Entries Tagged 'Installation' ↓

I almost forgot to talk about the Add/Remove Features dialogue that I came across when looking for my Solitaire and Freecell.

Inexplicably, as you can see, Vista seems to think that I have a tablet PC. While my wife does (and loves it), I don't think it's that smart to know that small detail. I on the other hand, do not. Why they decided to put this in by default, or why it thought that I actually had one is beyond me. Personally I think it points to the overall poor quality of the release.

Tablet PC features do nothing but take up space on my system so while I was turning on Solitaire, I thought I might get rid of the unnecessary Tablet PC stuff.

However, one of the first tools that I found when I started up Vista was the Snipping Tool. Ah, now they've got it right, they included a nice, small window/screen capture utility. As a guy who takes a lot of screenshots (for things like this) I thought it was great. No more SnagIt for me.

Unfortunately, as you can see above, it's a package deal. You get all the Tablet PC features or you get none of them. Why you can't pick and choose individual pieces like the Games section above is painful. I just want the Snipping Tool.

(Who named that? It sounds like something a Vet uses.)

And as it's named "Tablet PC Optional Components", what other Tablet PC specific features are lurking underneath the surface taking up unnecessary space? Is this why Vista is taking up nearly 8gb of my 100gb drive?

But in the end of the day it didn't really matter. The Snipping Tool has two major failings: it puts a bright red border around every screen or window capture saving it in the resulting file, and it doesn't scroll windows.

SnagIt wins and I'm not even sure it knew it was in a fight. I sure didn't until it was all over and I just unchecked the box to remove it all.

It's like pulling away from a Fiat Panda at a light. You may have been in a race, but you didn't need to know that detail against something that takes 20 seconds to hit 60mph. There's no glory in that win.

As far as not removing individual features goes, perhaps Microsoft knew the Snipping Tool was a sad utility and planned ahead for someone wanting to get rid of it all together.

One of my favorite things are conflicting juxtaposed messages - it really just shows poor attention to detail and almost invariably design by committee.  I loathe design by committee.  Sure these is the added value of everyone's opinion, but when you try to include all those opinions?  Mud.  I'm still looking for a good example of a product that was designed by committee.

An example of this are the "give you something to read while you wait" messages that appear during the Vista installation process.  If you read my previous articles you'll know I had plenty of time to look at them.

It's apparent that Microsoft's marketing team was in on the design by committee meetings because as I'm installing their product they're still trying to sell me on it.  OK, I bought it.  I own it.  I'm installing it.  I'm using it.  Why are you trying to sell me on it?  Have you that little faith in your own product?  Why do you need to tell me that it looks great, that it will increase productivity, that the games are really fun… 

If these were up for a shorter period of time it could be considered subliminal advertising.  You will think it looks good.  You will think it increases your productivity.  You will like the games.

Imagine if after you've bought the car the salesman rode with you all the way home telling you how great the car is, how much you're going to enjoy it, how much your neighbors will envy it, and how good it looks.  Would you start to second guess your decision?  Probably.

Marketing should stop once you're using the product.  I'm sold.  I got it.  Leave me alone.

(OK, technically you don't own your copy of Windows.  The block of legaleze that I had to agree to before installing it states that I'm really just allowed to use it and Microsoft can make it all go away whenever they want to.)

This is one of my favorite messages that appear during the install process and it's the reason that Marketing should get out once they've sold the product.

Time is precious…  Please wait.

That's superb.

Not only that, while I'm installing their latest and greatest Microsoft is telling me that I need a system that is simple, easy, natural and enjoyable.  Isn't that what I'm doing?  Or should I go back to XP? Should I get a Mac?

Why are you still trying to sell me on it?  Perhaps it's because they know they'll need to. 

So close, but no cigar yet. After four re-installs I was confident that everything was going to go well. Office 2003 installed properly, as did a number of my other applications. All the updates for my Thinkpad went smoothly, the updates that Windows Update found installed fine. It was looking quite good at this point.

Then I tried installing the updates for Office, specifically Office SP1 and the junk email filter updates for Outlook.

Feel like I’m setting you up for something again?

Wonderful. But it appears that Microsoft has finally started including links next to their error messages so you can figure out what Error Code 779 is. Very nice.

Very nice, but not helpful at all - not one of these links has anything to do with Error 779. Error 779 isn’t even mentioned in a single one of these documents. Why did any of these come up in a search for Error 779? This does not give much confidence in the much hyped new search feature.

Of course, the recommended troubleshooter doesn’t help. That hasn’t helped since Windows 95. So off to Google I go to see what I can find. This one was tough, it actually took me a while to find something useful, and again, just one person seemed to have this issue.U

Unfortunately, his solution of just copying the file from the Program Files/Office folder didn’t work, because I didn’t seem to have this file in there. I had to dig out my Office 2003 install CD to find it – hidden inside of a compressed file.

I then tried to copy it to the system32 folder – no dice, the flurry of incessant Windows Protection prompts prevented me from copying that file in. As the key part of his solution was getting content into that file, I copied from the one and tried to paste in the other. Nice dice – it wouldn’t let me save. Then I checked the permissions on that file, they were buggered again – no one single account could write to it (though this time I did have a Trusted Installer listed where I did not before).

But I did crack this nut. This time, I could change ownership of the file. Braving the flurry of Windows Protection prompts (did you mean to click the mouse that time?) again, I claimed the file for my own user account. Then I went back into permissions and game myself Full Modification privileges, then hid while Windows yelled at me that it was a dumb thing to do as it may compromise my system security. Yes, there are some that would claim installing Office itself is a security risk and apparently the charge is led by Microsoft.

I opened the file I grabbed off the CD again, copied the contents, opened the file in /system32, pasted, saved, and it let me! Sweet, merciful, the system let me fix something, banana nut bread cakes.

I ran Windows Update one more time – and it installed. I was finally running Office 2003 SP1. Running Windows Update one more time found 10 more updates that had apparently come in the meantime, that or because SP1 wouldn’t install it had gummed up the works. This time, only 3 of the 10 updates failed claiming the Windows Firewall wasn’t letting them through and I had to add a bunch of servers to the exception file.

You’ve got to be kidding me.

How many average users are going to jump through these hoops?

The third reinstall of Vista went smoothly (I'm quite good at breezing through it now) - the one necessary to get rid of the little issue where Office would not install.

During this reinstall, I imagined a Microsoft developer and the project manager responsible for bug prioritization discussing the severity rating of this particular issue:

Developer: "You know, we really should increase the severity on Bug 423429 to high. That is going to be a major issue when the OS will not configure the permissions on a freshly installed system correctly so programs such as Office will not install"

Project Manager: "No, I think it's fine where it is. It's rare, and we really have to get the sidebar working correctly."

Developer: "But this is a bug affecting the performance of our two bread-and-butter products - the flagship Vista and Office! You want to let this one go because the hands on the clock in the sidebar don't spin smoothly when it first loads up?"

You can imagine where it goes from there. The PM rails back into the developer, the developer raises his voice, the PM threatens to escalate to his boss (the boorish guy who throws his weight around, probably), and then the developer realizes he's sick of working on the OS after four years anyway and just wants it to end, so they all go get coffee and bug #423429 sits on the bottom of the list.

One year later, I get hit by bug #423429, write about it on the internet just before my PC almost winds up on the bottom floor of my apartment building.

This time, after I was looking at the brand new Vista desktop (again), I tried installing Office 2003 first. It worked. I guess third time really is the charm.

You most likely recall that I was configuring my system to dual boot both Windows Vista and XP, so that in the event of something going wrong (which it did, twice) I would still have a functional system. The grand plan, which I have done many times before with other versions of Windows and other operating systems entirely, was them to eliminate the undesired OS from my system once it was no longer necessary.

Unfortunately, if I eliminated Vista I would not have the pleasure of writing up these articles for you. So XP was the one to go, and it was really a disk space issue. Vista, when installed, takes up nearly 7gb on my system. Yes, that's right, 7gb. Almost unbelievable.

Loading up my copy of Acronis Disk Manager, I set about eliminating the XP partition and reincorporating the space into the Vista partition so that I would have room to run it (I had just about 1gb free at this point). The system rebooted and I received yet one more bombshell. Vista could not find the little program responsible for loading itself. What? I didn't touch that. No other OS I've ever installed has had this issue - I've resized and merged partitions with impunity - they all found their boot loaders. In goes the Vista install CD for a repair session.

I will say, the engineers who worked on the Repair portion for Vista really had their act together - perhaps because they knew they needed to. The system said that it fixed itself, again, and rebooted.

This time the Vista login screen appeared, I entered my password, and then… nothing. Just a blue screen (a different blue, mind you), and a mouse pointer in the middle of it. I could load up the task manager, and that was about it. I'd seen this before - Windows could not find my user profile. And it told me as much, informing me that it was using a temporary one because it didn't know what to do.

After some fiddling about I managed to get Windows Explorer to display my drives and saw the issue immediately. When it was working properly, Vista assigned its own partition as the C: drive and then assigned the rest according to the laws of device assignment - or at least that what I figured it was doing. Even though Vista was technically on the third drive partition (XP on the first, my data on the second, and Vista last) it was called C:. OK, that's fine, it just had the effect of assigning different drive names when I loaded XP.

This time however, my data drive was C: and Vista was D:. I tried imaging the drive from one I took prior to moving the partitions, and I got a blank black screen as it choked finding the bootloader.

I'm sure someone has the answer on how to fix this, but as my only machine was effectively dead at this point without loading my backup, I resorted to the one fix that seemed to fix more things each time I tried it.

A reinstall.

In our last episode we got our first impression of Vista's new interface . As I was waiting for it to install a second time I had time to think about three things:

1. Do I really need a fast processor, lots of memory, a large hard drive and a good 3D graphics card to support white text on a blue screen that doesn't even have word wrap?
2. I guess I can understand why I would suffer a terminal system error on a brand new, freshly formatted, cleanly installed, just released copy of Vista Business. Sure. I'll just have to get back to you on this one when I understand it.
3. I realize this install is quicker than it was before, but couldn't they include a copy of Solitaire to play around with while I wait? Sure the snazzy 3D subsystem and all that isn't installed yet, just drop in the copy from Windows 3.1 and we'll all be happy. That book I could be reading is all the way across the room.

The second installation went smoothly and, before I resigned myself to reading while I waited, the goldfish I chose for my user icon was looking at me.

There are two reasons I chose that as my icon. The first is it reminds me of Pixel, my goldfish currently in the keep of my parents who lives in an aquarium I built out of a Mac Classic. Pixel didn’t want to fly to Cairo. The other reason is that the pickings are kind of slim – they look like they were lifted untouched from XP.

I don’t remember half of these being choices during the install process. Regardless, some of my options are what I believe is a bass clef, either a leaf or lizard skin, a cool robot, mold, a fuzzy kitty, a happy puppy, or balls – which I suppose are necessary to install this operating system.

I do have to admit that it is a pretty cool feature to allow someone to choose their own picture for their icon, as I have done above by forever immortalizing my first BSOD. This is like taping the first dollar you earned to the wall, just not as rewarding.

After logging in I had my first look, again, at the Vista desktop. It certainly is a looker.

The new interface is called “Aero, an acronym for ‘authentic, energetic, reflective and open’” according to Microsoft. I can verify that it feels energetic, looks shiny and reflective, and does feel open with the “glass” borders. I have no comment on “authentic”.

Jenny Lam, the “experience” designer for Vista, did a spectacular job making this OS look nice. The individual responsible for XP allegedly departed for Fisher Price after the work was done. Real photographic talent was also utilized to acquire impressive background images. At the moment I happen to be using one by Hamad Darwish as my desktop. Nice looking stuff.

I was also impressed by how much of my hardware was detected and working properly right from the beginning. My display, which runs natively at an insane 1600×1200 resolution, was already set properly with no adjustments necessary. I did have to download some drivers specifically for the security chip and the fingerprint reader that came in my Thinkpad. No problems there.

Microsoft Office 2003 was next on the to-install list. In went the CD…

(feel like I’m setting you up for something here?)

The install began…

Notice the yet one more progress bar type.

And the flashbacks began…

Yes, the file exists and I’m the administrator. If I don’t have permission, who does? Do I have to get someone from Microsoft to log in for me? While checking to see if the file existed I noticed that the permissions on the file were really strange. No one had permission to modify the file, and even as administrator I did not have permissions to give anyone permission to modify the file. Is this for real?

Why am I even checking to see if system files that were installed with Vista are set properly just after I finished installing it? Some internet sleuthing ensued and resulted in finding precisely one other person who had this same problem. They fixed it with, drumroll please, a reinstall.

I’m not kidding you.

At this point I was ready to see if Vista would utilize the accelerometer built into my Thinkpad to determine what floor it had just passed on it’s way to the ground below.

There are three ways to move from Windows XP to Windows Vista: buy a computer with it already installed, upgrade the existing Windows XP installation on your current computer, or do a clean install of Windows Vista on your computer. I was essentially forced into the third option as I was not in the market for a new computer, and I read the documention from my manufacturer regarding upgrading to Vista.

According to this documentation, a significant portion of the preparation was to uninstall every piece of IBM and Lenovo Thinkpad specific piece of software. I pretty much stopped reading there as that sort of defeats the point of upgrading my existing installation.

Being the paraniod guy that I am, I did a full system backup to my external drive and then unplugged it. Using a disk partitioning utility, a new 10gb partition just for Vista was created figuring that should be plenty for it. The Vista install disc is only 2.5gb (in comparison, Windows XP just fit on a 680mb CD, and my venerable copy of Windows 2000 is less than 400mb). I wanted to keep my working copy of Windows XP on my system just in case things went wrong - I would still be able to boot into something to keep working while the kinks were figured out.

Did I mention this install is on my one and only machine? A laptop no less. Specifically, an IBM T60p notebook with a CoreDuo 2ghz processor, 1gb of memory, fast 7200rpm 100gb drive, and most importantly for that expected Vista experience a high quality FireGL 5200 256mb video card. The Vista Upgrade Advisor told me I was good to go.

The system was powered down, the Vista install disc inserted into the drive, the power button timidly pressed (I admit that I was nervous installing an operating system for the first time in over 15 years) and any key was pressed to boot from the CD just like the prompt told me to. A few moments later I was looking at the Vista installer.

First impression? Not bad looking for an installer. Clicking on the [Next] button we're introduced to our first random change in how to progress between screens.

There is no Next button, you just click on the only option you have. I couldn't do an upgrade, but it still felt it necessary to let me choose. And then we come to the "Where do you want to install Windows?" screen.

This should always make you pause and ensure you make the right decision. Unfortunately the helpful labels on the different drives are my labels. I've done this too often to bother with cute drive names. And one word of caution - that Format action doesn't give you much warning. Just a notice that all your data will disappear and then it's gone. Caution. I will say however that the format was nearly instant - no more getting two cups of coffee while waiting for your several gigabyte drive to format. Also notice that we're back to making a selection and clicking Next.

We finally come to the money screen, and our third way to progress through a single process. What was a standard square button on the previous screen in the bottom right, or a "button" in the middle of the screen, is now something complete different. How many people worked on the design of this process? Did they talk to each other?

I do have to admit the "Repair your computer" item was a bit concerning, like it was just waiting there knowing it will be used.

Smooth sailing from this point on, click the button and go get something to eat. I'm glad I brought my food back with me as the install was well on it's way by this point. It's much quicker now, Microsoft definitely put a lot of time and thought into making this part significantly faster. I remember two hour long installs for Windows 2000 as it tried to figure out what was going on (though I do have to say that Win2K is my favorite version of Windows yet).

Things are going well, and it looks like it found and recognized my copy of XP - lovingly calling it an "Earlier Version". I get to my nice new desktop and inside of the first 30 seconds I see a notice pop up in the corner of my screen - "File system is corrupted or damaged. Please run chkdsk." or something similar to that. I schedule a disk check for the next boot and soon screen after screen of files are scrolling past as it attempts to fix one after another. After more time that it took to install Vista the system reboots, and then the nearly unimaginable happens.

I haven't seen a blue screen on my XP installation in the eight months I've had my Thinkpad, and I can count on one hand the amount of times that my home built systems blue screened on me since I started running Windows 2000 and XP. Incidentally, I don't know why people say Windows isn't stable. That problem went away as soon as I stopped using Windows 98SE.

This error was fatal. No amount of rebooting would get past this point. Remembering the "Repair your computer" option I put the install disc back in the system and rebooted. I patiently waited for news from the doctor, but the prognosis was not good.

I rebooted into XP to get some work done.