I decided to be a good little consumer and spontaneously bought Windows Vista Home Premium and… wait for it… Halo 2! Yup, I needed to get a n new OS to play part 2 of one of the best FPS games ever – and so I did. Let me tell you, what a great decision that has turned out to be.
Third time’s the charm
I am on my third install of Vista, in just 6 short hours. I am really seeing why Lenovo is offering downgrades to folks who purchased Vista based machines from them. It’s crazy. I ran the upgrade advisor, and according to Microsoft the only thing that desperately needed attention was the RealTek audio driver. The thing is, if I let Vista do the updates, it installs some other driver (which I have yet to identify the driver or hardware) which causes the machine to send me into GP blue screen hell. The only way I have found to get around the BSOD, is to reinstall from scratch.
Finally I selected the no upgrade option for the initial install, and told it not update my machine at all. So far, so good. I updated the audio drivers, and added the drivers for my G15 Gaming Keyboard – both of which are still working great. I have yet to get Halo on the machine.
My favorite part is the boot loader, and how it gives two options:
- Windows Vista
- Earlier Version of Windows
Very nice, diplomatic and helpful. Like it couldn’t figure out that I had Vista – like it thought I was running Windows for Workgroups and suddenly decided to leap out of the 80’s to run Vista. That’s just lazy guys – come on! Any way, you can change the text here if you really want – I don’t care, but check this out here. You can use the built-in (BCDEDIT) editor and do it all Linux/Command lines style, or download EasyBCD to run a little GUI app to help you down the path.
All I have to say is thank the dear Lord I didn’t decide to just wing it and replace XP altogether with Vista – what a freakin’ mistake that would have been.
Woo Hoo!! As soon as I get my pc working correctly, I think I will venture off into this new land! This seems like a great idea! 🙂
I don’t about the whole great idea, but I would recommend running the upgrade advisor, and doing some searches for your mobo and see if there are any issues with Vista. Yours in newer than mine, but who knows….
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/buyorupgrade/upgradeadvisor.mspx