>The catalyst behind all this was Vista. Beta 2 is available, I downloaded it last night, and was hoping to install Vista64 on my AMD64 FX55 computer. I only have one drive, and the AMD is chock full. It’s got a 600W power supply now, so it could probably handle it, but since my DVD Drive is primarily for burning movies, a DVD reader in my main game computer is sufficient. That way I can have one burning away while I’m off killing people.

I’m installing Vista now. Since the DVD ISO is an odd file system type I had to mount the ISO on the other computer and install over the network. That worked just fine but took a bit longer due to the 100mb/sec cap on Ethernet. The other computer’s motherboard has a Gig/sec as does my AMD, so if it was working it could have been faster. I’m interested in this new file system UT8C? Something along those lines.

It sounds like what Linux uses for it’s system partition, and even if it’s not I’m happy to hear they’re upgrading how data is stored. Minus the whole embedded copyright stuff I’m very keen on a filesystem that audits itself to ensure nothing has been damaged.

I wanted it to dual boot with my other windows, but on this first restart I noticed a different kind of boot menu. It’s not the usual one that enables one to run everything from Win98, XP, XP64, or Linux… and it only showed “previous version of windows” and “windows vista” in the choices. I think I may have lost my XP (32) installation. I should be able to edit the boot menu and add it back manually but I’ll have to see — that is, if it even is lost. I bet the “previous version” choice brings me to the usual menu I see where I can choose to boot XP or XP64.

It’s not very informative so far, no advertising scrolling by, or plugs for their new way of doing things. It’s “copying files”, “expanding files”, “installing features”, “installing updates”, and “Finalizing Installation”. It just finished installing the updates and now it’s restarting:
Please wait while Windows prepares to start……………