my Dell XPS card reader.  Up popped the dialog asking what I wanted to do.  I chose view files.  I then went to my NAS disk and created a backup directory called \Backups\Phones\HTC Incredible\ .  I looked at the total number of files and checked my settings to make sure show hidden and system files was checked and then hit ctrl-A to select everything.  Then I hit ctrl-c to copy everything and started a paste to my previously created backup directly.  The 4700 or so files took about 5 minutes to copy over and was around 900 Megabytes in size.  The only problem I ran into was with 8 files that were in the item.cache and it told me that the names were too long to copy, I skipped them so I crossed my fingers that these would not be needed for my phone to be operational.

Once I had this backup I compared the details of the files in the backup directory to the contents still on the smaller micro sd card and they matched save for the 8 files I had skipped.  Now I took the 2 gig micro card out of the SD Reader.  I wanted to make sure that the phone could read the new 16 gig card so I put it into the phone and checked settings, 14.83GB is what it showed which sounded like it makes sense so I popped the card back out and into the SD Reader so I can copy files from the backup directory.  Interesting, when I viewed the files on the computer it appears that the Android system, on preparing the SD card when I put it into the phone, placed some directories on the card.  It included

.android_secure
Android
com.espn.score.center
LOST.DIR
newsrob

So, a couple of those are Apps that I know I have and the remainder are system folders.  Now, to see if this copy process will work.  My backup plan here is to just go back to the 2 gig card as I haven't deleted anything off of it yet.  I am probably going to get some duplicates during the copy because of the system created directories but I'll just overwrite and see what happens.  So, I do the reverse of what I did before, I got to the backup directory, copy all files with ctrl-a ctrl-c and then paste them into the 16 gb card's window.  The copy is taking 6 minutes or so.  I begin to ponder what a regression test of this process will be.  Should I go through each and every application to ensure it works as before?  That would take way too long.  I decide that I will reboot the phone with the new card installed and all files intact and make sure it comes up at a minimum and then go through and try my most frequently used "on SD card" applications.  I will be fairly certain all is well by the time I get through these tests.

Ok, what a mess!  It appears that everything that was installed to the SD card now fails on run with a force close.  The icons are now all replacted with the default android icon instead of the app's original icon.  Even more fun, I put the original 2 GB card back in and it is all still messed up.  Reboot the phone, hmmm, all the weird icons are gone but now it looks like 50% of my applications are missing.  Ok, this is going to suck.  Wait, icons are appearing, everything is back to normal, just like the system had to read it all back in and rebuild some cache files?  Anyway, whew, that was a bullet dodged.

So now I am in place with all of this new space what will I do with it?  My primary reason for converting to the larger card was to have space for music and possibly movies.  I have a large collection of MP3's and for years have used an Ipod Touch for all my Music and Apps.  Now that I'm an Android convert I want to use it for music.  Hopefully I will be able to use the Android built in applications for managing the music but I've heard they are not great.  I am going to start looking for a good app, even if it is pay for managing and listening to my music collect.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.  I hope you've enjoyed this short walk through and even though it's not very complicated maybe it will help someone out there to do the same thing if they are concerned over the process.

Toastmasters, finishing my Competent Communicator Manual

This week I will give my 10th and final speech of the competent communicators manual.  It is a speech to inspire your audience and hopefully I will do that and not bore them to tears!  I have been having a lot of fun with Toastmasters and hope to ultimately achieve the highest accolade of Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM).  I hear there are only a few thousand of them in the world and this might be the launching pad for my goal to be on the motivational speaking circuit.  I seem to be able to write well and I seem to be able to speak well in front of audiences so together maybe I can do something good in this world and maybe make a few bucks at it.

I sometimes wonder why I got back into the club.  I have a great job at a great company and there was a local club right inside the building I work in so getting to it was pretty easy.  The meetings are over our lunch hour and usually end on time.  All I really had to do was show up.  It's not that easy though.  As a Toastmaster it is so very important to work the program because you get out what you put into it.  So far I've played just about every role in the club including grammarian, toastmaster and evaluator in addition to giving my requisite speeches.  I've even become involved in committees that are responsible for putting on special events such as membership drives and awards celebrations.  The one thing I haven't done is become involved in leadership which I will need to do if I want to become a DTM.

So, after I give my speech this week I will begin working towards advance communicator Bronze level.  This award will be given after 10 more speeches from two completely new manuals that I will have to pick.  Then Silver level is 10 more speeches and Gold is still 10 more.  All along there are other requirements as well.  My goal is to have this completed by the summer of 2012 so just over 2 years to get it done.  Hopefully by then I will also be in leadership with my job and be running a team of database designers/developers for the bank.  I do have great aspirations and the club helps me to keep focused on soft skills that my technical job sometimes does not allow me to flex.

I will keep you posted on my progress towards DTS, thanks for reading.

Adventures in Upgrading to Windows 7

Recently I purchased an OEM License of Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium from the wonderful online retailer Newegg. I have been running XP Professional for I don't know how long now, at least 5 years, probably more. I was on Service Pack 3 and things were actually quite stable. I am running the following hardware for reference purposes...

• Asus AV8-XE Motherboard
• AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core CPU at 2200 MHZ
• 4 Meg of System Memory
• Ati Radeon 2900 Pro
• VIA VT8251 High Def On Board Audio
• WD740GD 74 Gig 10000 RPM Sata Drive C
• ST3250823AS 250 Gig 7200 RPM Sata Drive D
• DVR-111D Pioneer DVD-RW ATA

My first line of business was to get all of my data off of the existing drives. For this reason I purchased a DLink DNS-321 Network Attached Storage and threw a couple of Western Digital Green 1.5 TB drives into it. This journey will be a separate post but I wanted to note it here anyway as it was an important pre-step for this upgrade. Things to think about when you are migrating include

• Photos
• Music
• Documents
• Game Saves
• Applications that save outside of My Documents
• Outlook PST files
• Favorites
• Anything else you can think of

Basically what I did is just backed up everything I could think of to the NAS. It took a long time to do this over the network but it was worth it as I was sure that I could get something back if I needed it. The peace of mind is good to have and will save you once you wipe your drive for the operating system upgrade.

Ok, so we've got everything backed up now and are ready to get started. First things first, you have to go into your BIOS settings and make sure you can boot from your DVD drive. In my case I hit the DEL Key while the machine is coming up and then go into the boot settings. Move the boot priority up on the DVD drive (just make sure it is above the Hard Disk). Now exit and save your settings and if the Windows 7 DVD is in it will ask "Hit any Key to boot from DVD". Do so and a few moments later you'll see the cool new Windows 7 installation screen.

After getting through the initial screens I came to the screen which is always fun. I like to call it the blow away your hard drive screen. Here is where you can delete the partitions. Now, since I had backed everything up to the NAS I could confidently press the keys to delete my primary windows partition. Although even having this backup I still hesitated to do so, remember there is NO backing out once you've done this. Oh I'm sure someone will say you can use this tool or that tool to recover it even after deleting the partition but what a hassle that would be.

So you choose the drive you want Windows 7 installed on and the rest is pretty much automatic. There are a few questions regarding your keyboard type and time and date but soon you will see the fruits of your labor in the fancy new Windows 7 Desktop.  First things first, this is NOT windows XP, it's not Vista either.  This is a pretty new experience to me.  Sure you can get around, but things look weird at first.  The task bar for one look quite a bit different.  I'm sure there is a way to get it to look like the old one but I wanted all the new here so I'm embracing the new technology.  Aero is pretty cool too, if you don't know what that is basically it spruces up the entire desktop experience and makes everything behind what you're doing sorta visible through windows that are opaque.  There are plenty of other changes too including Gadgets which are essentially what Yahoo released a couple of years ago but they are cool to have built in.  I chose a clock, a cpu/memory meter and the Weather.  I put these on the 2nd monitor so they don't clutter things up and it really is nice to have the dashboard as I call it.  There are other cool gadgets too like an RSS feed reader and Internet Usage meter to name a couple.  I will continue to investigate these to see if any new ones come up that I want to try.

Alright so things are running but I hit the first snag immediately.  NO Sound.  So what's up with that.  Ok, so snag number two shows up pretty soon too, the machine won't boot unless I have the Windows 7 DVD in the drive, man that's a bummer, gotta fix that.  Finally I had installed the ATI catalyst drivers but the windows desktop is reporting a graphics card crash almost every 2-3 minutes.  Yeah, these are all bad, i'm starting to not feel too good about this upgrade now but let's roll on and see if we can fix some of these issues.

Turns out that there aren't any Audio drivers for Windows 7 for my onboard sound card.  The first thing I tried was an old Sound Blaster Audigy card but I couldn't even get it to work at all. I started poking around the forums and finally found a set of Vista 64 drivers that apparently work.  I installed them and do get sound but it seems a little weird at times, like it fades in an out to a degree.  Here is hoping that Soundmax will eventually release a Windows 7 native driver for this motherboard, but I'm happy for the moment at least.

For the Video card while using the 2900 Pro I actually went back to the included Windows 7 drivers.  Things were stable but not giving me the very best performance.  I purchased an ATI Radeon 4650 HD for a reasonable price and plugged it in.  It has a Gig of DDR3 memory on it and is a couple of years newer than the 2900 Pro so I had pretty good expectations from it.  The catalyst drivers so far are running well and it seems overall faster than what I so I'm happy.

Finally the boot issue.  Turns out that the Windows 7 installer decides where to put a 100mb partition pretty much on its own.  This partition contains the boot information and if you don't have this drive set up to be your boot partition in your bios then it will not boot unless you have the Windows 7 DVD in the drive.  In my case I just went into the BIOS and made sure that this drive was marked first in the boot order and all was well.

So, the Windows 7 upgrade didn't go exactly perfectly but you know, I'm glad I did it.  I certainly enjoy being in the 64 bit world now and being able to use all 4 gigabytes of my system memory.  I do notice some issues though, particularly around certain software not running at all like some of the old games that I have.  Battlefield 2 and Battlefield 2142 didn't run at all.  Outlook 7 seems to crash quite often and I've had a few crashes of Internet Explorer 64 bit which to be fair I had these in the old Windows XP also but I wanted more stability here.  I guess at the end of the day I'm now in the new world so things will get better with time.  I will update more as I get more experience.   Thanks for reading!