Windows Vista Vista Upgrade

[martinalmond]

Hi

After three months of waiting I ecieved my Vista Upgrade yesterday.

I decided to put it on my Acer Travelmate 2490.

I recieved the Vista disc and a disc with Acer driver upgrades as well. Although not clear what to do I got there in the end, so I thought.

All appeared well, I had checked my machine was compatable and bar a couple of small issues all appeared ok.

I ran the Acer disc which removed some programs and the tried to install Vista.

All appeared well until near the end where it declared there was a problem and it put the machine back to XP.

I know the RAM is ok as I upgraded that.

On checking things again it says there is not enough space on the hard drive.

It recommmends 40gb on each drive, very difficult as there is only 25gb on each drive and of course some of that is used by programs.

My D drive has only 2.5gb free but yet I cannot see many programs on that drive, bar what I think are three back up files which I cannot delete. I have now done a back up to disc and would like to remove these file but on trying it tells me they are to big for the recycle bin and then the file name is to big to delete. As yet I have found no way of deleting these files.

From what I can see therefore Vista is not going to run, and I am annoyed if not as that is the prime reason I bought the laptop, for the free upgrade. Why advertise it as Vista compatable and then not allow the upgrade.

My c drive has only 10.5 gb free.

Is there something I am missing here?

I wanted to do a clean install but I did not want to loose my files, so the install I did change all my details to be compatable, thus keeping my details.

Is there any way to do a clean install of Vista but put my files on a seperate hard drive and put them back on after the upgrade, if so how to I go about this as I do not want loose my programs and files.


Thanks if anybody has any tips



Martin

 

[muckshifter]

What version Vista did you get, and, is it a real MS DVD ?

Sorry, but I would not be tempted to install Vista on that 'spec' Acer, I don't care what MS or Acer say, it is a very basic 'entry level' laptop.

How much memory do you have now ... that Acer shares the memory with the graphics card, so you will not actually have all of it free for Vista.

Do you have a DVD writer (burner) ... if so, backup all our data to a CD/DVD

You do not need 'partitions' using XP or Vista ... I see that Acer only has a 60Gb hard drive, is that right ?

A "clean install" is always recommended when 'upgrading' the operating system ... boot to the Vista DVD and delete all partitions, this will wipe the drive of everything and give you a clean slate to work with.

 

[martinalmond]

Thanks for the reply.

It's a proper Vista Upgrade, 32Bit Business. I don't know why business.

I have just run a program called Treesize Drive, to check the drive and I have found a potential problem. Drive C according to that program is correct, it shows 16.5 GB free, and the program shows it at 16.2. My D drive is the problem. On checking via My Computer it shows it as 23.5GB used, on the Treesize program it shows it as only using 3gb, so I have lost 20GB.

Any ideas on how I could loose drive space.

YTo be honest, I have already decided not to bother with Vista, dissapointed but I can live with it.

My only other worry is what was deleted off by the Acer disc to upgrade the Drivers, I know it removed programs but not sure what, however the machine is running fine, very well in fact.

Yes I have double cecked everything and according to the spec I have a 60GB HDD.



Martin

 

[muckshifter]

Any ideas on how I could loose drive space.

a 60GB capacity drive will only show about 55.8 actual space ... blame the manufacturers of drives for not complying to Mb std of 1024 ... You did not get cheated, you just got introduced to the ‘marketing math’ used by every hard drive manufacturer ... it's a numbers game.