[hairybusdriver]

For those of you'se that have had to do a clean install on with windows vista,or even upgrade, how was your experience with the installation stage. you know how long did it take you, didi it freeze at all, did you have to restart at any time or many times? just wondering because im currently installing vista on my computer and i want to know what how it usually goes, is it pain free, or frustrating. oh yeah and how long did it take you to install.

[DaveA]

I have seen upgrades take as much a 6 hours.
More different hardware and software the longer it is going to take.

If you are doing a Upgrade, disconnect ALL external devices, then when one gets Vista up and running add one at a time and make sure that it works. Then add another.

After doing this mostly during Beta, I will NOT upgrade any XP machine to Vista. I would keep it as is, then, when I am ready for a NEW machine, I get one with Vista.

[hairybusdriver]

Dang, 6 hours, thats not cool. Hopefully It wont take that long. Anyways, i didnt input the cd key during setup before i started installation, so when do i input the cd key.

[davehc]

The question can return many answers. Some of the time will depend on the speed and performance of your computer.
During the beta testing and with the retail, using a clean install, the average time has been around 45 minutes to the desktop. I install Vista for many others. Except for unexpected hardware, I would say 40 minutes to 1 hour is a good guess. I have never performed an upgrade.
After installation, when you choose to activate, you will need to put in the CD key.
One thing in the start of the installation,Right away you'll be asked for the license key and with the check box below it.
When "Auto activate" is checked, Windows Vista will only give you three days to activate; but if you uncheck this box, Vista said I had 30 days to use the system before activation is required.

[hairybusdriver]

ya know, Ive been installig vista since 12:07 today, and now its 5:30. its still on the expanding files step and hasnt moved since i last looked at it 10 minutes ago. this is my 3rd time restarting the install too. the PC specs are, a dual core intel processor 2.80 gigahertz, 2.50 gigs of RAM, Nvidia 8800 graphics card, and 228 gigs of HD space. It just dosent make sense that its taing this long. Im gonna wait til tonight before i go to bed to restart it if it hasn't already finished. any idea on what the problem would be. Oh yeah and its the second time im doing an clean install on this machine, and it didnt take this long before.

[davehc]

Your specs look great. Did you try it with a format from the DVD before starting?
Only offer I can make is a suspect HD or a suspect installation DVD.

[hairybusdriver]

Yeah I formatted before starting installation. I think i know what to do now though. On my other computer i have xp installed on it. I installed Vista over xp instead of formatting in advance. It worked just fine. so what ill try this time is to install xp on the formatted machine and than install vista as an upgrade. Hopefully it will work out. ill let ya know.

[DaveA]

I think the install is having issue with the graphics card, which is the biggest hurdle for a Vista install. If you do not have a very current card the install will try every driver it has until it will find one that may work.

[hairybusdriver]

I finally got it to work. I dont know what happen but I just tried the installation one more time and it just worked out of knowhere. after like 8 tries. the only thing i did differently was run chkdsk before installing. Even than windows didnt detect any problems. all well, we'll never know what the problem was but ad least the installation finally worked. thanks for the help guys.