Last weekend I finally bit the bullet and decided to install Vista. There were a couple of things that were bugging me about my system so I wanted to either reinstall XP or give Vista a shot. It’s been on my mind for awhile now that since I am in IT now I need to get much more familiar with it than the occasional tinkering.
Out of curiosity I kept a log of the Vista install process which took about 45 minutes from the time I inserted the DVD until I saw the desktop for the first time. There are just a few comments I have about the install process, the first being that when the setup launched for about three minutes all I had was the Vista background with a cursor, nothing else. This was a little confusing because I didn’t know what, if anything, was going on. Needless to say the install was quite different from XP, but I liked it. There seemed to be a few instances where nothing appeared to be going on for a few minutes. One good example is when setup started expanding files. For a good 5-10 minutes it was showing 0% until after 10 minutes it was showing 75%. Another thing that stood out is that I was able to see an option to upgrade from XP to Vista but I was not able to select it, and believe was told it was not available. Mind you, I wasn’t interested in doing an upgrade, but I can pass this off on the version I am using.
After the install completed the only real issue I noticed immediately was lack of sound. I have built-in sound on my motherboard as well as a sound card that I use. There seems to be a number of people that have had issues with Creative sound cards after installing Vista, although it usually just requires installing a new driver. While trying to resolve the issue I encountered my first BSOD in Vista, but I did manage to get it working. I am hoping that will be the only blue screen I have to see. One other issue that appeared and that I am not 100% sure is gone is that after rebooting the boot process would seem to halt and I would be left with a blank screen. Usually after another reboot or two it was fine. My current thoughts on this are it was a result of the driver issue for the sound card, or it is somehow seeing the old XP install (in a Windows.old folder) and getting confused. I tend to keep my computer on so I will have to watch out for this the next time I reboot.
So, my thoughts on Vista. I have been just as guilty as most at making fun of Vista for as long as I can remember now, but I have to say that so far I am happy with it. I have to admit I am a bit of a sucker for the eye candy though. The primary purpose should be functionality but pretty is always nice too. I do have Aero enabled and my system is working just as good, if not better, then before the switch. For those of you familiar with it my computer scored a base score of 2.8 on the Windows Experience Index, obviously room for improvement but I’m not going to rush out and purchase another video card for a higher score. Overall I don’t have any complaints so far but it hasn’t even been a week yet.
(Note: For those curious, I am running Vista Business with SP1)