Installing Vista

So, I was multitasking at work today, installing Windows Vista on my laptop, and doing some work on my desktop machine. I thought the upgrade process would be simple, but instead it was a huge headache. First, Windows Vista Installer analyzed my whole machine and told me I was good to go. Then, I start installing it and it goes “wait a sec, just joking — you gotta remove all this software first before you can install Vista.” So, I uninstall Nero, my anti-virus program and a DVD RAM drive thing that I’ve never used. Install, take 2.

The next part of the process is rather uneventful, but I have to say that the progress meters in the installer are terrible. First, they aren’t really tied to time or anything useful. It will hover at 2% for 30 minutes, then just up to 15% in about 3 seconds. Second, they have this little moving dot thing which is close to the most useless thing I’ve ever seen. After about two hours, my computer decides to reboot. When the boot menu comes up, it no longer says “Windows XP”, but now says “Windows Installer”… so, it’s all or nothing at this point.

It’s been about two hours at this point, and all I have to show for it is a trashed Windows XP partition, and a 640×480 Vista thing that shows the installer progress.. Another two hours pass, with most of that time spent hovering at 68%. Out of nowhere, a random reboot occurs yet again. At this point, I almost don’t care what happens with my laptop. If it wouldn’t have started after all this, I think I would have run down to the store and bought a mac laptop. I was almost sad when it fired up again and completed the last bit of the install in just under 30 minutes.

Total time for the “upgrade” was a little over four hours. Here’s the final stretch captured on video: