Topic: Vista Installation What Should I do?

[Kaz]

Hi All,
Ok here we go I just cant get my head around this I need some help please,
Right I have 3 Drives
Drive C has Windows XP pro on = Drive Size 193GB
Drvie E has all my music Movies ect = Drive Size 191GB
Drive D has all my Data on = Drive size 80g

What I thought or was going to do and please correct me if I'm wrong I thought you could update from xp to Vista just like if you were upgrading from xp Home to xp Pro can you do it this way or not?

Second what if I was to install Vista on my E Drive would I loose all what I have on there now?

I'm really confused about this and not sure what or how to go about installing vista on my PC what I want is to get to know how Vista works and try it to see if I like it, but I don't want to loose my XP just yet some people say it's crap, but I'm getting a Laptop with Vista on so I need to get to know how it works what should I do Iv never done anything like this before so need some tlc on this please 

[Clive]

Best advice most of us can give you Kaz is don't do it!  XP is more stable and uses less system resources as you are about to discover with your new laptop! 

THIS just in.

[Kaz]

Oh

Best advice most of us can give you Kaz is don't do it!  XP is more stable and uses less system resources as you are about to discover with your new laptop! 

THIS just in.

Oh S**t
Should I Change the laptop from Vista to XP then  panic panic

[Sandra]

People said the same think about going from 98 to XP Kaz 

I dont think that anyone who got used to XP would go back to 98 now though.
Vista will be the same, yes it has its own little quirks but once you get used to it it has some nice features that arent available on XP, as you have now found out re the folder user permisions.

If you are dubious about soley using Vista then there a few ways to do it.
I have never liked the upgrade option form one windows OS to a newer version as I always prefer a clean installation.

The easiest way I have found is that if you have SATA drives in your pc then add another drive, if you can (a) afford it and (b) if you have room in your case.
Disconnect the other hard drives, connect the new drive and install Vista on that drive.
Once its installed you can connect the other drives and nothing will have been altered in anyway.
Then enter the bios and tell the pc to boot from whichever drive has the OS on for either XP or Vista, whichever one you are going to use the most often which at this stage would probably still be XP.
Each time you start up from now on, the pc will boot into XP.
If you want to boot into Vista then simply restart the pc and hit F8 (on most machines) to bring up the BBS popup menu ( boot menu) and select the drive that has Vista on it.
Your pc will now boot into Vista, take note that all your data will be the same but Vista will probably have called its own drive C and will probably have renamed the other drives as it likes
On the next reboot if you do not press F8 then it will boot back into XP and the drive letters wil be as they are now

Another way is to "Dual Boot" it.
Again a new seperate drive is the best option subject to (a) and (b) as mentioned earlier but if you have room on one of your existing drives then you can create a partition on one and install Vista to that.
When you boot up you will get the option to select either XP or Vista on each boot up after that.

The third way is to install a program that allows you to run a "Virtual OS", this will create a virtual drive that you can install any OS on and actually run it from inside XP, just like starting another program.
Microsoft has a free one but I havent tried it, or you can get something like VM Ware Workstation 6 which I have tried and found it to work quite well but its not free, usually 
It doesnt allow the full Vista experience for the Aero graphics due to a program limitation at the moment, later versions may do but as far as I can tell from limited use everything else works fine 

I hope that helps and if you decide to try it by any of those methods but need better explanation or help then get back to me 

[GillE]

If I'd known how irksome Vista was going to be, I'd have bought a Mac.

[Kaz]

People said the same think about going from 98 to XP Kaz 
I dont think that anyone who got used to XP would go back to 98 now though.
Vista will be the same, yes it has its own little quirks but once you get used to it it has some nice features that arent available on XP, as you have now found out re the folder user permisions.

If you are dubious about soley using Vista then there a few ways to do it.
I have never liked the upgrade option form one windows OS to a newer version as I always prefer a clean installation.

The easiest way I have found is that if you have SATA drives in your pc then add another drive, if you can (a) afford it and (b) if you have room in your case.
Disconnect the other hard drives, connect the new drive and install Vista on that drive.
Once its installed you can connect the other drives and nothing will have been altered in anyway.
Then enter the bios and tell the pc to boot from whichever drive has the OS on for either XP or Vista, whichever one you are going to use the most often which at this stage would probably still be XP.
Each time you start up from now on, the pc will boot into XP.
If you want to boot into Vista then simply restart the pc and hit F8 (on most machines) to bring up the BBS popup menu ( boot menu) and select the drive that has Vista on it.
Your pc will now boot into Vista, take note that all your data will be the same but Vista will probably have called its own drive C and will probably have renamed the other drives as it likes
On the next reboot if you do not press F8 then it will boot back into XP and the drive letters wil be as they are now

Another way is to "Dual Boot" it.
Again a new seperate drive is the best option subject to (a) and (b) as mentioned earlier but if you have room on one of your existing drives then you can create a partition on one and install Vista to that.
When you boot up you will get the option to select either XP or Vista on each boot up after that.

The third way is to install a program that allows you to run a "Virtual OS", this will create a virtual drive that you can install any OS on and actually run it from inside XP, just like starting another program.
Microsoft has a free one but I havent tried it, or you can get something like VM Ware Workstation 6 which I have tried and found it to work quite well but its not free, usually 
It doesnt allow the full Vista experience for the Aero graphics due to a program limitation at the moment, later versions may do but as far as I can tell from limited use everything else works fine 

I hope that helps and if you decide to try it by any of those methods but need better explanation or help then get back to me 

Hi Sandra
I think I'm going to do it this way
Another way is to "Dual Boot" it.
Again a new seperate drive is the best option subject to (a) and (b) as mentioned earlier but if you have room on one of your existing drives then you can create a partition on one and install Vista to that.
When you boot up you will get the option to select either XP or Vista on each boot up after that.

I think for what I want to do is try it out and get familiar with it a dual boot seems to be the best option then if I dont like it I can take it off god knows what Im going to do when the Laptop gets here, but I am excited and looking  orward to this as you say what did we do when we went from 98 to XP best thing I ever did, anyway I need some help on this what do I do to install it have I got to get ride of the stuff on my E Drive or will Vista just accept it there help and advice please

[Clive]

People said the same think about going from 98 to XP Kaz 

Very true Sandra!  Nobody will deny that!  However, you are forgetting that Win 98 did not make the jump to XP in one step.  That dreadful piece of rubbish known as WinMe that Microsoft passed off as operating system was the intermediate stage and you were vociferous in advising members to dump it.  Vista is widely regarded as the new Me and everyone is now waiting for the next OS to be launched next year.  SEE HERE

[Sandra]

Ok Kaz, if you can clear some of your E drive onto DVDs or another drive then you can make a partition on it.
Vista recommends 60 gig but if you are only going to be trying it out to see whether you like it or not then you will be ok with 40gig as I have had it running happily with lots of other programs installed on a 40 gig partition, just save stuff to other drives and not on your Vista partition, so that it doesnt fill up.

Once you have created a partition then set the bios to boot from the CD/DVD as the first device, save the changes and exit then restart the pc with the Vista DVD in the drive.
It wll ask you to press a key to boot from CD so press any key.
It will then check your pc and ask you which drive you want to install it on, double check that you have correctly identified the correct partition, as you dont want to wipe anything off the other drives/partitions.

Once you have told it where to install it to then its just the same as any other OS, just put in the information that it asks for.
In fact Vista is an easier and quicker OS to install than XP (yahboo sucks to all you nonbelievers    ) as it asks you which language to use at the start so you dont have the hassle that newbies get with setting it up as US english, if they dont know to change it during installation, or you get that language bar on your taskbar at the end of the installation.
Even my friend who originally taught me about pcs always ends up with a language bar when he installs XP 

Once you have installed Vista, remove the Vista DVD then set the bios back to boot from the hard drive as it was before, usually IDE 0, and restart.
You will get a screen with both OSs shown that you can use the UP and Down arrow keys to highlight which OS you want to use for this session, press enter and away you go 

[Kaz]

Hi Sandra
M

Ok Kaz, if you can clear some of your E drive onto DVDs or another drive then you can make a partition on it.
Vista recommends 60 gig but if you are only going to be trying it out to see whether you like it or not then you will be ok with 40gig as I have had it running happily with lots of other programs installed on a 40 gig partition, just save stuff to other drives and not on your Vista partition, so that it doesnt fill up.

Once you have created a partition then set the bios to boot from the CD/DVD as the first device, save the changes and exit then restart the pc with the Vista DVD in the drive.
It wll ask you to press a key to boot from CD so press any key.
It will then check your pc and ask you which drive you want to install it on, double check that you have correctly identified the correct partition, as you dont want to wipe anything off the other drives/partitions.

Once you have told it where to install it to then its just the same as any other OS, just put in the information that it asks for.
In fact Vista is an easier and quicker OS to install than XP (yahboo sucks to all you nonbelievers    ) as it asks you which language to use at the start so you dont have the hassle that newbies get with setting it up as US english, if they dont know to change it during installation, or you get that language bar on your taskbar at the end of the installation.
Even my friend who originally taught me about pcs always ends up with a language bar when he installs XP 

Once you have installed Vista, remove the Vista DVD then set the bios back to boot from the hard drive as it was before, usually IDE 0, and restart.
You will get a screen with both OSs shown that you can use the UP and Down arrow keys to highlight which OS you want to use for this session, press enter and away you go 

Hi Sandra,
My E Drive is 191 GB so that will be ok, (cant partition the E drive it wont let me, remember when I had it partitoned before something to do with Acer and a hidden partition or something) anyway just a thought could I not install vista on an External Hard Drive 320GB would that be allright then just plug it in when I wanted to use it can I do that? great explanation by the way thanks, just need to remember how to set bios

[Sandra]

In theory you can run an OS from the external hard drive but not all pcs support booting from an external hard drive.

[Kaz]

In theory you can run an OS from the external hard drive but not all pcs support booting from an external hard drive.

Thanks Sandra
I really appreciate all this help you are giving me.
If I were to give it a try from the external hard drive how do I go about doing it I'm sorry to be a pain, but I have never done anything like this before, feel a bit thick and I know I shouldn't think it's more of Oh my God what if I mess up my PC
Thanks again

[Sandra]

You need to see if you have the option to boot from a USB device in the bios, then if it will you can select that option as the first bootable device.
The procedure is just the same as I explained in the previous post, just double check when you get the option, that you tell it to install on the USB hard drive so that you dont lose anything off the others.

[Kaz]

You need to see if you have the option to boot from a USB device in the bios, then if it will you can select that option as the first bootable device.
The procedure is just the same as I explained in the previous post, just double check when you get the option, that you tell it to install on the USB hard drive so that you dont lose anything off the others.

Great!
Thank you, very much appreciated I am going to give it a go Fingers Crossed X

[Kaz]

You need to see if you have the option to boot from a USB device in the bios, then if it will you can select that option as the first bootable device.
The procedure is just the same as I explained in the previous post, just double check when you get the option, that you tell it to install on the USB hard drive so that you dont lose anything off the others.

I have gone into Advanced Bios and found that my Third Boot Device is set to LAN but there is others to choose from should I leave this as it is? or can I change it the options are:-
LS120
Hard Disk
CDROM
ZIP100
USB-FDD
USB-ZIP
USB-CDROM
LAV which is what it is set to now

BOOT Other Device is Enabled, but hasn't got any choices. 
My Boot Menu has the normal Hard Disc, Cd Rom , Floppy
I havent made any changes till I check with you first

[Sandra]

Hi Kaz, You will have to initially set the first boot device to CDROM for it to boot off the Vista DVD and install it to your USB hard drive.
Then you will have to go into the bios and see if it will show the USB hard drive in the list of bootable options. It may show it under the Hard Disk if you are lucky but I am not sure if it will or not, as I have never done it.
If it doesnt show as that then maybe it will still show as an option to use either XP or Vista when its starting with the hard drive as the first device.
If it doesnt give you the option then go into the bios again and set it to boot off the USB CDROM as it probably wont know the difference between a CDROM and a Hard Drive if theyre USB ones.

Good luck