My Vista saga, part 1
February 10, 2007 by Tris Hussey
Filed under Jobs
This is going to be a series of posts on my experience installing Vista on my laptop. I think it’s going to be about three posts.
My copy of Vista arrived on Thursday. Oooh the excitement. Did I install it right away? No. I had a proposal to work on due on Friday so potentially mucking up my work machine just wasn’t smart. I did do the stuff that I should to prep for it, though. I backed up files (even though Carbonite had me covered), I defragged the HD (it took overnight), and just generally got ready.
Friday morning. Proposal submitted (I used Ben’s tips and man the proposal was 200% better than any previous one) I got ready.
Boot from Vista DVD. All good so far. Enter product key, good. Install Vista, good. Then the first problem. Because I bought an OEM version of Vista Business, I couldn’t upgrade clean install was the only option. Damn. Okay, I’m backed up with critical files handy, should be fine. Hey I’ve been wanting to clean up my drive anyway.
The install took a looonnngggg time. Like over an hour. Yes, it tried even my patience. Finally, it’s done and …
No sound. Yep Internet worked. I could get to my network and files stored there. But no sound. I did some research and it turns out that Conexant and HP haven’t put out any 64 bit drivers for my sound chips. Hmm. In fact I learn that HP isn’t even supporting my laptop model for Vista. WTF! I bought it over a year ago with Vista in mind! The 64 bit chip, gig of RAM, decent size HD. I thought I was ready. Little did I know that HP was cranking out laptops with AMD 64 bit chips because they were running out of Intel 32 bit chips. Nice.
I learned how I could fix the problem, but still I couldn’t get it the sound to work.
After much fussing around, I gave up. My machine was running faster. Aero and all the eye candy was cool. But still, this was getting to be too much work.
Now one positive note on the “clean” install was that while I got a clean install of Vista on my drive, all my old files were saved. Yep, all of them. They were stashed away for me, ready to use and move around. Not bad. Actually, a very nice touch. The installer said that my old copy of Windows would be saved, I didn’t know that this also meant all my other files too. That was a good thing to see.
Back to XP for me. Or was it?
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Check out what others are saying about this post...[...] In part 1 I talked about trying to get Vista to work on my laptop. In part 2 I went into my second try, which again resulted in me returning to XP. So here in part 3, I’ll bring you to the final aftermath—getting back up and running again. [...]
[...] So you know from my continuing Vista saga that I had to wipe my drive a few times: Now one positive note on the “clean” install was that while I got a clean install of Vista on my drive, all my old files were saved. Yep, all of them. They were stashed away for me, ready to use and move around. Not bad. Actually, a very nice touch. The installer said that my old copy of Windows would be saved, I didn’t know that this also meant all my other files too. That was a good thing to see.Source: Pimp Your Work – My Vista saga, part 1 [...]