Today we’re going to take a look at the installation process for the final version of Windows Vista. If you’ve been working with Vista since the early days of the beta program, then you’ll be very familiar with what you’re going to see here (so basically, go ahead and skip this article all together).

However, if you’re new to Vista and you’re curious as to what’s involved in installing Vista, check out this article because we’ve got plenty of screen shots and hopefully some useful tips for you to work with when it comes time for you to install Windows Vista.

Preinstallation tips

As with any major Windows OS upgrade, it’s important to take a survey of what you have on your current system. If your computer is extremely new and you’ve got basic stock parts (meaning – you’ve got very standard PC components – nothing rare or unusual), then there’s a good chance you won’t have much to worry about when installing Vista.

Nevertheless, it’s important to sit down and do the following:

1. BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP BACKUP.

In my old age.. I actually don’t use too many different applications on a daily basis. Thus my backup routine is fairly simple. It goes as follows:

• Backup all of my Outlook email into a single PST file
• Find and backup the bookmarks.html file from Firefox
• Backup documents, pictures, images from the “My Documents” folder

That’s basically it! Why is it I don’t have much to back up you might ask? Well I have most of my data on a centralized network storage device here. All of my music, videos, documents etc are all stored remotely on another box. This makes updating a workstation on my network a simple process to perform.

On top of that, I follow a general rule about saving information on my computer – keep everything in a centralized location. I never used to be a follower of Microsoft’s My Documents concept but over the years, I found it easy to utilize that structure to save stuff. I also have dedicated folders on my box just for my stuff so backing up is as simple as backing up that folder. However you organize your data, remember to keep it simple and keep it straightforward.

2. Download and run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor. If you’re running Windows XP or an early version of Vista, go to the Microsoft website and download the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor application.

This tool will scan your computer and create a report listing all of the known system, device, and program compatibility issues. It’ll also recommend ways to resolve them. Finally, the upgrade advisor will help you choose the edition of Vista which best fits the way you want to use your system.

3. The Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor is great and all but there’s nothing like knowing your computer inside and out. SOO, list all of your hardware components on your system. Go on.. don’t be afraid of your system. It won’t break on you if you just poke around and see what’s installed!

So what do we mean by listing the components? Well try and figure out what is on your system – this includes (if possible) what kind of motherboard you have, the type of graphics card, the sound card, any TV tuner cards, any RAID controllers etc.

Know your hardware. I can’t stress that more than enough. If anything, go into Windows XP’s device manager and print out the list of components listed there.

4. Download updated Vista drivers NOW before the upgrade

Once you have your hardware list, take a look on the Internet and see if you can find updated drivers for your components.

For example, if you’ve got yourself an ATI X1600 Pro graphics card, go to the ATI website and look for Vista specific graphics drivers. If you’ve got a Creative Labs sound card, go to soundblaster.com and see if they have any beta drivers for you. Get the drivers downloaded now onto your PC (in a location that won’t get wiped out by the Vista installation of course) before you upgrade. Why? There’s always an outside chance that the network card or interface won’t be recognized by Vista in which case you won’t be able to connect to the Internet (so yes that means – make sure you download network drivers for your card if possible).

5. List all of your software applications, utilities, tools, and games that you normally work with on a daily or weekly basis. Once you have that list, check to see if there are any patches that you need to get in order to make the program usable under Vista.

Microsoft’s done a good job in making sure current Win32 apps run under Vista – but having said that, there are plenty of application compatibility issues you need to be aware of before embarking on this upgrade.

6. Windows Vista is resource intensive. There are two immediate ways you can improve performance – Add additional RAM and upgrade your graphics card.  In fact, unless your processor is over 3-4 years old, I’d look into those upgrades first before looking into a CPU upgrade.

Having said that, have multiple processor cores is a good thing for Vista (especially if you plan on running Windows Media Center). But again – the more memory, the better. The faster the graphics card, the better your Windows Aero experience will be.

Install Guide

Step 1 – Insert disc and enter basic info

This guide is all about setting up Vista from scratch. Once you have the disc – place it in your drive and reboot your system. Once your system begins loading up, you’ll see a screen shot like the following:

Once the system has finished loading up the installer files, you’ll be asked for information such as:

• Language
• Time and Currency
• Keyboard input method

Step 2 – Begin install process – choose a location for your new OS

You’re not ready to begin the actual installation process – press the “Install Now” button.

You’ll now be asked for your product key so make sure to have it handy.

Then you’ll need to agree to the license..

Now you’re ready to fire things off. First major action – select a location on your hard drives for the new OS. The Vista installer will show you all the drives on your system and provide you the tools to create, delete, and format new partitions/drives.

Here I’ve selected Disk 0 as the location of my new OS install. Since I had an earlier version of Vista on here (RC2), I’m going to wipe the drive and start with an entirely clean install of Vista.

Step 3 – Main installation

Once the drive/partition is finalized, the main portion of installation process will begin. Vista will pretty much be on autopilot for about the next 10-15 minutes. The steps it will be performing include:

• Copying Windows Files
• Expanding Files
• Installing Features
• Installing Updates
• Completing Installation

Once this section is finished, your system will perform a reboot.

Step 4 – Enter additional information

We’re nearing the home stretch now. Vista requires a bit of user intervention at this point. It’ll need your desired login name (and a picture for you to work with)

Vista will also like a name for your PC as well as a starting desktop background.

The next step is related to Windows Update for the most part (there are some security settings applied here too). You can choose from the following settings

• Use recommended settings – Let Vista install important and recommended settings, set Internet settings, and check online for solutions to problems
• Install important updates only
• Ask me later

This is really up to you but I usually leave it at the Use recommended settings. I just don’t have the time to always remember to check Windows Update so I don’t mind having Vista check things for me.

Now you’ll need to verify the date and time.

Finally, Vista will ask you for your computer’s location. Is it at Home, at Work, or in a Public location? Choosing the right option will let Vista customize proper network settings (which you can change later on)

You’re almost there! Vista gives you a big “Thank You” and tells you to “Start”…

Step 5 – Click START .. but it’s not quite done yet – performance analysis time and desktop setup

Just kidding.. Vista still needs to do some more things. First up, it’s Computer Performance Analysis time. Vista will analyze your computer’s performance and apply appropriate settings to match the performance analysis.

It’s during the analysis period where you’ll see the typical Microsoft marketing propaganda for the various new features found in Vista. Here are the screen shots:

Once the performance analysis is over, you’ll see your new desktop as well as the Windows Startup window.

But wait.. things are NOT quite finished…

Step 6 – Install updates and additional drivers

You’re nearing the finish line now but there’s still work to be done. It’s at this point where Vista will apply additional updates to the OS that it found via Windows Update.

Once the updates are finished, you need to see if there are additional hardware devices that need to be installed on your system. You can go into Device Manager and see what hasn’t been resolved yet. This is where some of the early preparatory work pays off. If you see any hardware devices without appropriate Vista drivers, go ahead and install the driver. This entire process might take some time if you have several drivers to install for different equipment.

From here on out - if you reboot your system with any unidentified hardware components, Vista will inform warn you on startup. This will remind you that you’ll need to install additional drivers (but you can always suppress the hardware warnings if you don’t have any drivers for the components)

For my workstation, I had add additional software drivers for the following components.

• DVICO FusionHDTV 5 Gold Plus HDTV Tuner card – downloaded and installed the latest 3.50.0.1 drivers here
• HP Color LaserJet 2600n – used the original HP Printer Drivers for Windows XP
• Silicon Image SiL 3512 SATALink Controller – I originally installed beta Vista drivers from the Silicon Image website but final release drivers were provided via Windows Update. This is the chipset used in the CompUSA Serial ATA PCI Add-on card (yes I was cheap the day I bought this card but it works wonderfully!)

I updated drivers for the integrated Realtek Audio driver which can be found here:

Summary

My hope is that by the end of this guide, you now have a feel for what installing Windows Vista is like. I have not covered installing Windows Media Center as of yet but you can see prior articles on that process elsewhere here at Krunker. In the meantime, here’s hoping that your installation experience goes smmothly! And remember – please back up all of your data before venturing forth on this installation experience. I can’t stress that enough!

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