After Microsoft’s Windows Vista went RTM last year I quickly installed in onto my desktop and then my laptop. Both were manufactured before the release of Vista. My desktop was a bit more than a year and a half old and my laptop about 8 months old and came with the ubiquitous Windows Vista Capable sticker. On the desktop, I did an upgrade, followed about a month later by a fresh install to the same partition. Recently, I bought a brand spanking new laptop for my wife, who needed to have her 8 year old Compaq laptop replaced because every time the virus signature update initiates, it locks up the whole machine. It was just getting too slow and its battery was certainly out of juice. I’m not throwing it out, but it’s just not that pleasant an experience if you need to do more than surf the web and check e-mail. So, I went high end with the processor, an HP 2700 Special Edition series Intel Penryn class 2.5 GHz beast, a nice 2GB of RAM, 120 GB hard disk, DVD writer, 14.1” Brite View screen, discrete NVidia 8400 graphics, extended life battery, HDMI port, fingerprint reader; it has the works for an everyday machine. It should last just as long as the last one did. And, it came pre-loaded with Windows Vista Home Premium, my first machine pre-loaded with the OS. The interface was smooth and functionality was without issue. The only problem I ran into was my network printer driver for the HP color laser printer 2605dtn, so I had to download the full CD. HP doesn’t provide the small driver for the network version of this printer. I noted a problem with IE after the installation of the CD where the HP Web Clips feature add on was crashing IE so I disabled it. The experience was so nice that I decided it was time to re-install Windows Vista on my other computers.
My first candidate was my laptop, an HP DV 5190. It’s an early dual core Intel processor T2400. It’s sold as a budget processor today, but it was one of the best at the time. I know a reinstall won’t fix everything. It definitely runs hotter than the new model, a given with the Penryn’s advances in power consumption and my bigger 15.4” screen. It’s also been dropped once or twice going through airports, car rental buses, and sitting on hotel beds, so some cosmetic damage has been done. My biggest problems were around my upgrade path for the machine. I chose an in place upgrade to Vista at the time because of all the pre-installed software. From what I could tell, HP put many things on the machine that worked against proprietary features such as the TV tuner, DVD, function buttons, etc. and they were not available for download at the time either. The Vista driver list was very small, just a card reader driver I think. On top of that, I really didn’t have time to get my system right after a full install. I was in the middle of writing a book for goodness sakes. So, after the upgrade I had multiple conflicts with said vendor software. I ran MSconfig and disabled a bunch of startup programs, which seemed to work for some stuff, but MSconfig is not supposed to be a permanent solution so it would pop up to tell me some programs were not started. OK, so then I would go and uninstall a bunch of these programs, but some HP core program kept popping up a C++ error whenever I would resume from sleep or a reboot. It was annoying and the system just seemed slow. Other problems I had was video from DVD being jerky and the inability to run a SD card as a ReadyBoost drive, even though I bought a faster Ultra II series card.
This weekend I ran a file backup using the built in File Backup in Vista to an external hard drive. I didn't want a whole image, just the important stuff. After a couple hours and a quick safety backup of some pictures to a USB key, I was ready. I popped the DVD into the drive and rebooted. No problemo. I told Vista setup to install and went to the advanced link for disk management. I deleted two partitions, one of which was the HP partition that was eating 12GB of my hard drive space. That wasn't ever a cool decision by HP in my opinion. I setup a new, single partition. I didn’t format the drive, but just told setup to proceed with the install. Vista handled the rest with no further prompting from me. After a reboot I did the regular things, such as account and time zone setup. After another reboot I was in business. A fresh install, which is the fastest this thing will ever boot with Vista. Next, I setup wireless networking by clicking on the network icon on the taskbar and entered the passphrase for my network. I connected and got an IP address, but it wouldn’t connect to the Internet. I opened the Network and Sharing Center and the graphical network map showed a disconnect to the Internet. After a click on “Diagnose and Repair” an automated repair of the network initiated, first tried an IP address refresh, but it ultimately disabled and reenabled the network adapter. I was now able to browse the web.
The first order of business was a download of Vista Service Pack 1. It’s not showing in Windows Update yet, so I downloaded it manually without a pass through the 45 patches Windows Update identified as critical and important. Service Pack 1 took another 30 minutes more or less to install. No problems with the service pack, which I’m sure is an easy result on a machine with nothing else installed, including security software. Windows Update only needed to install a couple things after the service pack, along with optional software like my “Vista Ultimate” copy of Texas Hold’em Poker and a couple of hardware drivers. Then I went for anti-virus software. Having more than 3 computers in the house means two buys of Norton Internet Security every year. It may not be the geek's preference for AV, but it keeps all the family computers safe and secure. The only other issue was my integrated card reader. Vista didn’t have the right driver for the TI chipset, so I went over to HP’s web site, downloaded the right driver, and installed. Problem gone, but HP could have provided this driver to Microsoft for availability in Windows Update. Next were my network printers and, to my surprise, the HP Color Laser installed with no need for an external driver download which was required on the other, new laptop. I guess it was added with SP1. This keeps me away from the bloatware like HP Web Clips.
Rebuilding your box is kind of like spring cleaning. When you’re done it makes you say ahhhh. All the quirky little problems seem to be cleared up, but some things still needed to be resolved. One is the video driver. Vista still installs the old WDDM version of the NVidia driver that came on the original DVD, which is a very poor performer and has major problems with video from my experience. Since NVidia laptop chipsets are considered OEM, NVidia wants you to download the driver from the manufacturer. The problem is HP hasn’t updated the driver for my laptop since March 2007 and it sucks too. I used the excellent laptopvideo2go.com package, a free download, which plugs in the OEM files to the driver so you can run the latest and greatest. Trust me, you want newer than last year’s drivers because video drivers from all the major chipset vendors were notoriously bad when Vista debuted. You also realize after a fresh install that you are missing certain programs that you don’t even think about until you realize they are gone. For me these are Nero Burning ROM, PowerISO, SnagIt, iTunes, Virtual PC, and Firefox. Microsoft Office 2007 went on too. I’m going to try to stay away from the crapware that tends to bog down your system in the first place. Vista freshly installed with SP1 on my old machine makes it feel like new, its a nice feeling.