2. Upgrade from a Previous Version
Microsoft suggests that anyone installing Vista on a PC that already has a recent version of Windows on it should use the Upgrade
feature; that is, boot into the old Windows installation and start
Vista setup from within. There are a few reasons you may want to do
this:
Preserve your programs.
If
you upgrade to Vista from within, you won't have to reinstall all your
applications and their settings. Of course, most of your programs will
need to be updated or eventually reinstalled to work with Vista, but at
least you won't have to do it all at once.
Preserve your settings.
Some of your custom file type associations and Windows Explorer settings will be preserved during the upgrade, as will most of the settings (custom toolbars, etc.) in your installed programs.
Preserve your drive letters.
If
you have more than one hard disk (or more than one partition), the
upgrade process preserves your drive letters. Sure, you can reassign
drive letters at any time, with the exception of the Windows drive. When
you do a "clean" install, setup insists on naming the Vista drive C:, regardless of the partition you choose during setup (see Figure 1-2, earlier).
Save time, sort of.
It
takes a lot less time, at least initially, to upgrade a previous version
than to install Vista "clean" and subsequently install and set up all
your programs. Of course, down the road, you'll spend a lot more time
troubleshooting your upgraded system than you would a fresh install. And
there's also the fact that a freshly installed Vista will easily
outperform an upgraded one (more below).
It's easier.
Upgrading is easier, but again, only initially.
As
you can see, it's not all lollipops and rainbows. Here's why you may
want to install fresh rather than upgrade a previous version:
Time for a little spring cleaning.
How
long have you been using that previous version of Windows? If you got XP
when it came out, you've amassed as much as six years of junk—drivers,
software, spyware, video codecs, and countless leftovers from software
you don't even use anymore—that will continue to bog down Vista once you
upgrade. If you take this opportunity to start anew, you'll have a
leaner, faster PC when all is said and done, even if it does take more
time to set up at the outset.
Be free of old hardware drivers.
Even
if Vista updates every hardware driver on your PC during an upgrade
installation, pieces of the old drivers and support software—not to
mention Registry settings from those old versions—will remain on your
system and undoubtedly cause headaches down the road. Don't be surprised
if you can't get your sound card—or any sound card, for that matter—to
work on an upgraded Vista installation.
It's harder.
OK, this may not seem like a selling point for a fresh install, but why back away from a challenge? It's not that much harder than upgrading.
Set up a dual-boot system.
You'll need to install fresh if you want to keep your old Windows installation intact.
Before
upgrading or installing fresh on a hard disk containing data, you'd be
wise to back up the entire system. But make sure the backup software you
use—not to mention the backup device—will
also operate in Windows Vista so you can read the media after the
install is complete; otherwise, your backup will be worthless. |
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2.1. Special case: Reinstall Vista
You
may find yourself in a position where you'll need to reinstall Windows
Vista, usually in an effort to solve a nasty problem or to repair a
damaged installation. The procedure you choose depends on the current
state of your computer.
If
you're able to start Vista and it's working well enough to reliably
access your DVD drive, but poorly enough that you're considering
reinstalling, then you'll need to decide whether to reinstall ("upgrade"
as Vista setup puts it) or install a second copy on your PC.
An
in-place reinstallation is the easiest way to go, and despite the
warnings in the previous section, probably won't make things any worse.
Just pop the DVD in your drive and follow the prompts. When asked what
type of installation you want, select Upgrade and then follow the prompts.
But
if your Vista installation is sufficiently munged, you may choose to
install Vista fresh without harming your existing installation, as
described next.
2.2. Fresh install on a dirty drive
As opposed to a "clean" drive, a dirty
drive in this context is one that already has data on it. There are
times you need to install Vista on a hard disk that already has a
Windows installation, yet you don't want to perform an in-place upgrade
or set up a dual-boot system.
For instance, if Vista won't start, then you can do what's called a parallel installation,
which allows you to start your PC and access your data. You may also
want to do this if you have a Windows XP installation you don't want to
upgrade.
If
you have more than one hard disk or partition, you can install Vista on
a drive other than the one currently containing Windows. |
|
To install Vista fresh on a drive with data on it, follow these steps:
Insert a Vista disc in your drive and boot off the DVD.
When you see the "Install Now" page, click the Repair your computer link at the bottom to get to the System Recovery Options window .
From the list, select Command Prompt.
When the Command Prompt appears, change to your Windows drive, usually C:, by typing the drive letter and a colon (c:) and pressing Enter.
Rename the Windows folder to windows.old, like this:
ren windows windows.old
Rename the Program Files folder to programs.old, like this:
ren "program files" programs.old
Type exit or close the Command Prompt when you're done.
Restart your PC and boot onto the Vista setup DVD again.
Install Vista onto your Windows drive.
When setup is complete, Vista will boot normally, at which point you'll be able to glean old files off of the Windows.old and Programs.old folders as needed. Eventually, you can delete these relics.
3. Potential Problems During Setup
The
most common cause of a failed installation of Windows Vista is an
out-of-date BIOS. If setup crashes, or if Vista won't boot after you
finish installing, check with the manufacturer of your system or
motherboard for any BIOS updates, and update your BIOS if needed. Better
yet, make sure you have the latest BIOS before you begin installation,
particularly if your PC is more than a year old.
Another
common stumbling block to a successful Windows Vista setup is your
video card (display adapter). If setup stops with an unintelligible
error message, reboots unexpectedly during setup, or just hangs at a
blank screen, your video card may be at fault. Unfortunately, setup will
rarely, if ever, warn you about such an incompatibility before you
begin. If replacing the video card permits Windows Vista to install,
then the culprit is obvious.
Next,
if you see an error that says something like "failed to open the
windows image file," this is an indictment of your DVD drive. Setup
installs Vista from a single, huge hard-disk image file, and some older
drives can't handle files larger than 3 gigabytes in size. The solution
is to replace the drive, or, if you're particularly attached to the
drive and you're
not in a hurry, purchase a copy of Vista setup on a stack of CDs (which
Microsoft calls "alternate media") and try again.
Lastly,
if it's an older disc, the culprit might be nothing more than a little
dust; wipe the disk against your shirt and try again.
4. Set Up a Dual-Boot System
With
a dual-boot (or multiboot) setup, you can install multiple operating
systems side-by-side on the same computer, and simply choose which one
to use each time you boot. So, why would you want to do this?
Both ends burning
If
you rely on some software or hardware that won't operate in Windows
Vista, you can install Vista and the other OS on the same system
simultaneously. And there's no reason you can't install Vista alongside
Linux, or even (if you have an Intel-based Mac) alongside Mac OS X. Or,
if you're using the 64-bit version of Vista, you might need to keep that
old XP installation around so you can run all that 16-bit software you
use every day (16-bit software won't run on Vista-64).
Just testing
If
you're in the process of upgrading from an earlier version of Windows
to Windows Vista, you may wish to test Vista with your existing software
and hardware without having to commit to the new OS until you're
certain it will meet your needs. Of course, you can also do this with
Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, freely available from http://www.microsoft.com/virtualpc/.
Depending on your timing, you may even be able to download certain
versions of Windows preinstalled on a Virtual Hard Disk that you can run
in place on your PC; see http://www.microsoft.com/vhd for details.
Software testbed
Install
two copies of Windows Vista on your system—one for normal use, and one
as a testbed for new software and hardware. That way, you can try out a
potentially buggy product without jeopardizing the main OS on which you
rely. Again, you can also use Virtual PC for this purpose, but it's just
so darn slow....
Backdoor
Got
disk space to burn? Install Vista twice, and keep the second
installation around to easily access your data in case your primary
installation fails.
For that matter, you can set up a dual-boot system after a Vista installation fails, and get to your valuable data without first having to repair Windows.
Windows Vista comes with built-in support for a dual-boot system. The dual-boot feature, called the Windows Boot Manager,
is installed automatically when you install Vista, whether you set up a
dual-boot system or not. If, at the end of the installation, Windows
Vista is the only operating system on your computer, it boots
automatically without giving you a choice. Otherwise, you'll see a menu
of installed operating systems, from which you can choose the OS you
wish to use.
To
set up a dual-boot system, you'll need at least two partitions: one for
each operating system. Install the first OS on any drive you like.
Then, during Vista setup, when you see the "Where do you want to install
Windows?" page (Figure 1-2), just select the empty drive, and setup will do the rest.
In
most cases, the boot manager of the most-recently installed operating
system is the one that will be used for all your operating systems, so
the sequence in which you install your operating systems is very
important. Most of the time, you'll need to install older operating
systems before
newer ones. For instance, on a PC with Windows 98, just install Vista on
a different drive, and voilà: you'll have a functional dual-boot
system.Some
other operating systems, such as FreeBSD and Windows 2000, have boot
managers of their own, and can therefore be installed either before or
after Vista is installed with little additional fuss. However, those
operating systems without their own boot managers, such as Windows 9x/Me, will break the Windows Vista boot manager if installed subsequently. |
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4.1. Modify the Boot Manager configuration
The
Windows Boot Manager is responsible for loading Vista, and, optionally,
booting any other operating systems you may have installed.
The Boot Manager in both Windows XP and 2000 stored its configuration in a tiny, easily editable file called boot.ini in the root folder of your C: drive, but in Windows Vista, this file is no longer used. If you install Vista on an XP system, and then open the boot.ini file left behind, you'll see this message:
;Warning: Boot.ini is used on Windows XP and earlier operating systems.
;Warning: Use BCDEDIT.exe to modify Windows Vista boot options.
The BCDEdit (bcdedit.exe)
tool that comes with Vista is a command-line tool, and isn't exactly
user-friendly. Open a Command Prompt window , type bcdedit and press Enter, and you'll see output that looks something like this:
Windows Boot Manager
--------------------
identifier {bootmgr}
device partition=C:
description Windows Boot Manager
locale en-US
inherit {globalsettings}
default {default}
displayorder {ntldr}
{default}
toolsdisplayorder {memdiag}
timeout 3
Windows Legacy OS Loader
------------------------
identifier {ntldr}
device partition=C:
path \ntldr
description Earlier version of Windows
Windows Boot Loader
-------------------
identifier {default}
device partition=D:
path \Windows\system32\winload.exe
description Microsoft Windows Vista
locale en-US
inherit {bootloadersettings}
osdevice partition=D:
systemroot \Windows
resumeobject {70c7d34d-b6b4-12db-cc71-d30cdb1ce261}
nx OptIn
detecthal Yes
What a mess. In short, the first section describes the menu you see when you first boot; the second section here—Windows Legacy OS Loader—describes the older version of Windows (XP); and finally, the third section—Windows Boot Loader—describes your new Vista installation.
If you type bcdedit /?
at the prompt, you'll see a bunch of command-line parameters you can
use to add or remove entries, choose a new default (the OS that's loaded
if you don't choose one before the timer runs out), or run a variety of
debugging tools.
But if all you want to do is choose a default and maybe change the timeout, there's a better tool. Open your Start menu, type msconfig in the Search box and press Enter to open the System Configuration window, and choose the Boot tab as shown in Figure 3.
Here,
the easy options are truly self-evident, and the advanced options are
at least accessible. On the right, you can adjust the Timeout from its default of 30 seconds; type 5
here, and you'll instantly shave off 25 seconds from your unattended
boot time. (Don't use a value so small that you won't have time to
change it, lest you set an inoperable installation as the default and
have no way to get around it.)
To choose the default OS, select it in the list and click Set as default. When you're done, click OK, and then restart Windows to see your new settings.
4.2. Of operating systems and filesystems
When
setting up a dual-boot system for day-to-day use, you'll need to
consider the matter of sharing files between your operating systems.
In
order to share files between operating systems, both partitions must
use filesystems supported by at least one OS. For instance, if you have a
dual-boot setup with both Windows Vista and Windows 98, you'll be able
to see both drives while you're in Vista, but you'll only be able to see
the 98 drive while 98 is running. (Although Vista can read drives
formatted with the FAT32 filesystem, it can't be installed on one.)
Now,
if both your partitions use the NTFS filesystem—which is what you'd
likely get if you set up a dual-boot system with Vista and XP—you also
may have ownership problems to contend with. Every file and folder on your PC has an "owner," a user tied to a
specific account on your PC. If, for instance, you create a file in
Windows XP and then attempt to modify it in Vista, you may be denied
permission until you "take ownership," .
And
in regards to protecting your data, encryption is also effective at
preventing an intruder from reading your files by installing a second
operating system on your PC.
