Windows Vista Fun
I have been having a lot of fun just installing Windows Vista Beta 1, and wanted to document all the hassle involved.
Preparing For the Installation
These are my initial machine specs
- AMD64 3000+ processor
- 160 GB SATA hard drive on a RAID controller. I am not using the
RAID configuration because I do not have any other drives to help speed
things up. Also, I am not interested in hard drive speed right now.
- 2 GB of RAM (more than enough for my needs, as well as Vista's)
- Built-in Gigabit Ethernet card, although my network only handles
10/100, and the shared connection at my apartment tends to only get
about 30 K (so many bandwidth hogs out there)
- 6 USB 2.0 cards
- Radeon 9200 SE with 128 MB of RAM - dual-monitor compatible
- 2x20"Flat Panel Dell monitors (1600x1200 resolution on each, with
only 1 dead pixel between the two...so 3200x1200 resolution altogether).
Originally, I had Vista running in a Virtual PC (VPC), but discovered some things
about VPC that made me cranky. I gave VPC 1 GB of RAM, but it still ran
very slowly. Also, the VPC only has 8 MB of Video RAM, even though my
video card has plenty to spare.
So I decided to go with a partitioned install with dual-boot.
Rather than post-partitioning my harddrive, I scanned the Saturday ad
for CompUSA and found a 200 GB SATA drive for $100 and just bought it
and installed it. Windows noticed it just fine, and using the Computer
Management console (Start->Control Panel->Administrative
Tools->Computer Management), and then went under "Disk Management"
to partition and format the HD into 4 equal-sized chunks (just for
future installs).
First Attempt
At this point, I tried to install Vista, and ran into my first
unexpected problem: Disk Managment requires a reboot for Vista to
accept the drive. So I assigned a drive letter to it, rebooted, and
attempted to install again. Vista actually recommends that I install from Windows as I try to do a dual-boot system.
The Vista installation screen is very nice. It has 2 major steps (very
easy and clean), so it is straightforward to install everything. I just
need to give it the key, select where to install itself, and then let
it run. It copies a bunch of stuff over to the new partition, reboots
the machine, and...(wait for it)...blue screens.
Apparently, Vista needs a driver for the RAID, which is a complete
"DUH!". I am used to installing on an IDE drive, which is much easer
because all the drivers are identical. My machine also has IDE slots,
but those are also on a RAID, which is different from my SATA RAID...do
it doesn't matter that I could have bought the 250GB ATA drive for $100
instead (like I need the extra 50 GB right now...I haven't even filled
up half of my original hard drive.).
Second Attempt
So I tried to install via the CD, but could not get it to use the
drivers off of the floppy they were provided on. Apparently Vista will
only look for drivers on CDs and USB drives. This is fine...I think
that floppies should be done away with: I can get a good-sized USB
drive for cheaper than a floppy drive, and it is
far more reliable.
My biggest problem was getting my machine to boot again to Windows.
Every time it tries to reboot, it automatically boots to the Vista
installer, instead of Windows XP. Every time I get the the dual-boot
screen, I cannot enter anything at the keyboard. Apparently, there is a
BIOS setting to allow "Legacy USB Support", but I was unaware of what
it is and what it does. I had to borrow a PS/2 keyboard from a friend,
and finally get myself back into Windows XP so that I could diagnose
all these different problems.
Third Attempt
Finally, I enabled legacy USB Support in my BIOS (It allows me to use
the keyboard, but does not pass on the keyboard to applications unless
legacy support is enabled...go figure). I also prepared a CD with my
RAID drivers on it (perfect waste of over 600 MB of space...but blank
disks are cheap, so who cares).
Finally, I am able to reboot, get back into the Vista Installer,
provide the RAID drivers, select the drive I am installing on and
install the OS!
And Vista is aweseome. However, initially, it does not look as fancy as
it can, because it does not have the right drivers installed for the
Video Card, even though I have plenty of Video RAM to handle "Areo Glass".
Because I have an ATI Video card, I went to the ATI website and
downloaded their Vista drivers. Of course they are Beta, but they are
fairly stable (I have not noticed any problems, yet). Unfortunately, my
machine started to lock up, and eventually, it would quit booting. This
is caused by several problems
- I did not write down the exact kind of video card I have right before installing
- Windows Vista thought I had a Radeon 9250
- I installed drivers for the Radeon 9800
- It ultimately corrupted the BIOS
ACK! I felt terrible. It was 1:30 in the morning. I was tired of
watching stuff on my TiVo while waiting for Vista to install, and I did
not have the brainpower to get my machine up and running again.
Needless to say, the next day (Sunday) I was really cranky.
Fixing Everything
On Monday, I had a flash of insight: before taking it to a shop to have
it fixed, try wiping the BIOS. So I did. And I discovered that I could
boot my machine again, and it complained about a corrupt BIOS. Not
pretty. But, there is a BIOS recovery tool for my BIOS, so I use it,
and everything is hunky-dory again. I setup my machine to boot to
Windows XP by default (because my sister needs to use the computer, and
does not need the confusion of a completely new and different OS). I then head to work, munging over my plan for that evening.
That evening, after I came home, I went to CompUSA and bought a new
Video Card: an AGP Radeon 9550 with 256 MB of RAM for $100. Sweet! I
also bought a cheapo PS/2 keyboard so that I never run into issues with
a computer again (My brother took my last keyboard when he took my old
computer with him to college in Missouri).
I took it home, installed it and made sure that Windows XP did not have
a cow. It really appreciates it, and now Bejeweled 2 (which my sister
loves to play) finally runs without skipping.
Then, I installed it for Vista. Finally, I could give it the Longhorn
Device Drivers (LDD) for the video card and get Aero Glass running
again. Just the fact that Windows Vista takes advantage of the Video
Card makes a huge improvement in the reactivity of the OS. All the
applications are snapper because the CPU isn't doing all the rendering
work itself. But Aero Glass is just awesome in itself. Whenever a
window pops up, it actually starts slightly smaller and very
transparent and fades into view and slides to its full size. There are
no jagged edges on anything so it looks completely smooth and natural.
When you minimize a window, you can actually watch it shrink, instead
of the dinky flashing blue title bar trick that previous versions of
Windows use.
Aero Glass also has this really neat translucent effect is applies to
the title bar and frame of every window: you can see through it, but
you can't see anything distinctly behind it: everything blurrs. Some
people complain that it looks aweful when you have several title bars
stacked on top of each other, but that is not the purpose of the
effect. The purpose is to demonstrate what can be done, how easy it is
to accomplish that effect, and how fast it renders.
Coming Up
I plan to start playing with WinFX: the 100% managed code (.NET) SDK
for Windows Vista. I have installed the SDK, and I have played with the
new graphics system which replaces GDI. I will put together blogs on
this as I play with it.
One of the huge improvement of Windows Vista is that is 100% managed
code. This makes it much more open in its functionality, as well as
much easier to program to through any language. Another great feature
is that you will not need to have an Intel or AMD (x86) processor to
run the OS, meaning we, as consumers, will now get greater competition,
prices, and performance out of the processors available to us. Intel
processors will be the dominant processor for several years to come,
but it will start to loose market share, greatly.