I had a unique opportunity this week. I was handed a nice shiny Windows Vista RTM Enterprise Full Edition CD. My first thoughts were to install it on my spare Windows Box (Yes, I know I have too many, but when someone hands you a lonely homeless PC, how do you say no?) The derelict PC in question is a 2.4Ghz Pentium 4 with 2Gb of ram and a 40GB Maxtor DiamondMax Plus Ultra ATA/133 7200 RPM Hard Disk with 2MB Cache and a 10ms access time.
I am sure you are wondering why I am giving you so much detail about the hard disk. Well, here is the deal. Windows Vista’s installer, told me this particular machine could not be upgraded to Enterprise edition, I had to do a clean install. I embarked on the install, and it had me repartition the hard disk, no sweat. The next thing it tells me is to select the partition to install Vista to. I selected the volume and whammo. “Windows Vista cannot be installed to this volume. This hard disk is incompatible with Windows Vista.” Now normally I wouldn’t be upset with finding my hardware was not Vista compatible. I just can’t understand why the installer makes you format your hard disk before it tells you that nice jewel of information.
After a few hours I had XP Pro back humming along beautifully and all was right in the world.
Windows Vista, Take 2
So I decided I would try it on my Media Center PC in the bedroom. I have a DVR in my cable box so this PC is really only used for surfing the web and watching Diggnation anyway. I popped in the CD and started the install again. All was fine, I rebooted, the vista splash came up and……hang.
Hard freeze, hard disk light pegged but no activity. I rebooted, started the install again. HANG! Now THIS PC is a HP Media Center PC, 2.5Ghz P4, 1GB Ram, 120GB HD and 128MB Geforce FX6200 Ultra. I figured it would be beefy enough. After the second hang, I cracked the case, removed the Network Adapter and TV Tuner and tried again. This time I made it through the entire install and booted Vista. I have to admit, it was pretty. Pretty as hell that is until I plugged in the USB adapter for the infrared receiver that my Microsoft Media Center keyboard uses to talk to the PC. That locked it stone cold and I haven’t touched it since.
My laptop is “Vista Ready” supposedly but honestly, I don’t want to reinstall the OS this weekend so I am not going to fool with it yet. Good grief. I hope the rest of you have better luck. I am sure I will try it again soon.
JB
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Not that it helps now, but did you try restarting the system and letting the setup on the DVD start again after it had done the format of the drive?
Actually yes, I went into the bios and tried several variations of PIO and DMA mode in case it was a writing issue and not a particular model issue.
Well, if you’re computer doesnt have the “windows Vista Capible” badge placed on it, Vista simply won’t run properly. This is partly why people have been down grading back to XP. But vista did fix the problem in it’s own sistem. Vista (You probably already know this) is ready for future generations of windows. (meaning something big is coming up)
Sorry if i didnt help much.
Not a big vista fan. It wastes a lot of cycles on crap that doesn’t make you more efficient… and why haven’t they decided to implement their own official virtual desktops yet? I swear every time there is a new Windows it looks more and more like microsoft collaborated with fisher price when developing the gui.
also watch out when buying a machine that pushes vista as the main os. my hp laptop didn’t even come with an install disc or a restore disc. I had to pay $12 to have them send me a vista disc and it turned out to be a restore disc… now how am i going to dual boot vista with my slackware?