Vista Beta 2 Question

[Hi Ho]

I am installing Windows Vista Beta 2 on a new hard drive so I can mess around with it. I had read that it is a slow install but I am going on 2 hours now and I am not sure what to do.

For the past hour and a half it has been on the "Installing Windows" screen with the hour glass. That's all that's there. There is no progress bar or anything. The mouse freezes for a minute or two, then moves, freezes, moves, and so on. The DVD drive spins up for about 10 seconds and slows down in a repeating cycle. I am afraid to restart for fear of messing it up. Has anyone else who has installed this experienced this problem?

[PCBrandon]

When I installed it on my laptop (specs in signature) it took what seemed to be a very long time to install. Majority of the time was on 'Installing Windows' like yours and then it rebooted and resumed. I'd give it some more time, and if it continues on like that after another hour or two, I'd reboot and start the installation again.

[Hi Ho]

Unfortunately, I restarted it. I'm guessing I shouldn't have. It kept coming up with a "Setup Rollback" option and that kept failing.

Not all was bad though as I noticed my newly created partion on my new 250 GB hard drive was only 123 GB. So, using a different partition manager, I have repartitioned and formated the drive so I can start over with the Vista installation. I'll just let it go as long as it wants this time.

[Hi Ho]

Talk about a waste of time. After a total of 18 hours it would not work. The final 8 hours were spent on the "loading features" step with a check mark flickering by it. I guess I won't be trying Vista.

[trulad]

I just installed it on a second hard drive and it took about 1-1/2 hours. Works OK,now I need to figure how to easily switch from XP to Vista without changing the drive in bios.
trulad

[PCBrandon]

Perhaps your download is corrupted. Try downloading a new copy and see if that works.

[Hi Ho]

I'll try burning a new copy and try the installation again tonight.

[Hi Ho]

For those who have downloaded the DVD ISO, how big is the file exactly? The Microsoft site says it is "about 3.5 GB" but my ISO file is 3.12 GB. Appearently I have reached the maximum number of downloads so I cannot download it again. I am burning another copy as I type but I don't know if it will make any difference.

Another thing to add, I have been unable to run the install from the DVD without getting a blue screen STOP error. I had to start it from Windows. Any insight on this? I will try installing with the new disc later tonight so I don't tie up the PC for others in the house.

[RJS2]

I didnt download my own .iso, shared mine with a friend 2 different keys though. It is 3.12 on disk. Took little over a hour to install.

[tigstah]

the iso i d/l was 3.12gb.....it only took about an hour to d/l. i'll try to install it over the weekend.

[Hi Ho]

Is there any way that my attempted Vista installation could have screwed up my Windows XP install? Ever since I tried installing Vista, XP boots and runs fine. The problem is with the internet. I don't know if it is coincidence or not but, on my desktop, it takes about 5 minutes to load the PCMech forum. Certain pages, such as my Windows Live Mail, will not load at all. Online gaming is impossible. I did a speed test at DSLReports.com and it said 2.4 kb/s! My cable internet has NEVER tested under 2 Mb/s. The strange thing is, on a different desktop, such as my dad's, it tests at around 30kb/s. Still extremely slow, but faster none the less. Also, on my other PC, more pages load such as Windows Live Mail, though slowly.

Could this be a coincidental problem with my cable internet service that just happened to start at the same time I was messing with Vista or could Vista have, somehow, messed something up? I was installing Vista on a completely different hard drive. It shouldn't have touched XP.

[mairving]

Originally Posted by Hi Ho Is there any way that my attempted Vista installation could have screwed up my Windows XP install? Ever since I tried installing Vista, XP boots and runs fine. The problem is with the internet. I don't know if it is coincidence or not but, on my desktop, it takes about 5 minutes to load the PCMech forum. Certain pages, such as my Windows Live Mail, will not load at all. Online gaming is impossible. I did a speed test at DSLReports.com and it said 2.4 kb/s! My cable internet has NEVER tested under 2 Mb/s. The strange thing is, on a different desktop, such as my dad's, it tests at around 30kb/s. Still extremely slow, but faster none the less. Also, on my other PC, more pages load such as Windows Live Mail, though slowly. Could this be a coincidental problem with my cable internet service that just happened to start at the same time I was messing with Vista or could Vista have, somehow, messed something up? I was installing Vista on a completely different hard drive. It shouldn't have touched XP.

The problem is most likely that IE7 screwed things up. I had a guy that was dual=booting XP Home and Pro. He installed IE7 beta on the Home partition. After that IE6 on the Pro partition didn't work. The version of IE7 couldn't really be uninstalled. The solution was to have him use Firefox. What I would do is install FF and see if the same problems still exist. If not you will know that it is a browser issue.

[Hi Ho]

I'm sorry I forgot to mention that I already tried Firefox. My normal browser of choice is Maxthon, which does use IE as the base, but all three browsers perform equally slow, as do online games, which are unplayable. It's possible that my ISP is simply having problems. I will talk to them and see.

EDIT: I emailed my ISP and got a phone call back (odd because I didn't leave my number and my dad is the account holder). Anyway, it appears that my dad hasn't paid the bill so that explains that problem.

I would still like to try the Vista Beta. I know it's a buggy beta but I still don't see why it refuses to install on my PC. It simply hangs after the first reboot, every single time. I tried again last night and let it run when I went to bed. I got up this morning and it was still on the same screen, appearently frozen.

When I try to boot from the DVD I get a STOP error that says to remove any newly installed hardware, run a memory test, etc. My new 250 GB Seagate hard drive is the only newly installed hardware and it appears to be working fine. I even ran the Segate diagnostics program and it gave it a clean bill of health. I guess I could run MemTest, though I have done that before and found no plroblems. I'm close to giving up but I don't want to. If anyone has any ideas I welcome them. Has anyone here been unable to install Vista on any machine? I have not been able to find anything on the net about people that have not been able to install Vista at all, even if it took several hours.

[Hi Ho]

Well... I'm on Vista right now. I got it working. I decided to try again. This time I put the DVD in my old Pioneer DVD-ROM instead of my NEC burner. I also disconnected my main hard drive with XP on it. It booted from the Vista DVD and installed Vista in exactly 30 minutes.

So far I am quite impressed with Vista. I haven't had any problems yet getting things to work other than the fact that I can only get stereo sound at the moment. I have installed and run Medal of Honor Allied Assault without problems. I will be trying other games and programs.

One thing that I have discovered is that it takes FOREVER to copy or move files around on the hard drive. Does anyone have any insight on this?

Another thing I need is antivirus protection. AVG does not work on Vista, that's what I have read, so I have not even tried it. Does anyone know of a good, free antivirus program that works in Vista?

[MaxRat]

You need to disable UAP (via msconfig) and driver signing (via bcedit) and also right click the drive properties and Uncheck indexing of drive...this will make it run faster...

Also Avast works very well on vista...I have been a AVG fan and when it didnt load I tried Avast and it works fine....although it will show in the performance monitor for slow start-ups and shut-downs....

read my vista thread...it works fine if you're using vista... there are plenty links and I can supply you with 20+ pages of info where I got that (via linkage)

[David M]

I don't understand why you guys are torturing yourselves like this? I don't think any of you are sadomasochists but why install an OS still in beta that you know still has many many bugs? Perhaps if Microsoft was paying you to refine their product it may be worth it...but why do it for free?

[HAL9000]

Curiosity... one wants to see what all the hype is about. If I had a spare hard drive around to play with, I would probably do the same.

[MaxRat]

Exactly.....

I have it installed on my wifes rig and have almost no issues with it....Hal is right...it's just fun to see what all the hype is about...plus you kinda help out MS too...which I dont mind...they always return the favor one way or another...

[Hi Ho]

I did it out of curiosity as well and so far, it has shown itself to be just as stable and responsive as XP. I still have my XP install tucked safely away on the disconnected hard drive but I have copied all of my files to Vista and it is running normally. All of the games I have tried work without a hitch. Maxthon works, which surprised me. I got my soundcard working right and I now have surround sound. I can't believe this is a beta!

I found your Vista thread, MaxRat, and in one of the links there were instructions to stop the extremely annoying UAC prompts. That was very helpful. I kept indexing on because I find the instant search to be one of the most intruiging features and I have used it countless times to find things. I believe the PC was running slow last night because it was still indexing all of the files.

If there is one thing Vista needs more of, it's RAM. It runs fine on my 768 MB but I can imagine it would run even better if I had 2 GB or so.

I like the interface. Aero is very cool. I know many people don't give a damn about how the OS looks and prefer classic mode but I really like the smooth streamlined interface with perfectly smooth animations that don't slow anything else down.

I've barely scratched the surface and I'm still tweaking and finding features but I'm really liking it so far.

[MaxRat]

Good...glad to hear that...

I have been playing with it over a month now and they just released a new build with more features turned on...I have heard it's less than a 30minute install start to finish and requires alot less ram running....gonna be good...

[Hi Ho]

I have been playing with it over a month now and they just released a new build with more features turned on...I have heard it's less than a 30minute install start to finish and requires alot less ram running....gonna be good...

Any idea if/when this will be available to us plain folk? After using it a bit more I can say that it is a RAM hog. If more than two desktops are logged on at once it runs out of RAM. A strange issue I've been having is that, at random times, the hard drive light will come on and CPU usage will go to 100% for no appearent reason. I have to do a hard reset to get it back.

[MaxRat]

you can order the Vista-beta build or RC-1 via ms.com....

I dont have that issue...although I have noticed quick spikes of cpu/hd activity but it comes right back down to 0...

[Hi Ho]

Unfortunately, things in Vista land seem to have taken a downhill turn. It has become totally unstable and won't even log onto two out of the four user accounts. The display resolution suddenly changed to 800x600 and won't let me change it, even after a video card driver reinstall. It locks up regularly and is pretty much unusable.

So, I have switched back to my old XP install for now. Now I have a question about that. How do I get rid of the Vista boot menu, which still thinks Vista failed to install (because I installed Vista with my XP drive disconnected). It gives me maybe 1 second to make a choice and I fear that if I don't hit "Earlier version of Windows" that it will attempt to "Roll back Vista setup" and screw up my Vista installation completely.

When I attempted to hook my XP hard drive up alone, it was not detected in the BIOS. I thought the drive was dead! I have to connect both hard drives in order for it to work. What is up with that? My XP drive is set as the master and used to work just fine by itself, before I even had the Vista drive.

To put it short:

1. How do I get rid of the old Vista boot menu that is on the Windows XP drive. I see a new "Boot" folder on drive C in XP and I'm assuming this is the Vista boot manager?

2. Why doesn't the BIOS detect my Western Digital 80 GB drive wit XP installed when it is connected without my Seagate 250 GB drive with Vista installed? It works fine when both drives are connected.

3. Is it possible to setup the boot manager so that I can select between Vista and XP without physically switching drives?

[MaxRat]

XP disk and fixboot and fix mbr....

When in Vista...go to control panel/ perf& ratings/advanced tool/ windows diagnostic center....

Down under you will see a memory tab... where it shows "hard faults" are you having any...?

I just checked mine and I had 300 hard faults between scvhost.exe and mmc.exe...

I am running 210x9.... but I memtested (for hours) all the way to 220x9 fully stable...Apearently...it's not VIsta stable....

Vista is very picky on ram timmings and speed....

[Hi Ho]

I looked in the Windows Diagnostics Console and there are no hard faults under memory.

I found THIS program, VistaBootPro, and I was able to remove the "Rollback Vista Setup" option and set XP as the default. However, I cannot figure out how to add my Vista installation to the boot options. I'm running it in XP. Is there any way to do this?

[glc]

You probably have the WD drive misjumpered - this is why bios won't see it without the other drive connected. "Master" on a WD *requires* a slave present. Use CS or remove the jumper for standalone.

[MaxRat]

do you mean so you can dual boot....

You do as normal...have XP installed and then creat a partition at least 50gig in size...boot from the Vista dvd and install in on the created partition... it will do the magic on it's own...then when you restart you'll have the dual boot option...