Song of The Day: Bugs - Artist: Pearl Jam

Wow. Given yesterday was the very first time consumers got to purchase and see Windows Vista, I thought I’d commemorate the launch by buying a copy of Windows Vista Home Premium and by installing it on my home desktop. As I write this entry, I’m now using Windows Vista and enjoying some of the benefits, but the upgrade did not come easy! From the time I stepped into CompUSA to pick an edition to the time I swapped system cards nothing seemed to “just work.”

Synopsis and Recommendation

So people don’t have to read the entire entry here’s a synopsis. Unless you have a relatively new PC with Vista drivers from vendors, don’t bother upgrading in my opinion. Wait until your drivers are available. If you have an outdated PC then it may be better for you to buy a new desktop or laptop with Vista pre-installed. To be honest I wouldn’t have bothered with the upgrade, but I am a software developer so it’s important for me to stay on top of things. When it comes to editions, I like Windows Vista Home Premium because it packages Aero, Media Center, and a few other goodies for entertainment use, but I guess the edition will depend on one’s needs.

If you don’t want or need hardware, OS, and driver compatibility hassles, and you are in the market for a new computer, you may want to consider buying a Mac. Although there may be other types of challenges with Macs, I’ve never had that much trouble with an OS upgrade on an iMac or MacBook. I know that this is comparing apples and oranges somewhat (e.g., perhaps should compare Dell/Sony “config” with Apple), but for $160 bucks, and from previous experience with Windows XP Home, the install should have been smoother. I’ll be watching out for other reports concerning OEM configs. If you want to read my painful saga of why I recommend this, continue….

The Painful Trek

Although my home desktop is a “custom built” PC and slightly aged, I still figured I’d fair well on compatibility because most of the components were purchased within the last year and a half (see below). Furthermore, since I didn’t have much on it in the form of data and programs, any backup would be, and was, simple.

However, I soon found out that the new Mac commercial isn’t all that far from reality when upgrading! It actually surprised me. My Vista installation reminded me a little of an installation involving an older distribution of Linux. Poor saps (aka me) would have to check compatibility lists, forums, and multiple vendor sites to determine what would and wouldn’t work. Sometimes installations would take hours. Enter distribution Vista.

LIST OF COMPONENTS

CPU - Intel Pentium 4 3GHz
Motherboard - Abit IC7-G
RAID Controller - HighPoint Tech SATA RocketRAID 1640
Disk - Two SATA Maxtor ~220G drives RAID striped
Ethernet - Linksys LNE100TX
RAM - 1Gig (2×512M) Corsair 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400
DVD - HP DVD-Writer DVD 100i
Video Card - Radeon X850XT
Sound Card - Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum
OS - Windows XP Home SP2 w/ all critical updates from Windows Update

So when I got home with my new copy, I popped it in my DVD drive. Expecting an autoplay, I actually received the following drive window, “LRMCFRE_EN_DVD(E:),” and a single README file with the following text in it:

This disc contains a “UDF” file system and requires an operating system
that supports the ISO-13346 “UDF” file system specification.

Huh?

I checked into UDF. The technical specs for the HP DVD drive indicated support, but the drive was aging, so…

At that point I figured it was driver related, so I decided to run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor as recommended on Microsoft’s Vista site. It pointed out that my RocketRAID needed a driver, that my Linksys ethernet card wasn’t recognized, and that various other programs may not work (e.g., various DVD-based programs), but it did not indicate, however, that anything was wrong with my DVD drive.

I looked around on the Internet and discovered that certain older DVD drives may not be supported. Figuring this to be the problem, and knowing that DVD drives are not that expensive these days, I thought I’d venture out to buy a new one. However, before doing so I decided to take a chance and download and install 67 critical updates from Windows Update. I figured that one of those may rememdy the issue, but none did. The optional updates didn’t appear to be related to optical drives or disc formats, so I passed on those. Furthermore, after not seeing any Vista drivers for my Linksys LNE100TX, and not believing drivers would surface soon, I decided to pick up another ethernet card just in case. So, I headed off to Best Buy on a Vista peripheral hunt.

MSFT Tech Support

So I got home, hooked up an LG 18x External Multi DVD Rewriter and received the same message! Both DVD drives failed to read the disc. I even tried booting from the DVD drive based upon recommendations from online groups. Although it COULD read the disc for booting, I could not upgrade because Vista consistently directed me to upgrade from within Windows XP (i.e., having the upgrade version). At this point I called Microsoft Vista support.

To make a long story short, Microsoft’s Tech Support eventually directed me to use another computer’s DVD drive to see if it could access the software. Ironically, I could. How? Using my G5 iMac and OS X! That’s right. I had to use my Mac to copy the contents of the disc over the network to my Windows XP machine in order to perform the upgrade. What an unlikely coupling. I give credit to Microsoft’s Customer Support for being patient and trying multiple things with me to get the DVD recognized correctly. I only questioned, silently, when the person suggested that I contact “Windows XP” technical support regarding my suspicion that Windows XP Home was the culprit concerning UDF (i.e., would have expected them to take that action item).

And jumping this first hurdle allowed me to start my upgrade; there was much more to come. For example I could NOT upgrade because of another fatal error during the process. Maybe this could have been remedied, don’t know, but I decided to perform a clean install instead of fiddling with it, which worked. Another issue was that my Sound Blaster X-Fi Platinum did not work–even with Creative’s latest beta driver. I had to revert back to my motherboard’s audio controller for sound. Moreover, there was still other hardware challenges (remember that ethernet card?) to tackle! All this fun for the bargain price of $160 :). Perhaps more tomorrow but for now…. 600) )4j

Update: Windows Vista Nightmare - Part 2

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