If you’re an enterprise administrator faced with the prospect of rolling out Windows Vista to hundreds or thousands of desktops around the world, take heart: Microsoft has finally upgraded its deployment tools in dramatic fashion, taking advantage of the componentized architecture of Windows Vista. But these deployment tools aren’t just advantageous to the world’s biggest corporations. If you’re a power user, a tinkerer, or someone who ends up having to reinstall Windows fairly regularly, you might just be interested to discover that Vista’s newfangled deployment tools are going to prove quite enticing to you as well. Here’s what happened. With Windows Vista, Microsoft has completely rearchitected Windows for the first time since, well, Windows 95, breaking the system down to core pieces, called modules, which are as non-dependent on each other as possible.

Before, each version of Windows included a foundational module that was based on the English language. If Microsoft, a PC maker, or an IT administrator wanted to create, say, a French version of Windows, they would have to add the French language on top of Windows. Now, Windows Vista is language independent. The core foundational module of Windows is much smaller as a result, and it will now be easier for Microsoft—and IT administrators— to roll out patches because they won’t need different ones for all of the languages Windows supports. Microsoft also changed Windows Vista to a file-based disk imaging model.

In the past, Windows Setup would spend a lot of time copying thousands of files from the Windows install media (typically a CD) or a network-based file share (when installed by corporations). These file operations were time consuming because each file had to be expanded and copied to a particular directory structure on the fly. With an image-based model, Windows Vista ships as a single image file containing just the most basic components required to get the OS up and running. During installation, Windows Setup simply copies this single image file to the hard drive and then expands it, creating a simple Windows installation.

After that, custom features are added and the OS is installed. Simple. Finally, Microsoft improved its Windows deployment answer file, a text-based file that literally contains the answers to the questions you answer during interactive Setup when you do a clean install, upgrade, or dual-boot. These questions include such things as “What is your product key?” But the beautiful thing is that the answer file can contain answers to questions that aren’t asked during Setup at all. In this way, we can create custom Windows install images that will install a version of Windows Vista that isn’t possible to obtain using just interactive Setup. But wait, there’s more: Even if all you want is a standard Windows install, creating your own answer file is still a good idea, because you can use that file to run what’s called an automated Windows install, where you don’t have to babysit the install process. It literally automates the whole thing.

The key to all of this is something Microsoft calls Windows Automated Installation Kit (WAIK). This free software kit includes a number of tools, including the User State Migration Tool (USMT), for migrating settings from Windows 2000 and XP to Vista; XImage, for editing Vista image files; Windows System Image Manager, for configuring custom Windows Vista images and creating unattended installaton files; and Windows PE (Preinstallation Environment), a simple Windows boot environment designed primarily to bootstrap Windows Vista installation and prepare a disk for the new operating system. As noted earlier, these tools are designed for enterprises, which typically need to roll out Windows Vista to large numbers of PCs in an automated fashion.

But you can use these tools to create custom Vista install images, burn them to blank DVDs using the third-party disk burning software of your choice, and then install the version of Windows Vista you want. Unfortunately, the Windows Vista version of WAIK wasn’t completed in time for this article. But you can find complete instructions for creating custom Windows Vista install DVDs on the SuperSite for Windows (www.winsupersite.com).

Upgrading to Windows Vista

With all of the new features of Windows Vista, there’ll be a mighty temptation for you to buy a copy of the operating system in a store and immediately install it over your existing instance of Windows XP, 2000, Me, or 98. Before you do, you should consider some of the following cautions: _ Your old PC may not be up to the challenge of running Vista. You may need substantial investments in additional RAM, a more capable video card, a larger hard drive, or all of the above to get adequate performance from Vista. _ Some of your hardware, such as printers and networking adapters, may not work at all after you install Vista—unless you update the drivers they need to versions that are Vista-compatible. _ Even if you find that one or more of your drivers needs to be updated, the vendor of your hardware may not make a Vista-compatible version available for months, years, or ever. (It’s happened before with previous versions of Windows.)

Avoid Installing Vista over Another Version of Windows

We do recommend that you get Windows Vista preinstalled when you’re buying a new PC. But you may be surprised to learn that we don’t recommend that you install Vista over XP or an older version of Windows. The reason is that installing Vista on top of another version of Windows may cause incompatibility problems that you might not be able to easily fix. When you buy a PC with Vista preinstalled, it’s almost certain that the components in the PC will have been selected for their compatibility and will have the latest driver software. If you install Vista to an older machine yourself, however, you may find that your printer, networking adapter, or some other vital component no longer works because the version you have of its driver is incompatible. In general, you shouldn’t consider installing Vista over an older version of Windows unless the following conditions are true:

• You need a feature of Vista that you can’t add to XP; or

• You need an application that requires Vista; and

• You can’t afford even the least expensive new PC that comes with Vista preinstalled Even if one of the above cases is true, you may be better off burning your old data to a CD, formatting the old PC’s hard drive, and doing a clean install of Vista.

This avoids the possibility that some components of the old OS will hang around to cause conflicts. If you’ve never before backed up and formatted a hard drive, however, don’t try to learn how on any PC that’s important to you.

XP Users Can Try the Vista Upgrade Advisor

To help you determine whether a particular PC has the performance characteristics and the current hardware drivers it needs to work well with Vista, Microsoft provides the Vista Upgrade Advisor. We recommend that you run the Upgrade Advisor on your current, non-Vista PC, if only to be humbled when you see the many aspects of your system that may need you to shell out some bucks for complete Vista compatibility. Even if you never install Vista on an older PC, you may find that upgraded drivers are available that will give you better performance on your current system.

The Upgrade Advisor is a short and simple test that you access on Microsoft’s web site. It runs only on PCs that have Windows XP installed. As Microsoft states on the site, “In general, PCs purchased within the last two years have a better chance of being able to run Windows Vista as-is or with affordable improvements to the system hardware.” That leaves out a lot of PCs that were built when Windows 2000, Me, or 98 were the leading operating systems. Visit Microsoft’s ‘Get Ready’ Web page. At the time of this writing, the Vista Upgrade Advisor was available from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready. That page also has useful information about the exact hardware requirements for Vista. This includes a description of Windows Vista Capable PCs (which can run all Vista applications) and Windows Vista Premium Ready PCs (which can also run the slick Aero user interface).