Vista Compatibility

Installing Windows Vista over a copy of XP or another, older version of the operating system poses problems that you may not want to face. In this article, we discuss the issues you could face.

Upgrading to 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. A clean install, however, isn’t a panacea. Your old PC may not have enough memory, disk space, video performance, or CPU performance to run Vista satisfactorily. If you do decide to install Vista over an older version of Windows, at least run Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor, described in this article, to see which drivers you may need to update first.

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).

The Vista Upgrade Advisor

For those who want to upgrade a Windows XP machine to Vista, starting with the Vista Upgrade Advisor is a good first step.

Getting Ready for the Upgrade Advisor When you start the Upgrade Advisor from Microsoft’s site, a small application is downloaded to your PC. When you run this app, you see the dialog box shown in article 3-1. The advisor is designed to test two different kinds of hardware compatibility: Whether your hardware is fast enough and modern enough to run Vista satisfactorily Whether your device drivers are compatible with Windows The advisor’s initial dialog box suggests that you plug in any devices you may want to use with Vista. It’s easy to forget some, but this is absolutely the time you want them to be checked out. So here’s a short list to jog your memory about gizmos you’ll want to make sure are plugged in to your PC and powered on before you start the advisor’s system scan: Printers and scanners (make sure they’re powered on, not just plugged in) External hard disk drives, backup devices, and USB drives of all kinds An extra USB hub that you seldom use - plug it in anyway to check it Spare USB keyboards and mice that you may have forgotten iPod or other MP3 player, even if you seldom synchronize it to your PC Headphones and ear buds (they may require audio drivers that won’t be tested unless the devices are jacked in to an audio port) When you’ve checked for all of the preceding and you feel that you’ve plugged in and turned on everything you might want to test, click the Start System Scan button in the advisor.

Can Your PC Run the Core Experiences? The Upgrade Advisor first tests a PC’s hardware, looking for signs that the system has all the chops it needs to handle essential disk, memory, and CPU functions. the Advisor will tell you whether these hardware features are up to the task of running Vista’s core experiences, which are basic features. If the Upgrade Advisor reports “No action required” for your hardware, you can breathe a sigh of relief. This all-clear doesn’t necessarily mean that Vista will run acceptably fast on that particular machine, but it does mean that the advisor found no show-stoppers that would necessitate expenditures on your part for new PC components. If you decide at this point to install Vista on this particular PC, and it proves to be too slow for you, you can still upgrade your RAM, video board, disk drive - possibly even swap out your motherboard for a new model - to improve the situation. You may not have that luxury if you install Vista on a PC that the Upgrade Advisor reports isn’t capable of handling it.

Are Your Drivers Capable of Vista? After the core experiences test of your hardware, the Upgrade Advisor moves on to test the software drivers that are crucial for the various components of your system and peripherals that may be attached. Assuming that the PC you’re testing has passed the basic compatibility test, you may find that the driver test poses challenging obstacles for you. There are three possible situations that the advisor will report to you about your drivers. You may need to manually update certain drivers after Vista is installed. Certain devices may simply not be supported by Vista at all. Vista may simply support your devices with native Windows Vista drivers. In that case, you obviously won’t need to do anything to make those drivers work with Vista. We look at the other two cases in the sections that follow.

Drivers That Need Manual Updating Drivers that need manual updating are updated versions of drivers that are compatible with Vista, but for some reason, Microsoft hasn’t included them in the shipping version of Vista. That means Vista can’t install the newer drivers. You’ll have to find them and install them yourself - before you try to install Vista over XP. This may pose a dilemma for you. If Microsoft can’t include the new drivers in Vista in such a way that it can install them for you, why does Microsoft think you’d like to search the Web for the right software and install it yourself? That’s exactly what you’ll need to do, though, if you expect Vista to work properly when you install it over your older operating system. Fortunately, the Upgrade Advisor has at least told you what to look for. Our advice, if the advisor tells you to manually install new drivers, is to start your search with the web site of the vendor of the hardware that needs a driver upgrade. You’re most likely to get the latest and most compatible driver version directly from the maker. Some upgrade sites on the Web don’t actually offer the latest versions of the drivers you need. If you don’t know how to find drivers on a particular vendor’s web site, you may be better off using DriverAgent.com. This site is run by the Touchstone Software Corp., a Massachusetts company that has developed CheckIt Diagnostics and several other wellknown utility programs. At the site, you can click Scan to find which drivers may be outdated on your system and how to obtain new drivers, whether your system is running Windows XP, 2000, Me, or 98. Don’t install drivers that are labeled as beta unless you’re willing to take a chance on these drivers’ readiness for widespread use. If newer drivers are available, the site will download them for you if you pay a fee of $29.95 for a one-year membership. This fee might save you some valuable time. If you don’t want to pay, at least the scan will show you which of your drivers have newer versions available. For more details, see www.DriverAgent.com.

Drivers That May Not Have a Vista-Compatible Version Drivers on your system that are incompatible with Vista, and Microsoft doesn’t know of Vista-compatible versions, show up second in the Upgrade Advisor’s software report. In article 3-3, you can see that the advisor calls for new drivers for the HP LaserJet 1320 printer and the Agfa ePhoto 1280 camera. The printer, in particular, is a fairly odd omission in Vista’s stable of drivers, since the LaserJet 1320 is one of HP’s most popular smalloffice peripherals. If the advisor says that a particular driver you need may not exist, the first place to start your search - as with the drivers Microsoft says you must manually install - is the site of the hardware vendor. New drivers are released every day, so the one you need may have just come out. If your search doesn’t reveal an updated driver that specifically says it’s Vista-compatible, your next step is to enter the world of tech-support hell. That’s right, you’ll need to find someone in the company who’ll pay attention to your e-mail, phone call, or letter and tell you when a Vista-specific driver will be released. Good luck on making that happen. Fortunately, major manufacturers tend to quickly release drivers that work with new Windows versions. That may mean drivers that come out at almost the same time as Vista or only two or three months later. Smaller companies and those who no longer support a particular model of hardware, however, may never spend the time to develop a Vista-ready driver. In that case, you may have no choice but to purchase newer hardware that does have a driver you can use in Vista. In such a case, there’s always the question about what to do with the hardware that won’t work with Vista - eBay, anyone?

Microsoft’s Obscure Stash of Legacy Drivers Even if the Vista Upgrade Advisor tells you that you need new drivers, and that they aren’t known to be available, you still may have something that will work. That something is called an XP driver. Yep, a driver that works fine under Windows XP may also work fine under Vista, even though the Upgrade Advisor doesn’t say so. Table 3-1 shows scores of drivers that Microsoft developers refer to as “XP drivers for legacy devices which we believe to function well on Windows Vista.” These drivers, however, won’t be included with Vista and the Upgrade Advisor may or may not say that they’re compatible, in case your system already has one or more of them. Sources within Microsoft report that, “For various reasons, these drivers will not be ‘in the box’ for the final version of Vista.” If you’re having trouble getting Vista to work well with a particular piece of hardware, and you can’t find a Vista-specific driver for it, you could try locating and installing an XP driver as a last resort. To install an XP driver, you’ll need to download it from a manufacturer’s site or have a copy of the driver on a CD, a USB drive, or some other medium. You can then use Vista’s Add Hardware control panel to try to write the new driver to your hard disk. Be sure to copy the old driver to a safe location, such as a USB drive, in case the new driver works worse than the old one did and you need to switch back. The list in Table 3-1 includes drivers for a lot of Ethernet cards and Wi-Fi adapters, for some reason. If your PC can’t connect to a wired network or can’t see your wireless router after installing Vista, this list of XP drivers that Microsoft developers believe will work under Vista could help you find software to correct the situation. Our thanks to Wendy Stidmon of Microsoft for assembling the list of XP drivers that work in Vista.

Why Didn’t Microsoft Include These Drivers in Vista? At the time of writing, we haven’t been able to get a good answer to the question of why Microsoft didn’t include in Vista the hundreds of XP drivers that were found to work well on the new OS. It appears to us that the omission of these drivers in Vista is due to licensing issues that couldn’t be resolved prior to Vista’s release to manufacturing (RTM). As indicated previously, Table 3-1 shows XP-generation drivers that Microsoft experts“believe to function well on Windows Vista.” The list is sorted by manufacturer name, although some of the descriptions of the components are very generic. The manufacturer name is followed by a hardware ID, a unique key that identifies a specific driver.

Summary Windows Vista constitutes, in many ways, a break with the past, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to make a break with your existing hardware just yet. Using Microsoft’s Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor, you can determine whether your current PC is powerful enough to run Windows Vista and, if so, which of your existing hardware devices will work properly after the upgrade. Then, using the secrets discussed in this article, you can often get even unsupported hardware working properly with Vista. If none of that works, well, what can you do? Windows Vista is an entirely new operating system after all.