Vista Upgrade and installation

[ChesterPL]

Hi there everybody.

I have VAIO FE31M with WMC2005 and I've just signed for upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium via Moduslink.

As this new OS still in my opinion requires some fixing and improvements, I have two question about "still-to-arrive-to-my-mailbox" Vista Premium and it's installation on my laptop:

1. It says during registration for this update that Sony will provide Vista DVD with all Sony VAIO utilities, software, drivers, services etc. that is required for proper useage and running of my lappie. Is that true ??? Or will I have to find and install those things by myself (you know, built-in camera, bluetooth, touch-pad, power management, setup center and all those things you want to be there). I'm especially concerned about volume level display (OSD bars) cos I know people have trouble to get it to work on Vista...
You know what I'm talikng about, don't you ???

2. Because I use software that may not be yet compatibile with Vista (like Adobe products), I just want to try this one out to check how it's running and if everything is all right, but then I would like to go back to WMC2005 for some time, at least untill everything settles down and proper updates and new versions of programs are released.
Does installation of Vista make any changes to original recovery partition of laptop or could I still use it to overwrite Vista and go back to recovered "C" partition with WMC2005. (I have two partitions: "C" 40GB and "D" 120GB).

Or even better...I have made image of "C" partition with WMC using Acronis True Image 10. Could I use this image to bring back my old OS from Vista ??

Any help will be highly appreciated.

THX

[Blencogo]

Hi ChesterPL,

The upgrade to Vista DVD will have all the drivers/utilities/applications included. It will be just like the Recovery Discs you made when you first purchased your Vaio.

That is the theory anyway - in practice a few things don't seem to work 100% and new software will need to be released to fix them. The Camera still has an outstanding problem and a few other things remain 'buggy'.

Your Recovery Partition should remain intact - your Recovery DVDs would also work (if you haven't made amy, make sure you do before you install Vista) - you can also restore your Acronis Mirror (although this will take many hours!!)

The only thing you can't restore is the Vista BIOS Update.

[ChesterPL]

you can also restore your Acronis Mirror (although this will take many hours!!)

Thanks for the replay.

Actually restoring OS from Acronis image on my laptop is extremaly quick. I can do it in 15 minutes. Although I have 40GB partition, Acronis makes image only of data, not empty spaces on disk so image is small (u can also use compression) and it's quick. Besides I've made image on fresh clean Windows - no programs installed. So u can imagine I prefare to recover Windows from Acronis cos this way I have everything set up the way I want in minutes...

As the matter of fact, VAIO uses the same method to restore Windows but it does this from it's own images (like Recovery Partition or Disk) and you get all those crap programs with it (I got rid 99.9% of those) so it takes ages to setup your system the way you want after recovery. That's why is so handy to use Acronis

The only thing you can't restore is the Vista BIOS Update.

Yeah, with this one I'm gonna wait untill I'm sure I want to switch to Vista...unless I have to make BIOS Update to run Vista ???

Which leads me to another question - If I do this update but then I want to go back to WMC2005 will it still work properly ??? Or it has no effect on older versions of Windows ???

[Blencogo]

If I do this update but then I want to go back to WMC2005 will it still work properly ??? 

I think quite a few people have done this already after a disappointing try out of Vista.