I’m not that fond of Vista just yet. Besides the annoying (are you sure you want to open this, even though you just clicked it?) messages, Vista does have some nice features that XP is just missing.
- Nicer looking interface
- Better system tray
- Clock supports multiple time zones to show more than one time
- A photo gallery
- Widgets, gadgets (whatever you want to call them)
- A calendar
- Better start menu
Why am I running Vista in a virtual machine rather than dual booting or installing over XP? Although Microsoft’s Vista Upgrade Advisor tells me that I can run Vista and doesn’t seem to indicate that there will be hardware issues, I can’t install Vista. Well, I can install it, it’s after I restart and it starts the loading screen that I get a blank screen instead of a window to move on to the next step to finish the install. Just for lying to me, Microsoft should buy me a computer with Vista pre-loaded.
At first, I started to think it was my video card; 256MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200LE. I searched all over forums and websites to figure out if there was a solution to this problem. Some people said that it’s not compatible and others said it is. Another place said that you can use just about any video card, but if you want the Aero Glass look and other nice features, you need the Vista compatible video cards. Well, my video card can more than handle that if only I could load Vista!
Since David had an extra video card laying around, I figured I would try it out. It turns out it was only a 16MB nVIDIA Vanta, and I still had problems trying to get Vista loaded. It kept giving me blue screens.
Next, I started doing some more research, reading forum after forum and found out that nVIDIA stopped support for the nForce2. What!? Supposedly a select few have gotten Vista working with nForce2, but a lot of others can’t seem to. This must be my problem?
So, it’s either buy a cheap computer with Vista pre-loaded, buy new hardware or just stick with a virtual machine. For now, I think I will stick with the virtual machine. Sorry Microsoft, your new OS isn’t worth the money at this time.
If anyone knows of a solution for installing Vista with nForce2, please leave a comment! I would rather not buy new hardware just to play around with Vista. If it only involved buying a new video card, that would be fine, those are cheap and I think the fan on mine is dying anyway.
