*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

In Part 3 of this series we learned the x64 ISO of Vista originally uploaded to MSDN was corrupted As a result of this I installed the 32bit version of Vista on my AMD machine.   Once the DVD nightmare was over,the installation of Vista went really smooth and offers some new features that are welcomed. 

During the install I was happy to be able to load drivers for RAID controllers via USB drives.  The installation is completely visual this time around (no more dos looking boot screens) and even things like formatting and partitioning are done with a mouse.  One time I forgot to plugin my USB mouse and even though I was in the middle of the install it detected it.  Very nice. 

Once the install was completed I wanted to checkout my machine's Vista rating.  This seems to be a common practice among those who want to see how there system stacks up.  Here's a screen shot:

As you see, the overall score is the lowest score which in my case is the AMD 3400+ processor.  Apparently Vista loves my BFG 6800 GT video card since it gave the highest possible rating of 5.9.  My hard drives running in a RAID 0 configuration faired very well with a rating of 5.9, the highest. 

Overall the system is running very fast, and the interface looks gorgeous.  If you have Vista installed and if you have a windows key (which is between alt and ctrl on most keyboards) press the window key then tab combination. You'll get something like this:

There are tons of enhancements to Windows Vista, too many too mention.  Start by looking at the Windows Vista Home Page.  There you will find a lot of information on the various versions of Vista and which features they include as well.  Here are some nice haves that I am enjoying on Vista:

• Address Bar - Right click on the task bar and then go to the Toolbars tab.  From there choose "Address".  You can see it in the above screen shot.  It allows you to jump to any URL quickly.  And just like in IE 7, the shortcut keys work there as well.  For example you can type in "msn" then press ctrl-enter.  It will automatically add http://www.msn.com as the URL and launch IE 7.  If IE 7 is already open, a new tab will be created.
• Windows Photo Gallery - One of the things I missed from my Powerbook was iPhoto.  Windows Photo Gallery is now included with Vista so you can easily organize photos.  Someone hurry up and write a Flickr plugin!
• Search - Search is baked into the start menu and I haven't noticed any slow down in the PC.  I also find myself using it all the time to lookup emails, programs (instead of the old start->run), pictures, etc.  For example, I knew I had this email from a vendor the other day, but I couldn't find it.  A quick hot key of windows key -> "cajun turkey" and I found it instantly. 

There are tons of other features  and little niceties that I've noticed here and there but you'll have to get busy installing Vista for yourself to really get the feel of it.    By the way, I also installed Vista on my Media Center PC and have been running Media Center on Vista Ultimate for the past several days.  I'll try to write something up on it later on.

Sorry for the delay in this thread of posts about installing Windows Vista but I ran into a very nasty virus that kept me away from the computer for several days.  In Part 2 the last problem I had encountered was the installation not being able to find the install.wim file.  After checking and re-checking my hash, I knew for a fact I had a good download so it had to be the burn of the DVD that was causing my problems.

After searching the Internet I found others that had the same problem.  Most were trying to install Vista in Virtual PC or VMWare though (not on a regular PC).  More times than not it was always the burned DVD.  Some of the users suggested to burn the DVD at the lowest possible burn speed.  So I fired up another version of Nero and chose the lowest option available, the 2x option.

New Error During Installation

Immediately upon booting with the new 2x DVD I burned, the computer read the DVD drive faster, booted faster and things appeared to be in order.  Once it got to the license screen I typed in the license key and didn't get the d:\sources\install.wim error I had previously gotten.  I thought I was on my way to an install...... WRONG!  After I chose my Promise Fasttrak driver from my USB jump drive I chose my C: as the partition to install Vista too and formatted the partition.  After about a minute of the installation copying files, I got this screen.

Ok, so here is the WORST part of this.  In order to get to this point, I had formatted my main C:\ drive.  Yep.  Blown away.  This meant I couldn't reboot back into Windows XP and burn another copy or anything.  This is one of those cases where having multiple PCs comes in handy.  My only other computer that had a DVD burner was my Dell Laptop but I didn't have the ISO on this laptop but I did backup the ISO to my external drive.  I will spare you the hours it took me to get the ISO copied over to the laptop which didn't have a FireWire port.  Moving on.

Once I got the ISO copied onto the laptop, I checked the hash.  Yep, it was good.  I had to go to town anyway so I decided to pickup some new DVD discs.  Further investigation on forums stated this could also be a problem.  Once I returned from the store I put the new disc in the drive of the laptop ready to burn yet another DVD.  Then another problem appeared.  For some reason Alcohol 120% wouldn't burn the disc, it wouldn't even start the burn.  Thinking that Alcohol 120% was just on the fritz I downloaded CDBurnerXP, a well known and respected free burning program.  Same problem.  What was going on? 

Upgrade DVD Firmware

Reading the error logs from the two programs it seemed the best thing to do was to upgrade the firmware on the DVD drive in the laptop.  It was suppose to "magically" solve the problem.  I upgraded the Sony DVD RW D56A to the latest Sony  firmware of PFS3.

Once I rebooted I thought this was it.  I was going to burn a new DVD at lower speed and get Vista installed.  After I got rebooted I tried to burn the disc again.  It failed to boot.  This time, I got the d:\sources\install.wim error.  By this point, I am starting to suspect the ISO image. 

MSDN.....where did the x64 ISO go?  RTM x64 corrupt?

By this point I am feeling extremely defeated.  Nothing I did worked.  For whatever reason I happened to decide to download the x32 version of Vista and it was about finished.  While I was on MSDN, I noticed that the x64 version of Vista is missing from the site!  It honestly isn't there anymore.  The 32bit version is but the 64bit version doesn't show up anymore on the front page or menus.  The only conclusion I can withdraw from all of this having burnt about 15 DVDs at various speeds on various burners and different types of media is the x64 RTM of Vista that was posted to MSDN was corrupt.  Plain and simple, it won't install.