A Saturday Operating System Re-Install

[Jason Dunn]

<p>It's been a while since I've had to do this, but my installation of Windows Vista Ultimate on my media editing computer was acting so funky it was time for a wipe and re-install. I've been watching it go down hill for a few months now, mostly around codec problems (which is a rant for another day) and random application crashes. This morning was the last straw though: I kept getting DEP (Data Execution Protection) errors when using Sure Thing label-making software. Crash crash crash. I was somehow wishing that Windows Vista was different in this regard, but Windows is still Windows: shared DLLs, shared codecs, sloppy third party development, and a tendendency towards instability over time. I've found Vista to be better XP - most of my installs last a good year - but it's still a frustrating problem to have. <MORE /></p><p>I decided to roll back to a squeaky-clean image I had created last year using <a href="http://www.acronis.com" target="_blank">Acronis TrueImage</a>. The idea being that I have a version of Vista installed, activated, and with all the drivers I needed for the on-board hardware. I installed this clean version of VIsta (after dealing with TrueImage's tendency toward idiocy in dealing with USB-based keyboards), then I let Vista patch itself up to current status. When SP1 never appeared I did a manual download and install. That worked well, and the final update I did was an NVIDIA driver update. After the install of the video driver, I rebooted my system, only to be presented with an error messages generated by my monitor telling me that the system was displaying a monitor setting that the monitor couldn't match. I rebooted a few times by punching the reset button, then I booted into safe mode (which worked), but I was unable to set the system to a resolution that the the monitor would support. It's worth noting that this is a 24" Dell LCD monitor that runs at 1920 x 1200...so I can't imagine what resolution the video card was set at (2560 x 1600?). System restore? It seems I turned it off on the image I'd created with Acronis TrueImage.</p><p>My only real choice left was a re-install from scratch of Windows Vista. I pondered whether to go 64-bit or not, but in the end I decided that I wanted compatibility more than any of the rather nebulous benefits of going 64-bit (other than getting to use an extra 698 MB of RAM). The install has now finished, and the system is fully patched. What I haven't done, however, is to re-install all the drivers from Shuttle. After Vista installed, everything just worked: audio, networking, video, etc. In fact, looking at the Device Manager, there wasn't a single unrecognized device. That's quite impressive. So the question now is, do I stick with the WHQL-certified plain-jane drivers that come with Vista - which tend to be stable, but not optimized for speed - or do I seek out the proper drivers for my hardware? I updated the video driver of course, but I've left the sound, networking, and chipset drivers alone. Decisions, decisions. Opinions?</p><p>One thing worth noting: Vista absolutely <em>screams </em>when it's brand new!</p>

[ctmagnus]

<p>...Windows is still Windows: shared DLLs, shared codecs, sloppy third party development, and a tendendency towards instability over time.</p>

NAV 2009 is apparently going to be a single-file install in order to avoid this.

[jeffd]

Funny you should post this now, I just had to reinstall vista 64 on my game machine last night as well. It wasn't due to any OS issues, rather when I built my rig last year I was so rushed in putting it together I neglected many things that ultimatly led to bad airflow and overheat issues. So I tore it down and rebuilt it, but left an old HD out that I had put in for my XP/backup OS. The setup that I had ended up with after messing with all my operating systems had vista on the main drive in a small partition, with programs and games being installed on a 2nd partition of the main drive. Unless I used xp, the 2nd drive was rarly accessed, however the 2nd drive was the boot drive.

With that drive gone, I tried to no avail to get vista to install a new MBR on my main drive to boot vista. The GUI recovery interface wouldnt even see the vista installation on the drive! I used the command line program Bootrec.exe, and it sees the vista OS fine. However even thought it says it repairs the MBR, I couldnt envoke any of the other options (repairboot.. and the one that scans and adds OS entries to it), they kept saying element not found.

Because I went with the OS partition route, I didn't lose anything except a few of my games saved games, it was just abit of a pain in the ass though. I should probably be trashing vista for totaly screwing this up but meh... its a losing battle.

[The Yaz]

Since SP1, I'm more willing to use the default drivers. When I installed a viewsonic widescreen monitor on Vista before sp1 I had a similar "monitor resolution not supported". I went to viewsonic's site and uploaded the driver to take care of the issue, but it always seemed slow for a 2ms refresh.

After installing sp1, I noticed that everything seemed to work faster. I couldn't believe that the software was slowing down so much, but in reviewing the installed peripherals, I noticed that Windows had replaced the Viewsonic driver with "Generic Widescreen Video Device".

I would run it plain vanilla for a while. You can always tweak going forward if the system starts to hang on you.

Steve

[Stinger]

I had the same SP1 oddity as you. I recently installed a year old copy of Vista Home Premium on my machine and assumed that turning on auto-updates would mean that Vista would automatically patch itself to the latest Service Pack.

I was only when my machine crashed that I found out that SP1 wasn't installed. Vista recovered from the crash, told me that the crash was caused by "Windows, Publisher: Microsoft Corp" and then let me know that this issue that caused the crash can be fixed by installing SP1. That's useful information but why didn't Vista install SP1 already? The only reason that I can think of is that SP1 is such a huge download.

[jeffd]

when I reinstalled vista, SP1 would not show up in the auto update list. I had to download the stand alone installer.

[tuxplorer]

1. Monitor your event log once a day.
2. Use Windows SteadyState (Disk Protection) and ERUNT (Registry Protection) for a longer stabler Windows installation.

[jeffd]

just grabbed steady state.. will have to keep that one around. As for erunt, looks like a simple backup program. Isn't this no longer needed with vista? Anyways it dosn't look like it could prevent much of anything, it just backup and restores it.