Before installing

[Guest]

Greetings.

I am about to install you'ved guessed it, vista beta 2 and have run the
windows upgrade advisor which says that my realreak AC97 drivers needs to be
downloaded (done) and I need a driver the nvidia network controller
(downloaded).

I have the following spec:

AMD athlon XP2800
MSI K7N2 Delta2 Platinum nforce 400GB
1.5GB Dual Channel memory
40GB ATA 133 HDD
nVidia 6800GT 128MB

Has anyone else installed with similar specs?
Can anyone suggest things I might need to look out for before installing?

Thanks in advance

 

[Colin Barnhorst]

If this is your primary computer do not do it. You only have one hard
drive. If you install you will overwrite your current operating system and
there is no tool to roll it back. If this is just a second computer you use
for testing then go for it. The most important info to start with is to
read
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/preview.mspx,
in particular the red-text.

If you are a customer who fits the description Beta 2 is for you. If not,
at least make sure you have the skills listed. If not then consider waiting
until Vista reaches release. Remember this is not a Consumer Preview and it
is not an Early Adopter Program (TAP). Microsoft will not help you if you
get into trouble. We will do the best we can, but this is an all-volunteer
group.

 

[Travis King]

Or you can make two partitions on your 40GB hard drive. (I would do either
two 20GB partitions or I'd do a 10GB partition for XP (assuming that's what
you're using) and a 30GB partition for Vista.) WARNING! You will lose all
data on the hard drive unless you use a special 3rd party partitioning tool.
Also, 20GB isn't a lot for Vista, and don't expect to put much of your
software on there then. Now if this is not your primary computer, then go
for it and install Vista just on the 40 gig HD as you have it now.

 

[Todd]

I have read the replies from Colin and Travis, and I agree with them. If
this is your primary computer, and you have important data on it, do not
upgrade your current operating system to Vista.

So if this is a test machine with no data that needs to be saved on it, go
for it.

But if this is your primary machine, with important data on it, there are
still ways to do it.

1) do an image of your current operating system, so that when you are
finished looking at Vista you can restore the image, and be back to exactly
where you were. Then do a clean install of Vista. If you're not exactly
sure how to do an image, don't do it. All too often users find that after
making an image, they can't restore it. I blame the companies that market
so called backup software that can't be relied on, and that misleads a user
into thinking he has a good backup when he doesn't.

2) Get a new hard drive. I got a new 200GB maxtor hard drive for $45 after
rebates. Look around, you can find similar deals. I used the MaxBlast
software that was included in the box to copy my operating system to the new
hard drive. You can also download software from the drive manufacturers
site. After verifying that it worked, I removed the new hard drive from the
system, reinstalled the old hard drive as the secondary master, and did a
clean install of Vista. Then I reinstalled the new hard drive as the
primary master. Now I use the BIOS to select the hard drive to boot from.

3) as Colin and Travis mentioned, if you have enough free space on your hard
drive, you can use third party partitioning software to split your hard
drive into two partitions, and install Vista on the second partition. I
would prefer to do 1 or 2. Given the chances of getting an unusable image,
I'd really prefer 2.

Todd

 

[John Barnes]

I agree #2 is the best. If you do an image, make sure the software verifies
the image, more time but absolutely necessary, especially if you use
CD/DVD's for backup.

 

[Travis King]

I agree with Todd that if you cannot make the partitions, go out and get
another hard drive. An 80 gig hard drive can be had for dirt cheap
nowadays. Secondly, if you dual-boot your computer, make sure to install XP
first, then install Vista second. If you do it in the reverse order, (Vista
1st then XP) you will probably end up with a dual-booting nightmare.