Vista Ultimate Beta 2- first thoughts

OK. I was able to use mozilla's download manager to dl the vista 2 beta from MS without any problems.

I burnt the DVD at 8x, and set my bios to load the DVD drive first.

Reboot the system, get an error about no boot environment available. System boots into Mandriva linux.

Go back into the bios, set the DVD as the only bootable device. Same error.

Disable APIC support on the BIOS, boot DVD. It loads. I have no idea why I couldn't get the DVD to load with APIC enabled. Right now I'm using Vista still without APIC enabled. My Win2k partition will only boot with APIC enabled. I'm going to mess around this this some more. My motherboard is an ASUS P4T-E. Vista will boot from the harddrive with APIC enabled, but the DVD will not.

I use the setup tools to delete all of my Mandriva partitions to make way for Vista. Three partitions deleted, two created.

Both partitions reformated easily, and tell it which drive to load Vista on.

Copying of files proceeds to 29%, then errors out on a media read error. Quick search on google shows other people having problems with bad DVD burns.

Tried to reboot into Windows 2000 but my boot partition is gone. After some looking around I find this tool on the Vista DVD, bootsect.exe.

So I tell load back into the Vista DVD and select the recovery options. Using the recovery options I open a command prompt. The recovery options on the DVD are very nice. It can load a command prompt that has full access to all drives. NTFS, FAT32, or you can even load drivers for USB/firewire storage devices.

At the command prompt I issue the command bootsect

"bootsect /nt52 C:"

bootsect runs and fixes the MBR and sets up my Win2k OS drive as the boot drive.

Reboot server, system loads into Win2k, but hangs. Change APIC setting to enabled, system boots fine.


Reburn DVD at 2.4x, start install over again.

System loaded without any issues. Took approximately 1 hour.

The display appears to be very crisp. The UI looks much better than XP or Win2k. Installed mozilla without any issues. Installed Java without any issues.




Problems- Could not get shockwave to install on IE7.0. This is to be expected as nobody is coding apps specifically for 7.0 yet.

Shockwave would not autoinstall on Mozilla. Had to use the manual install procedure.

So for the folks that don't have access to run this, let me know if you want anything specifically tested, or what you would like to know more about, and I'll play around and let you know what I find. So far I really like it.

OK.. I have my first issue.. If I sleep the machine, or reboot it, when it comes back up it creates a new network connection for my home network.

So right now if I go into the network center and look at the network list I see:

Home Network (I renamed it this)
Network
Network 2
Network 3
Network 4


My thought is that this is trying to emulate software that I have on my laptop that identifies which network I connect to. If I'm at work I get certain settings, different settings at home on wired or wireless network as well. It does this via mac detection. However, all of these networks have the same MAC assigned to them. I'm going to try and figure out if this is a misconfiguration on my part, or a problem.

I had zero problems with the install. I decided to install in a vmware session.

I also don't have the network problem that you have.

I will agree with you about the interface. The interface is pretty nice.

I dont' like how they changed the "documents and settings" part too. Now everything is under "users".

Not to mention... In windows explorer, you don't have your classic menubar. No file, edit, view, etc. They moved everything around again... I HATE THAT! You can get it back though... organize, layouts, classic.

It'll take some getting used to and exploring. I haven't tried to install many programs yet. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow... but for now... time to party.

For some reason... the internet is VERY slow in this VM session... I'll have to mess around with that a bit. I'm running XP Media Center 2005 with 3 Virtual OS's all off the same bridged network card... maybe thats why... The other sessions don 't seem to have that problem.

Then again... it just started when I tried to download firefox and sun java... get your tin foil hats out. :-o lol

could someone post screen shots?

had some real bad experience with the last version, and have run out of computers to install the new beta.

appreciate it.

What would you like screen shots of?
I'd be more than happy to post them... just let me know what you want.

For the people who have downloaded and installed a working copy, could someone please post the MD5 / SHA1 checksums of it?

<begin rant>
Stupid MS doesn't put any checksums on the download page
</end rant>

I got some checksums from torrent sites, but they may not be reliable, or may be from a different ISO.

Unless of course they provide a checksum, in which case, I still haven't found it.

Phish> I'd love to see some screenshots of a standard out-of-the box install, no windows open. If you could get some with a few windows open, maybe Windows Explorer and the control panel (or thier vista equivalent), that would be great.

Here are a couple I took last night.

I'll take some more soon.

Phish, you think you could post your vista beta 2 checksums? I would be very grateful :).

md5

Quote:

---

0E733AB1A8E8FF9A8684FD3639332773 vista_5384.4.060518-1455_winmain_beta2_x86fre_client-LB2CFRE_EN_DVD.iso

---

sha1

Quote:

---

2404153a60d81103861b876878893222a5529d3a vista_5384.4.060518-1455_winmain_beta2_x86fre_client-LB2CFRE_EN_DVD.iso

---

The link I used to download was
http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/...FRE_EN_DVD.iso

I used my own DL manager.

What about this one ??

0e733ab1a8e8ff9a8684fd3639332773

I'm still figuring the checksum tool out (it's on a linux box as my windows is installing :D)

Let me know if it's ok ... Otherwise I'll need to practice some more ;)

.C.

Thanks for the checksums. I got it Friday night of torrent and was waiting to see some checksums.

Quote:

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Not to mention... In windows explorer, you don't have your classic menubar. No file, edit, view, etc. They moved everything around again... I HATE THAT! You can get it back though... organize, layouts, classic.

---

That's IE 7 for you. I've had the beta for a while so I am used to it. Been having some issues with Active X on some sites but other than that it's ok. The site preview is nice.

Quote:

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My thought is that this is trying to emulate software that I have on my laptop that identifies which network I connect to.

---

What software is that? I am in connection hell. All my networks are static and I constantly change settings.

I have a lenovo thinkpad t43 laptop. The connection software is called Thinkvantage access connection. It is IBM software made specifically for the thinkpad. It is pretty nice software. Gone are the days of constantly reconfiguring my proxy servers.

On vista I think they call it smart networking. I'm not near the machine that has it installed, but when I am I will get the exact name that MS is calling it and post it up...

The weird thing is that it stopped doing it. I also don't like some of the changes to the UI.

I've been using XP in classic mode for several years. I just switched to the XP UI when I got this laptop earlier this year. I'll probably use vista in it's native UI just to get familiar with it. It's not that different from the XP interface. I actually prefer the way the start menu works in Vista over XP.

There is also a lot of desktop configuration tweaks for multiple monitor support. You can tell certain applications to always open on a specific monitor, and the vista toolbar has some neat applications. But in my opinion it is trying to steal the wigget idea from OSX.

I just finished burning the DVD and the isntall screen popped on the desktop. Considering I need to ghost then partition a dual, in this case tri-boot I am resisting the urge.

Thanks for the info mo. Sounds like Vista incorporates some external software I use now. And was going to buy.

"must spread points around" I HATE that.

I sent my "product code" to the printer Friday night while trying to get a MS download. I go to the printer today and the code didn't print. The page shows the MS license background but they did not print the code. I hold the thing up to a bright light... nothing.

So I go back and log in with my hotmail account. This is ONLY second time EVER and I NEVER got a good download from MS. And I get this...

Thank you for participating in the Microsoft Windows Vista Customer Preview Program.

You have received the maximum number of Product Keys available for this program.
Note: Windows Vista Beta 2 can be installed and activated on up to 10 PCs using with one Product Key.

NO THANK YOU MS, I am going to jump on my little wire hamster wheel and run run run all around the internet trying to get a VALID code. YEAH, here I go.... squeaky squeaky squeaky

RoadClosed: They should have emailed it to you... they did for me. I also have printed two of them out. You can use one key to install on 10 machines, so I have used one install and have 19 left. Check your PM, I sent you a key you can use.

I used an old hotmail account to sign in when downloading. I went to check my mail for the key and I had to re-activate the account. I figure since the download took that credential everything would be fine. And why the hell would they NOT let you print the key certificate?

I bet they spent a million dollars on that code. But hello "prt scr". Why make it difficult this is beta test? But I'll give them the benefit. My email was inactive and I didn't get the Key. I should have written it down. But at the same time the key should be tied to that now active account. I looked for a little bit for a link to have the key re-mailed or something. Squeaky Squeaky.

I then decided to try my other hotmail account so I used those credentials. I got the same message that a key was already assigned. Huh? Then it is NOT tied to a specific account? I cleared my browser cache of every cookie... same thing. Squeaky Squeaky. Cleared entire history and all... squeaky squeaky

So I cleared everything again. Closed IE then created a NEW hotmail account on an email domain unknown to Passport. Same damn error, I already have my key. NO FREE WINDOWS! Even in BETA. Sqeaky Squeaky

So I ask WHY? What is on this PC that identifies me? Active x control, something. I haven't tried FireFox and the new Passport account yet.

Oh and thanks to everyone who have offered keys. kudos. I tried to spead some point for teamwork but it's not letting me.

Hmm... not sure about your printing issue.
I used IE7 to print the keys and they came out just fine for me...

Road- It sounds like your printer issue is moreso an issue with the colors that they used, and your printer. I had no problems printing the key, although I did make sure to print it in grayscale as I sometimes have issues where certain colors do not print properly, so I lose text when printing in color.


They were probably counting the number of registrations to your IP address. You did it each time from the same machine right??? Use a proxy anonymizer and see if it lets you. They are only giving out a limited number of licenses so it would make sense that they give them to different IPs. Relying on cookies or anything like that is what would not make sense to me.

Hmm. Ok I'll succomb to a printer issue and not some dastardly deed by MS. :D It's strange though it printed the whole page and even the background behind the key but NOT the key. I thought it may be an issue with contrast or something but I held it up to a super bright light. As for the inability to download another... once again I perhaps jumped to a conclusion AND it is my IP adress recorded. The most logical and unparanoid scenario. :D And not some hidden code.

Have anyone got it working on Microsoft Virtual Server?

- Xierox