Vista upgrade disaster

[vehelpfulguy]

This is not really a question, just a word of warning for those thinking of upgrading to Vista.

I work in computers and know a lot about them. Did my first upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Business today.

It was on a 15 month old PC that I built myself and that has run XP Pro with no problems since I built it.

Ran Vista upgrade advisor and it said there were no problems.

Began the upgrade and it ran for about 2 hours and seemed to go fine.

On final reboot got the Windows blue screen of death with PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA

But the Blue screen disappeared so quickly I could not read any more so could not see what the error was.

I got a Windows screen where you can reboot in various safe modes, would not work. Tried doing repair, would not work.

Tried all sorts of other things, but could not get Vista to boot at all.

After trying for about an hour I gave up. Luckily this was a "spare" hard disk (and I have XP backed up with Ghost anyway) so was able to recover.

I feel sorry for anyone who gets a problem like this and has now trashed their working copy of XP.

I shall not touch Vista again and stick with XP until Microsoft "finish" Vista.

If you are planning to upgrade to Vista then think before you act.

[Kerplunk]

Thanks for that.

[sir.prize]

Hasta la Vista, Microsoft!!!!!!!

[rojash]

Hi VHG, with yours and mine we could maybe have the beginnings of a "Museum of Vista Failures". My spare drive has not been back in the machine for 3 weeks, as I just can't face spending any more time trying to get it working properly (although it does at least boot).

[camioneur]

I'm amazed. Two of the 3 people I would have thought to be the very last to try Vista seem to have been 2 of the first...gob-smacked.

[mattie]

I am using Vista for research purposes as I work in IT, but I bought a copy of Vista and a new hard drive to install it on, so as not to mess up my existing set up.

What I immediately found was that Vista doesn't have drivers available for all my motherboard devices, and none are available from the manufacturer.

[rojash]

camioneur, if one of those is me, the explanation is that our company got 10 free licences from MS, I have to support customers who may (God help them) be running Vista, and ensure that the software that I produce will run on their machines (assuming that their machines work at all). I installed to a removable hard drive, so to get back to XP, I just oiked it out and replaced it with my working drive.

[Gromit]

No disrespect to posters here, but I am getting sick to death of hearing people's VISTA woes. I was at a party on saturday, and it turned into competative victimdom on the lines of "My computers now more **** up than your computer" and "I've spent 4 days trying to mend it to no avail".

For WOW read YAWN.

[rojash]

Gromit, at parties, I never talk computers. This, however, is the computers section of AB, and Vista is of abiding interest to many people who have not yet experienced it.

[Whickerman]

Have heard nothing but tales of woe re Vista. I'm steering well clear.

Thanks for the advice!

[Gromit]

rojash, Apologies

I wasn't saying it is not a valid topic for here, and I did say I mean't no disrespect to posters here.

Can't you get you money back if it doesn't work?

[Mattk]

sounds like an interesting party !

[Gromit]

Mattk

Makes a change from bragging about how much their house values have risen in the past 6 montzzzzzzz zzzzz. Party was at in-laws - enough said.