So..... I decided to take the plunge and try installing Windows Vista (Home Premium) on my 3.5 year old HP laptop. The Vista Upgrade adviser (available from Microsoft's web site) said it couldn't be done. Which of course is why I had to try.I backed up the entire hard drive first, because I wanted an easy way back to sanity if this upgrade didn't work out. Then I installed Vista as an upgrade over the existing XP install. It seemed to install fairly well - I only ended up with 2 issues. AVG (my Antivirus program) didn't want to work anymore, so I just re-installed it and that was fine. But Vista also had trouble making sense of my D-Link Wireless G Buscard network adapter. I tried to let Vista fix the situation, but it seemed baffled. I scoured the net for a solution, trying a beta driver for Vista, but that didn't work. Finally, I just uninstalled the device and re-installed it using my original driver disk. That was it. Odd, since Vista is supposed to support this device. What really freaked me out is that D-Link's own Air Utility doesn't seem to manage the wireless connection anymore. I just switched from wired to wireless network while Vista hibernated and it just works - which the Air Utility would have you believe wasn't happening.
I figured I was going to have problems with VMWare, and I was right. My Ubuntu VM starts, but its ethernet connection is not functioning. I'll have lots of time to troubleshoot that one. Otherwise, things seem to be working. Vista has slowed my laptop a little (it's a Pentium 4 2.66GHz with 1GB of RAM), but I suspect that has more to do with my video hardware than anything else. As it is, Vista will not give me the option to use the Aero interface, so that's an indication that I do not have the video horsepower needed - or at the very least, I may not have the Direct X 9 compatibility. I'll let you know if I manage to tweak this beast into submission.
Later. I'll give you my impressions of Vista's new features.
2 comments:
Oh Karl. I would have thought that you of all people would know the ancient Windows proverb: "He who chooses the path of upgrade over fresh install, unleashes gremlins of high magnitude". This is especially true now, as vista is a whole new animal, and much different than say, moving from nt4 to nt5.
At the very least, you might attribute some of the slowness to the upgrade method you chose. At the worst, you can expect the system to slowly spiral to a state of complete unusability within months or possibly weeks. Bottom line, if you want to get a true idea of how vista runs, and will run on your laptop, start with a fresh clean install.
I am quite aware that I chose the worst method in switching from XP to Vista. I did it on purpose, to see how good (or bad) it would go. I know many of my clients are going to try the same thing and I wanted to experience the task and its outcome first hand.
You're very right though, the best approach is a clean install. That will probably be the next variation I try.
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