Upgrading Windows XP with Vista RC 1
Notes on my experience upgrading a DELL Inspiron E1705 running Windows XP with Vista RC 1:
· Memory stick reader was reported as an unsupported device before the upgrade.
· Nero 6 had to be uninstalled before the upgrade.
· The upgrade took hours to complete. Many very long steps have no indication of how long they’ll take.
· Microsoft OneCare was incompatible. The Vista version is not yet available.
· X1 was initially incompatible. The latest free download version is compatible. The integrated desktop search lacks critical features like document pre-viewing alongside search results and search term highlighting within preview documents. Together these make it enormously less productive to find target documents.
· AIM and MSN Messenger lost some of their settings.
· Keyboard mapping of left control onto caps lock was lost. Remapkey.exe fails with a “Cannot open registry” error. Shift-right-click on remapkey.exe and select “Run as administrator” and it works.
· iTunes 6.0.5 doesn’t complain of having to use basic color scheme (6.0.2 does) but text updates in play list windows are buggy. Scrolling the window fixes the display.
· Canon i960 on a networked XP computer required a driver update. Downloaded v1.73e XP driver and installed it on the hosting machine. Had to fiddle with the printer on the Vista machine to get it working again.
· The screen goes dark as soon as hibernate is selected. The disk is still active for about 30 seconds while the image is written. Restore takes about 30 seconds as well.
· Can’t play a DVD with Windows Media Center because “…the video resolution may need to be lowered…” from the display resolution of 1920 x 1200?
· Windows Media Player 11 can’t play a movie DVD because “…there is a problem with digital copy protection between your DVD drive, decoder, and video card. Try installing an updated driver for you video card.” Worked fine under XP…