Vista Headaches

Installing Windows Vista is not for the feint-hearted. This morning I decided to upgrade, after yet another backup (just in case), and after getting the list of programs that would no longer be compatible with Vista, I went ahead with the install. All seemed to go well until Windows wanted to reboot, then I got the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death" with a Stop: 0x0000007B error. Something to do with being unable to recognise the boot device. Perhaps this is another issue with using a SATA disk, I'm not really sure. Even tried booting into Safe Mode caused the BSOD error, so I had to restore the C drive (thank God for the backup!!!!).

Upgrading wouldn't work when I booted into the Vista disk. So I decided on a clean install on another partition (the second partition on the SATA drive, a logical drive). That didn't work either, with Windows telling me that it was incompatible with the install. Maybe I'm just not meant to install Vista. I'm trying something else now though. Moving everything off the first partition on an IDE drive to the second partition on the SATA disk, then I'll try a dual boot. Windows sees this IDE drive as the first in the list, so when it's empty I hope this approach works. Partition Magic comes with a handy utility for mapping drives, and it looks to references to a drive letter and can change it to a new drive letter. Since all my music is on the drive that I'm moving I'm hoping it will update all the links it finds. Probably another lengthy process. Nothing is ever quick when you're playing around with large disks.

I've downloaded update drivers for everything I need to work:

• Netgear 108Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter
• Lexmark 510 Series Printer
• nVidia Display drivers

It'll mean reinstalling all the programs I'm using but that's probably not a bad thing. I think I'll be able to see what's on the old C drive from inside Vista, (thinking ahead here - I haven't even got it installed yet). One piece of hardware probably won't work anymore: a Plustek USB Scanner that is fairly old, even XP sees it as outdated but it can be installed on Carly's computer so we still have the use of it. No biggie.

I've been preparing for this all day, and once again, am getting increasingly frustrated when things aren't going as planned. Nothing new about that though.