Build a Windows Vista Upgrade Parachute

In this article, we provide you with what you need to know about upgrading to Windows Vista. You will get definitive information about released features and capabilities of the various versions of Windows Vista, learn when you can and cannot do a Vista in-place upgrade, and find out about tools to make your Vista installation easier and less prone to errors and crashes.

I was hoping for dual-boot information as well. I had no success doing this with RC1 as the Vista install would always hang before the login screen. The only way I could get it to function was to tell my BIOS to boot from the Vista drive and then do a clean install on it. It works for testing, but not for permanent use.

All you gotta do is partition it right. The boot loader will take care of it then. Two partitions, one for XP and the other for vista, with vista > 20-25gb (my recommendation). Didn't have any problems after RC2 with this setup.

Seems he's living in the wrong century. DDR2 is the standard now, and the next standard for the next few years, DDR3 is pin and electrically compatible with its predecessor. Not to mention that we stopped using SIMM with the advent of PC-100.

This article seemed basically like a generic "How To" article for the "dumb" people out there who really haven't done this sort of stuff ever, and who are just getting into it. A lot of it is sage advice, erring on the side of caution, but certainly something I wouldn't like to see on the front page of a hardware enthusiast's site, but such is the way of the internet.

Oh well, at least nothing in there was blatantly WRONG, as far as I could tell. I personally am not upgrading to Vista until next year. History+experience tells me to let Microsoft finish (what I term to be) their final beta test and release SP1. I wonder what's gonna be in that service pack...

I agree, this was not a parachute topic. Parachute indicates a safety net to save you or recovery should something catastrophic occur. A means to bring you back to XP before you tried Vista. This article did nothing of the sort.

The only part I enjoyed was the part about the new transwer wizard but there was no detils on how this would operate. Do I need two computers, can I collect all the data from my computer and put it on DVDs then bring it into Vista? Actually I don't know the answers but I will be looking them up before I install my copy of Vista.

I have already ordered my parachute. I bought another hard drive, identical to my current 300GB drive (no real reason for it to be identical except I'm thinking about playing with RAID stuff later) and I will use the new drive to do one of the following:

1) Duplicate my original drive to the new drive and install Vista on the new drive.

or

2) Place a fresh copy of XP on the new drive and then upgrade to Vista. Make a bootable recovery DVD set (never want to do two OS install again). Then install all my applications. This is where I need to read about this new fangled wizard to see how it can help me. And again, make another bootable recovery DVD set with my normal applications loaded. Any other not-so-important applications will be loaded last.

I am leaning pretty heavily towards the second option as I like a clean install.

Joe

seems to be in more love with vista

1. upgradeing XP to vista will probly not work alot of software that is on XP will most likey not work on vista or uninstall (thanks to .MSI based installers)
2. the price between basic and perm is very small and Most users will buy OEM not retail or Upgrade unless thay whent to {PC world} (most users will not pay for an OS thats about the same price of an PC or an pc with no monitor unless thay have money to burn)
4. topic seems way to towards beening in love with vista ,

when XP came out apart from securty problems that other users have with it i cant seem tomany ffaults with it, Vista simple things like

Display has been Split up ,
the power button now puts the pc in stand by ,
it comes with IE 7 (Why did thay not put clasic mode layout in IE7 do you know how hard it is for me to explne to N00bs over the phone how to type an web site in now and it allso has confused alot of users and alot do not want it i norm thow on Opera on)

Wireless netowking, still not work out where Perfered order page has gone i found it 2-3 times on an customers pc by pure luck (WHY was it removed from Found networks)Norton NIS 2007 + wireless = no network / uninstall = internet

Search, err i got my head around it now i think , i do think it better but i have to type something in so i can Pick adv serch , new users will be confused if the files are not in docs or desktop as it not find them

superfetch is good but most likey will make hard disks fail sooner (any free ram superfetch fills it with cache users do notices this as there hdd goers mad for 5-10 mins after desktop loads {Depending on how much ram more ram longer it take to fill it and may slow other programs down an little when its doing it} )

NO classic mode, Classic mode should be XP Not Windows 2000 or make an mode that makes all folders and start menu work like XP, with option for Glass maybe (Just an nit pic that one) alot of user are still on windows 98 ME or 2k, so VIsta is like going to an M$-Dos Mac OS X (but Mac there layout works)

contorle pannel > the Endless looop of menus that seems to made it overly compliclated with lots of icons (i mean i am an power user/gamer/ and things are not whare i am expecing them to be or do what explected)

offline files the Task bar Icon is Not linked to the Contole panel > offline option

new users going from all older vers of windows will just be confused with vista

UAC seems to work i not turnd it off yet but new users will priobly find it anoying very fast and find an way to turn it off (User accounts >UAC)

working with files seems to slow at times like Not been able to Use the folder window untill the file has opened (XP click click you can norm use the window strate away)

and on the topic of ghosting thay added an new step to make it longer if for say your RAID 0 setup failed and you had

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good points and some inbetwean points
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standby seems to work ({Sleep} most of the time so don't hold your breath)

Netowk icon is good it tells you are on line

start menu is nice (the sliding menu probly confues Slow users who have to think when clicking on All programs as it Mite switch back to the main start menu by the time thay click on it) to me its Poor that you can move the computer network and search round as i prefer computer to be at the top my self

DX10 ? want some patchs to come put with support

After all the talk, after all the fuss, here comes out Guy with something like this:

"Just the price to pay for greater security"?! Whose security? This is just too much... Sad, sad, sad.

Also, since when has caution and reason become "cynical"? Frankly, a cynic would ask "still using windows? why?" and then laugh in your face. A balanced and reasonable person would actually take the time to educate you about the fact that jumping on a new OS just for the sake of some silly bling-bling is not the right thing to do. What would it feel to be working for a company that is still using XP? How about SANE? I'd really like to hear only 1 (one) reason for a company (any company) to install this OS on their business computers at this point in time. Come on. One?

if i was going to get vista basic better getting XP

Vista Prem is only an little bit more then basic (£20 if that talking on the lines of OEM prem vs basic)

HDMI will work with unprotected content as far as i know (as thats what i be useing any way so HDCP should not appy to me)

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Vistas UAC seems at times an little of an task in its own right some times, most user will not go out side of there Docs folders but some do and you be presented with 2-3 conferm boxs so you can do things

most users will not know how to make an program start with Admin rights all the time as well

i could Peck at vista all day but i haveing to do more to do simple tasks or get to somthing that was simple on XP (feals like linux control pannel but an little more messy)

still if i want to search for files on my server i resort to remotely logging into it and doing it from there

ON the Topic of Remote , M$ Vista Remote assist is plane and simple crap there is an 3-5 sec lag on the mouse, screen up dates allso are about that slow as well, Vista remote Does not turn off the vista's extra vis stuff so resulting in pure anoying remote speed, Realvnc is your frend here as long as you can get the other one to get it on

Did you ever think to check Microsoft.com?

Hey Guys,
I can confirm that for dual booting it will only work (or at least i couldnt get it to work any other way) if you create a new partition or use a different HD to boot from.
Once i had partitioned a 25GB section off, dual booting was a piece of cake for me.
Having said that, i was using rc2 so maybe some changes have been made.
I also think that its a waste of time using vista at this point. it runs significantly slower (just for everyday use such as loading programs, compresing files etc) and apparently has bugger all support for games at the moment.
My official stance at this point is that its great fun to play around with but wont be replaceing XP pro as my main operating system for some time yet.

True that ;p
however i have had XP and 2k dual boot from the same HD with no partition for some years, never had any problems with it.

i have an amd dual core, 1 gig of ram(gasp!!!) a 1600x and 740gigs spanning 3 drives with an ati chipset and have none of your problems. sounds like its nvidia drivers causing the problems, not the os.

what i dont get is what your talking about vista moving your stuff? what did it move where? im assuming you backed up all your info before you switched to a new os. if you already had it in a games/music/movies/documents type setup, i dont think it would move it. it hasnt moved mine. you can set the start menu music, documents, and pictures links to where you want them to, so again, where has it moved your stuff?

Why Tom's bothers with Guy Thomas is a mystery to me. Makes you wonder what Guy has on the people at Tom's that keeps them publishing this stuff.

That doesn't explain heavy disk load.

All options for system tweaking are either moved or renamed. For example try finding Add/Remove Programs in Control Panel. You won't find it because it has been renamed. Display properties are not where they used to be. There is Documents and Settings but everything is actually in Users folder, etc.

Using Vista? I am sure that you can use Vista alone with 1GB or RAM but have you tried using some more demanding applications like Photoshop, Visual Studio, have you opened more than 10 tabs with a lot of big pictures in Firefox or IE, etc?

I can assure you that even 2GB is not comfortable enough for all the above, and I am talking about it from a perspective of a software engineer so no, I don't have viruses, it was a clean and fresh install on empty (formatted partition) and it was 64-bit Vista I have tested because I need that in my line of work. I am all but impressed with it. Don't even get me started on the state of drivers. For example (apart from poor ATI and NVIDIA drivers), no Logitech force feedback wheel drivers, no Razer mice drivers, no scanner drivers, no printer drivers... More than enough reasons not to go Vista yet.

And if that is not enough, DRM may be cracked at the moment, but since software licensing service (SLC) runs as a kernel driver (spsys.sys) and system service all the time (as opposed to XP where genuine checks were initiated only when you wanted to download something), it will be possible for Microsoft to push updates or trigger checks whenever they want as long as you are online. And if you are not, it will ask you to connect and if you deny, it will just disable itself.

If you don't believe me, just search for SLC.DLL inside of system executable files. Even Mahjong Titans or that new ball game can trigger genuine check.

SLC is integrated so deeply into the system core that without it system just wouldn't run. While it is there, your computer is not yours. If it weren't for phoning home, so many restrictions and the fact that you don't know what half of running services/drivers/processes do behind your back I would consider buying it. This way I just used 30 days trial and said "No thanks" in the end.

I have a message for game developers -- do not bother to write DX9 and DX10 code path. Write OpenGL instead, new hardware functionality is already exposed via OpenGL API. It will work on both XP and Vista, you may lose a bit on XBOX market but it will work on Linux and on Mac and a lot of people are desparately waiting for that to happen. The more you use OpenGL more it will be improved. It is a key to destroying Microsoft's monopoly.

I've been using a dual-boot (or triple- or quad- for that matter) for the last 3-4 versions of Windows and it's always the best approach. I've had no major problems dual-booting XP, Windows 2003, Vista 32-bit AND Vista 64-bit all on the same computer. You just need to make sure you have a separate partition for each o/s - and try to keep all the installed software on separate partitions if you can as well.

The beta versions of Vista caused some problems - and was very hard to remove when I had to, but the RTM versions seem fine. If there is an issue with Vista that affects the boot files, you can just boot from an XP CD and do a repair install in 20 min and your main XP install will be ready to go again.

The weird part of Vista is that whatever partition you install it on (D:, E:, etc.) will change to C: once you boot to that partition. It takes some getting used to, but it has been working great for me.

There will always be about a year when I have to run both O/S versions in a dual-boot configuration until most peripherals, drivers, games, etc...finally start working with the newer O/S.

I'm running a Core Duo 6600 with 4 GB RAM, 7900GS SLI on an eVga 680i board - strangely enough, the processor (overclocked to 2.7 GHz) is the slowest part of the system, according to Vista (5.4 - everything else is 5.7-5.9). It runs pretty well, but there's no way I'd consider using it as my only operating system yet!

Just make sure you install XP BEFORE you install Vista (on a different partition) and you should have no problems.

I am not going to add much more than the following simply because I think the other posters on this thread have already found what was wrong with that article.

I don't understand this whole part about office 2007 in this article. The part that irks me is that the author says that:

"...the greatest benefits of Office 2007 are under the covers, and are delivered only if you run this version on Vista"

Why does this belong in this article? Last I checked MS has NEVER bundled a full copy of Office with a windows release (since they would be losing in excess of $100 per bundled copy in the process). If he is trying to compliment MS on their new capabilities of Vista through this statement, then this is hardly something that would be unique to MS Office. Furthermore, that would seem to imply that MS is intentionally depriving their winXP customers from new features unless they spend another ~$160-$400 (depending on which version they buy) to upgrade to Vista. Seeing as how the author himself claims that he found difficulty understanding why he would need to upgrade to Office 2007 over his perfectly functional Office 2003, that would seem to imply that unless you update to Vista, there is no reason to get Office 2007.

Over all, this article strikes me less as a practical article concerning fixing/avoiding possible hiccups while migrating and more like a cleverly disguised way to brag about how great the new Windows is, all the while presenting information that any self-respecting THG reader would have already known anyways.

I think THG can do better.

-Zorak