I’m just in the process of installing Windows Vista SP1. I had been using Vista SP1 before, but I had to install it as an upgrade after several other programs were already there and I feel it’s cleaner to start with a Vista SP1 installation medium from scratch.
Microsoft has finally fixed the KB929777 issue. Windows no longer shows a BSOD during boot if you have hardware that causes the storport.sys driver to be loaded on a 4GB+ RAM system. This was a real killer since I previously couldn’t get any further than the second stage of setup without physically removing half of my RAM.
1. Attempt
Installed fine, renamed my Windows XP partition from D: to H: by changing the drive letter in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices. I do it this way because Vista doesn’t allow me to change the drive letter of that partition otherwise.
After a reboot, I went to the Disk Management Console and tried to change the drive letters of the other partitions. Took quite long, so tried to do other stuff in the mean time, like giving my C: partition a name. That attempt hung the explorer window in which the rename was to take place. After 3 or 4 minutes with nothing happening, I pressed reset and started the installation from scratch.
2. Attempt
Did the same as in the 1. attempt, but with some more reboots. This time the drive letter changes completed quickly and I continued with installing the latest updates, activating my system and installing the newest Daemon Tools Pro Advanced which I also activated online.
At this point I made a backup (so I don’t plaster the activation server of Disc-Soft (Daemon Tools) and Microsoft (Vista) with activation requests). Then I downloaded the .NET Framework 3.5 installer from Microsoft. It downloaded 29 MB of stuff and then proclaimed “setup.exe has encountered an error and needs to close”. This installation is now “unpure” (it has seen an error message ;)), so I restored my backup.
3. Attempt
I tried to use the .NET Framework 3.5 installer from the VCSExpress directory of my Visual Studio 2008 Express DVD. I know from experience that the one in the VCExpress directory has the same bug, but the one in VCSExpress worked for me, so far.
After I copied the entire dotNetFramework onto my desktop, it proceeded to download components from Microsoft (shouldn’t do, they’re all there in the subdirectories). Then the usual “setup.exe has encountered an error and needs to close” message (behind the error message, the .NET Framework 3.5 proudly announces “.NET Framework 3.5 has been installed successfully”, which is untrue. Restoring my backup now…
4. Attempt
My server (Windows Server 2008) shut down one of the RAID drives after I had mounted the Visual Studio 2008 Express ISO. One explorer window stoically incremented its progress bar, the other did nothing and attempts to browse the server took way to long.
I finally pressed reset and restored my backup once more.
5. Attempt
I tried starting the .NET Framework 3.5 installer directly from the Visual Studio 2008 Express DVD (after making sure all drives were spinned up) with administrative rights.
Failed again. Two problem reports were generated. The first problem was that “.NET Framework 3.5 was installed successfully”. The second problem was that an installer named blabla-DEU.exe failed. I have an english Vista SP1 DVD but set my regional settings to german.
6. Attempt
Got it! After switching everything in the Regional Settings to English, the .NET Framework 3.5 installer worked flawlessly. Continued with installing 7-Zip, WinAmp, VLC, EAC and SciTE, then created another backup.
Continued with NAnt, NUnit, Visual C++ 2008 Express and the Windows SDK for Windows Server 2008 and .NET Framework 3.5. Then pulled another backup.
A new clean windows image in only 6 hours! I’m getting good at this! :-]
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