how installed vista

I have read the threads about drive letters, partitions, etc. I'll not complicate this by explaining all the things I tried before deciding to install Vista on a single clean drive. And that wasn't without complications either. The Vista CD (I downloaded and burned it) will not boot (by design I assume). So I did a minimal install of XP on the drive, then inserted the Vista DVD and installed it on the same drive. It put all my XP files in a folder called "windows.old". After I got Vista installed, I got the boot menu that gave me the option of booting the the old version (XP). That just locked up but I didn't really care since I didn't want XP in the first place. So I booted into Vista and deleted the "windows.old" folder. That wasn't easy because explorer kept trying to delete files that didn't exist and wanted to create new folders, etc. Strange behavior. However I finally got it done. Of course I still got the boot menu but I set the timeout on it to zero so it is effectively bypassed. Now I have "just Vista" on a single drive with no complications as a result of the procedure. The only complications I have now are "just Vista". :-) There oughta be an easier way and I imagine someone is about to tell me about it.
-- --- A dyslexic man walks into a bra ---

The DVD should have booted - it's designed that way and has booted for the last 3 or 4 releases for me.
To get rid of the boot menu you'll have to edit the boot.ini file (for early versions of the beta) on your hard drive. Here's a place to start: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/driver/tips/debug_vista.mspx
- John
"Menno Hershberger" wrote:

I have read the threads about drive letters, partitions, etc. I'll not complicate this by explaining all the things I tried before deciding to install Vista on a single clean drive. And that wasn't without complications either. The Vista CD (I downloaded and burned it) will not boot (by design I assume). So I did a minimal install of XP on the drive, then inserted the Vista DVD and installed it on the same drive. It put all my XP files in a folder called "windows.old". After I got Vista installed, I got the boot menu that gave me the option of booting the the old version (XP). That just locked up but I didn't really care since I didn't want XP in the first place. So I booted into Vista and deleted the "windows.old" folder. That wasn't easy because explorer kept trying to delete files that didn't exist and wanted to create new folders, etc. Strange behavior. However I finally got it done. Of course I still got the boot menu but I set the timeout on it to zero so it is effectively bypassed. Now I have "just Vista" on a single drive with no complications as a result of the procedure. The only complications I have now are "just Vista". :-) There oughta be an easier way and I imagine someone is about to tell me about it.
-- --- A dyslexic man walks into a bra ---

On Sun, 02 Jul 2006 09:30:23 -0700, Menno Hershberger wrote:

I have read the threads about drive letters, partitions, etc. I'll not complicate this by explaining all the things I tried before deciding to install Vista on a single clean drive. And that wasn't without complications either. The Vista CD (I downloaded and burned it) will not boot (by design I assume). So I did a minimal install of XP on the drive, then inserted the Vista DVD and installed it on the same drive. It put all my XP files in a folder called "windows.old". After I got Vista installed, I got the boot menu that gave me the option of booting the the old version (XP). That just locked up but I didn't really care since I didn't want XP in the first place. So I booted into Vista and deleted the "windows.old" folder. That wasn't easy because explorer kept trying to delete files that didn't exist and wanted to create new folders, etc. Strange behavior. However I finally got it done. Of course I still got the boot menu but I set the timeout on it to zero so it is effectively bypassed. Now I have "just Vista" on a single drive with no complications as a result of the procedure. The only complications I have now are "just Vista". :-) There oughta be an easier way and I imagine someone is about to tell me about it.

There is an easier way but the point is you figured it out yourself and got a working Vista install without destroying an existing, in use XP system.
Fantastic.
Now you have it running get a backup image off the drive with Acronis 9.0 and then play about with it, if you break it so what, re-install the image and you learnt something else.
8-)
Jonah