IT Professionals

Moving To Vista – Importance Of Preinstallation

Posted by on Jun 20, 2007 | 8 Comments

I keep hearing about it over and over again – how come Vista compatibly is so bad? To be honest, I suspect a lot of this is over blown as many people have not had as much trouble as some other people out there have experienced.


Who 2 Install Vista In 2 Min – The funniest home videos are here

Okay, is it really that bad? For some people, yes, yes it is. And frankly, provides the strong argument that if you are going to be upgrading to Vista, understand that the drivers are still pretty sketchy and it might be worth it to simply buy a ready-build PC with it already installed. Seriously, I even had trouble with two different network cards, finally managed to make it happen with an old Windows XP driver and a little dance.

What has your Vista experience been like? Do you feel like this guy in the video or instead, simply have no complaints as the hardware detection has been spot on for you? Hit the comments, tell me about it.

[tags]vista,windows,upgrade[/tags]

  • Steve from Yellowstone

    That’s Anthony from the Opie & Anthony show. That vid was featured on their site for a while, opieandanthony.com

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/theoracle/ theoracle

    I much prefer the Cheerleader Catfight, which I assume is the Main Attraction.

    Seriously, my results have been both good and bad, so I guess its a wash. Driver problems are a disgrace as far as I’m concerned, since Ubuntu seems to work, supplying the necessary drivers on the same systems that have problems with Vista. If it is a space consideration [which I heard a Microsoftie say at a Launch meeting] then use 2 discs, because they certainly soak the public enough for it.

  • http://www.rbrunton.ca/BruntonSoft Ron Brunton

    Hi Matt,

    I have had almost no problems with Vista and I like the OS. The only hardware problem I have is that HP has decided that it’s not going to provide a Vista driver for my HP Scanjet 4470c. I don’t use a scanner a lot, so it hardly seems worthwhile purchasing a new one, but without a Vista driver it doesn’t do me any good for the few times I really do want to scan. This is an HP issue more than something to lay on Vista.

    Other than that, Vista has been very stable (XP was stable for me as well). What puzzles me about the folks who are having problems is that my computer is a DIY gem – Intel Core 2 Duo 6700, Intel BX975 MB, 4 GB RAM (that a 32 bit OS only recognizes 3.325 GB), two 320 GB SATA HD, ATI All-in-Wonder 1900, Benq DVD+-RW. ATI hasn’t yet supplied the media centre Vista sofware, but this also has not been a big problem since I don’t watch TV on my computer and the ATI XP software wasn’t all that exciting.

    Hope this helps inform the discussion.

    Ron

  • Craig Griffin

    I installed Vista Business on my home built desktop, it was an oldie but very stable, P4 2.5GHz, Seagate 80Gb HDD, 1Gb RAM, ATI 9550 128Mb Video. The only problem I had was that it wouldn’t install as an upgrade over XP Pro SP2, so I just clean installed and it ran like a dream. That system has since been retired and I purchased a notebook with Vista Home Basic pre installed, I immediately upgraded it to my Business version with no problems. The notebook is an MSI VR700 with an extra gig of RAM to take it up to 2Gb.
    Cheers

  • Rob Keiser

    No problems here. I’ve been running Vista since it was available on MSDN. I loaded the Ultimate version on a Dell Inspiron 9400 with the nvidia 7900 GS video card.
    I did a clean install and it took all of 18 minutes. Everything worked and still works.

    The only problem I ran into was not Vista’s fault – the laptop does not support PC Cards and I had a Cingular wireless card. I bought a Novatel card to use and the software that came with it was a bit flaky on Vista, I found some updated software (not from Cingular since they don’t officially support the card) and it has been working like a champ ever since.

    I’ve also got the 64bit version running on a desktop and have not had any problems with it either.

  • http://wp3.lockergnome.com/nexus/microface/author/microface/ Steven Leach

    I have installed Vista on several existing systems, for customers who have hear all about the new whiz bang interface, and the nice new features. In every case (12) befor I would flattly refuse to do so, there was some issue with a driver that was not available, and I had to cobble together some XP driver.
    In every case (12), the Aero interface was no where to be seen, none of the systems was up to date enough to handle Aero. In 3 of the cases the customers opted to keep Vista, with an upgrade in RAM 2 GB -> 4 GB and a new Graphics Card. In the other 9 cases They did or could not update their systems, so I put them back to XP Pro.
    It’s a good thing that I use System images on a TeraStation !!
    When a customer calls up, and wants to upgrade to Vista, I tell them about teh previous 12 customers, and then tell them my charge $200, and politelly suggest they either buy a new computer usually 800 – 1000, or else stick with what they have, with a new theme, and $50 cleanup using RegCure, SpyWare Doctor, and other tools to clean things.
    I guarantee a speed up of 50%, or else they don’t owe me a thing. Only Once have I lost the $50 charge.
    People just don’t realize that adding, and removing software on a windows systems is so problematic, that using an uninstall app is almost a neccessity, to get everything back to teh original state.

  • GAB

    The Dell system I purchased shipped with Ultimate version. As expected, it has a mild learning curve both with Vista and Office 2007. My wife hates both and just wants her old XP pro and Office 2003 ;)

    Since the system was built with Vista, I have not really had any major problems though some persistent problems have not been resolved with a lock up issue during sleep mode. If you are away from the PC and goes to sleep, and this is not every time so I am leaning towards the longer it is in sleep, the more chance the problem will exist. The problem being you can not get it out of sleep. Your monitor will show amber as it is in power save mode, you can see the slight green glow on the power button of the PC yet no keyboard/mouse/power button will bring it out of sleep. You are forced to hold the power button down for the 7 seconds to power it off, then power back on which immediately starts up the PC in recovery mode. It has also happened when, as you walk up to the PC, you have the black power saver mode on your screen and can hear the fans running on the PC yet you can not get your desktop back via keyboard or mouse so you are then once again forced to power it down and restart. Since you have no keyboard or mouse (they are both USB) you must wait for it to boot the the recovery option it chooses. The problem has been there since the first week we got the PC so I should probably be on line/phone with Dell to try to resolve the issue. Some Dell onsight searching states to update the bios for a very similar problem so I need to try that as well.

    So, is it a Vista issue or a Dell issue? That is the question ;)

    GAB

  • LYJ

    GAB could have been sitting beside me and reporting since I have been using my new Dell system with Vista.
    LYJ