Problems with the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor

[TheKeyboardDemon]

I'm thinking of upgrading to Vista, not sure if my machine can handle it though. I downloaded the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor from the MS website, however this keeps telling my that either the MS servers are too busy, I have lost my net connection or may need to uninstall and resinstall the program. Has anyone else managed to get a successful response from running this programe

[bobthemonkey]

its probably just sheer volume. wait a couple of days and try again.

[momentofmadness]

I quick peek at the Vista specs on the Microsoft website should tell you all you need

Minimum for Vista Home Basic, is 512MB RAM and a processor over 800Mhz - oh and you need 15GB space for the install

[TheKeyboardDemon]

momentofmadness said:

I quick peek at the Vista specs on the Microsoft website should tell you all you need

Minimum for Vista Home Basic, is 512MB RAM and a processor over 800Mhz - oh and you need 15GB space for the install

Never go by minimum or recommended specs, that's usually just wishful thinking from my experience.

[momentofmadness]

TheKeyboardDemon said:

momentofmadness said:

I quick peek at the Vista specs on the Microsoft website should tell you all you need

Minimum for Vista Home Basic, is 512MB RAM and a processor over 800Mhz - oh and you need 15GB space for the install

Never go by minimum or recommended specs, that's usually just wishful thinking from my experience.

So what do you think the Vista upgrade advisor from the Microsoft website will tell you?

I agree minimum spec is usually set far too low...

[jagdpanther]

momentofmadness said:

TheKeyboardDemon said:

momentofmadness said:

I quick peek at the Vista specs on the Microsoft website should tell you all you need

Minimum for Vista Home Basic, is 512MB RAM and a processor over 800Mhz - oh and you need 15GB space for the install

Never go by minimum or recommended specs, that's usually just wishful thinking from my experience.

So what do you think the Vista upgrade advisor from the Microsoft website will tell you?

I agree minimum spec is usually set far too low...

Ive heard from a lot of people that it takes gargantuan amounts of resources to run vista let alone anything else running on vista

I'll stick with XP

[ThePassenger]

TheKeyboardDemon said:

momentofmadness said:

I quick peek at the Vista specs on the Microsoft website should tell you all you need

Minimum for Vista Home Basic, is 512MB RAM and a processor over 800Mhz - oh and you need 15GB space for the install

Never go by minimum or recommended specs, that's usually just wishful thinking from my experience.

Windows NT 4 Server, supporting 20 users, 24MB RAM. According to the old docs I've got floating around. I'd suggest the minimum specs for reasonable performance are 1Gb RAM, 1.5Ghz processor (or the equivalent speed grunt), GeForce 4 (not MX0 era video card.

[jamieboy]

jagdpanther said:

Ive heard from a lot of people that it takes gargantuan amounts of resources to run vista let alone anything else running on vista

It certainly uses all the resources it can get, but it actually runs OK on my 3-year-old vaio with 512MB. No aero interface because the graphics card is relatively feeble by today's standards, but it's honestly perfectly usable for email and browsing and Office 2007.

[dern]

I installed it yesterday on my dell inspiron 6000 which is a 1.8GHz (I think) with 1Gb of memory. It was the easiest windows install yet and it installed the aero stuff. Office 2007 looks really nice too. Yet to use it in anger so will reserve any recommendation I may make but I like it so far.

The main disappointment is that because I got the business edition I didn't get the chess program

[TheKeyboardDemon]

I fixed the problem (actually my brother told me how to fix it). The problem was I didn't have .net installed, now that I have it the program works fine and I can upgrade to Vista Home Premium edition, but not Ultimate.

[SneakyNeil]

Thing is, if you can't run Aero then you're basically going to have XP with a fancy theme, but with loads of buttons in different places, slower, more expensive, and possibly with some driver issues. Doesn't seem like that great a deal to me... By all means go ahead if its just for tinkering & curiosity though.

[jamieboy]

SneakyNeil said:

Thing is, if you can't run Aero then you're basically going to have XP with a fancy theme

Sorry, but that's simply untrue.

[jamesuk28]

Well i got the home premuim edition upgrade. Upgraded from xp to vista but the upgarde failed. Went for a clean install instead as this was an option given. However when I tried to activate the product it said my key was only for an upgrade not a install.

So had to upgrade my new vista home prem to vista home prem,(sounds mad I know) this was suggested on one of the microsoft forums and it worked.

One thing i am not happy about is it can only be used on 1 computer. A lot of people have a desktop and laptop. So you should be able to upgrade all your machines IMHO. Microsoft do offer a discount of 60% for another key.

[TheKeyboardDemon]

SneakyNeil said:

Thing is, if you can't run Aero then you're basically going to have XP with a fancy theme, but with loads of buttons in different places, slower, more expensive, and possibly with some driver issues. Doesn't seem like that great a deal to me... By all means go ahead if its just for tinkering & curiosity though.

As I understand it, Vista should give greater driver support straight out the box, and as I have been suffering from some Video driver issues I thought I would plug in a second drive and give Vista a go to see how well it handles this. I think the driver issues may be down to a component level conflict, which occasionally leads to blue screen errors when I'm using DirectX intensive applications (playing games!!) but I don't do this too often. As for expense, my brother pays £2000 a year for his MSDN subscription, as a result I get to play with any software in the MS range, as he can use this software for work.

[agent006]

jamieboy said:

Sorry, but that's simply untrue.

Why?

[jamieboy]

agent006 said:

jamieboy said:

Sorry, but that's simply untrue.

Why?

Because most of the changes from XP to Vista are under the skin.

[TheKeyboardDemon]

jamieboy said:

Because most of the changes from XP to Vista are under the skin.

As is always the case when a new rollout of windows is released, for pure cosmetic additions to Windows there have various add on packs that Microsoft have sold seperately to create that graphic effect, other icon packs have been available to download via various forums and user groups.

When I got my first BMW I got a BMW pointer that would spin like a coin instead of the usual hour glass icon when the PC was busy, and instead of getting my usual windows tune playing at start up I had the sound of an M3 being revved hard.

[agent006]

jamieboy said:

Because most of the changes from XP to Vista are under the skin.

Obviously, but what are they?

[voyds9]

Got to laugh
Just run advisor and told Home Basic was the best choice.

Amd X2 4400+
3Gig Ram
Nvidia 7950X2 Video card
2x250Gb Smasung hard drive

3dMark2006 at about 11500

What do you need to run Home Premium

However on the Mesh site they are selling computers with a lesser spec with Vista.

[jamieboy]

agent006 said:

jamieboy said:

Because most of the changes from XP to Vista are under the skin.

Obviously, but what are they?

Day-to-day it looks like the driver model and the network stack are the most obvious ones. The SMB changes sound interesting, but I've got no idea what practical difference, if any, they'll make.

If you're interested in it, there are many resources on the web that can explain the differences better than I can.