I’ve been trying to install Windows Vista since RC1. I have burned 4 coaster DVD’s that would get some percent of the way through the install and then fail with corrupt file errors. I don’t really need Vista, but I wanted to play with it nevertheless. I also picked up an ATI HDTV Wonder PCI with some Christmas money, and without Windows XP Media Center Edition, I’m stuck using ATI’s crummy media center software for watching and recording TV. It doesn’t even have a decent built in program guide.

So, I spent some of Friday night and Saturday giving Vista one more try at installing. I have 3 hard drives in my PC, so i cleared one of the partitions and went to work. I burned a DVD and tried to install from within Windows XP, which is entirely possible. However, I got the dreaded “corrupt file” error twice in a row. After consulting Google, I found out that mounting the Vista ISO using a virtual drive tool like Daemon tools will work for the install, since apparently the Vista installer copies all the relevant data to the hard drive, modifies the boot sector to boot, then does all the nitty gritty install stuff, but at that point you don’t need the install disc anymore.

After updating my Motherboard’s bios and giving Vista its time to install, I had a new machine up and going. Everything on the Microsoft site claims the HDTV Wonder is compatible with Vista, but the first message I got about hardware was that it wasn’t. Later I found out that Vista had installed the drivers for the Digital side of the tuner but not the analog side. I installed the Krams Driver and followed the instructions, but Media Center still refused to cooperate. Browsing the Vista Device Manager, I saw that there was a hardware component that hadn’t installed correctly. I clicked on it and did an auto update of the driver, and viola, the Analog and Digital components of the HTDV Wonder installed. Rebooting and running Media Center one more time gave me live TV, but with much studdering and skipping.

Eventually I found out that when I updated the Bios, I hadn’t reset my CPU clock, so my processor was running at about half horsepower. Fixing this made most of the studdering go away, but not all. It seems that my Athlon XP 3000+ at 2GHz just isn’t enough for Vista and Media Center, even with nothing else running. The same setup nets about 35% CPU usage on XP using the ATI media center. Arrrrg.

So, at least until I get a chance to upgrade my hardware, I’m going to have to stick with XP. My general impression of Vista is that it doesn’t have enough new stuff to warrant a change just for the heck of it, but it is fun to play with and pretty to look at. I’ve had some further problems with the ATI Catalyst Control Center not allowing me to change to the right screen resolutions, but other than that most things have been smooth.

One point to make, but that most who read this far will already know: Vista doesn’t have any major advantages over XP that I’ve found yet. If your computer is working for you fine as it is, you probably don’t have any real reason to upgrade. But, you probably didn’t have to read all of my rambling to figure that one out.