Vista installation hangs up

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JohnnyPerko said:
Any clue how to get back to my desktop?
Click to expand...

Is it possible for you to provide some details, such as system
configuration, Vista build number, whether it is x86 or x64, why you are
upgrading instead of doing a clean install as has been recommended with
everything but death threats, etc...
 
Mark, an upgrade with Vista is a different animal than an upgrade with
previous versions of Windows. It is a new kind of clean installation of
Windows, but with preservation of programs, files, and settings. I know it
soundd oxymoronic, but as I read more about this I am coming to the
conclusion that the old common wisdom about upgrades just does not apply to
Vista.

The Vista installer lays down a preconfigured image of Windows, but not a
Ghost image. Setup then completes the device driver installations,
registers programs, and so on. I have little understanding of just what
that means, but I do understand that the process does not leave the bits and
pieces of the previous version of Windows that tend to mess things up for
the new version.

I think what is going wrong with these posters is that they have not run the
Upgrade Advisor and removed the incompatible programs recommended by the UA
for removal. I think the rules we have been playing by have changed a lot.

It may be that the advice we need to be giving is not whether or not to
upgrade, but how to do it properly.

What do you think?
 
It's not oxymoronic at all. I bet we have read the same articles. I think
I understand the theory, but as with everything in life, sometimes a subtle
nuance makes a large difference.

Are we sure that Vista is doing this properly? What I mean is, are we sure
that the Vista registry isn't getting clogged up with invalid keys and other
such phenomena moved over from the previous XP installation? There have
been a few instances where the upgrade was done with Office 12 Beta
installed previously in XP that rendered Office 12 Beta not only unusable
but uninstallable and unrepairable, as an example.

And I do appreciate the advice, believe me.

But here is the conundrum: it seems the majority have done something
incorrectly before they come here for advice and they average CPP'er is not
here to get advice first.

In the case of the OP in this thread, my goal was to perhaps obtain some
information regarding what the problem could be. I will endeavour to keep
the sarcasm in check, however.

Mark
 
"I think the rules we have been playing by have changed a lot."
-Sage Colin

I think you may be right, Colin.

If I have time this weekend, I might test upgrading
on a different machine. I will definitely be trying the
upgrade install for RC1. Even though, our past
experiences almost force us to advise others against
the upgrade install, I think it is important that we understand
Vista is different. It is also important for beta users to
do this so that we can find bugs in the upgrade procedure.


-Michael
 
I'm not so much thinking of the OP as I am just thinking out loud. Just as
the upgrade process is buggy, so is the whole of 5384. That's why its all
beta. I'm for letting them upgrade and see what happens.

Keep in mind, the advice is still not to do any of this on a production or
primary home computer, so if a participant has XP up on a test box or at
least an extra partition, then they should try an upgrade. If not, well
they shouldn't even be trying Vista.
 
Exactly.

I think what is confusing things is that the basic assumption still has to
be that none of this is done on a production or primary home computer. The
problems pouring into here resulting from fouled up upgrades really has more
to do with folks ignoring that instruction than anything to do with a beta
upgrade process.

The dominant theme isn't "What's wrong with the upgrade process?" but "How
do I get XP back on my primary home computer?"

We need to advise them to only upgrade a test installation of XP at this
time.
 
I'm going to do the same, Michael. Maybe we'll be able to see some of the
problems and come up with real answers instead of the standard "Well you
shouldn't have done that."
 
I've seen this kind of warning in many posts and I'd like to know what
the deal is here with regard to data loss when Vista is on a seperate
partition to XP.

I have good backups of all important data and several machines to play
with but I'm running Vista on a "production" machine. Now by production
I don't mean a development machine as I'm not doing any at present. If I
were then I might well be a lot more cautious. But it is still the
machine I use most for communication with clients and friends.

It has two large drives of around 250GB each. The first is divided into
two partitions with XP on the primary and Vista. The other disk is
purely a data disk.

I'm aware of the thing with restore points. I'm not worried if Vista or
even XP goes belly up for some reason. I'm sure I can reinstall without
a problem. It will be a pain to reinstall XP because of all the apps
that are installed on it but I have all the disks and licenses I need to
do that.

All my email and my email program is on the data disk. The program can
be run from Vista or XP and all the mail gets copied to a USB stick
every day as it is also used from other machines. (Portable Thunderbird
in case you're interested).

If anyone thinks my data is at risk with this kind of setup please tell
me how that could happen. It is backed up but I still wouldn't want to
restore unless I had to.
 
See, there's the difference. You understand the need for backing up data
and have taken steps. Yes, it is a pain to reinstall everything, but after
the first 20-30 times, you settle into a routine.

Colin is referring to people who have registered for the CPP, don't know a
registry key from a basketball key, have not only no backup of their data
but don't even have a copy of their XP operating system and then somehow
foul up while installing Vista onto the only computer they own. As you can
see, there is a considerable difference. I give you: the average user.

It is this average user that must be able to pop in DVD and an hour later
have Vista running like peas and carrots, without dual-booting, hiding
drives, tweaking or turning services off, manually loading drivers, etc...
Clearly, if 5384 is any indication, this is far from reality. I believe
this is what Colin is thinking, as well.

But I have no solution for the average user who is holding a copy of 5384 on
a DVD, other than, don't do it. What I inferred from Colin is, maybe that
answer isn't good enough, and maybe there are some that can try some
upgrades, on a testbox, and really flush out the problems, and then come up
with some real solutions, unlike the flippant answers I have become
accustomed to doling out.

</soapbox>

Mark
 
But that was my point. I haven't lost any data even though I've taken
precautions.

I haven't had a single crash or BSOD or even a freeze. I'm running 5384
as if it were my main O/S for at least a week now. I only go to XP when
I want to do something that would be faster to do there because I can't
be bothered to install the apps into Vista.

On this machine I installed into a clean new partition and when Vista
said it was ready to roll I checked in device manager and it was clean.
I kid you not.

So where are all these problems?

On a previous install on a lesser machine I didn't have Aero but it
still ran fine with 512 RAM on an AMD 2400.

I feel like I'm missing something.
 
Oh, Bernie... read through these newsgroups! The place is rife with
botches. Colin once recalled that someone had upgraded their office
computer and needed help printing invoices (or payroll, can't remember
exactly). Has a day gone by that there are not two or three posts from the
hapless that start out "Help me uninstall Vista?" That is the person I mean
by the average user. You followed the instructions and used experience and
common sense. The average user does not know that instructions exist and
has no experience.
 
Ah I see. I was wondering if I was lucky or had just the right hardware
as I had the impression from reading posts that the O/S itself was
extremely iffy. Well it isn't perfect but it is a long way from some
betas I've seen.
 
Microsoft doesn't qualify its warning, as I am too wont to do, with
something about how it might be OK to install to a separate volume on a
production machine. They just say "don't do it."

I think the reason is that an installation can blow the xp ntrldr (I had
that last week) and removal of Vista can render the system inoperable,
requiring booting with an xp disc and doing the repairs. You and I know how
to do that, but a novice user just might resort to just popping in the xp cd
and doing a clean installation. That would blow his data away.

Since there is no predicting what users will do when in panic ("MY COMPUTER
IS BROKEN!!!"), and given that MS PSS is not giving phone support for these
situations, the only responsible thing for MS to say is "don't do it."

I think, when asked, we should too.
 
Bernie, I cannot emphasize enough how having a separate test box (the right
tool) has made my year-long love/hate relation with Vista a great
experience. Having the right hardware and the right software tools makes
even the big crises OK. But if I had tried any of this on a laptop with no
other computers in the house (and therefore no internet connection when
things went south) I would have hated the very work Vista.

But let me cite an example of when, despite doing everything Vista in
isolation, Vista screwed up my wife's laptop...and Vista was never on it.
While testing build 5270 I decided to try MSN9. My wife has a family member
account on my main account. All of a sudden, MSN9 wouldn't download her
email and was messaging her that the account was past due. Well it turned
out that MSN9 on Vista and the MSN servers were getting things wrong and MSN
started viewing my wife's family member account as a separate account
requiring payment of past months due. MSN9 did not uninstall gracefully.
In fact it dropped the optical drives from both my x86 and x64 installations
and I wound up reinstalling both before all was well. Just getting rid of
the MSN9 installations on Vista allowed me to get my wife signed back into
the service properly.
 
That is impressive Colin.

Colin said:
Bernie, I cannot emphasize enough how having a separate test box (the right
tool) has made my year-long love/hate relation with Vista a great
experience. Having the right hardware and the right software tools makes
even the big crises OK. But if I had tried any of this on a laptop with no
other computers in the house (and therefore no internet connection when
things went south) I would have hated the very work Vista.

But let me cite an example of when, despite doing everything Vista in
isolation, Vista screwed up my wife's laptop...and Vista was never on it.
While testing build 5270 I decided to try MSN9. My wife has a family member
account on my main account. All of a sudden, MSN9 wouldn't download her
email and was messaging her that the account was past due. Well it turned
out that MSN9 on Vista and the MSN servers were getting things wrong and MSN
started viewing my wife's family member account as a separate account
requiring payment of past months due. MSN9 did not uninstall gracefully.
In fact it dropped the optical drives from both my x86 and x64 installations
and I wound up reinstalling both before all was well. Just getting rid of
the MSN9 installations on Vista allowed me to get my wife signed back into
the service properly.
Click to expand...
 
I picked my worst nightmare and upgraded it. It is a 32GB virtual machine
running XP Pro SP2 that I used for trying out all kinds of beta stuff and a
bunch of freebie utilities off the net. It got so gooed up I haven't used
it for a year so it was not up to date in anything.

Vista upgraded it gracefully. I must admit I am surprised. However, I do
have a couple of conclusions.

Although the incompatibility list showed me four programs that needed to be
updated to run in Vista, only three of them could be uninstalled. As luck
would have it, the unremovable program is MSN9 (this program has become my
Vista nemesis). I could not remove it in regular mode, clean boot, or safe
boot. My conclusion is that if a program is on the incompatibility list,
don't proceed with the upgrade. Remove the program and then restart Setup.
I can only imagine what happens with NAV if the user doesn't remove it
first.

The second conclusion is that the AI in Uninstall/Repair Programs is a lot
better than in XP. It is pretty proactive about offering an update at the
time the user chooses to remove a program. I had SQL Server Express edition
which need to be removed or updated. I started the uninstall process and
Vista offered me the option to replace it with SQL Server Express with SP1
and then took me to the site for the download. And this was after I had
explicitly clicked on Uninstall. Color me impressed. In XP I had to click
a link and hunt down the info myself.
 
While I am sure many are happy for you that you updated successfully,
apparently your "worst nightmare" was still much better functioning than the
average user's computer. And the same thing I said to Bernie, I don't think
the average user even knows that the Upgrade Advisor exists. An argument
could be made that the average user is seeing the Upgrade Advisor and
ignoring it because they are upgrading already, anyway.

I am starting to think the flaw is in the process, that MSFT is expecting
too much from the average user. I know it is way too late, but the process
should have been automated, with a choice at the end: "Uninstall these
programs or Do Not Upgrade to Vista: Pick-one" Then, the uninstallations
could be automated from that point as well, after the user has given input.

I am going to, this weekend, on a testbox that I apparently hate, install XP
SP2 Home, some adware, some spyware, a bunch of IM clients, three or four
browsers, some old (Win95 era) software (kludge it up nicely, maybe even a
virus or two), then uninstall and reinstall some stuff then install some
things a few different times without uninstalling them, and then "fix" the
computer with some freebie registry cleaner. Then I am going to pop in the
DVD and let it rip and see what comes out the other end. I believe that
will approximate the average user's experience. If nothing else, I perhaps
will finally experience some of the errors we are seeing.
 
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