Vista Upgrade

[Bazz]

Just upgraded my Dell Inspiron from XP Pro to Vista Business (Free upgrade). No major problems and fairly quick process. There were a couple of snags however...

A word of warning to those of you contemplating upgrading, all my printer drivers were removed - no warning of this was given. Now I realise that printer drivers designed to work with XP are unlikely to work with Vista but had I appreciated this beforehand I may have spent some time checking I could get Vista compatible versions, before I started the upgrade process. I had about 20 drivers loaded for all sorts of printers at work.

The only other bitch I have (at present) is that despite the kind folks at Dell providing a Vista Preparation DVD the Synaptics Pointing Device now won't scroll or page back/forward and the h/w button to start the Dell MediaDirect prog no longer works. As both these are integral parts of the laptop I don't think Dell did a very good job with their preparation!

[mitchja]

I also received my HP express upgrade to Vista Home Premium last week for my lap-top and it was very straight forward indeed with no problems at all [y]

HP supply an HP upgrade DVD and the Vista DVD. You start using the HP upgrade DVD which starts a wizard which gives you the option to back everything up, it then upgrades your bios and then deletes the XP recovery partition on the HDD.

You then insert the Vista DVD and re-boot to install Vista. It does a full clean install and so starts a fresh (although after the installation, your old windows XP folder is re-named but is still there as are your old XP user folders and old XP program files folder).

The last stage is back to the HP DVD, where it installs all the drivers and HP software so you end up with exactly the same software you had when your purchased your original XP lap-top.

It took me a while to get Aero working, but once I'd run the Windows Experience Indexer it worked [y]

HP make the whole process very easy.

Regards

[Bazz]

Seems like HP did a better job than Dell with their Upgrade DVD James. I also had the option of a new clean install but opted for the upgrade.

[RichardMannion]

Bazz,

Intrigued that the pront drivers got removed, as the XP drivers will work fine. Most Xp drivers for devices will work fine for devices in PC's. Obviously for the new graphical elements (Aero) you will need to have WDDM capable drivers, but again if you use SP drivers (XDDM) you will get the display to work.

The drivers we tend to ship in the box, are to provide the basic functionality. To get the full functionality, you will need the full drivers from the hw vendor.

Thanks,
Richard

[mitchja]

IF Dell are anything like HP, they have put up all thier Vista drivers on their web site (which are the same ones that are on the HP DVD)

I'm having to use an XP driver for my HP printer at the moment, as HP still haven't released a Vista driver for the HP Colour LaserJet 3550N (although one is on it's way). Works OK though with the XP driver.

One thing this I have noticed (although it doesn't effect me) is that there are very few USB ADSL modem drivers for Vista (and many modem manufacturers are not planning on releasing any either) so many ISP's are recommending you switch to an ADSL router first (if you dont already have one) if you want to upgrade to Vista.

Regards

Bazz,

I'm having the same DELL experience. Printer won't work and, this morning my broadband connection played up. I called TeleWest (oops I mean Virgin Media) only to be told they do not yet support Vista!

Happy days.

John

[RichardMannion]

Gotta love the ISP's for blatant lies

They mean the poor quality 'modems' they supplied made by a certain large French government owned corporation aren't up to spec, and therefore fail? If you are using a Router, there is no reason at all why they shouldn't support Vista as at that stage it is purely TCP/IP. If you are using a USB modem, then that is a different story as James as pointed out, few have got their drivers sorted out. Not as if they didn't have plenty of time to get them done is it (seen as we took so long to release!).

Thanks,
Richard

[Bazz]

Two weeks ago I bought a Lexmark MFD the 9350 for home use, it shipped with XP drivers but not Vista, which I find amazing. I had to go to their website to download the Vista drivers.

John, I have had no problems with my Belkin wireless router / Talktalk broadband. (Due to the upgrade I mean )

I have the upgrade Vista but have after the initial BSOD with it, decided to wait to go from my very stable XP SP2 to vista. One reason aprt from the horrendous trouble I had trying to install last time, is that my scanner is not supported so will lost the use oif the scanner, or have to go out and spend more money on a replacement scanner.

[Bazz]

Richard, i have now downloaded the Vista Synaptics driver and the pad is now fully functional again. Still haven't been able to get the built in hardware button that is supposed to start the Dell MediaDirect program to function but the program itself runs okay. I am pursuing this with Dell support.

Alan, there is always potential for problems with peripherals whenever you upgrade software or your OS. We have a wide variety of kit and some of it will only work with Windows 98 as the manufacturers have not written drivers for anything after that - it is a real pain and very costly! So I now find myself running Win 98, Win 2K, Win XP Pro and now Vista - what a f*cking mess that is!

Bazz I now what you mean. i have been lucky up until now that under XP all my bits work with updated drivers, its just that Canon have not produced a driver for my ancient (well, three year old) scanner and don't seem to be doing so :-(

Next weeks "The gadget Show" Channel Five 19:15 Mondays, has John Bently installing Vista on his own computer, should be fun to see....