How I installed Vista

[Menno Hershberger]

I have read the threads about drive letters, partitions, etc.
I'll not complicate this by explaining all the things I tried before
deciding to install Vista on a single clean drive.
And that wasn't without complications either.
The Vista CD (I downloaded and burned it) will not boot (by design I
assume).
So I did a minimal install of XP on the drive, then inserted the Vista
DVD and installed it on the same drive. It put all my XP files in a
folder called "windows.old".
After I got Vista installed, I got the boot menu that gave me the option
of booting the the old version (XP). That just locked up but I didn't
really care since I didn't want XP in the first place. So I booted into
Vista and deleted the "windows.old" folder. That wasn't easy because
explorer kept trying to delete files that didn't exist and wanted to
create new folders, etc. Strange behavior.
However I finally got it done. Of course I still got the boot menu but I
set the timeout on it to zero so it is effectively bypassed.
Now I have "just Vista" on a single drive with no complications as a
result of the procedure.
The only complications I have now are "just Vista".
There oughta be an easier way and I imagine someone is about to tell me
about it.

 

[Guest]

The DVD should have booted - it's designed that way and has booted for the
last 3 or 4 releases for me.

To get rid of the boot menu you'll have to edit the boot.ini file (for early
versions of the beta) on your hard drive. Here's a place to start:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/tips/debug_vista.mspx

- John

 

[jonah]

I have read the threads about drive letters, partitions, etc.
I'll not complicate this by explaining all the things I tried before
deciding to install Vista on a single clean drive.
And that wasn't without complications either.
The Vista CD (I downloaded and burned it) will not boot (by design I
assume).
So I did a minimal install of XP on the drive, then inserted the Vista
DVD and installed it on the same drive. It put all my XP files in a
folder called "windows.old".
After I got Vista installed, I got the boot menu that gave me the option
of booting the the old version (XP). That just locked up but I didn't
really care since I didn't want XP in the first place. So I booted into
Vista and deleted the "windows.old" folder. That wasn't easy because
explorer kept trying to delete files that didn't exist and wanted to
create new folders, etc. Strange behavior.
However I finally got it done. Of course I still got the boot menu but I
set the timeout on it to zero so it is effectively bypassed.
Now I have "just Vista" on a single drive with no complications as a
result of the procedure.
The only complications I have now are "just Vista".
There oughta be an easier way and I imagine someone is about to tell me
about it.

There is an easier way but the point is you figured it out yourself
and got a working Vista install without destroying an existing, in use
XP system.

Fantastic.

Now you have it running get a backup image off the drive with Acronis
9.0 and then play about with it, if you break it so what, re-install
the image and you learnt something else.



Jonah

 

[Guest]

There is an easier way but the point is you figured it out yourself
and got a working Vista install without destroying an existing, in use
XP system.

Fantastic.

Now you have it running get a backup image off the drive with Acronis
9.0 and then play about with it, if you break it so what, re-install
the image and you learnt something else.



Jonah

 

[Guest]

Sorry, first post didn't go through. I had the same problems. Downlaoded the
file twice. Burned to each download to DVD twice, tried "mounting" the ISO
using Dameon, etc. Still couldn't get the Autorun or Setup to work. Didn't
like Win ME on the system I was trying to install. Wouldn't do a clean
install. I then did the same thing, installed XP, then the DVD ISO ran as an
upgrade. Thanks to the others for the suggestions as to how to clean up the
files though,