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Downloading Vista RTM

November 17, '06 Comments [16] Posted in Reviews | Tools
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Only 18 minutes left. I'm downloading Vista off of MSDN right now at a speedy 2 megs a second.

I've been running RC2 on my main machine at home since it came out and I've had a MUCH better experience than RC1.

My RC1 experience was very Beta 3, shall we say, and it kind of soured me.

However, I got to play with RTM on a few Microsoftie's machines at TechEd Europe last week, and my own experience with RC2 and ReadyBoost (using an Apacer Handy Steno) has been stellar. Only one blue screen in the last three weeks, and that was an ATI Display Driver bug.

I'm hoping to upgrade over RC2 (ya, I know, that's not very clever, but I'll try it if it's possible, as I REALLY don't feel like paving my machine again this year) and I'm wondering what order I should do things in.

I think I will:

  • Remove all things Office 2007 Beta 2 TR from my current Vista RC2 installation
  • Upgrade to Vista RTM
  • Upgrade to the Beta ATI Drivers for Vista RTM (Catalyst 8.31.100)
  • Install Office 2007 Professional
    • I'll skip the other apps like InfoPath, OneNote, and Visio, until I hear that they've got this whole product key thing fixed. (Right now, even though a product key is supposed to allow 10 activations (and really should be 10 PCs) it only allows one application!)

Sound like a plan? 

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Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. I am a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Comments [16]
Friday, November 17, 2006 1:39:10 AM UTC
That is not fair. 2 Meg a second!! I am only getting 160K (I have 350K) and started downloading 3 hours ago. Still 1 hour to go. Still should have it installed before Friday. :-)
John
Friday, November 17, 2006 1:41:21 AM UTC
Man, you guys are lucky. I'm downloading now and I'm lucky if I can get 70KB/s on my crappy cable connection (that's the max download speed overall, btw, not just from msdn). 2Mb/s? Man, I green with envy :)

I'm hoping to do a complete repave this time, my current WinXP installation lasted since january, so I can't complain, but too much crap installed now, that the machine deserves a clean start :)

Hopefully I'll have some time in a couple of weeks to clean up my dev virtual machines as well. There are a few optimizations I saw a few weeks ago that I want to try.
Tomas Restrepo
Friday, November 17, 2006 1:47:11 AM UTC
I recommend a clean install if you can. The upgrade from RC1 to RC2 to RTM is a little crufty. Not bad, and in fact that is how my current system arrived at RTM. But even so, insiders suggest a clean install if possible.
jerry
Friday, November 17, 2006 2:59:05 AM UTC
I keep seeing people saying they're going to download Vista and spend this week installing it, which sounds like it'd be an awesome way to spend a weekend, but I'm confused about how this works from a lincencing perspective. Doesn't my MSDN subscription only give me the right to install an OS on a spare PC or virtual machine to test my apps on? I didn't think running Vista on my development machine was allowed?

Or have I missed something?
mabster
Friday, November 17, 2006 3:19:46 AM UTC
Repaving for me too. I did the RC1 upgrades but not for RTM. Plus I think I am going x86 -> x64. Did the 32bit because of lack of drivers during the RCs but now I think I'd like my full 4GB ram.
Paolo
Friday, November 17, 2006 3:37:58 AM UTC
Scott, would you do a clean install from XPsp2 or an upgrade? Basic dev machine. VS2005. SQL2005. Etc.
Andy RObinson
Friday, November 17, 2006 4:11:20 AM UTC
Looks like the Microsoft File Transfer Manager is written in VB6? Who said VB6 was dead. ;)
Diego Barros
Friday, November 17, 2006 6:10:22 AM UTC
for those of you with slower downloads...check out this tip on my blog

http://weblogs.asp.net/jamauss/archive/2005/06/07/410690.aspx


--Jason
Jason
Friday, November 17, 2006 8:54:36 AM UTC

I'm confused - you're downloading RC2 and Microsoft bosses are saying "most stable Windows release ever" and "its off to the manufacturers already".
Dr Nic
Friday, November 17, 2006 8:57:38 AM UTC
Ok, I just tried an upgrade from RC2 to RTM. About 99% through the upgrade I got a crappy error saying that the installation wizard encountered an error...click OK to rollback to your prior version. Fortunately the rollback worked. Just blogged it here... http://www.jwalkerlive.com/BlogPost.aspx?BlogIDNum=125.

Save yourself 3 hours, repave. That's what I'll be doing this weekend. Crud.
John Walker
Friday, November 17, 2006 4:31:54 PM UTC
For the love of God, will you never learn?!? Clean install!!!
Jason Mauer
Friday, November 17, 2006 5:01:32 PM UTC
I for one would like to hear more about the activation issues. Where does one get the status as to whether it works and what the issue is. I certainly would not like to blow the activations on one app...

Thanks
Ben
BenB
Saturday, November 18, 2006 1:38:57 AM UTC
Looks like the MSDN site is a bit overloaded at the moment. I'm unable to generate a product key for Vista (get an 11004 error) nor am I able to download (the MS file transfer manager is unable to connect to the servers). Understandable. I'm sure they're getting hammered with download requests right now.
Coleman
Saturday, November 18, 2006 3:09:46 PM UTC
2 megs/sec?! 160K/sec Heck, I started the download last night over my piddly 256K DSL connection and when the baby woke up at 2:30AM noticed that my machine had rebooted itself! It rejected the DOWNLOAD of Vista outright.

If that isn't an omen I don't know what is. I think Vista will be dual-booting on my work laptop for a while. :)
Scott
Monday, November 20, 2006 6:25:55 PM UTC
Looks like there are/were some product key issues, but they are being actively worked on and they will be issuing new keys so watch for those.
Scott Hanselman
Monday, November 20, 2006 7:25:16 PM UTC
Has anyone had any positive experiences with the 64 bit edition concerning available drivers?
I would like to run Vista with 4GB, but since 32bit can't cope well with it, I'm thinking of installing the 64bit version... Sadly, I read that many people have trouble finding the right drivers...
Gill Cleeren
Comments are closed.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in any way.