Poor experience with RC1

[Robin G]

I had the first public release of Beta 2 (5384?) installed on a separate
partition with reasonable results and decided to try RC1 (5600) to see
if there was any improvement in performance.
My first irritation came with the installation. The upgrade option
didn't specify if it was going to upgrade my Vista installation or my XP
so I wouldn't risk it and chose a new install. The installation then
proceeded without any problem but as soon as the desktop had been built
the performance became impossibly slow. I had constant fan noise from my
machine and, as soon as I tried to do anything, everything ground to a
halt and I had to power off by hand to shut down. Over a period of time
I managed to turn off some of the services such as indexing but
installing drivers was impossible - it just kept hanging.
Believing the installation might be at fault I formatted the Vista
partition and reinstalled - the performance was even worse and I didn't
get past the welcome screen on the first login.
My system is quite old - an Advent T9100 with a P4 3.2 GHZ processor,
1.5 GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce FX5500 256 MB RAM, and a fairly new 200GB HD
with 50GB on the Vista partition - but that should be more than adequate
for Vista and it appeared to be so on build 5384.
I have sent feedback to MS but couldn't send any precise information to
them as the installation just locked up when I tried to.
Very disappointing.

Robin
--

 

[Sascha Benjamin Jazbec]

Which version ( x64 or x86 ) we talk about ?

the x64 RC1 sometimes seems to have strange results on specific machines ..

I for myself have an much older CPU /mainboard combo (Athlon 1800 MhZ/Socket
A via chipset) than you and my RC1 runs like a dream.Aero full with Geforce
6200AGP/ 128 and only 512 RAMs. Vista X86, of course.

SBJ

 

[Andre Da Costa]

I was presented the option during the the initial phase of setup in XP x86
whether I want to Upgrade or do a Custom install. The Upgrade option will be
greyed out if you do not have sufficient disk space on the drive from which
you launched setup, but if you choose custom it will present alternative
options, such as choosing a empty logical partition. The upgrade option will
also be grayed out if you launch Vista x64 setup in Windows XP x64, you can
only do a clean install, but you can upgrade from BETA 2 x64 to RC1 x64. The
only reason I can think of, you did not have sufficient disk space.

I agree with performance on Vista x64, I have a few apps open and its mad
slow. Still, my system is not top of the line, so that might be a factor:

AMD Sempron 1.6 GHz
512 MBs of RAM
FX 5200 128 AGP

 

[Robin G]

Which version ( x64 or x86 ) we talk about ?

the 32-bit.

Robin
--

 

[Robin G]

I was presented the option during the the initial phase of setup in XP
x86 whether I want to Upgrade or do a Custom install. The Upgrade
option will be greyed out if you do not have sufficient disk space on
the drive from which you launched setup, but if you choose custom it
will present alternative options, such as choosing a empty logical
partition. The upgrade option will also be grayed out if you launch
Vista x64 setup in Windows XP x64, you can only do a clean install, but
you can upgrade from BETA 2 x64 to RC1 x64. The only reason I can think
of, you did not have sufficient disk space.

I should have mentioned in my first post that I'm talking about the
32-bit RC1 but I think you missed my point. I was given both options
during install but I was not going to allow an upgrade when the
installation didn't make clear whether it was going to upgrade my Vista
installation or my XP installation so I chose "custom" and a logical
partition. As I pointed out - that partition is 50GB, more than ample.

Robin
--

 

[Andre Da Costa]

Forgive me, but what is the problem specifically?

 

[Guest]

If you started the setup from inside XP or Vista, I think it would be
reasonable to expect the setup to upgrade that specific OS, and not one one a
different partition.

If you started the setup by booting from the disk... I don't know if it will
let you upgrade that way because that would be very ambiguous, but it is just
as easy to select "Custom install" instead. Then, you just have to select the
partition you want to upgrade or do a clean install on.

As for your bad experience, that is very unfortunate. It has been working
fine on my Dell Inspiron 6000, 1.5 Ghz Pentium M, 512mb mem, ATI Radeon
Mobility x300 w/ 64mb video mem, since September 1.

 

[Robin G]

Forgive me, but what is the problem specifically?

It would be a lot easier to explain if your newsreader wasn't configured
to post original material below your sig.

Here is my original post:

I had the first public release of Beta 2 (5384?) installed on a
separate partition with reasonable results and decided to try RC1
(5600) to see if there was any improvement in performance.
My first irritation came with the installation. The upgrade option
didn't specify if it was going to upgrade my Vista installation or my
XP so I wouldn't risk it and chose a new install. The installation then
proceeded without any problem but as soon as the desktop had been built
the performance became impossibly slow. I had constant fan noise from
my machine and, as soon as I tried to do anything, everything ground to
a halt and I had to power off by hand to shut down. Over a period of
time I managed to turn off some of the services such as indexing but
installing drivers was impossible - it just kept hanging.
Believing the installation might be at fault I formatted the Vista
partition and reinstalled - the performance was even worse and I
didn't get past the welcome screen on the first login.
My system is quite old - an Advent T9100 with a P4 3.2 GHZ processor,
1.5 GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce FX5500 256 MB RAM, and a fairly new 200GB HD
with 50GB on the Vista partition - but that should be more than
adequate for Vista and it appeared to be so on build 5384.
I have sent feedback to MS but couldn't send any precise information to
them as the installation just locked up when I tried to.
Very disappointing.

As the subject says; I am reporting a "poor experience with RC1"

one specific gripe: On a machine with both XP and Vista installed, the
"upgrade" option on RC1 does not make it clear which OS it is going to
upgrade. This effectively ruled out "upgrade" as I wasn't going to take
the risk of it trashing my XP installation.

one general gripe: On my machine RC1 is unusable.

Robin

--

 

[Robin G]

If you started the setup from inside XP or Vista, I think it would be
reasonable to expect the setup to upgrade that specific OS, and not one one a
different partition.

It may be reasonable to expect that but I was not prepared to risk my XP
installation on an expectation. The installation should be specific
about what it is going upgrade. (I started the installation from inside
Vista)

If you started the setup by booting from the disk... I don't know if it will
let you upgrade that way because that would be very ambiguous, but it is just
as easy to select "Custom install" instead. Then, you just have to select the
partition you want to upgrade or do a clean install on.

Custom install didn't give the option to upgrade - just a clean install.

As for your bad experience, that is very unfortunate. It has been working
fine on my Dell Inspiron 6000, 1.5 Ghz Pentium M, 512mb mem, ATI Radeon
Mobility x300 w/ 64mb video mem, since September 1.

I agree that many are having a good experience with their RC1 but it is
important that bad experiences are reported also.

Robin

--

 

[Olivier Marquet]

I fully agree: RC1 is slow compared to the beta 2, apparently the hard disk
and the fan are continuously busy, a real disappointment compared to beta 2,
that appeared smooth compared to this.
I do not see what improvements have been made, but can see all the
shortcomings of it.
On top, indeed, lot of programs that work with beta 2 don't work anymore,
like Avast!, that was specificaly adapted to vista beta 2.

Why couldn't the guys at Microsoft discover by themselves that this version
is worse than the former one ?

 

[Guest]

I had the first public release of Beta 2 (5384?) installed on a separate
partition with reasonable results and decided to try RC1 (5600) to see
but as soon as the desktop had been built
the performance became impossibly slow.
My system is quite old - an Advent T9100 with a P4 3.2 GHZ processor,
1.5 GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce FX5500 256 MB RAM, and a fairly new 200GB HD
with 50GB on the Vista partition - but that should be more than adequate
for Vista and it appeared to be so on build 5384.

I have a PC that's the half of your and RC1 runs very fast.

 

[Guest]

I fully agree: RC1 is slow compared to the beta 2,

I wonder if you're just crazy??? A troll??

 

[Rock]

I fully agree: RC1 is slow compared to the beta 2, apparently the hard disk
and the fan are continuously busy, a real disappointment compared to beta
2, that appeared smooth compared to this.
I do not see what improvements have been made, but can see all the
shortcomings of it.
On top, indeed, lot of programs that work with beta 2 don't work anymore,
like Avast!, that was specificaly adapted to vista beta 2.

<snip>

Alwil software just released today a new version of Avast that's compatible
with RC1.

 

[Robin G]

I have a PC that's the half of your and RC1 runs very fast.

It appears, then, that there is something incompatible between RC1 and
some machine configurations. If it had only happened once I would put it
down to a faulty installation but it is repeatable. Sadly it was not
possible to use any of the tools provided to send information to MS
about it.

Robin
--

 

[Olivier Marquet]

No, of course not a troll: my Pc really froze two or three times since i had
RC1 installed. and the performance was dramatically bad. Now I stpped the
indexing /search service and it goes much smoother.


(Recent HP,

 

[me]

It may be reasonable to expect that but I was not prepared to risk my XP
installation on an expectation. The installation should be specific
about what it is going upgrade. (I started the installation from inside
Vista)

You're just being a ass wipe. You booted to Vista then that is the OS
it is going to upgrade.This is the way all the upgrades in the past
have worked and that's they way this one works also.
Get over it , upgrade or not but quite wasting time bitching about
nothing.