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Vista install problems

Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
edited June 2007 in Help / Advice Forum
My parents bought a new computer with one of those free Vista upgrades at the begining of the year.

Now being as they are scared to put a disc into the dvd tray they left it to me to install.

Bassically what came with it was a disc that you first stuck into it and it apparently updated all the drivers to work with Vista then you bung Vista in and wait a while.

After about 2 to three hours of waiting round it told me that it couldn't install it.

The specs of it easily surpass what is required for Vista (I'm not at the computer but at a guess), it's got 2 GB of RAM and decent dual core and a passable video card, I can't remember what it scored on the test sheet but it scored well.

Can anyone suggest what to do to get it to install without formatting the computer?

nzDA7PA.png

Satans..... hints.....
Blake T on

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    ElectricTurtleElectricTurtle Seeress WARegistered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Could you be more detailed as to the exact "could not install" error?

    ElectricTurtle on
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    Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    It didn't get any more specific which is what I found agravating.

    It said something along the lines of. "Vista could not be installed, the computer has restored your previous settings."

    Blake T on
    nzDA7PA.png

    Satans..... hints.....
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    ComahawkComahawk Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I would seriously suggest staying with XP for the time being... Vista is pretty unstable still, I just had to do a complete reformat last weekend due to it going completely to shit.

    Just wanted to throw that in...

    Comahawk on
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    Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Not to be overly rude but this is a "help me install Vista" Thread. Not "help me decide which operating system to use" thread.

    Blake T on
    nzDA7PA.png

    Satans..... hints.....
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    ZellZell Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    Don't install Vista, I heard it has evil DRM.

    More seriously, does the upgrade disc allow you to do a clean install? Because upgrades are still not recommended, and clean installs keeps all your files (unless you tell it to format the disk somewhere)

    Zell on
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    DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    edited May 2007
    I'm not sure if the "upgrade disc" provided by OEM's are exactly the same as the retail discs. I've only used the retail disc. Played it in XP and did an in-place upgrade.

    So are there 2 discs you have?
    1) vista driver disc
    2) vista install disc

    Djeet on
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    Blake TBlake T Do you have enemies then? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered User regular
    edited June 2007
    Zell wrote: »
    Don't install Vista, I heard it has evil DRM.

    More seriously, does the upgrade disc allow you to do a clean install? Because upgrades are still not recommended, and clean installs keeps all your files (unless you tell it to format the disk somewhere)

    Possibly, this may be the best option as I assumed a clean install means crush kill destroy everything. I'd need to go back to their place to check though

    Djeet wrote: »
    I'm not sure if the "upgrade disc" provided by OEM's are exactly the same as the retail discs. I've only used the retail disc. Played it in XP and did an in-place upgrade.

    So are there 2 discs you have?
    1) vista driver disc
    2) vista install disc

    Yeah the retailer had it's own driver disc (that you install first) then you shove the install disc in. I assume it's done this way so once Vista installs you have all the drivers you need and don't have any issues.

    Blake T on
    nzDA7PA.png

    Satans..... hints.....
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    DjeetDjeet Registered User regular
    edited June 2007
    I've upgraded XP systems (as well as boot-time installed to blank disc) directly from retail disc and did not need a separate driver disc (many of these systems were never offerred with Vista or Vista upgrade from manufacturer). Though since my installs have mainly been for testing purposes I've not bothered to see if all the drivers were properly installed (sound in particular). If your upgrade disc is the same as a retail disc (which it might be, my understanding is only the 64bit and "Enterprise Edition" discs were different) you may want to try an in-place upgrade without using the manufacturer-provided Vista driver disc. My disc reports 2,678,614,016 bytes used, though if your disc reports same size that does not necessarily mean they are the same disc.

    Once the in-place upgrade is complete, perhaps that driver disc can be used to install Vista drivers for any devices that were improperly installed. The documentation on Vista installation is a bit strange. It kinda implies that all installations ("clean" or upgrade) involve a clean install of Vista with application and data migration.

    You could image your system beforehand in case the in-place upgrade hoses things. Symantec offers a 15 day trial of Ghost if you don't have imaging software. And microsoft has Ximage.

    Djeet on
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