Cheap PC Vista Upgrade Timeline
Here's a near blow-by-blow timeline of my upgrade process from Windows XP Windows Media Edition to Windows Vista Ultimate Edition. I upgraded using a DVD burned from the production ISO file.
- 1321 - Typed in activation code. The installer looked at my system and identified potential upgrade issues. The interesting thing about this is that the list was a bit different from the one the Vista Upgrade Advisor created. It did not, for example, list nVidia Networking as a possible problem. And, it added the Sun Java Scheduler as a possible problem. Another addition that did not show up in the Adivsor output was the nVideo Display driver.
- 1326 - File copying began
- 1333 - Getting files 19% done
- 1340 - Getting files 67% done
- 1344 - The screen fills with a blue gradient fill and the words Upgrading Windows appears
- 1347 - Expanding files 21% done
- 1359 - Expanding files 93% done
- 1400 - Installing features and updates phase
- 1401 - The PC rebooted on its own
- 1403 - The message "Please wait a moment" appears
- 1405 - The screen background changes to black and then changes to "Completing upgrade"
- 1415 - Completing upgrade 28% done
- 1426 - Completing upgrade 46% done
- 1432 - Ack, I left the external USB hard drive plugged in. The Vista upgrader ran a disk check on it that took a few minutes.
- 1438 - The screen blanks out to black again
- 1440 - Completing upgrade 64% appears
- 1445 - Vista asks to verify my timezone
- 1451 - Vista runs a performance check
- 1501 - Vista login prompt appears
The upgrade process took about 90 minutes (I walked away or looked away a couple of times and when I returned there was a prompt or two). It would have saved a few minutes if I had turned the external hard drive off before beginning the upgrade.
So, how does the upgraded Vista PC work? Stay tuned for the next week or two to read a couple of surprises I ran into after logging in.
Cheap PC Vista Pre-Upgrade Preparation
I performed most of my Windows Vista beta and release candidate testing on either a Dell Optiplex GX280 with 512MB RAM or a Parallels Desktop for Mac virtual machine. I installed Vista Ultimate Edition on a Dell Lattitude D600 notebook a couple of months ago after its hard disk died and, basically, I had nothing to lose installing Vista on a freshly delivered new hard drive (warranty replacement). Most of my installations were clean installations since the early beta versions did not permit upgrade installations. Installation times varied between 2.5 hours and 45 minutes.
This was the first time I had an opportunity to upgrade a sort-of production desktop PC running Windows XP (Media Center Edition). Here's what happened before actually starting the installation.
I ran the Microsoft Vista Upgrade Advisor. Here's what it told me in a nutshell.
- Realtek High Definition Audio: Required a driver upgrade.
- Nvidia nForce Networking Controller: No compatibility data. Oh oh.
- HP Photosmart 7700 Series printer: No compatibility data. Hmm.
- Nero OEM: Must be uninstalled before upgrading to Vista.
- PowerDVD: Might have minor issues.
- Windows Messenger: Might have minor issues.
- Microsoft ActiveSync: Has compatibility issues.
Except for the networking issue (eMachines uses the nVidia chipset for pretty much everything it appears), I wasn't too worried. So, I pressed on.
I spent a couple of hours making sure I could recover from a totally botched upgrade. Here's what I did.
- Copied data files and OEM drivers from C: drive to D: drive (2 hard disks in this PC).
- Copied critical data to an external USB hard drive.
- Used Drive Image XML to backup a complete drive image of C: to an external USB hard drive.
Upgrading a Cheap PC to Microsoft Windows Vista
I've been running various beta and release candidate versions of Microsoft Windows Vista for since 2005. So, I thought upgrading my cheap home PC from Media Center Edition to Vista Ultimate Edition was going to be a footnote blog item. I was wrong.
So, I'm planning to blog about upgrading a cheap ($500 after rebates) eMachines T6420 desktop over the next week or two. I think some people might be surprised by some of the things I found. And, remember, I've been using Vista for 18 months or so on other PCs.
So, let's start with the system configuration for this T6420 desktop. It is pretty simple and unimpressive.
- AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (~2.2GHz)
- 1GB RAM
- 200GB C: drive
- 160BG D: drive (added after purchase)
- No graphics card. Uses shared video RAM
Deleting Microsoft OneCare Backup Files
I've been testing using Microsoft's OneCare to backup files to both DVD+RW and external USB hard drives. The optical disc backup works fine but is slow and requires disc changes for large drives.
The external hard drive method worked a bit better. But, I found myself wanting to start over and change the backup scheme. This turned out to be a problem because Microsoft OneCare creates some kind of specially protected file named DO_NOT_DELETE_mediaID in each of the subdirectories. This file cannot be deleted, renamed, or otherwise changed using what most of us would consider to be the usual methods of taking care of such a problem. A bit of searching around found a solution in the Microsoft OneCare web forum though.
The trick turned out to be a command line command that I had never heard of: cacls. This command can modify the Access Control List. It should be used like this to make the files under the Windows OneCare Backup directory eraseable.
cacls "G:\Windows OneCare Backup" /t /g administrators:F
Here are a couple of things you should note:
- G is the external drive letter. Change it to what your external drive is assigned to.
- There must be a space between /t and /g.
- Note that administrators is the group name, not administrator which is an account name
- The F after the colon indicates Full Control. It is not a drive designation