I am so knackered ....

Last night I received my copy of Vista Home Premium from OCUK and spent almost the entire night installing Vista onto two desktop PCs and a laptop, alongside XP as dual boot arrangements (I'm not that confident I can get all my hardware working with Vista, nor do I want to completely let go of the safety of a well known operating system!).

I won't bore everyone with the details, but let's just say Vista has some way to go yet before I would recommend it as an upgrade to be your sole operating system. At least XP works! My printers are a law unto themselves, they all work on at least one computer (usually when they're the local printer), one PC will happily print from both printers, the laptop will do neither and the other one will print locally but not over the network.

I managed to delete my backup drive on this PC (which is backed up elsewhere but it does contain My Documents etc) in partitioning for Vista so I feel like all my computers are in a sort of half state at the moment. I can't use PGP because my keyring was - yes - in My Documents on the backup drive (having "sensibly" removed them from the C drive!)

I've a redundant entry in the boot menu here from spending a ridiculous amount of time trying first of all to install Vista to a logical drive (which of course won't work, unless you have the MBR on a primary partition) and all in all, I sat up all night until it was time to get ready to go to work at 6 am. I think I had 45 minutes in bed and didn't sleep at all.

So I feel just about dead ... and have to get up at 5 am tomorrow to work a similarly long day (till 4.30). I'm doing the bare essentials online then sleep has never seemed more attractive :D

As I feared. That's why I have no plans to upgrade to Vista, nor even to IE7. I never do betas at all, nor brand new releases right away. Oh yeah, and I wait for new movies to hit cable tv before I see'em, too.

I am the same way...very hesitant with OS upgrades........although personally I havent really had many issues with IE7...

as for Vista...the hardware requirements alone...I cannot install on a spare to test...and if I did have a spare machine to test on...with those hardware specs...

it wouldnt be my spare :)

Moira I feel for you...I have had network upgrades that have gone like that...40 hour weekend installs..

MLF

I'm sure IE7 works fine for the most part, but I'm using an IE shell that just calls the ms webBrowser controls, and has it's own security measures added via the GUI. From what I'm told, 7's engine renders more slowly than 6, and that's something I definitely don't need. Everything on my PCs is working so well right now, I'm just afraid to mess with any of it.

It was my own stupid fault really - I always multi task online, and the internet seems to come alive around 2 am. I was chatting to people (useful info though, I solved some problems at the same time) and moved between the 3 PCs trying to repair XP here, install Vista on two other machines and continue with my ultimate edition on my SFF. Incidentally - and I hope this isn't out of order - I have bought two legal copies of Vista but couldn't resist trying the crack out of interest and it worked. But I notice today it has started counting down. So this is really just a warning and a lesson - it matters not to me, because I have my geniune copies, but don't anyone be tempted to think they can get Vista Ultimate for free, it will work for a few weeks and then some update *will* fix it, no matter what files you rename in the registry. And you need updates. Vista is way too buggy to run it without ever updating and they aren't going to advertise that a particular update is going to disable all your fiddly hard work (and it is fiddly).

The moral of the story is, Home Premium will do for most people and with prices on OCUK so cheap, trying to get a "cracked" version is not only dishonest, but not even intelligent.

:( I'm even more knackered now, I had to go get petrol and cash. I NEED SLEEP!!

Upgrades to anything while tired or not on top of your "game" can be hazardous.

I once upgraded a flash BIOS while tired. I saved the old BIOS to the floppy drive as instructed installed the new one and rebooted. Got the "no system disk" error. Tried to reboot with the floppy to retreat back to the old BIOS. Got the non system disk error. Start a self destructive rant because I thought I killed my MB. Took a walk with the dog. During the walk I had a divine intervention, "The BIOS needs to be configured for your system, Dummy". Went home did a setup on the BIOS and told it what I had for drives, then it worked. I should have known that, but I was tired and had a "brainfart".

Good luck with the rest of your updates, for my personal gear I don't know that I will upgrade to Vista. If I do it won't be until SP1.

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Originally Posted by Moira

Last night I received my copy of Vista Home Premium from OCUK and spent almost the entire night installing Vista onto two desktop PCs and a laptop, alongside XP as dual boot arrangements (I'm not that confident I can get all my hardware working with Vista, nor do I want to completely let go of the safety of a well known operating system!).

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Hmmm, I think that you really meant to say that you got "Your three copies of Vista"? :D

And I am sure that you bought the retail versions, rather than the OEM versions ?

After all Moira, I just know that you read the MS EULA, don't you ;)

:p:D

Because 2am your time is 9pm here, Moira. Prime time in the USA.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by JPnyc

I'm sure IE7 works fine for the most part, but I'm using an IE shell that just calls the ms webBrowser controls, and has it's own security measures added via the GUI. From what I'm told, 7's engine renders more slowly than 6, and that's something I definitely don't need. Everything on my PCs is working so well right now, I'm just afraid to mess with any of it.

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If there's a movie that I want to see, I see it on the opening night in theaters ;)

But I'm still on Windows 2000 Pro :(

No, I bought an OEM version for this PC (given the wonderful rating of 2.8 despite having 2GB RAM, a hard drive that scored 5.2, and a dual core Athlon 64 bit processor). I installed the same copy on the laptop which is currently counting down to activation, but I hope by the time it does I'll have received my upgrade which having bought a new laptop recently, I'm entitled to!

The third PC I already explained about. In fact, I just looked at it and it's been saying 29 days for over 24 hours now, so I'm not sure what's going on there - I was going to system restore it, but I'll just see how it goes. Either way, long term I'll probably dual boot that with Ubuntu or Suse and not bother run Vista on it.

Actually I've been pretty lucky with the laptop - it has the new built in GMA 950 chip from Intel, which has only just replaced the 900, not capable of running aero. I really didn't expect to see the full aero effects from onboard graphics and much as I begrudge buying a 3D graphics card for the operating system as I've had to do on my PC here, I have to say the "switch between windows" is awesome when you have a lot of windows open!

I was on win2k pro on my laptop. I'm getting a new one though, I can't live with the speed of that one anymore. Looks like I'll have to brave vista afterall

Well, I'm now reinstalling XP on my main computer - Vista managed to screw everything up big time. Vista started refusing to install or uninstall any programs, and when I tried reinstalling Vista that didn't work either. I also noticed that with every reboot, the contents of my data backup drive, copied over on the network were missing. I was also getting a message saying new devices had finished installing and a reboot was needed, but a reboot produced exactly the same message.

I then realised DeepFreeze had lost its icon - and the ability to access it or uninstall it. It was running in thawed state, but somehow it's as if it was activated and had frozen the drives in a sort of half state. Anyway, I decided the time had come to reinstall, which is what I'm trying to get started before going out tonight for our wedding anniversary meal!

Happy anniversary ::birthday

:)

Thank you! :)