Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

gimp-o-matic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:53:05 GMT

Ugh, forgot half a sentence :-P

Having access to a copy of VMware, and having the know-how to create a floppy disk that loads "the Beast" is a rare thing in the user community that Windows Vista is targeting, the average user, and I rarely see this even amongst die-hards like myself.

rudydanielle: the WIM format used in the Vista installer is kind of similar to the tar file format in Linux/Unix - it is like a ZIP archive, but it contains extended information about file attributes and such. I am pretty sure that installing Vista is not much more than extracting the contents of the image file, detecting some hardware, and updating the registry and boot record. It does not make an "image" of your old configuration, so going back to your previous operating system is impossible at the moment, as far as I know.

--GoM

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

gimp-o-matic — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 20:47:28 GMT

Installation of Vista Beta 2, for me, was nothing more than a big hassle.

Here's why: according to Microsoft, my system is very weird. I have two physical hard disks: a 160GB and a 30GB. The 160GB disk had about 5 partitions on it: the first is an 80GB ReiserFS partition for my primary operating system, openSUSE Linux 10.1. Next came the Windows Vista partition, which was around 30GB (I think) and formatted as NTFS obviously. Then I had a 25GB FAT32 partition for transferring files between the Linux partition (where all my downloads like Office 2007 are stored) to Vista. The last two partitions are both on one extended partition, and they are two Linux swapfile partitions, a 2GB one used for swapping, and a 1GB one used for hibernation. The second hard disk (the 30GB one) has a copy of WinXP used for gaming and stuff, I rarely use it.

Naturally, the Vista installer wanted to update my MBR. That's just the way the NT boot manager (and the old NTLDR method) worked. I figured this would happen, so I wrote down my GRUB (GRand Unified Bootloader, the bootloader I use for Linux) configuration and made a GRUB bootable floppy so I would be able to get back to Linux. My fallback worked great, and I successfully booted Linux and re-installed GRUB to the MBR. Which, of course, left Vista un-bootable.

Here is where my complaint is: because the BOOTMGR configuration is stored in a binary file now, as opposed to a text file, I had to install a whole new copy of Vista in VMware just so I could format a floppy disk with Vista's boot record and put 3 files on the freaking disk. Then I mounted my NTFS partition in Linux, copied the boot manager database to my floppy, and I was able to boot Vista using the floppy.

This is something that almost nobody in the casual user community can do. It was even a significant challenge for me, an experienced system administrator who has used Windows since it was just a GUI layer on top of DOS and Linux for about a year and a half, and writes PHP while administering a Windows/Linux cross-compatible network centered around a server running Fedora Core 4. Having access to a copy of VMware, and having the know-how to create a floppy disk that loads "the Beast."

Recently, when I installed Ubuntu Linux on my laptop (migrating from Windows XP Pro) I was given the option during the installation to install GRUB to a primary partition instead of the MBR. I would sincerely appreciate a similar option in Vista setup, it would save hours and hours of work for us die-hards that run Win/Lin dual-boot setups.

--GoM

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

rudydanielle — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 21:08:52 GMT

I was just wondering if you do an update from XP to Vista and it truley is "imaging" then you should be able to undo it right? Well if so , how?

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

Henz — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 05:32:20 GMT

About the installation time goal, i did see a big improvement (as into time taken). I tested in my lab installing Beta2 takes exactly 1 hour to complete the installation (from copy file to see desktop). With RC1, it shortened to appx. 20 mins. I was first shocked, because the copy file process looked "skipped" to me? and the expand file process took about 2~3 mins. I am not sure how and why it was done this way. But the installation definiately ran considerabely faster.

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

dimorphios — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 03:40:00 GMT

RC2 is suppost to be out this friday although most sources say it will only be available to beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers... us general public people are getting left out :(

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

newscientist2000 — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 02:28:56 GMT

I just hope we can get RC2 soon, maybe that will boot faster!

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

hell — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 00:09:17 GMT

I installed on my laptop on another partition i.e. dual boot and it tooked like 28 min starting from when i put the DVD to the when I was ready to use. It was quick a lot quick then i expected. But, it has problem with the xilinx and modelsim softwares.

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

robert3892 — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 22:41:03 GMT

Here are my specifications: AMD Athlon dual core 4600 processor Socket 939, K8N Neo 4 MSI motherboard, 4 SATA western digital 160 gig drives, 7950 GX2 EVGA videocard, 480 watt PSU. Neither RC1 5600 nor 5728 will load on my PC. Beta 2 loads and works fine because I believe it doesn't load a driver for my videocard...but that's a guess. It sure would be nice to have an Vista RC1 build that I could install and test....tried it with RAID and also without RAID.

johnson_robert_roy@hotmail.com

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

Sidebar Geek — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 19:22:30 GMT

Installl times with vary depending on hardware.

I've had 20 minute clean-installs since Beta 2 on my Dell XPS 1710 Latop but 30-35 minute clean-installs on my Desktop PC.

One thing is for sure and that's Microsoft has made some serious improvements with Vista's install time.

However, I do think the upgrade install times are a bit too long in my opinion.

re: Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

yardi4life — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 16:33:58 GMT

dimorphios eat dust...

I have installed Vista Ultimate Pre-RC1 in 21 Minutes from "Window is loading" to "Welcome center".

From Copying files to Completing Installation took about 12 minutes... Yes I have very fast machine (core2duo e6400 @ 3.04 /w WD raptor drive, 2 dvd-r/w drive, sata II drive, 2gb mem, onboard sound, dual gigabit lan, 6 usb2 ports, nvidia 7900gt, print).

With that said I have had problems also with install Vista Ultimate Pre-RC1 where it would take about 45 minutes. After hours of troubleshooting I found that disabling the A drive ( PC did not have any A drive but was enable in BIOS) would speed things up.

I have also installed build 5728 on VMWARE 5.5 (XPSP2 Pentium D 3.2 w/ WD raptor) in under 30 minutes from "Window is loading" to "Welcome center".

Good job deployment team.