Customer Reviews

Microsoft Windows Vista Business UPGRADE [DVD] [OLD VERSION]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I've just finished upgrading to Vista Business using the Upgrade DVD. During the upgrade from Windows XP pro, the upgrade failed. Because of the timing of the upgrade process, I was left with a non working machine. Every attempt I made to fix the broken upgrade failed as well. As I saw it, the only way to fix this was to install an clean version of the OS to get back to my data. Unfortunately I was wrong (I'll get to that later.) During the clean install, when I entered my product key I was informed that the key was only for upgrades, not clean installs. But, at this point, what could I do, the upgrade failed and my machine was dead. There was an option to not enter the product key at this point, and re-enter it after the OS was running. SO... I continued with the install. After that the install went quite smooth, Vista is up and running on my machine right now as I right this warning message. It looks cool, there are a few issues such as my bluetooth wireless drivers aren't available yet, but I knew about that in advance when I ran the upgrade adviser. BUT now for the BIG issue. When I attempted to use my valid product key to activate Windows Vista, I was informed that my KEY wasn't valid because I did a clean install. After spending 2 hours arguing with MS tech support, they basically told me this... I had to do a clean install of XP and then attempt to do the UPGRADE again!!! WTF!!! They expect me to spend another 8 hours (after I've already spend 5 hours to this point) putting XP back on just to ATTEMPT the upgrade again (which might fail again!??!!?) OR my other option is to spend $299 for the Full install version to avoid the 8 hours of wasted time. This is complete bull! I've been working with MS products for a very long time and every "upgrade" product in the past allowed you to do a clean install if you provided a valid key of a previous product during the clean install process. This product isn't ready for you! Please save yourself time and energy fixing issues that MS should have had worked out. DO NOT buy the UPGRADE DVD, because you are risking $200 on a possible upgrade failure, then will have to spend a lot more time OR another $300 to get another product key.

It's late at night and this will be a quick review based on my experience with VISTA business. I've only used the product for a week.

First, i'm at experienced PC user and like to always keep up to date with the latest hardware. I was reluctant to upgrade to VISTA at first because it didn't support my online postage provider's software (so I thought) as well as a game I play (that's now supported, but wasn't at first).

The one big thing that held me back from the upgrade is that Microsoft sure loves to confuse the customer. Until I ran the Upgrade Advisor I had no clue that the Vista Home Premium Upgrade couldn't be used to upgrade XP Pro without a clean install. In the end I had to go with this version. I normally refuse to upgrade an OS without doing a clean install first. That's for a very good reason! One last thing I don't like about Vista is that you can't do a VISTA clean install with the upgrade without first installing XP. Why is this?

So, I opened the box and put the disc in after removing several programs from startup such as my anti-virus program. The upgrade went perfectly fine and I ran into no problems at all. I was never once asked for a driver disc. Really.

At first I was surprised at how much background hard drive activity there was at first even when the system was not doing anything. I fixed that by disabling some things in Vista that run in the background. That seemed to help and I don't experience this as much anymore. Overall, programs seem to run just as fast as they did in XP. Maybe a little slower, but I haven't noticed much at all.

All my old programs ran fine. My online postage software, Internet Security software and even my Video Capture program. So far I haven't found anything that hasn't run properly, but that'll probably change soon.

I did however have one graphical glitch. There was a weird halo effect around my mouse pointer. It seemed to clear up a little bit when I installed some new Nvidia Beta drivers for my 7800GT. It still occurs, but rarely.

I also had some problems with the Windows Switcher randomly going to non-3d mode. I didn't realize at first it will not work in 3d mode without the Aero theme enabled. I don't understand why this is.

To be truly honest, i'm generally not a fan of Microsoft products. I'll use them and that's about it. I really thought i'd hate Vista, but I actually like it.. a lot actually. Sorry to sound like a commercial, but I really enjoy using it. I really have no clue why it's so expensive though! The price is way too high. The basic edition is priced ok, but I don't get why the other versions cost so much more.

I'm sure i'll come up with some bad things to say eventually. A few things have been annoying, but I can fix them with a little work. I'm quite annoyed that at default you can't delete or save to the root directory of C: without special permission. No big deal.

The backup feature is nice. I currently have my entire drive backed up every morning at 8am through the Windows Task Scheduler. There was no "easy" way to do this. I had to do some checking online for the settings to add this to the task scheduler.

I also found it strange that the other got I received an error message saying I couldn't edit video from an external drive without copying it to my main drive first! Hopefully I can figure out why this occured. Something I can fix quickly I hope.

Overall, I like it a lot. I definitely wouldn't bother installing it on a computer that's over a year old though. I imagine it would be pretty slow.

4-302-2007 UPDATE:

I've had way too many problems with VISTA. I've wiped my drive and reinstalled XP. Several programs would not run at all or crash for no reason. Even with the latest versions. I also found that several of my old programs ran incredibly slow. I have a fairly high end PC too with 2gb of ram. I kept everything updated and was never able to fix all my graphical glitches in VISTA at all. At first some of the "annoyances" didn't bother me, but after weeks of using this version of Windows i've just gotten sick and tired of them. I felt like I had no control over my system at all. I also did not feel safe using Vista. There's always something going on and using up CPU power without it showing up in the task manager. I understand this is how VISTA works, but it's annoying and I never tried turning off these features.

Just a note that if you want to reinstall Windows XP you'll most likely need to wipe the hard drive. I tried four times and couldn't reinstall XP with Vista still on the drive. It was pretty much hell and I gave up and wiped the drive. Back to XP. I now feel terrible for giving this OS a 4/4. I'd now give it a 3/5.

Slow from power on pc to desktop and shutdown slower than XP as well. As other reviewer mentioned you cant use upgrade DVD to ever do a clean install if needed, in the past XP allowed that. The speed of the Vista once loaded feels the same to me as xp but it just seems like they could had trimmed some time off the boot up or shut down.

I installed this with no problem and absolutely love it. I enjoy the Vista interface and have found the navigation to be pretty user friendly.

Before anyone installs this, they have to do their homework. Microsoft offers a Vista Upgrade Advisor to let you know of potential problems with your current hardware and also software that you currently have installed on your system. If you decide to go maverick and install anyways then you get what you get...a mess.

I had a friend that didn't do his research and guess what. I got the call that Vista is crap. WRONG! He didn't do his homework. So I ended up helping him reinstall XP to factory and THEN installing Vista. He is rocking and rolling now.

So people, do your homework and here's some advice. Run the Vista Upgrade Advisor, look at the programs you all ready have installed and get in touch with the vendor to make sure their software plays nice with Vista. If it doesn't then look at incurring a fee to buy the version that does. If you look at everything in advance then there are no suprises; and yes, Norton Internet Security will have to be upgraded to the Vista capable version but I all ready knew that because I did my homework.

I'm going to make this as brief as possible. I don't like doing Microsoft Upgrades, as a rule, becaue they very seldom work well and there always seems to be a hidden problem that only surfaces after you think things are going well.

I've been a systems admin for thirteen years and over that time, I've learned a few things about Microsoft. First - I never apply the first version of any service pack. This lesson was learned the hard way back in the NT 4.0 days. Second - Always back up your computer before applying an upgrade (you'll be glad you did).

The only reason we decided to purchase the Vista upgrade was to determine if it was a viable approach to upgrading our desktops at my company. We were concerned about some of our legacy program's (anything that hasn't been updated in the last five years) compatibility with Vista and applied this upgrade to one workstation which is based on a standard company image. For the typical workstation, Vista appears to have all the necessary drivers and even our dual screen nVidia video cards work despite the warning that they might be incompatible (this is not old technology!).

So, after a very lengthy install process (you'd never know the days of installing Windows 95 on a 386 were history!!) the workstation upgrade was nominally successful. The ONLY advantage from our standpoint is that it's "prettier". You must get used to a completely different UI and figure out where Microsoft has decided a better place for something should be. NOTE TO MICROSOFT: Change for the sake of change doesn't automatically improve anything!

The caveat to this whole upgrade is that when I ran the upgrade on my personal workstation, it went well, judging by initial appearances. I disabled the security programs to eliminate the nagging "Are you sure you want to do this" nanny software, BUT, in the background there was always some vigorous hard drive activity. I disabled indexing and off-line caching and then discovered the real issue: Vista was resetting all my permissions on my hard drives and this, in turn, was causing a lot of my programs to fail due to "rights" issues.

Essentially Vista was sabotaging itself, by reducing me from an Administrator on my own machine to a restricted user. Did I bother to chase down the cause of this behavior and resolve it? For the remainder of that day I attempted to restore my ownership and authority, but Windows Vista had become a mad dog and my instinctive reaction, evetually, was to KILL IT! I formatted my drive with a sigh of resignation and relief and restored my XP Pro installation and have lived without Vista ever since.

Will I give Vista a second chance later on? Probably, but only because progress is irresistible and I will sooner or later HAVE to conform. Until that ominous day arrives, I will avoid the inevitable for as long as possible.

One thing seems to be sure: I have learned from some unfortunate dial-up users (get broadband, people!) that buying a brand new PC with Vista means you end up with a worthless mutant PC. The dial-up connection is too slow for Vista to do it's thing and you end up not being able to do anything until you get broadband or take your machine in to a place that has broadband to complete the personalization and registration processes.

So, if you HAVE to do Vista, do it from scratch and have a good internet connection. Good luck!!

After 3 days of trying I gave up and did a clean install.
That went well, but bringing over old files is still a pain. In older applications such as Lotus you will find help no longer works. Almost every program that ran well on XP has given me some sort of problem on Vista.My suggestion would be to not load any program not made by
Microsoft untill Vista runs flawlessly for a long time.
If I had it to do over I would wait a year or so before making the change.

GREAT PRODUCT. JUST ONE DOWNFALL. CHECK WHETHER YOUR PRINTER AND OTHER SOFTWARE/HARDWARE IS COMPATIBLE FIRST. I'VE HAD WINDOWS VISTA SINCE IT CAME OUT AND MY PRINTER DRIVER IS STILL NOT COMPATIBLE. WHICH MEANS I HAD TO PURCHASE ANOTHER PRINTER IN ORDER FOR IT TO WORK.

i really like my new windows vista upgrade.the graphics are stunning and it is extremely user friendly.infact, i liked vista business so much, i upgraded to the ultimate version.both versions are very easy to install;many people seem to be waiting for 'all the bugs to be worked out' but, honestly, the bugs aren't a problem.it is important to run the advisor about -is your system ready for vista before you install- to get rid of any conflicts your computer might have with vista;other than that everything else is a breeze. Use my system about 6 hours a day and am using a xps 700 dell computer go for it, you'll have lots of fun!

Since I knew upgrade from an existing operating system is always troublesome, I selected a clean Windows Vista install over Windows XP. Installation was smooth and did not cause any problem. All drivers were loaded automatically. Windows Vista even finds most recent drivers.
I liked Vista so far. User interface is awesome. Sidebar is cool. I liked the way Microsoft put security features into Vista. I heard some people complaining about it asking too many questions for approval. I think there is a trade-off. If you let everything go without your knowledge, then you are in trouble.
I highly recommend Vista compatibility test before installing. I also recommend a clean Vista installation instead of upgrade from XP (you may need to re-install all the applications in this case). My friend had problems when upgrading from XP and he says Vista installation safely returns back the original without any problem in case of any error.

We purchased a compaq laptop with Vista Home on it for a great price. I'm MCP and A+ certified, so I felt an upgrade to Vista Business would not be a problem. This software did exactly what it was supposed to do. However, if you decide to perform an upgrade, be aware that some of the drivers may not be included in the upgrade. I spent a couple of hours with Compaq chat technicians to help me locate the drivers for the wireless network card, and about 4 other items that did not function after the upgrade. I expected this to occur, but felt it was worth getting the functionality for our network from Vista Business rather than staying with Vista Home. I briefly considered XP Pro, but having had experience trying to get a new OS platformed laptop to 'go backwards' to an old OS, I decided that staying in the Vista family was preferable. Another consideration when moving to Vista (especially from XP or W2K) are printer drivers. We had a terrific, newer HP all-in-one (copier, printer,fax) which lost its photo software after we moved from W2K to Vista. The copier/printer/fax operations worked, but I had no photo processing software and HP said they were sorry, but had no plans to provide a Vista version.