Re-install vista
I’ve just finished re-installing Microsoft Vista on my work laptop. Boy was that a good idea.
Before doing this I was experiencing instability, random crashing of explorer, sleep mode sometimes worked, sometimes not, but always slowly, and no, it was not hibernating!. Also it didn’t always wake up from sleep… Lucky bugger!
Ok, so. First things first, make a backup. I stole a 320gb disk from a Linux box I never use (trust me, I have other boxes), and put it in a USB enclosure. Then I used Vista backup tool to do a complete backup… Nice for completeness, but unfortunately it’s not easy to browse that kind of backup.. So I additionally did a file backup, which Vista supports also.. Actually, backup tools in Vista are quite good.
Next, whip out my USB stick and ZIP up my most important documents and settings to that. This is paranoia!.. Still, if that’s what it takes to make me feel secure enough to wipe the hard disk, then so be it.
Ok… All backed up, three times, and fingers firmly crossed.
I whip out the Vista install disk that came with the laptop (you did order one yes?.. oh know dell provide a recovery partition, but just try to use it!). Boot off of the disk, delete the existing install partition, then install on free space… That’s the easy part. The hard part is that after installation Vista blue screens on boot!!!!… OK, this is bad, really bad..
I install again. And it blue screens again… It turns out that if you switch off properly, then boot, it’s ok.. Some bug in the ATA driver. SP1 fixes this issue, so once that’s on there you’re ok… And that’s what I did. As soon as Vista is on, go through online updates constantly until there are no more, and SP1 is installed.
So, after all that. I’m slowly installing the apps I use… Note: Never install all the apps you had, just the ones you used. You always have loads of apps that have been installed just for one off things, or that have fallen out of use. Don’t clutter your system.
Second, re-organise your files. Don’t just restore them… This is a great time to spring clean, so create a dump folder to restore your data files to, but only pull things out of there that you need, and put them in sensible locations.
Now I’m fully re-installed everything is ticking along nicely… Very nicely. Sleep now works again, instantly, the way God intended. And touch wood, no explorer crashes yet.
Moral of the story. Be brave, re-install.
