One of the main machines I use to store all of my porn important data and use to do site work died a few weeks ago. It’s been a long journey to bring her back to life – part of the process was an “upgrade” to Vista Home Premium. After 3 failed installation attempts and a replacement DVD from Microsoft, I’ve finally got things working. There are more details after the jump, for the rest of you, expect some clean up and better organization with the sites, foXnoMad and Be Lazier – and the return of Live Cheap, Save Big and wineNoob on Monday.
Some of the issues I encountered with Vista, which I had been upgrading from XP.
- Vista has some install issues on machines with multiple partitions. If you get the CD BOOT: Cannot load BOOTMGR, this may be part of the problem.
- The Vista DVD MUST be installed from the primary drive connected to the FIRST IDE connector on the motherboard. I had both of my DVD drives connected to a separate IDE card, which caused a variety of errors.
- I had to install Vista 3 times before a successful install. Once during the installation, my system unexpectedly rebooted, the other a freeze during the expansion of files. Try at least 5 times if these problems happen to you.
- You may very well need your hard drive(s) drivers handy if you have any blank partitions (completely bare). Vista was not able to format any of those drives – this may be because I was installing from an upgrade.
- To install from the “upgrade” version of Vista on a blank drive (which it normally won’t let you do) – select “Custom Install” and do not enter the product key. Select the option for entering it later. After the install is complete and the system up and running, enter you product key and voila!
Any one else have any Vista issues or upgraded yet?
