G
Guest
So I thought I would finally install that Beta 2 I picked up at TechEd last
month. Initially I installed it on VMWare but was unable to enjoy Areo due
to the 128Mb video requirements, after playing around with it a bit I figured
I would try to install it on another partion for dual boot.
I resized my disk partition using Acronis and created a new primary
partition for Vista. I have 2 320GB SATA drives in a RAID 0 connection using
the nVidia RAID on the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, I was not entirely
sure how successful I expected I might need drivers (for XP I needed to
install on a single ATA drive, install drivers, then used Acronis to clone
the drive to the array as I don't have a floppy disk), but I noticed that
when I installed it on VMWare I noticed I could load drivers from CD and/or
USB flash disk (yea!)
I decided to start the installation from XP and got to the disk
configuration selected my new partiotion and pressed next, I then recieved a
warning that some drivers had not been installed listing 3 devices all
seemingly related to my SATA array (very nice, that should have saved me some
time) so I cancelled. Unfortuantly it sent me back to the begining rather
then back to the disk configuration so I had to redownload the update (that
could get anoying if updates are large or many), enter my product key again .
So I get back to the disk configuration and select the load driver, I have
the drivers on a network share and since I'm currently running under windows
XP I kinda expected that I should be able to load the drivers from anywhere I
could currently navigate to in explorer, but was disappointed I could only
load from the specified locations. I inserted the driver CD but Vista would
not find the driver on the CD either. Now I was getting a bit concerned but
since it didn't appear to have spent any time searching the CD I figured
Vista was only looking in the root directory, rather then burn a new CD I
thought I would try this USB flash disk option and copied the mess of files
to the root directory on my USB flash disk, thankfully it worked. BROWSE
option would be VERY USEFUL.
So I get a list of 4 items 2 of them with the exact same name (although at
the time I thought I had 2 items twice but it was actually 3 items 1 of which
appeared twice but I'll get back to that). So install the SATA raid
controller press Ok press load driver again and select the other device which
I can't remember what it was at the moment. I click next to continue
installation and I get an warning I'm still missing a driver for WDC
something or other (appeared to be my western digital hard drive, either my
usb or sata drive I wasn't entirely sure) I didn't see why I should need a
driver for my hard disk and have never loaded one for it in the past so I
ignored the warning and continued.
Setup copied files, expanded and restarted, setup ui continued after restart
and so far so good. However it wasn't long before I relized there might be a
problem setup was at the Expanding files but after 15 minutes did not appear
to have moved at all nor did it display the (XX%) as it did when copying
files in windows (took only 15-20 minutes for a complete install in VMWare so
I'm thinking something is wrong). I had NO FEEDBACK that setup was not
working, this was the UGLIEST part of my setup experience, without feedback I
was unsure if the computer was hopelessly stalled wasting my time or busilly
expanding files and just needed some more time. I made myself something to
eat and after another 20-30 minutes still no progress and I was confident it
had stalled. I had a feeling that it probably was not seeing the disk array
and had something to do with that device it warned me about so I figured I
should repeat the process to see if I had missed something.
I restarted and this time figured I would start setup from the DVD, already
having the drivers on USB flash disk I expected I would get at least as far
as I did before. But when I pressed load drivers it would not find the
driver on my USB flash disk.
I again restarted into windows XP and attempted to begin installation again
from there this time however when I pressed load drivers I noticed that one
of the drivers was for the raid controller the other for the raid device...
okay whatever loaded 3 drivers this time and when I clicked next I got didn't
get any warnings and thoguht things should run smooth from here on...
So setup restarts setup runs, expands files and about 10 minutes later
restarts again and looks like it is going to boot into Vista for the first
time.... but nope... blank screen again NO FEEDBACK 10 minutes later I'm
fairly confident its not doing anything and restart, I try to launch it in
safe mode and it finally stalls out just after crcdisk.sys. I'm thinking it
has something to do with my SATA RAID array and was thinking I am probably
going to need to break my array, but I restarted into windows XP and did a
search online for crcdisk.sys and discovered some mention of Vista not
supported on USB disks, I was not attempting to install on a USB disk but did
have one attached.
After turning off my USB harddisk, I restarted and all is well.
It then asks me for my user name and password. My preference is to create a
seperate administrative and limited user account (sa-username and username) .
I don't like spaces in my username although supported I don't think it is
best practice as some applications may not work correctly so I avoid it.
Vista here seems to encourage users to create user names with spaces in them
and assumes that all accounts typed here should be administrators (I thought
the default in Vista was going to be Limited User Accounts? what happened to
that?). Although I do like to have my full name rather then username listed
on the welcome screen. Not a huge issue as I know I can type sa-username now
and then go into computer management and change my fullname listed on the
account however this is not very obvious so standard users so I think most
users will end up with login names with spaces possibly causing issues for
them later on (or perhaps not as I've always avoided spaces in my login, but
anywayws it seems that the process for setting up an account where login
differs from Full Name is not intuitive and that non-administrative users
need to be added after setup). It would also be nice to be able to rename
the administrator account and set the administrator account password at this
time.
So now that Vista is up and running one of the first messages I get is that
"Windows needs to install driver software for you Unknown device." That
doesn't help me very much, which Unknown device would that be? Although I
don't expect windows to be able to provide information that is not available,
I can usually find additonal information in the device manager in the
location property (eg on WinFast TV2000 XP Expert WDM Video Capture.) so
rather then guessing which device it might be referring to I generally update
the drivers from device manager. Perhaps windows could display a different
message for Unknown Devices such as windows has found an unknown device on
WinFast TV2000 XP Expert WDM Video Capture...
So I think thats it for now.
- Kurt
month. Initially I installed it on VMWare but was unable to enjoy Areo due
to the 128Mb video requirements, after playing around with it a bit I figured
I would try to install it on another partion for dual boot.
I resized my disk partition using Acronis and created a new primary
partition for Vista. I have 2 320GB SATA drives in a RAID 0 connection using
the nVidia RAID on the ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, I was not entirely
sure how successful I expected I might need drivers (for XP I needed to
install on a single ATA drive, install drivers, then used Acronis to clone
the drive to the array as I don't have a floppy disk), but I noticed that
when I installed it on VMWare I noticed I could load drivers from CD and/or
USB flash disk (yea!)
I decided to start the installation from XP and got to the disk
configuration selected my new partiotion and pressed next, I then recieved a
warning that some drivers had not been installed listing 3 devices all
seemingly related to my SATA array (very nice, that should have saved me some
time) so I cancelled. Unfortuantly it sent me back to the begining rather
then back to the disk configuration so I had to redownload the update (that
could get anoying if updates are large or many), enter my product key again .
So I get back to the disk configuration and select the load driver, I have
the drivers on a network share and since I'm currently running under windows
XP I kinda expected that I should be able to load the drivers from anywhere I
could currently navigate to in explorer, but was disappointed I could only
load from the specified locations. I inserted the driver CD but Vista would
not find the driver on the CD either. Now I was getting a bit concerned but
since it didn't appear to have spent any time searching the CD I figured
Vista was only looking in the root directory, rather then burn a new CD I
thought I would try this USB flash disk option and copied the mess of files
to the root directory on my USB flash disk, thankfully it worked. BROWSE
option would be VERY USEFUL.
So I get a list of 4 items 2 of them with the exact same name (although at
the time I thought I had 2 items twice but it was actually 3 items 1 of which
appeared twice but I'll get back to that). So install the SATA raid
controller press Ok press load driver again and select the other device which
I can't remember what it was at the moment. I click next to continue
installation and I get an warning I'm still missing a driver for WDC
something or other (appeared to be my western digital hard drive, either my
usb or sata drive I wasn't entirely sure) I didn't see why I should need a
driver for my hard disk and have never loaded one for it in the past so I
ignored the warning and continued.
Setup copied files, expanded and restarted, setup ui continued after restart
and so far so good. However it wasn't long before I relized there might be a
problem setup was at the Expanding files but after 15 minutes did not appear
to have moved at all nor did it display the (XX%) as it did when copying
files in windows (took only 15-20 minutes for a complete install in VMWare so
I'm thinking something is wrong). I had NO FEEDBACK that setup was not
working, this was the UGLIEST part of my setup experience, without feedback I
was unsure if the computer was hopelessly stalled wasting my time or busilly
expanding files and just needed some more time. I made myself something to
eat and after another 20-30 minutes still no progress and I was confident it
had stalled. I had a feeling that it probably was not seeing the disk array
and had something to do with that device it warned me about so I figured I
should repeat the process to see if I had missed something.
I restarted and this time figured I would start setup from the DVD, already
having the drivers on USB flash disk I expected I would get at least as far
as I did before. But when I pressed load drivers it would not find the
driver on my USB flash disk.
I again restarted into windows XP and attempted to begin installation again
from there this time however when I pressed load drivers I noticed that one
of the drivers was for the raid controller the other for the raid device...
okay whatever loaded 3 drivers this time and when I clicked next I got didn't
get any warnings and thoguht things should run smooth from here on...
So setup restarts setup runs, expands files and about 10 minutes later
restarts again and looks like it is going to boot into Vista for the first
time.... but nope... blank screen again NO FEEDBACK 10 minutes later I'm
fairly confident its not doing anything and restart, I try to launch it in
safe mode and it finally stalls out just after crcdisk.sys. I'm thinking it
has something to do with my SATA RAID array and was thinking I am probably
going to need to break my array, but I restarted into windows XP and did a
search online for crcdisk.sys and discovered some mention of Vista not
supported on USB disks, I was not attempting to install on a USB disk but did
have one attached.
After turning off my USB harddisk, I restarted and all is well.
It then asks me for my user name and password. My preference is to create a
seperate administrative and limited user account (sa-username and username) .
I don't like spaces in my username although supported I don't think it is
best practice as some applications may not work correctly so I avoid it.
Vista here seems to encourage users to create user names with spaces in them
and assumes that all accounts typed here should be administrators (I thought
the default in Vista was going to be Limited User Accounts? what happened to
that?). Although I do like to have my full name rather then username listed
on the welcome screen. Not a huge issue as I know I can type sa-username now
and then go into computer management and change my fullname listed on the
account however this is not very obvious so standard users so I think most
users will end up with login names with spaces possibly causing issues for
them later on (or perhaps not as I've always avoided spaces in my login, but
anywayws it seems that the process for setting up an account where login
differs from Full Name is not intuitive and that non-administrative users
need to be added after setup). It would also be nice to be able to rename
the administrator account and set the administrator account password at this
time.
So now that Vista is up and running one of the first messages I get is that
"Windows needs to install driver software for you Unknown device." That
doesn't help me very much, which Unknown device would that be? Although I
don't expect windows to be able to provide information that is not available,
I can usually find additonal information in the device manager in the
location property (eg on WinFast TV2000 XP Expert WDM Video Capture.) so
rather then guessing which device it might be referring to I generally update
the drivers from device manager. Perhaps windows could display a different
message for Unknown Devices such as windows has found an unknown device on
WinFast TV2000 XP Expert WDM Video Capture...
So I think thats it for now.
- Kurt