I tried the install of Vista Beta 1, be prepared   

As much experience as I've had with Windows, and Beta versions, this one 
certainly has been the most frustrating.

It only took about 19 Hours to download the 2.5 GB ISO image.  I was 
impressed really.  I was expecting every bit of 2 days with a new release 
such as this one.  I've been developing with Visual Studio .NET 2003 for over 
a year, and playign with Visual Studio 2005 since Microsoft would give me a 
copy.

I'm excited about the new features in 2005 and wanted to see exactly what it 
would do with the new flagship Windows Vista.  After staring at my download 
screen like a kid on Dec. 15th looking at his christmas present under the 
tree, for what seemed like forever, I finally got my ISO image.  Used a ISO 
mounting utility off of a link from the MSDN download section and mounted the 
ISO image to a drive letter (z:) and opened that puppy up.

After reading the readme.txt and the readme.htm files (they're Identical 
BTW), I couldn't contain myself anymore.  Setup.exe here we come.  The setup 
program was simple, you Select and installation drive (upgrade was 
unavailable, but the readme file said dual boat wasn't a problem as lon as I 
was on 2000SP4 or later).  I had 10GB unpartitioned on my drive for just such 
an occasion.  I had to manually create this partition (setup won't do it for 
you in the graphical interface) but after formatting it NTFS, and selecting 
it, all was well.  You then assign it a computer name (the default GUID makes 
no sense at all) and answer a few other questions and click install. (I'm 
impressed with Microsoft's new ability to make their OS installer idiot 
proof.)

I was disheartened later to learn that there isn't any way to set your 
administrator password till you're already booted up on the Beta.

My system is a DELL Inspiron 5150.  3Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, GeForce 5200go 32MB, 
DVD+RW4X, With a wireless/wired Nic.  I fully expected to have to load 
drivers for my NIC, My DVD+RW, My Wireless Card, My Modem, and would not have 
been shocked to find I had other drivers to load.

My computer is not a slow computer.  It's not the "Speedy Gonzales" I'd like 
it to be, but It's gotten me through life till now.  However; when I 
installed Vista Beta 1 it took 2 hours and 45 minutes from "Click here to 
install" to when i saw a start bar!  There was NO interaction required suring 
that time. (They need to include spider solitaire in their install program so 
you have something to do.)

I was so excited my wife almost made me go outside.  Here I was, staring at 
the first new operating system I've gotten since Windows XP RC1 (about 5 
years).  I was irritated that I had been told to "please wait" by what I'm 
calling the "new blue screen of infinite waiting" (this thing is more 
irritating than a screen dump that never ends).  I'm finally logged in, and 
I'm immediately assaulted by all of Microsoft's "You're under attack!  Please 
hide under your desk!" messages.  My automatic updates were not turned on, 
"You have no antivirus software installed", your Firewallis on by default 
(good thing since you were just logged on as the machine administrator with 
no password).

My wireless netowrk icon popped up and showed there was a wireless network 
within range.  I put in my wep key (stored in a text file so I can copy and 
paste {the new interface is even applied to notepad... looks pretty sweet 
IMHO}) and I was on the network.  I then decided to check my device manager 
and see if there were any drivers that Vista didn't grab.  Well, it found my 
wireless card, and my DVD+RW, and everything else, except it missed my my 
10/100 Nic and my modem (no sweat who uses wired networking on laptops 
anymore anyway).

Now, to deal with the supplimentary drivers not loaded problem it kept 
bugging me about.  I used the new explorer to find the ISO mounting utility I 
installed from. (I don't like the new interface, it renders really slow and 
it's aggrivating to get used to if you've been used to the old way since 
Windows 95 (before it was 95a,b,c, whatever)).  Anyway, loads the driver no 
problem, mounts the image and then I get an Essence of Emril "BAMB!" memory 
dump. (don't try this at home kids).  OK, so i really didn't expect to be 
able to use an untested ISO mount utility on a BETA release of a brand new 
windows OS, but I had to try.

Now, I've put about 4 hours into this operating system (not including the 
download time) and I've had an "up time" of about 10 minutes.  I'm not super 
impressed at this point.

After my unintended reboot, windows pops up with a "Windows has recovered 
from your stupidity" message and it tells me it's trying to discover why it 
crashed.  I get sick of waiting on the new and improved progress bar to quit 
hypnotizing me, and I hit cancel (a guy can only take about 15 minutes of 
this and then he's done).  Bill Gates must not like cancel, because about 
that time, explorer stopped responding.  I hit Ctrl+Alt+Del (the sys admin's 
best friend {sometimes my only friend}) and get treated to a version of the 
"new blue screen of infinate waiting" where my options are something to the 
effect of: lock this computer, change password, log off of administrator, and 
"Start Task Manager" (we don't just open it anymore, we're now starting 
it.... just like we hit start to shut down, we now start a program to end 
another).  I "Start Task Manager" and get the same old task manger with the 
new and improved user interface environment laid over the top of it (so it 
takes longer to render and drives me crazy).

I can tell I'm getting long winded, so I'll cut to the chase for you.  I end 
explorer.exe.  It's supposed to start back up automatically (has in every 
other version of windows) but doesn't, so I do what I do in XP when it won't 
come back up, I use the run line and type "explorer".  That doesn't work, it 
just locks up the task manager.  I start another task manager instance, to 
end the first and then have no response.  I then decide a reboot would be 
better than screwing with this thing, and do so.

IT NEVER CAME BACK UP!  I WAITED AND WAITED AND WAITED AT THAT STUPID BLUE 
"STAY CALM AND WAIT SCREEN" FOR 40 MINUTES and never got my desktop back.  If 
I ever get the OS to come back up, I'll load Office 2003 and Visual studio 
2005 on it an d let you all know how much fun that is!

In the mean time, please let me know something if you've had these problems 
and have overcome!  I feel like my new "Optimus Prime" came w/o any paint, 
wheels, and doesn't transform.

date: Tue, 2 Aug 2005 20:46:03 -0700   author:   The Burke Jones The Burke

Re: I tried the install of Vista Beta 1, be prepared   

The Burke Jones wrote:
> I was disheartened later to learn that there isn't any way to set your 
> administrator password till you're already booted up on the Beta.

I had a look at this and it appears that unattend.xml on the CD is 
configured to do this. I suppose you could always change it if you 
wanted to...

> is a DELL Inspiron 5150.  3Ghz P4, 1GB RAM, GeForce 5200go 32MB, 
> DVD+RW4X, With a wireless/wired Nic.  I fully expected to have to load 
> drivers for my NIC, My DVD+RW, My Wireless Card, My Modem, and would not have 
> been shocked to find I had other drivers to load.

Interesting. My Dell D600 installed much quicker than that, and it's a 
1.8GHz mobile, with 1GB RAM.

> "You have no antivirus software installed", your Firewallis on by default 
> (good thing since you were just logged on as the machine administrator with 
> no password).

Never saw any of this as it's all disabled by my group policy

> My wireless netowrk icon popped up and showed there was a wireless network 
> within range.  I put in my wep key (stored in a text file so I can copy and 
> paste {the new interface is even applied to notepad... looks pretty sweet 
> IMHO}) and I was on the network.  I then decided to check my device manager 
> and see if there were any drivers that Vista didn't grab.  Well, it found my 
> wireless card, and my DVD+RW, and everything else, except it missed my my 
> 10/100 Nic and my modem (no sweat who uses wired networking on laptops 
> anymore anyway).

Mine prompted me to install the suplementary drivers and once installed, 
everything but the modem worked ok.

> IT NEVER CAME BACK UP!  I WAITED AND WAITED AND WAITED AT THAT STUPID BLUE 
> "STAY CALM AND WAIT SCREEN" FOR 40 MINUTES and never got my desktop back.  If 
> I ever get the OS to come back up, I'll load Office 2003 and Visual studio 
> 2005 on it an d let you all know how much fun that is!

Office 2003 installed fine, and Windows even indexed my email for me. 
How nice.

The only problem I have is with the networking being very slow, 
resulting in some pretty weird behaviour. Example:

I can load slashdot.org ok, but messenger.msn.com only half loads. This 
happens in both IE7 and Firefox, but both sites work fine on another PC 
connected to the same LAN segment. Weird. Personally, I reckon 
something's a bit buggy in the network layer, but I haven't had the time 
to look for it yet...

date: Thu, 04 Aug 2005 10:31:09 +0100   author:   Daern's Instant Fortress