%/%&#%# Arrgh >:( - Misslilo's New Windows Install

[misslilo]

Christ what hell of a last night!!!

I had Vista Ultimate lying on a shelf for quite some time, and last evening/night I decided it was time to install it.
Whee - couldn't wait, but turned out it couldn't just upgrade, I had to do a full install.
Alright I thought to myself - shouldn't be that hard - have done it tons of times before.
It's as easy as scratching yourself in the behind, right?

RIGHT! Boy was I wrong!

It kept stopping the install either right at the start, or half way through or right when it's finalizing the installation.
I think I had to hard boot the PC at least 40 times and formatting about 5 times.
And also trying an XP install, because maybe it was the disc itself, that was at fault...nope, nothing worked.

I finally had to give up, becuase it was getting way too late, but all day at work it bugged me big time.
You know this feeling you get in the stomach, that something is not right...
It was horrible - just to think of getting home not being able to turn the beast on and have some fun...

So after I got home I was determined to solve this hell.
I made a pot of coffee, sat down and turned the Pc on - and as I watched the initial start up sequence, right before it comes up asking me to hit a button to boot from CD/DVD - it hit me!!
Oh man - why didn't I do that from the start???

All I had to do was DELETE the damn partition, make a new and THEN install the beast.
So I did and everything went fine... YAY
Only then - - right when it's preparing to show the desktop, it stalls!!!!
Arrggh - not again!
In frustation I hit CTRL-ALT-Delete and the sucker showed a bit of the installation again, before it froze on me.
Gave me hope though, that if I restarted and let it keep at it... (had to do that 3 times), then eventually it would finish.

And voila - 6 hours later I now have Ultimate installed and most of the essential fixes done.
PHEW - never again!

[Rudy]

No offense misslilo but, installing Vista was a bad idea...

[misslilo]

I know a lot of people say that, but I've had Vista since the very beginning, and never really had any problems.
Sure, before the updates I ran into a few incompatibilities, but that's it...
Now it runs fine and plays almost everything I throw at it
As soon as UAC is disabled, it's fine.

[Tawmis]

I am not a huge fan of VISTA myself. It's on my laptop, and it's a nightmare. But it could be that the laptop just isn't strong enough to deal with Vista, even though that's what was installed on the laptop right from the vendor. When I threw XP on there - the thing ran lightning fast. Unfortunately the key I had for XP didn't work for more than like 2 weeks and Vista had to be reinstalled on it again.

Once more, it returned to a slow crawl.

So if you have a machine that can handle Vista, it might just be good. Unfortunately I haven't had that experience with my laptop. So I have a bad taste in my mouth when it comes to Windows Vista.

[DeadPoolX]

Misslilo's story is generally the same for me whenever I change anything on my PC. It doesn't matter what it is -- OS, video drivers, sound drivers, whatever. I'm amazed whenever something actually works.

I should note that this problem has plagued me since the days of 386/486 computers. Whenever something is changed or added (even games), it's not at all unexpected that something might (and probably will) screw up.

That's one of the reasons why I've held off on installing my new video card. I know I should (and I will), but I'm not looking forward to my inevitable system crash and spending a week fixing it.

I hate Nvidia cards and the drivers associated with them. Although I haven't had an Nvidia card since my old "GeForce 3 Ti 500" (which was brand new back then), I can easily remember the hell I went through when updating drivers. I'd have to go into Safe Mode, uninstall the drivers, use a third-party program to clear out whatever remains of the drivers after the uninstall, reboot into Safe Mode, install the new drivers, reboot and pray.

The above wasn't just my experience, either. That was how numerous tech-oriented websites suggested updating drivers.

That's the primary reason I switched to ATI. It's easy -- uninstall the old drivers, reboot, install new drivers. End of story.

[Collector]

My experience with Vista is that most of problems that most have with it is that they try installing it on a machine that doesn't have enough guts behind it. Vista is a resource hog. You need to have at least a couple of GB of RAM and a fast enough of a CPU behind it to make it happy. AND most other complains come from the UAC. I won't recommend that most users should turn it off, but if you do, it makes it behave more like XP. I have also found that Vista 64 is more stable than XP32 on the same machine.

Misslilo, is this 32 or 64 bit Vista? I have heard that the Windows version of KQ6 runs on Vista without need of VDMS and with no cursor bug. If you have 32 bit Vista, could you confirm this for me?

[misslilo]

My experience with Vista is that most of problems that most have with it is that they try installing it on a machine that doesn't have enough guts behind it. Vista is a resource hog. You need to have at least a couple of GB of RAM and a fast enough of a CPU behind it to make it happy. AND most other complains come from the UAC. I won't recommend that most users should turn it off, but if you do, it makes it behave more like XP. I have also found that Vista 64 is more stable than XP32 on the same machine.

Misslilo, is this 32 or 64 bit Vista? I have heard that the Windows version of KQ6 runs on Vista without need of VDMS and with no cursor bug. If you have 32 bit Vista, could you confirm this for me?

It's the 32 bit.
KQ6 windows version? Do I have that?
I only have the Collection I've told you about in other threads... is the windows version in that one?

As for disabling UAC, I know what I'm doing - but you're right, most people shouldn't disable it.

Oh and my specs are:
Processor Name: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E6750 @ 2.66GHz
Videocard Name: NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS - 640MB(<- This is why Vista runs smooth on my machine)
Installed Memory: 2.046,50 MB

Oh and DeadPoolX - Updating Nvidia drivers now is a breeze.
I go to the Nvidia site, that checks if you have the latest driver. Download and run it and that's it.

[DeadPoolX]

Oh and DeadPoolX - Updating Nvidia drivers now is a breeze.
I go to the Nvidia site, that checks if you have the latest driver. Download and run it and that's it.

That's good to know! It used to be absolutely horrible.

[Collector]

If this is the 2006 collection, apply my DOSBox patch to restore the missing files, open the KQ6 folder and run "King's Quest VI.bat", not the VLP.

[Fender_178]

Man that sucks. I wont be getting Vista until I get a new computer. Which should be some time in the near future and it will be used for Xp/vista compatible games that cant run on my current rig. And my current Xp rig will be used for the older dos games through DOSBox and some old Xp compatible games that this rig can run.

[Collector]

DOSBox runs perfectly on Vista.

[DeadPoolX]

From what little I know about Vista (other than rumors) is that you'll really need about 4GB of RAM to function properly. Vista works with less, but it'll get really slow when using other applications.

I've also read that installing an upgrade of Vista (it doesn't matter which version) can potentially cause many more problems than performing a clean install with a stand-alone copy.

I suppose that makes sense. I've never found upgrading an OS works too well. I remember people having a lot of problems with WinME when upgrading Win98SE. As well all know now, WinME was a bad move on Microsoft's part, but at the time, it seemed like a good idea.

I think in time, Vista could actually become a very good OS. When XP was first released in 2001 it had a lot of issues. I know because I was one of the early adopters. Aside from being slow and a resource hog (at the time), it didn't "play nice" with a lot of programs.

Fast forward to 2009 and three service packs later, people regularly say how much they like XP. There's been eight years of updates, so why not? However, I've read that Microsoft plans to cut off "mainstream support" of XP on April 14, 2009. That's in a little over two months from now.

Maybe Vista will turn out the same by the time 2015 rolls around. I doubt it, since it looks like Microsoft is getting ready to release a new OS (Windows 7) in the next few years, but it could happen.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft is continuing support for Win2K until July 13, 2010. Win2K was released in 2000, effectively having a longer life than XP.

[Collector]

I've also read that installing an upgrade of Vista (it doesn't matter which version) can potentially cause many more problems than performing a clean install with a stand-alone copy.

As you note later, this is always the case. There is also a fair difference between Vista 32 and Vista 64. The 64 bit version has a smaller memory foot print than 32 and is generally more stable. This does come with the price of the loss of more backwards compatibility. I have found that installing Vista had been mostly trouble free, but have never tried an upgrade. I would strongly discourage anyone form it, anyway.