Microsoft Windows Vista Ultimate - 32-bit - Upgrade - Standard - 1 User - Retail - PC

I've normally always liked Microsoft OS's. But that all changed with Vista. A little personal background: I'm an electrical engineer, did computer technical support prior to that, run a home network and build my own systems. In other words, I'm technically very astute. I have a gaming system with 2GB ram, SATA hard drives, PCI express (SLI) video card. My system more than passes the Vista compatibility test (other than removing McAfee). So I decide to order Vista. After receiving my copy, I proceed with the installation. Vista performs another compatibility test during installation and comes up with an error that the install can't proceed because the SATA/Raid host controllers are incompatible. I did everything I could think of, including contacting MS technical support (useless!). Keep in mind I've done the upgrade option given by the Vista CD and not the clean install (which wipes the system). I also have 2 backups of everything; one on a different internal drive and one on an external USB drive. I decide WTF and spring for a new motherboard with current drivers. I get XP running with my new board and all and then try the upgrade again and receive the same exact fracking error! I call support again and they say I have to choose the clean install option, which I didn't want to do because I don't want to reinstall all the software (including special engineering and math programs). Thanks for skewering me MS.

Since I have to flat line the system I decide to install a stripped Raid configuration with 2 Seagate drives. I still have the IDE drive in the system with my backups. The drive configuration is finished so I insert my Vista upgrade CD and try to begin installing (I figured it would work like XP before; since this is an upgrade CD it would ask me to insert my previous full version CD into the drive). I get the message that this copy of Vista can only be installed from within a running version of XP. So now I have to reinstall XP first (since installing the raid wiped the previous install of XP). I whip out my old 1.44 floppy and the disk for installing the sata/raid drivers for the new motherboard (this is required for installing XP on a clean system as it doesn't come with those drivers). I finally get to the point of selecting the drive to install XP on. It lists my IDE backup drive and my stripped 800GB raid drive. I create a partition of the full space on the raid. Now I carefully and methodically select the 800GB drive as the install drive and press enter to install. Next is a screen informing me the 800GB drive needs to first be formatted and I press whatever key it was to proceed. HORROR of HORRORS! The next screen informs me the XP install is formatting my backup IDE drive (the one with all my file backups). There isn't an option to cancel and even then knowing I'm too late, I shut the system down and physically disconnect the backup drive (which in retrospect I should have done anyway). I've just been skewered by MS again! But all is okay, I stopped the format and can probably recover the data with some special recovery software and I have my USB external backup drive. Finally after much struggling, shedding of blood and a multitude of expletive outbursts that would make a sailor blush, Vista is installed on my system. I plug in my external USB backup drive and go to My Computer, but no drive is listed. I check device manage and Computer Management and the drive is listed but I can't access it. I unplug the USB drive and plug it into my XP laptop and the drive and data are fine. I plug and drive back into Vista and nothing! I call MS support again. After some fooling around and telling the tech that all my Backup data is on this drive he informs me I just need to assign the drive a drive letter in computer management. I'm leery, but he's consulted with others and is certain this is the way to proceed. So okay I do it and low and behold the drive is now list in my computer. I click on it and get the message that the drive must be formatted. FRACK! Now I don't know if you were keeping count, but that is now 2 separate copies of external backups that have fallen victim of the Vista upgrade. How many of you out there have 2 separate Backups?! Not many I'm sure. After 2 hours I get off the phone and still can't access the drive in Vista or XP now. Resignedly I begin the search for data extraction and recovery software, which I find and buy. The software installs and runs fine on Vista, but when it extracts the data from the initial internal backup drive all the files are of zero bytes. Okay, not good! I remove the drive and put it into another computer with XP and install the software on that system. The software again runs fine and successfully recovers all my data. Woot! Saved! After a week and a half of fiddling with Vista, installing software and drivers, only the typical software (office, IE, media player and a few others) work on the system but there are many instabilities. None of my engineering software works, there are network access issues and a plethora of other issues. The most important thing is that I do not trust Vista with my data. Today (2007/02/10) as I write this, I have formatted my system and am happily reinstalling XP.

With all that said, the moral is DO NOT UPGRADE TO VISTA on a working XP system, especially if you have any non-standard software (engineering, databases, etc). If you are brave (or foolish enough to do so), be sure to backup all your data on multiple drives and disconnect them from the system while you do the upgrade. If you are lucky, one of the copies may survive the journey you've embarked upon.

Recently I decided to upgrade my Windows XP Pro system (a Dell XPS 410, purchased last October) to Windows Vista; I had been holding off for awhile, but was curious to get going with tne new O/S. The reason I chose the "Ultimate" version was so that I could do the "in place" uprgade, which means that you can install Vista over your current O/S and programs; most verstions of Vista, including the "upgrade" packages, by default do a "clean" installation, which means it will delete your current O/S, all your data, and install a fresh copy of Windows.

Well, I found out, that I should have done what I wanted to avoid, and taken the time to do the "clean" install, and reinstall my programs. This is why almost everyone will have problems with some of their programs after the upgrade: Vista moves various system and data files from your \DOUCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\USER folders, including, your \My Documents and all sub folders, \Local Settings, which contain your \Application Data and \Temp folders, and many others. Thus when you restart after the upgrade, if the program you have installed had files there, and the Vista Setup script didn't know to move them to your new storage locations which is \USERS\USERNAME\DOCUMENTS or \USERS\USERNAME\APPDATA, that/those program(s) will have problems finding their files and settings (including older versions of Microsoft Outlook not being able to find its .pst files, LOL). This aggravated me because it took HOURS to figure out; Microsoft should provide printed doucmentation something to the effect of "To Advanced Users-the Vista In Place upgrade will move these files," etc and how to deal with it. This would save a HUGE amount of time. Less advanced users probably simply assume their system is broken and roll back the upgrade.

Once the O/S is installed and troubleshooting is done, I think it's excellent. After about 15 years, it's actually more document centric than program centric, e.g. instead of "run" on the start menu, you have "search;" you start typing in a text box and the start menu shows you everything-files, documents, web pages, emails, whatever that have a matching text string. So for example instead of launching Word, then looking for and opening the novel im working on called "Silver Lining," i type "Sil" into the "search" box, pick the "Silver Lining.doc" entry, and Word launches and loads my document. Finally more like the Mac than previous Windows, which were really basically DOS with a graphic shell pasted on. (Yes I know you could already launch programs with documents, but this is more elegant, you'll see what I mean after you've got to do it a few times).

I'm quite satisfied with Vista; in fact with my late model hardware it's like having a new computer again. But, my advice to most people is, if your computer is more than about a year old, wait for a new machine. If you are upgrading a recent machine that has the hardware needed, back up all your personal data, and do the clean install. Changing operating systems is not for beginners; if you have any doubts, it's best to pass.

It's not because it's so slow that I hate it, it's because Microsoft has decided that I'm too stupid to know what I'm doing so they've decided to protect me from myself and won't allow me to even look at what's on my hard drive. Every mouse click now takes 3 or 4 clicks for the same thing. It's so confusing to look at my documents folders, I can't figure out what is where. I can't view web pages on my own site because they aren't in the security frame of safe. All my USB WiFi devices don't work on Vista and the only ones available are extremely expensive. My cousin bought a Vista installed laptop and with customer support couldn't get it connected to his WiFi router at home because of security issues, so he took it back and got one that has XP Media Center on it for less. I was given a full, licensed copy of Vista Ultimate and I will not install it on any of my computers. If MS stops supporting XP and I have only Vista available in a PC, I'll buy an Apple.