miscellaneous, etc.

Ed gave be a Vista Beta 2 DVD yesterday, the packaging is pretty nice. The install process is a bit lengthy, but not particularly arduous. The only tricky bit was removing the EFI partition, for some reason the Vista bootloader has a real problem with this extra partition. When the Vista installer prompts you to choose a partition, click on the EFI partition (it’s usually 199MB or 200MB in size) and then delete it.

After the installation process completes, the computer will reboot and startup from the new Vista volume. On my machines, there was an immediate error:

File: Windowssystem32winload.exe

Status: 0xc0000225

Info: The selected entry could be be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt.

This information is documented elsewhere on the internet, but the solution is simple: reboot from the Vista Beta 2 installation DVD and repair the volume. From the Vista “Install Now” screen, click the link towards the bottom that reads “System Restore Options”. The System Restore application will startup, ask you for your preferred language, then scan all of your volumes. In my case, it found my Vista volume and asked if I wanted to repair it and that took care of it.

Everything seems to be working, I have an Intel Core Duo Mac Mini and not all of my hardware is recognized. I’m going to scour the internet for drivers, the Boot Camp CD won’t install the drives. I’ll post some links if I have any success.

Update

I’ve decided that Vista Beta 2 isn’t really worth the hassle. The UI is substantially different, but I’m not convinced that translates into substantially better. It was fun to look at and mess around with for a couple of days, but I’m wiping it and putting XP back later today. I don’t want to harsh on Vista, but I’m not seeing why it took so long to get this puppy out the door.

technorati tags:windows, vista, beta