Sean Feeney
Architect of the digital age

Testing Vista

7 March 2007

I just installed Vista Business Edition on my Dell Precision M70 tonight. According to the Vista diagnostics it has a rating of 4.0 on the Windows Experience Index. Supposedly the top rating at the moment is 5.0. The score is based on CPU speed, memory, graphics, etc. I’d say not bad for a laptop.

The reason for the upgrade is two-fold: I’ve been wanting to do it for a while (since it was released on MSDNAA) and tonight my scanner stopped working with XP, even after reinstalling its TWAIN driver (and all Windows TWAIN drivers). After verifying system files and exhausting all other options, I would have had to re-install the OS. Rather than go with XP again I decided to just do a clean Vista install.

It’s interesting to note that I did try an in-place upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Business back when it came out. Several tries wound up with it failing somewhere around 70% each time and reverting back to XP. It’s only after this that my scanner no longer worked. XP also stopped recognizing my digital camera inside of the GUI. Oddly enough the Logical Disk Management service DID recognize it, and I could access it through command prompt, but whenever I tried accessing the drive letter it was given from inside of the Windows XP GUI it would cause an error.

So let this be a warning: DO NOT attempt an upgrade from XP Pro to Vista Business, even when the Vista Upgrade Adviser says that there will be no problems preventing the installation. You might not like what you’re brought back to if it fails!

Posted in digital cameras, Logical Disk Management, scanners, TWAIN, Windows Vista, Windows XP