Installing and Upgrading to Windows Vista

So you want to install Windows Vista? Well, we’ll walk you through all the various ways you can acquire Windows Vista in this article, including a clean install, where Windows Vista is the only operating system on your PC; an upgrade, where you upgrade an existing version of Windows to Windows Vista, leaving all of your data, settings, and application intact; and a dual-boot, where you leave Windows XP on your PC but install Vista to a different hard drive.

Taking the Easy Way Out: Acquiring Windows Vista with a New PC The simplest way to get a completely working copy of Windows Vista is to buy a new PC. Wait, we’re serious: Even though PC makers tend to fill their machines with oodles of useless utilities, add-on programs, and other sludge, the one thing you can always be sure of when you buy a new PC is that Windows Vista is going to work out of the box. That is, all of the hardware that comes as part of your new PC purchase will work without any additional effort on your part. You won’t have to step through the various setup-related issues we discuss later in this article. In fact, if you did purchase a PC with Windows Vista preinstalled, most of this article won’t apply to you at all (well, except for the deployment discussion at the end of the article, assuming you got a Vista DVD with the new PC). You should be able to simply turn your new PC on and get to work.

One thing that PC purchasers should know about is how to restore their system, or return it to the state in which it was in when new. Virtually all new PCs sold today include a means by which you can do this. Most of the time, you can restore your PC using a special hidden partition on your hard drive. Other PC makers actually include what’s called a restore disk, or restore DVD, with the system. Check your documentation to be sure that you know how to restore your system if you need to. And when you’re removing all of that junk that the PC maker installed on your previously pristine Windows Vista installation, be sure you don’t remove anything you’ll need to recover your system.

Interactive Setup If you purchased a copy of Windows Vista on DVD at a retailer or online store, you can install Vista using Microsoft’s new Interactive Setup application, which guides you through a series of steps while installing Vista. There are three primary ways to install Windows Vista using Interactive Setup: A clean install, where Windows Vista will be the only operating system on the PC; an upgrade, where you upgrade an existing operating system to Windows Vista, replacing the old with the new; and a dual-boot, where you install Windows Vista alongside your old operating system and use a boot menu to choose between them each time you reboot. We’ll examine all three methods in this article.

Clean Install A clean install of the operating system is our preferred method for installing Windows Vista. Although it’s possible to upgrade to Windows Vista from certain previous Windows versions (see the next section), this path is perilous and can often result in a Frankenstein-like system where only some of your applications work properly. In our opinion, it’s best to start with a clean slate when moving to a new operating system, especially a major release like Windows Vista. Be sure to back up your critical data before performing a clean install. Typically, you will wipe out your PC’s entire hard drive during a clean install, so any documents, e-mail, and other data will be destroyed during the process. Also, make sure you have all the installation disks for the applications and hardware drivers you’ll need to reinstall after Vista is up and running.

Step-by-Step: Windows Vista Interactive Setup In this section, we’re going to walk you through the entire Windows Vista Setup process, using Microsoft’s interactive Setup application. This application was completely overhauled for Windows Vista, and it’s much more streamlined, simplified, and faster-moving than the version used in Windows XP. Follows these steps to install Windows Vista as a clean install:

1. Insert the Windows Vista DVD in your PC’s optical drive and reboot. After the BIOS screen flashes by, you may see a message alerting you to Press any key to boot from the CD or DVD. If so, press a key. Some systems, however, do not provide this warning and will instead boot from the DVD by default. If your system does not boot from the DVD, you may need to change the system’s boot order so that the optical drive is checked before the first hard drive. To do this, you will have to consult your PC’s documentation, as each PC handles this process a little differently. A black screen with a progress bar and the text “Windows is loading files” will appear, 2-1.

2. Eventually, the screen will display a multicolored drape effect and the initial Setup window appears, 2-2. Here, you can preconfigure the language, time and currency formats, and keyboard or input method you’ll use during Setup.

3. Click Next. The Install Now window appears, 2-3. To continue with Interactive Setup, click Install Now. This window also provides a way to access Windows Vista’s new recovery tools. If you run into a problem with Windows Vista later, such as not being able to boot into Windows for some reason, you can boot your system with the Setup DVD and use these tools to help fix the problem.

4. In the next window (shown in Article 2-4), enter your Windows Vista product key. This is a 25-digit alphanumeric string - in blocks of 5 separated by dashes - that you will find on a bright yellow product key sticker somewhere in your Windows Vista packaging. You can also optionally choose to have Windows Vista automatically activate for you. Do not lose this product key or give it away to anyone. Each Windows Vista product key is valid for exactly one PC. After you’ve installed Windows Vista and activated it - which ties the product key to your hardware - you won’t be able to use this number again on another PC, at least not easily. Note, however, that you will have no problems reinstalling Windows Vista on the same PC using this same product key. If for some reason you are unable to electronically activate Windows later, Vista will provide a phone number so you can do it manually.

5. In the next window, you must agree to the End User License Agreement (EULA). Although very few people actually read this document, you should take the time as it outlines your legal rights with regards to your usage of Windows Vista. Our understanding of the legaleze in this document is that Microsoft exerts certain rights over your first born and soul. In Article 2-5, you can see the EULA window.

6. In the next window, select the partition, or disk, to which to install Windows Vista. On a clean install, typically, you will be installing Windows Vista to the only disk available, 2-6.

7. Typically, you will see a link called More Options on this window. Clicking this link brings you to a screen where you can delete, format, or extend the current disk, if possible, or create a new partition if the hard drive is brand new and unformatted. This window is shown in Article 2-7. If you are performing a clean install on a previously used machine, we advise you to format the disk during this step to ensure that none of the cruft from your previous Windows installation dirties up your new Windows Vista install. You don’t actually need to format a new disk. If you attempt to install Windows Vista on an unformatted disk, Setup will simply format the disk to its maximum capacity, automatically.

8. After you’ve selected the disk and formatted it if necessary, you can walk away from your computer for 20–45 minutes, depending on your hardware. During this time, Setup will copy the various files it needs for installation to the hard drive, expand the Vista image file from the DVD, install Windows Vista and any included software updates, and complete the installation by attempting to load drivers for your hardware. A screen like that shown in Article 2-8 will display during this entire process.

9. A reboot or two later, and your PC will launch into the second, and final, interactive phase of Setup. In the first screen, shown in Article 2-9, you are prompted for a user name (typically a short name like Paul or Brian and not a full name like Ferris Bueller), password, and display picture. If you don’t choose a picture, you get the flower by default. (You’ve been warned.) A few notes about this initial user account. Unlike Windows XP, Windows Vista does not create a visible Administrator account automatically for security reasons. Nor are you allowed to create up to five user accounts, as you were in XP. Instead, you can create a single user account during Setup. That user account will be given administrator privileges. Subsequent user accounts - created in Windows Vista using the User Accounts Control Panel - are given limited user privileges by default, but that’s easy enough to change. We look at creating and modifying user accounts in Article 9. Be sure to use a password, please. It’s unclear to us why Microsoft even makes this optional, but using a strong password is one of the most basic things you can do to keep your system more secure.

10. Type a name for your PC and choose a desktop background (  2-10). By default, Setup picks a PC name that is based on your user name. This is probably not a great name for your PC, but you’re free to change it. Setup provides you with only six potential background images for some reason. To change your background to another image or a solid color after Setup is complete, right-click the Desktop, choose Personalize, and then Desktop Background. You’ll see many more choices there. Setup doesn’t let you specify a workgroup name, or join an Active Directory-based domain, as did the Windows XP Setup routine. To change this after Setup is complete, open the Start Menu, right-click Computer, and choose Properties. Then, click the Change Settings link in the Computer name, domain, and workgroup settings section of the resulting window. The dialog box that appears is very similar to the one you’re used to from Windows XP.

11. Choose whether to enable Automatic Updates, 2-11. You can use the recommended settings, in which Windows automatically downloads and installs all updates, can install only important updates, or can choose to be prompted later. This behavior is far more aggressive than the similar Setup screen that Microsoft added to Windows XP with Service Pack 2. Note that you can’t choose to download but not install updates. Our advice is to choose the Ask Me Later option for now, even if you completely trust Microsoft. Then, you can configure Automatic Updates later using the new Windows Update utility. From that interface, you can use the more traditional options, including downloading but not automatically installing.

12. Configure the time zone, date, and time 2-12. Even if you’re not particularly careful about setting the time correctly here, Windows Vista will eventually adjust to the correct time automatically, because it is configured out of the box to synchronize with an Internet time server. That said, you should at least make an effort to ensure that the time is reasonably correct to avoid problems with this process. Before the Windows Vista desktop appears, Setup takes a final bow by testing your system’s performance characteristics. We’ll look at what that means in the next section, but during this time, you’ll see a screen like that shown in article 2-14. This process generally takes about 30 seconds to 2 minutes, depending on the speed of your PC.

Post-Setup Tasks With the performance test out of the way, Setup finally quits, leaving you staring at your new Windows Vista desktop. A few things will occur immediately:

1. The Welcome Center window opens, 2-15, providing you with a glimpse at your system details, performance rating, and a list of 6 to 12 tasks you might want to perform now that you’re up and running. You can safely close this window. We’ll guide you through all of the post-setup tasks you’ll need to perform. The first time the Welcome Center appears, there’s no indication that it’s going to appear on your next reboot, but it will. From then on, however, Welcome Center will display an option on the bottom of its window titled, Run at startup. Clear this option if you want Welcome Center to stop being so welcoming. If you do disable Welcome Center, you can always access it at any time by navigating to All Programs -> Accessories -> Welcome Center in the new Start Menu.

2. If your PC includes a network card (wireless or otherwise) that was properly detected and installed during Setup, you will be prompted to configure that network connection. When you click the prompt, you will see the window shown in article 2-16. From here, you can choose whether the network you’re accessing is private (your home network), work, or public (such as at a library, coffee shop, or airport). Windows will configure networking differently in each case. Okay, now it’s time to finish configuring Windows Vista so you can begin using it. The first step is to check out your hardware driver situation: Ideally, all of the hardware connected to your PC has been detected, and Setup has installed drivers for each of your devices. To see whether this is the case, you need to open a tool called Device Manager. There are a number of ways to access Device Manager, but the quickest is to open the Start Menu, right-click Computer, and then choose Manage. If any of the entries, or nodes, in the Device Manager tree view are open, displaying a device with a small yellow exclamation point, or bang, then you’re going to need to install some drivers. There are four basic ways to install drivers in Windows Vista, listed below in opposite order of preference:

Automatically: Right-click the unsupported device and choose Update Driver Software. Windows will search the local system, including any setup disks, to find the appropriate driver. In our experience, this method almost never works but it’s worth trying.

Manually: As before, you right-click the unsupported device and choose Update Driver Software. This time, however, you must supply the driver files via a setup disk or other means.

As an executable setup disk or download: Many drivers come in self-contained executables where you run a setup routine just as you would for an application program. If possible, be sure to use a Windows Vista–compatible setup application: These should work just fine. However, Windows XP drivers often work as well, albeit with a little grumbling on the part of Windows Vista.

With Windows Update: This is the best way to install drivers, and it’s the first place to visit if you discover that Windows Vista Setup didn’t install all of your hardware. The hardware drivers found on Windows Update aren’t always as upto- date as those supplied directly from the hardware manufacturers. That said, Windows Update–based drivers have been tested extensively and should always be your first choice. Note that Vista will likely connect to Windows Update automatically if you have a configured network adapter, grabbing any device drivers it can, within minutes of booting into the desktop for the first time. To find drivers on Windows Update, open the Start Menu and choose All Programs -> Windows Update. Then, click the Check for updates link in the upper-right corner of the Windows Update application, 2-18. You should repeat the preceding processes until all of your hardware devices are up and running. If you did run Windows Update during this time, you will likely have seen a number of Windows Vista product updates as well. You should install those updates before moving on to the next step. Now, it’s time to install your applications. Install them one at a time and reboot if necessary after each install as requested. This process can often take a long time and is mindnumbingly boring, but the good news is you should only have to do it once. With your applications installed, it’s time to restore any data that you might have backed up from your previous Windows install. Or, if you have installed Windows Vista to a brand-new PC, you can transfer user accounts, music, picture, and video files, documents, program settings, Internet settings and favorites, and e-mail messages, contacts, and messages, from your old PC to Windows Vista using an excellent new Vista utility called Windows Easy Transfer. Located in Start Menu -> All Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools, this utility is a wizard-like application, shown in article 2-19, that you can install and run on your previous OS as well.

Upgrading When we discuss upgrading to Windows Vista, we are typically referring to what’s called an in-place upgrade. When you perform an in-place upgrade of Windows Vista, you replace your existing version of Windows with Windows Vista. An in-place upgrade, hopefully, will bring with it all of your applications, documents, and settings. Hopefully. The reality is that in-place upgrades often don’t work as planned. For this reason, we don’t typically recommend upgrading from your current Windows version to Windows Vista. If you simply must perform such an upgrade, behave as if you were doing a clean install just in case, and back up all of your crucial documents and other data ahead of time. That way, if something does go wrong, you won’t be stranded. Before even attempting an upgrade, you should understand what kinds of upgrades are even possible. Windows Vista ships in a wide range of product editions, most of which don’t have direct relations in Windows XP. Put simply, only certain versions of Windows can upgrade to certain versions of Windows Vista. From a licensing perspective, only certain Windows versions are eligible for a Windows Vista upgrade. That is, you can’t purchase and install an Upgrade version of Windows Vista unless you’re using a supported Windows version now. If you’re running Windows 95, Windows 98 (or Windows 98 Second Edition), Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows NT 4.0, you are out of luck. You cannot purchase an Upgrade version of Windows Vista, and you cannot perform an in-place upgrade from your current operating system to any Windows Vista product edition. Instead, you must purchase the Full version of the Windows Vista product edition you want, and perform a clean install, as specified earlier in this article. If you’re running Windows 2000 or Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, you are eligible to purchase an Upgrade version of the Windows Vista product edition you desire. However, you cannot perform an in-place upgrade. Instead, you will need to perform a clean install, as we discussed previously, using the Upgrade version. The only Windows versions that both qualify for a Windows Vista Upgrade version and can be upgraded, in-place, to Windows Vista, are Windows XP Home, Professional, Media Center, and Tablet PC Editions. However, within this set of operating systems, there are still some restrictions. To help simplify your options, Table 2-1 summarizes which versions of Windows can be upgraded in-place to which Windows Vista versions. You might notice that Windows Vista Starter and Windows Vista Enterprise are not represented on this chart. That’s because neither of those Windows Vista product editions supports upgrades at all. Windows Vista Starter is aimed at emerging markets, whereas Windows Vista Enterprise is a volume-licensed version of Windows that is only provided to corporations.

Step-by-Step: Upgrading to Windows Vista If you’re undaunted by the process of upgrading of your copy of Windows XP to Windows Vista, in-place, then you’ve come to the right place. In this section, we’ll tell you how it’s done. Most of the process is virtually identical to the steps we outlined for performing a Clean Install earlier in the article.

1. The first difference is that you will typically launch Windows Vista Setup from within Windows XP. To do so, simply insert the Windows Vista Setup DVD into your PC’s optical drive. The Setup routine should auto-run, and you’ll see the window shown in article 2-20.

2. Click Install Now to continue. In the next step, you’ll be asked if you want to go online to get the latest updates for installation. You should always do so, because Microsoft will be improving Windows Vista over time and there will certainly be some updates available by the time you read this. Setup will search for and download any updates.

3. Setup will proceed as it does during a clean install, and you’ll enter the product key, agree to the EULA, and so on. When you get to the “Which type of installation do you want?” screen, it’s time to step back a second and recoup. This is where we’re going to veer off into new territory.

4. Instead of choosing Custom, you will choose Upgrade. First, Setup runs a compatibility check to determine whether any of your hardware or software will need to be reinstalled - or will work at all - after the upgrade is completed. After scanning your system, Setup will present you with a Compatibility Report, 2-21. What you see here will depend on how old and weather-beaten your system is. The more stuff you’ve installed, the bigger the chance that there will be problems. After that, Setup will continue exactly as it does during a clean install. And we mean exactly: Unlike previous Windows versions, Windows Setup literally backs up your settings, data, and application information, performs a clean install of the operating system, and then copies everything back in a way in which it should all work as it did before. But this is why the upgrade process is so dicey: If anything goes wrong, you’ve taken a perfectly usable Windows Vista install and mucked it up with all the garbage from your Windows XP install. In any event, after Setup is complete, the system will reboot. Unlike with the other setup types, an in-place upgrade skips over a few steps, including those where you configure your user name, password, display picture, desktop background image, and machine name, because you’ve presumably set up all of those options in your previous Windows version. Instead, Setup jumps right to the Automatic Updates phase described in the clean install section of this article and then the time and date settings (which, frankly, should have been correctly configured previously as well). After that, you click the Finish button (no “You’re ready to start” message, sorry), and Windows Setup tests your system performance and then loads the Welcome Screen. So what’s the end result? If everything went well, you should be able to log on to your previously established user account and access a desktop that looks reasonably like the one you had configured in Windows XP, 2-22. The big mystery, of course, is your data and applications. You should spend some time testing each application to see if everything works. In article 2-23, you can see the Firefox web browser, previously installed and configured in Windows XP, up and running just fine after an upgrade to Windows Vista. Because of the potential for problems, we recommend backing up any crucial data and settings before performing any operating system upgrade.

Dual-Booting with Windows XP With a radically different operating system such as Windows Vista, you may want to test the waters a bit before diving headlong into the future. Or, perhaps you need to run certain applications that still don’t work properly in Windows Vista. Or you’re a software or web developer, and you need to test your creations in both Windows XP and Windows Vista. For these and other reasons, Microsoft has long supported the notion of dual-booting, where you install two or more operating systems on the same PC, choose between them using a boot menu when you turn on or reboot the PC, and then run one or the other. Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP (all versions), and Windows Vista all support dual-booting natively. Although it’s possible to dual-boot between most of these operating systems and an older Windows version like Windows 98 or Me, those DOS-based versions of Windows are no longer supported by Microsoft and therefore won’t be discussed in this article. If you need to run a legacy operating system, or a particular legacy application, we recommend a software virtualization environment like Microsoft’s Virtual PC 2007, which is designed specifically for Windows Vista. We’re going to assume you already have Windows XP installed on your PC and are looking to add Windows Vista to the mix. We don’t do this for our own benefit: Because Windows XP was developed years before Windows Vista and has no native understanding of Vista’s boot loader and boot menu, it’s best to simply install Windows XP first. Windows Vista was designed with knowledge of XP’s boot loader and boot menu, and therefore can safely be added to a PC after Windows XP.

Before proceeding, there are two major issues to consider. You need to add a second hard drive or partition to your computer into which you will install Windows Vista. We’ll look at ways to do this in the next section. Do not, under any circumstances, try to install Windows XP and Windows Vista to the same partition or hard drive. While you might be able to pull this off, both operating systems use many identically named folders and you will run into problems. You need to decide how you are going to initiate the dual-boot install of Windows Vista. You have two choices: While in Windows XP, insert the Windows Vista Setup DVD and begin Setup from there. Or, reboot your system, boot from the Setup DVD, and begin Setup that way. What’s the difference, you ask? On a typical PC with two hard drives or partitions, one dedicated to Windows XP, and one dedicated to Windows Vista, you will typically end up with XP on the C: drive and Windows Vista on the D: drive when you initiate Windows Vista’s Setup routine from within Windows XP. But when you reboot the system and boot with the Windows Vista Setup DVD, something magical occurs. After both operating systems are installed, Windows XP will be on C: and Windows Vista will be on D: while you’re using Windows XP. But when you’re using Windows Vista, the system will report that Windows Vista is on C: and Windows XP is on D:. This is vastly preferable to the former method, because most people are used to seeing the operating system partition located on the C: drive. For this very simple reason, we recommend that you always install Windows Vista in a dual-boot scenario by booting the system with the Vista Setup DVD and launching Setup from there. Okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. First we need to figure out how to make space for Windows Vista.