One of the things I was eager to do this weekend was to download and install the Vista RC2 release (build 5744). I’ve documented my experiences below as I rebuild my laptop and you’ll see I have an interest in Microsoft developer tools .

Installation

I fired up my Toshiba Tecra M3 laptop and booted straight to the RC2 DVD. Microsoft has really done a great job on the installation now and I am pretty sure that every install I have done (Beta1->CTPs->Beta2->RC1->RC2) is getting faster and more troublefree as you would expect as the product nears release. RC2 asked the usual questions and was fully installed in approximately 30 minutes. My 16 month old lappie achieves a Windows Experience Index of 3.3 which means I get the Aero GUI enhancements!

AntiVirus – AVG7.5 rocks! (well sort of)

One of my main pain points previously since RC1 was getting reliable Anti-virus installed and running. As an AVG (www.grisoft.com) fan, I had unreliable experiences trying to run AVG7.1 on RC1 and eventually removed it altogether. I must say, today’s experience could not have gone better . I downloaded and installed the latest AVG 7.5 Professional version (trial) and the install was quick and painless. During installation I checked for updates and it reported, downloaded and installed the update without any problems at all.

[Update: My joy was short-lived… After two reboots while I installed other software, I received an error message saying “Could not initialize AVG Anti-Virus Kernel interface”. On the next reboot this error was gone again . I’ve just done a full scan to test things and it appears to be working OK. Not sure what gives with this one at the moment but it appears intermittently on startup now.]

VMWare Workstation 5.5.2

Yes that’s right. I am a VMWare fan as well. I ran the VMWare Workstation 5.5.2 install and it went nice and smoothly through the entire process, not even troubling me for a reboot at the end! When I ran the application for the first time, Vista warms you that an unrecognised application is trying to run but a quick click confirms that you trust VMWare and away you go. (FYI – I use VMWare to host a full Windows 2003 Server R2 virtual machine running Microsoft Team Foundation Server for presenting demonstrations at user groups etc and it runs quite reasonably. Note: 2Gb RAM)

Visual Studio 2005 Team Suite

The VS2005 Team Suite installation went like clockwork up until the SQL Server 2005 Express install which warned that you need to install the (currently unavailable) Service pack 2 before you can run SQL Server 2005 Express on Vista. I clicked continue to proceed with the installation and hopefully the SQL Server SP isn’t too far away.

Office 2007 Beta

The Office Beta was painless and I installed the Professional version without any hiccups at all. I installed the Office 2007 Beta Technical Refresh and again I had no issues to report.

Mounting ISO images

I Googled used Goggle to do a quick search and came across a blog post that talked about using MagicISO to mount ISO’s in Vista and how the author had it working with Vista Build 5536. I installed it and then installed MagicDisc as well. Unfortunately I did not have the same success than Rich spoke about in his post and I can’t seem to remove them cleanly either . [Update – cleaned them off now]

I have been a Daemon Tools fan for quite a while but have had issues with this product on previous Vista releases. I still needed to mount an ISO so I checked the Daemon Tools site and YIPPEE!!! A new release (4.0.6) which claims full support for Vista. Ok let’s run this puppy and see what happens…

OK.. Well it looks like Daemon Tools 4.0.6 does what it’s supposed to do and I’ve mounted an ISO and I’m installing the Team Explorer (Team Foundation Server Client) from the mounted ISO image now .

Team Explorer

The Team Explorer install went well from the mounted ISO image (see last point). I have connected to my Team Foundation Server running inside VMWare Workstation and this install seems to have been a success. 

In Summary

Overall the installation experience was pleasant and successful. Now all I need to do is resolve these two annoying startup issues…

NOTE – I haven’t started searching for any answers yet so fingers crossed  the answers are out there and not too far away.