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Well, I jumped right on the Vista RTM release which became available to MSDN'ers last Thursday evening. I was at a good time in my business to get going on Vista before venturing into our new development. This thread is our "war stories" thread to discuss our ventures in migrating to Vista.
To start, this is probably one of the most drastic changes to the Windows OS since Windows 95, if not even greater. I didn't track Vista during beta and RC stages, so this is my first hands on experience with Vista, other than screen shots on web sites and magazine articles. My first day with Vista was "oh my, this is really different" until I resorted to "memory and habit" patterns as to where things are.
I have a high-end Dell Precision Workstation 670 fully loaded and never really used the hardware to its fullest so I elected to go the 64-bit route. The first battle was getting my 670 to even boot from the DVD, then getting that resolved in about 5 hours, which resorted to setting my DVD from CS to Master and the other CD-ROM from CS to Slave. I then finally got Windows to boot, but only after loading the SCSI Raid drivers to see my hard drives did I hit the next road block. I can't remember the error, but I had to change the order of boot devices and disable my secondary CD-ROM to get by this show stopper. From there, I got the OS installed and began my first experiences with x64.
Although ActiveWin.com shows an article on how Vista comes with 19,500 drivers on the DVD, I have been spending most time with Google getting my "stuff" installed. Searching for x64 drivers for about everything from my Dymo label writer, nvidia video, no driver support for my Dell 2405FPW display, HP ScanJet 7400c not supported, but found a note to use vuescan drivers (not free), on and on! ActiveSync doesn't work, not sure if there are any anti-virus suites that support Vista, I'll have to check the Windows Live OneScan, and go there.
I attempted to load a Windows XP x64 raid driver (perc 320/dc) and next thing you know, Vista is dead. It mentioned rebooting then running a repair, never got beyond that so I decided it was time to go the 32-bit route. Well, I couldn't even get it to install, probably again a RAID driver issue, I kept getting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and it would keep rebooting. So back to 64-bit again, here I am, just got Office System 2007 installed (although not yet launched to use) and I'm trudging on. The video often is "scrambled" in sections of the screen (multi-color bars) which I'm not sure if that's due to a beta nvidia video driver, or the Plug-n-Play driver being used for the 24" LCD.
I'll continue down the 64-bit path and see how things go, but I'm beginning to believe that 64-bit may be for servers only, very specific applications, performance, and not really meant to be for the "home" user, developer, i.e. non-server use. It just doesn't seem to have been adopted up till now, will it be from this point forward with Vista 64, even though there was XP 64, is yet to be seen.
Feel free to chime in with your Vista war stories, how you're doing in this migration, etc. I believe this is going to be one of the hardest OS upgrades for the world, at least based on my experiences and I consider myself to be "somewhat" competent with computers, as opposed to seeing my parents try to go through this! It also seems to be "we're caught with our pants down" at Vista RTM, just not much really ready for this release for some reason! I know there is time between now and the Jan 30 "public release" but vendors have a lot of work to do over this 2 month period to really get this OS supported.
Vista is needed for sure, it's "Windows MAC" as I call it! It's going to be exciting, but I think it's just the start of the "OS Effects" to come, we'll be even more MAC'd in the next Windows OS I believe.
Back to the fight...now to my development products.
To start, this is probably one of the most drastic changes to the Windows OS since Windows 95, if not even greater. I didn't track Vista during beta and RC stages, so this is my first hands on experience with Vista, other than screen shots on web sites and magazine articles. My first day with Vista was "oh my, this is really different" until I resorted to "memory and habit" patterns as to where things are.
I have a high-end Dell Precision Workstation 670 fully loaded and never really used the hardware to its fullest so I elected to go the 64-bit route. The first battle was getting my 670 to even boot from the DVD, then getting that resolved in about 5 hours, which resorted to setting my DVD from CS to Master and the other CD-ROM from CS to Slave. I then finally got Windows to boot, but only after loading the SCSI Raid drivers to see my hard drives did I hit the next road block. I can't remember the error, but I had to change the order of boot devices and disable my secondary CD-ROM to get by this show stopper. From there, I got the OS installed and began my first experiences with x64.
Although ActiveWin.com shows an article on how Vista comes with 19,500 drivers on the DVD, I have been spending most time with Google getting my "stuff" installed. Searching for x64 drivers for about everything from my Dymo label writer, nvidia video, no driver support for my Dell 2405FPW display, HP ScanJet 7400c not supported, but found a note to use vuescan drivers (not free), on and on! ActiveSync doesn't work, not sure if there are any anti-virus suites that support Vista, I'll have to check the Windows Live OneScan, and go there.
I attempted to load a Windows XP x64 raid driver (perc 320/dc) and next thing you know, Vista is dead. It mentioned rebooting then running a repair, never got beyond that so I decided it was time to go the 32-bit route. Well, I couldn't even get it to install, probably again a RAID driver issue, I kept getting the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) and it would keep rebooting. So back to 64-bit again, here I am, just got Office System 2007 installed (although not yet launched to use) and I'm trudging on. The video often is "scrambled" in sections of the screen (multi-color bars) which I'm not sure if that's due to a beta nvidia video driver, or the Plug-n-Play driver being used for the 24" LCD.
I'll continue down the 64-bit path and see how things go, but I'm beginning to believe that 64-bit may be for servers only, very specific applications, performance, and not really meant to be for the "home" user, developer, i.e. non-server use. It just doesn't seem to have been adopted up till now, will it be from this point forward with Vista 64, even though there was XP 64, is yet to be seen.
Feel free to chime in with your Vista war stories, how you're doing in this migration, etc. I believe this is going to be one of the hardest OS upgrades for the world, at least based on my experiences and I consider myself to be "somewhat" competent with computers, as opposed to seeing my parents try to go through this! It also seems to be "we're caught with our pants down" at Vista RTM, just not much really ready for this release for some reason! I know there is time between now and the Jan 30 "public release" but vendors have a lot of work to do over this 2 month period to really get this OS supported.
Vista is needed for sure, it's "Windows MAC" as I call it! It's going to be exciting, but I think it's just the start of the "OS Effects" to come, we'll be even more MAC'd in the next Windows OS I believe.
Back to the fight...now to my development products.