DON'T UPGRADE XP PRO TO BETA 2 - YOU WILL LOSE YOUR OUTLOOK BACKUP

[Guest]

If you are running Outlook 2003 and install Vista Beta 2 Business as an
upgrade and try to backup your Outlook file you are in for a rude awakening.
You will lose all the emails that you thought you had backed up and the
original backup file and archive backup will both get corrupted and rendered
useless. I found this out the hard way earlier today. I've lost over $600.00
worth of software that was purchased and downloaded over the past 6 months
because of this MAJOR problem. Without the emails with the order info and
serials, etc. the software cannot be replaced.

The fact that Beta 2 was unleasehed on an unsuspecting and unprepared public
just makes it that much worse. I've been a beta tester since the days of
Windows 3.1 and never experienced anything like this. No more will I defend
Microsoft or its software as I have in the past.

We, as Beta testers, were asked to perform "upgrade scenarios" because Beta
2 was stable enough to do so. That was nothing but a lie. It is not stable by
any stretch of the imagination. Build 5381 was far more stable than Beta 2
and that's unacceptable.

Beware and be warned that Microsoft can no longer be trusted as far as I'm
concerned. And the $5.00 maximum for damages they refer to in the Beta 2 EULA
is a joke for a multi-billion dollar company. I would venture to bet that no
one ever receives one cent for their losses. I know I won't recoup anything
for the losses I have suffered - all my emails from January 2006 through May
2006 are lost forever and most of them were business related correspondence.

I am so stressed out and frustrated at this point, I want nothing to do with
Windows Vista or Microsoft products ever again. I don't feel like the company
can be trusted at all. If/when a class action lawsuit comes out of this
premature release of an unstable beta to the general public, I will be sure
to get in on it as quick as I can.

 

[Tom Lake]

If you are running Outlook 2003 and install Vista Beta 2 Business as an
upgrade and try to backup your Outlook file you are in for a rude
awakening.
You will lose all the emails that you thought you had backed up and the
original backup file and archive backup will both get corrupted and
rendered
useless. I found this out the hard way earlier today. I've lost over
$600.00
worth of software that was purchased and downloaded over the past 6 months
because of this MAJOR problem. Without the emails with the order info and
serials, etc. the software cannot be replaced.

Of course you followed the upgrade directions carefully and didn't install
the BETA
on your production machine and backed up your test system before installing
BETA
software on it, right? If not, you'll get no sympathy from me.

When all else fails....
read the instructions.

Good advice. Try practicing what you preach!

Tom Lake

 

[Jane C]

Tom, you beat me to it!

And of course the OP broke the terms of the EULA by so doing, so perhaps
Microsoft should take action against him or her?

 

[Guest]

I did follow the instructions and backed everything up and the backups were
corrupted by Vista. As for it being my production machine, I only have one PC
and the email - which was one of those that was lost - specifically stated
that they needed to know about the upgrade scenario to be sure it would be
ready for RC1 status soon.

I'm not asking for sympathy either. I had no problems with Build 5381 which
was still technically Beta 1. The general public has access to Beta 2 and
will lose things just like I did. Save your smart assed symapathy remarks for
them.

I'm dying from untreatable cancer and personally don't give a rats ass about
your snide remarks.

 

[Guest]

Hi Kolohe Wiz

Thanks for warning everyone that we may lose valuable data if we are not
carefull.

Very sorry to hear you have cancer, don't dispare, that does not mean its
the end by any means, get well soon, miracles do happen, I pray for you.

Now about your lost data.

Sorry to here you lost some very important data.

But remember in computing really nothing, yes nothing, is ever lost, its
just a matter how much you want to spend to recover it.

Often original data can be recovered from a HDD that has been formatted many
times, or even data that has been scrambled, overwritten, deleted with
mulitple overwrites to US Government distruction standards can be recovered.

I am not saying that you lost $600 of data and it will cost you $8,000 to
recover it, but it might, everything is relative, how much do you really need
the data, it might not cost much at all to recover it, think positive.

I suggest you contact a professional advanced recover company and get a
quote for their services, professional recover services nowadays are
extremely advance but expensive, and they also take time, recovery is not a
hasty matter, sometimes it could take weeks, yes really.

Don't attempt advanced data recovery yourself, you could just make it worse.

All alpha's and beta's should be considered to be potentially unstable, no
matter what the developers say or allude to, thats the nature of software
development, it user beware.

It is often best to just install major OS's beta's on a spare machine, and
never as a duel boot on a production machine or your only machine.

Cheap modern second hand machines are the way to go with major OS beta's,
never, never, upgrade untill final release, not even for RC1's.

One last thing, I was always taught that "backup" means to off the machine,
to tape, disk, external and removable HDD, not just to some archive file on
the same machine, that way if the machine blows-up who cares, remember it us
vs the machines, and the machines win every time.

Good Luck.

Grumpy

 

[Tom Lake]

I did follow the instructions and backed everything up and the backups were

corrupted by Vista.

A proper backup is on removeable media which isn't even in the machine while
Vista is loaded. How could Vista corrupt it?

I'm not asking for sympathy either. I had no problems with Build 5381
which
was still technically Beta 1. The general public has access to Beta 2 and
will lose things just like I did.

Yes they will lose data if they don't follow common sense procedures. (Why
do
they call it common sense when it seems to be so UNcommon?)

I'm dying from untreatable cancer and personally don't give a rats ass
about
your snide remarks.

If I was dying of cancer (or any other untreatable disease) I certainly
wouldn't
sweat losing some data off a hard drive. Nice try.

Tom Lake

 

[Joe727]

The is a Beta version of Windows. Why would you upgrade at all? Install
Vista on a separate partition and dual boot. That way you can leave your
current operating system untouched and intact. This is how I set up my PC
to install Vista Beta 2:

http://home.cfl.rr.com/jbmsbink/VistaInstall.jpg

Joe

If you are running Outlook 2003 and install Vista Beta 2 Business as an
upgrade and try to backup your Outlook file you are in for a rude
awakening.
You will lose all the emails that you thought you had backed up and the
original backup file and archive backup will both get corrupted and
rendered
useless. I found this out the hard way earlier today. I've lost over
$600.00
worth of software that was purchased and downloaded over the past 6 months
because of this MAJOR problem. Without the emails with the order info and
serials, etc. the software cannot be replaced.

<snip>

 

[Tom Scales]

I did follow the instructions and backed everything up and the backups were
corrupted by Vista. As for it being my production machine, I only have one
PC
and the email - which was one of those that was lost - specifically stated
that they needed to know about the upgrade scenario to be sure it would be
ready for RC1 status soon.

I'm not asking for sympathy either. I had no problems with Build 5381
which
was still technically Beta 1. The general public has access to Beta 2 and
will lose things just like I did. Save your smart assed symapathy remarks
for
them.

I'm dying from untreatable cancer and personally don't give a rats ass
about
your snide remarks.

I'm sorry you have cancer, but don't have any clue what that has to do here.

If you only have one machine, than the Vista Beta was NOT for you. No ifs,
ands or buts, you should not have installed it.

Even if you were going to, leaving the original files AND the backups on the
drives was ludicrous. If you can't afford a cheap USB hard drive and be
smart enough to leave it unplugged while testing Vista, then frankly, you're
not the right person to be beta testing.

Tom

 

[Guest]

Tom,

I thought I was the only cynic. Beta testing Vista would not be on the top
of my to-do list.

Even if true, I don't see how it pertains to the subject at hand.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

the backups were corrupted by Vista.

You need to learn how to make proper backups. End of story.

 

[Guest]

The last time I looked a DVD was separate and that's where it was backed up
to as well as a separate partition on the hard drive. And Vista has to be
running in order to perform the backup considering it's necessary for the
program in question (Outlook 2003) to be usable.

And you would sweat it if it contained critical information, trust me. Then
again, with your apparent attitude, you probably wouldn't. My guess is that
you are one of the true yuppies. In this case, yuppies is an acronym. You
figure it out.

 

[Guest]

That remark was directed at his stupid remark. No, beta testing is not a high
priority of mine but it helps to keep my mind off the constant pain. When
your only means of income is from working at home and you lose a lot of
important data needed for that work for no apparent reason other than a loss
of stability between Beta 1 Build 5381 and Beta 2 Build 5384, you tend to get
pissed off.

 

[Guest]

I swear that you are all as stupid as the tech support personnel in most
companies you have to deal with - The data was corrupted on the hard drive
and DVD's used to back it up. FACT: The data gets corrupted on the hard drive
BEFORE it could backed up or DURING the backup process. It's a thing called
logic that apparently no one that has responded can grasp. As for the beta
testing on a single machine, that's why there are two hard drives in it and
why, until this point, I had always kept the systems physically separated and
used a dual boot setup. This time there was a specific request to test the
"upgrade scenario" so that's what I did. At first there were no problems and
everything was working fine. Then I chose to go back to XP Pro because I
didn't feel there was adequate security in Vista or available for it. Since
the Outlook backups had always worked before, I trusted that they would this
time. Instead the entire backup file was destroyed for all practical
purposes. What else do you call it when a file over 50MB's in size suddenly
shrinks to 255KB?

FYI: The cancer reference was directed at Tom more as a reference to the
fact this his remarks mean nothing because I have far more important issues
to deal with every day.

 

[Guest]

No, you need to learn basic logic and Vista needs to be made far more stable
before public release.

FACT: A backup is only as good as the data it contains.

FACT: If the data gets corrupted BEFORE or DURING the backup process (as is
the case here), then it is the fault of the OS or software and not the user.

 

[Guest]

If there had not been an email specifically requesting to test the upgrade
scenario, I would have stuck to the dual boot like I had up to now - two hard
drives - one for production and one for testing. Considering that this beta
was released to the general public, it should have been stable enough to use
as requested as an upgrade. According to the Vista readiness check, the only
problems I should have experienced were with the Norton software and some SQL
server items. The Norton was simple - uninstall it. SQL is part of my Visual
Studio 2005 (also not compatible with Vista, so I discovered) set up so it
needed to stay.

 

[Guest]

Explain where and how the EULA was broken, plain jane.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

And Vista has to be

running in order to perform the backup considering it's necessary for the
program in question (Outlook 2003) to be usable.

Uh, what?

I must admit I've only read bits and pieces of this thread, but you
installed Vista *then* tried to do a backup?

You already had a functional OS before installing Vista. You shut down
Outlook, you backup the .PST file, burn it to disc, whatever. At that
point, you have your working backup, Vista's never even been involved,
you've never even put the Vista media in the machine, and you're in a state
where you shouldn't care whether that original .PST file gets
trashed/corrupted/whatever.

You then install Vista, Office, etc, then in the worse case scenario if your
original .PST file at that point is corrupted, you can always copy the file
from the DVD on the top of the corrupted one. Additionally, if it turns out
Vista's unusable for you, you can always nuke it, reinstall your previous
OS, then Office, and then, again, copy your PST back from your DVD.

 

[Homer J. Simpson]

No, you need to learn basic logic and Vista needs to be made far more

stable
before public release.

FACT: A backup is only as good as the data it contains.

I'm not disagreeing.

FACT: If the data gets corrupted BEFORE or DURING the backup process (as
is
the case here), then it is the fault of the OS or software and not the
user.

So you installed Vista and used *it* to backup your files?

I stand by my assertion. Dude, you do your backups *before* installing a
beta OS. If your backup's corrupted then, it's certainly not Vista's fault.

 

[Frank Saunders, MS-MVP, OE/WM]

I swear that you are all as stupid as the tech support personnel in most
companies you have to deal with - The data was corrupted on the hard drive
and DVD's used to back it up. FACT: The data gets corrupted on the hard
drive
BEFORE it could backed up or DURING the backup process. It's a thing
called
logic that apparently no one that has responded can grasp. As for the beta
testing on a single machine, that's why there are two hard drives in it
and
why, until this point, I had always kept the systems physically separated
and
used a dual boot setup. This time there was a specific request to test the
"upgrade scenario" so that's what I did. At first there were no problems
and
everything was working fine. Then I chose to go back to XP Pro because I
didn't feel there was adequate security in Vista or available for it.
Since
the Outlook backups had always worked before, I trusted that they would
this
time. Instead the entire backup file was destroyed for all practical
purposes. What else do you call it when a file over 50MB's in size
suddenly
shrinks to 255KB?

Data can't get corrupted on a DVD. It must not have burned correctly.

 

[Joe727]

Well, you should have set up a separate PC to test the upgrade function, not
your primary PC. That's only common sense since Vista is indeed, still in
Beta.

As for release to the public - I find Vista, as you put it, stable enough.
Sure there are problems, but that is exactly why Microsoft released it.
They want end users like you and me to report back problems encountered.

Joe