neophite

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I've seen a lot of frustration expressed on this board. I recently bought a
Dell desktop and and am considering upgrading to vista. I don't want to to
have a try a clean installation. Good move or am I creating a big headache?
 
Heroes said:
I've seen a lot of frustration expressed on this board. I recently
bought a Dell desktop and and am considering upgrading to vista. I
don't want to to have a try a clean installation. Good move or am I
creating a big headache?
Click to expand...

What's the rush? If your new PC doers all you bought it to do why not
hang back for a while until the dust settles and the initial Vista
problems get ironed-out?

I can't for the life of me see why anyone who hasn't a specific need
which can't be met in XP SP2 would upgrade to Vista at this stage.
 
What's the rush? If your new PC doers all you bought it to do why not
hang back for a while until the dust settles and the initial Vista
problems get ironed-out?

I can't for the life of me see why anyone who hasn't a specific need
which can't be met in XP SP2 would upgrade to Vista at this stage.
Click to expand...

The same reason many people buy new cars every few years when their
current one runs fine.

As far as problems, Microsoft in infamous for writing lousy
installers. It isn't so much the final product, Vista, so far for me,
once I installed it successfully runs fine, adds a lot of refinements
and is worth the upgrade just for the eye candy improvements alone,
some of which truly make your computing experience better and more
user friendly.

Many people have a sheep mentality. They hear "stories" and fall into
line. Don't upgrade until the first service pack comes out months from
now, only do clean installs, blah, blah, blah. Its mostly hype.
 
Heroes said:
I've seen a lot of frustration expressed on this board. I recently bought
a
Dell desktop and and am considering upgrading to vista. I don't want to
to
have a try a clean installation. Good move or am I creating a big
headache?
Click to expand...

Only those with problems will post here. Many are able to install just
fine.

First make sure that the version of Vista you want to upgrade to, can do an
upgrade for the XP OS you have. There is a difference between the ability
to use an upgrade version of Vista and the ability to do an in place upgrade
(which retains installed apps and data) which is what you want. See this
link for upgrade paths. The green dots mean you can do an in place upgrade.
The yellow means only a custom install so programs will have to be
reinstalled and data migrated:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradepaths.mspx

Some programs are incompatible with Vista. Run the Vista upgrade Advisor
first to get an idea though the Advisor is not always accurate. You must
uninstall any AV programs, 3rd party firewalls, CD burning programs like
Roxio and Nero, and any other system level utilities (like Tweakui and
Partition Magic) and programs that use drivers.

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx

To be sure check with on the web sites for the programs you have to see if
they are vista compatible. Make sure there are Vista compatible drivers for
all your hardware, check on the Dell site.

You should have the means to reinstall XP if needed, always have the
original media for any software and make a backup of all important data
before doing the upgrade. Consider using drive imaging software such as
Acronis True Image Home v. 10 to make an image of the drive to an external
USB hard drive. This can be quickly restored if needed and ATI 10 works
fine in Vista, too.
 
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