My Vista saga, part 2
At the end of part 1, I was resigned to go back to XP. It hurt. My machine was working faster, and well, I wanted to be running Vista!
So I boot from my HP-supplied XP install CD. I do a clean install and a format. I wanted to make sure that old Vista stuff didn’t muck anything up with XP. Of course this takes a while too. XP installs, then I have to run the HP driver CD to get all the other stuff running up to snuff (video, 64 bit patches, etc).
So I’m back up with XP. But it still bothered me that I didn’t get Vista running. What kind of geek am I if I can’t get the work arounds and tricks to work so I can have sound?
So before I started putting files back, I decided to give Vista one more go. It was a personal challenge now.
This install of Vista when faster than the first one. I took the format option so again the drive would be nice and clean.
Vista comes up. Same thing, no sound. This time I did a lot more reading and had more tricks up my sleeve. After about 30 mins of fuzting around I had sound! One problem, no microphone. Okay Skype calls would be a problem. Okay I can use the other machine while I wait for real drivers. Oh and to get sound to work, I have to boot pressing F8 so I can tell Vista to ignore the unsigned driver for the sound card. Yes, I found the work around and administrative tweak to that is supposed to eliminate the need for this, but it wasn’t working.
I decided the eye candy and speed were going to be worth it though, so I soldiered on. I started bringing files over. Then I hit a major snag. I couldn’t figure out where the heck I could put my Outlook PST file that I had backed up. Every time I tried to get into those folders, I got a not permitted error. Not permitted! I’m runing as the adminstrator! I should be able to get to everthing!
This is when I really started to lose patience. Maybe I should have stuck it out. But it just seemed like I was going to be fighting with getting files back in order. Hitting F8 every time I boot and want sound. Having to switch computers for Skype calls. Yeah this wasn’t looking good.
With an even heavier sigh than before, I decided that this machine was only destined to run XP.
Again, with the booting from CD, drive formatting, driver installing, updating, blah, blah, blah.
Of course now, I had a pretty lean machine. Nothing extra. No legacy files. Maybe this is a good thing.
In part 3 I’ll tell you how I got back up and running again and my lessons learned.
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