Vista questions

Android412

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5 Jan 2004
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How is everybody finding the compatibility of Vista, with both programs and drivers?

By looking at some of the thread titles network drivers seem to be an issue.

Starting to get the itch to upgrade, but wanna know what I'm instore for.
 
Well first of all, it's still in Beta which you probably know. It is not recommended to run the system as your primary OS unless you have a seperate testing machine, wether it be a laptop or desktop, to run it on. This way any problems won't affect any work you need to do. Alternatively to a seperate machine, you could dual-boot with another OS, wether it is 2000/XP, or you could run it as a Virtual Machine. However the ladder will not have desireable affects as you won't get the Aero Glass, and other cool features.

Driver support has gotten better and better with each build. If you notice the details in the new thread that I created, build 5381, the x64 and x86 builds increased in size 800MB and 300MB respectively. Not all of that is drivers, but some of it should be ;)

If you have the allocatable hardware, give it a shot. If nothing else, it's quite an experience :cool:

We also have a solid base of users running the latest Betas, so feel free to post questions when you have them, perhaps even from Vista and IE7 :)
 
I have a totally unrelated question but as it is to do with vista i thought it better to post it here rather than start a new thread.

I need to remove a vista build from a second harddrive, i know i can reformat the whole thing but i would prefer not to do that as i have files on there that i can't move at the moment. Would another way be to just delete it? Or is there a special uninstallation procedure??
 
How is the drive configured related to the files you need?

Is this drive in your system, configured as dual boot?
 
It is configured as a dual boot i have xp on my C drive, unfortunatley i did not partition the D drive before installation so they are all mixed together.
 
with vista still fully installed, boot to your XP installation
go to start -> run and type "c:\boot\fixntfs -xp" (without the quotes) click ok, and reboot the system

when the system reboots you should notice the bootloader has gone

If possible, move the files from the D drive that you want to keep to C for now.

boot back into xp again and go to disk management

select the drive you have vista installed on, right click it and select format.

then, go to windows explorer and delete these files from the root of your xp drive or partition:

boot (folder)
boot.bak
bootmgr
bootsect.bak


right click on 'My Computer',
select properties -> advanced -> startup and recovery settings, and under system startup, make sure that windows xp is selected as the default

If you don't have the fixntfs file, I have attached it to this post.

After doing all this I still had some problems with booting so what i done was to insert my xp disk and go to the recovery console and use the Fixboot c: command to get rid of the last bits of Vista and get XP booting on its own again.

No data will be lost on your c: drive and your current xp configuration with software installed and files saved will not be altered at all.
 

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Thanks so much i will try that when i can move most of my files from d drive, reputation points duly added, especially for such a quick reply ;-)
 
Would it also be possible to install a new vista version over the top of an old one? So instead of deleting the old one i just updated?
 
No, you have to do a complete start from scratch. There isn't an upgrade path from one beta to another. If you get it to install over it, by some freak of nature, you are only asking for problems.

If you get it setup this way, keep the partition seperate for Vista (as in keeping the files you moved with the rest of your stuff). This way, you can blow it away at any time without any regret or effort.
 
I have used VMWare primarily, although with the official release of Beta 2 around May 22nd, I'm going to dual-boot.
 
for what reason? is the aero theme not available with vmware or is it just that it will be more stable than previous ones? what are the disadvantages of vmware, is uninstallation easy?

p.s - thanks for all the advice :)
 
Some of the visual effects weren't reliable, but i wasn't running it with a lot of dedicated RAM.

Uninstallation is a snap, as you just have to delete the single file that the image runs from :)
 
ok, i have purged my D drive of all nessesary data and then i went to carry out the actions as planned typing c:\boot\fixntfs -xp in run just flashed up a black window no option to press ok, then i tried the file you put up as well, and it had the same effct.

restarted, but both boot options still there :(
earlier version of windows or vista

then tried to go and reformat D drive but it said that i couldn't because it was active and deactiavting it took away the drive so no good there either

wish i had know about vmware before hand :(

also not all of the boot file names you mentioned where in xp, maybe i'm looking in the wrong place. i found bootsect.bak and a boot folder with a boot skin and a boot screen in it but not boot.bak or boot mgr

don't really know where to go from here..
 
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Noticed you had a seperate thread about your D drive, which you resolved.

What is the status now?
 
I can't find any way to reformat the D drive because it says it is active and vista is still available for dual boot.
 
Would it be a good idea to just completely delete all the vista files in the D drive and maybe that would make it available for reformat?

If not maybe you could point me to the specific directories that have the files i need to remove the dual boot option.

The help would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Right Click my Computer, go to Properties. Under the Advanced Tab, go down to where it says Startup and Recovery - click settings

Then, click the Edit button towards the top right, delete the line related to Vista.

As long as there are no important data files on D, it doesn't matter if it's active you can still format it. The message is only there as a warning incase you try to format a system drive.
 
This is what is says in the boot folder:
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
;
[boot loader]
timeout=0
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /TUTag=SI306S /Kernel=TUKernel.exe
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition (TuneUp Backup)" /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /FASTDETECT /TUTag=SI306S-BAK

Which bit should i delete?
 
Last edited:

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