Inside Vista's Image-Based Install Process 519
KrispyGlider writes "Vista's installation process is dramatically different from any previous version of Windows: rather than being an 'installer,' the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC. It is hardware agnostic, so it can adjust to different systems, and you can also install your own apps into it so that your Vista install becomes a full system image install. APCMag.com has published an interview with a Microsoft Australia tech specialist on the inner workings of it as well as a story that looks at some of the pros and cons of image-based installs."
dual boot? (Score:5, Interesting)
This reminds me of other Microsoft installs I've done over the years, and it smacks of such disdain for the rest of the OS universe. Nowhere in the article, nor can I find evidence anywhere else is there an accomodation for an install where XP is just another OS. I remember my first experience with this, when I installed a Win98 on a linux box, and not only did Win98 not offer a dual boot, it (seemingly) gladly removed my linux MBR and formatted my partition without asking if it was okay, and without saying it had done so. That was quite a surprise.
Does anyone know if there is a way to do this? (Though, knowing XP can point to more than one OS to boot, I'm guessing Microsoft is more gentle if there is a pre-existing Windows OS there.)
I've googled for dual boot information, it looks to be similar to what I already know -- it's easier to set up a dual boot machine on a pre-existing Windows machine.
At last (Score:5, Interesting)
XP takes a swift nose-dive for me when I upgrade my core components; it makes upgrading an even more painful process. As for Linux, I've yet to test this, but I gather it responds much better than XP to new hardware?
Fewer Choices? (Score:4, Interesting)
Still, anything that makes installs easier is probably a good thing, at least to the average user.
Re:dual boot? (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you tried VMWare (or any other virtualization system)?
MMM yes but no...
There is something interesting in what GP wrote. Of course virtualization exists but I think it would be quite interesting to have some kind of BIOS program that allowed you to change OS whenever you pressed a predetermined key combo.
How to achieve this?, well I think the "hibernation" faccilities of current Operating systems will do the trick. What should happen is that, when you turn on your computer you boot in whatever OS you had, then when you press the supposed ALT+TAB shortcut the BIOS function sends the current system to hibernate (saves RAM to HD file, etc , etc) and boots the second OS. Then, if you press ALT+TAB again the same process will be done but instead of booting the computer will just restore the state from the hibernation file.
It may seem something difficult but I think that will be way cool and unlike virtualization solutions you will not have any performance loss due to the software overhead (I am proposing some kind of software interrput which the guest OSs will call when the user presses the hotkey).
Now that I think of it, please forget what I said, I am going directly to the USPTO
Knoppix - Kanotix - Ubuntu - Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fewer Choices? (Score:1, Interesting)
You should try Linux, any flavor. It asks your preferences up front, usually on one or two screens before it starts installing. After that it only needs you to change CDs. And when it's done, you don't have a bare OS with no apps but Notepad, IE, Lookout and Solitaire but you have a whole suite of browsers, office apps, games, and all kinds of other tools that you have selected at the get go.
Installing Windows and then installing all the applications you need, one by one, is a royal PIA. Installing Linux is a breeze. You should try it.
This being "news for nerds" I am continually surprised at the number of people here who have never tried Linux. No wonder non-nerds all run windows, even the (pseudo?) nerds haven't tried Linux.
The wrong problem (Score:3, Interesting)
Smalltalk and Emacs did this. (Score:4, Interesting)
The mother of all windows, Smalltalk, Did just this.
And when you where finished for the day ST did
a sort of core dump to disk. When you want to
start up it restored your workspace just where you left off.
Emacs was so slow to load all of its lisp macros
the authors did the same thing dumping the core
image into an a.out file and starting that each time.
Perhaps You think Imaging a disk is different.
But I propose that its just the same thing as a different
level of the memory hierarchy. You just install into
a 800meg partition and dump to CD. same thing.
Make it bootable, add a start up that rus the installer
and copy it to disk.
Re:Does it install faster? (Score:2, Interesting)
Later,
-Slashdot Junky
Re:Does it install faster? (Score:3, Interesting)
I always wondered if that was one of the reasons Windows took so freaking long to install. Not only would they be decompressing the CABs, but this would have to happen while the CPU is running 100% to negotiate the disc ---> HD transfer.
Re:dual boot? (Score:2, Interesting)
Windows for daily life on the IM clients (video chat actually works in Windows, which is a requirement for my family, as we are spread out all over the world,) compatibility with work docs in MS Office, ripping music from DRMed formats to MP3, and running Quickbooks. I use Ubuntu for real work...photography work, image creation/editing, I'm learning Blender, web development, etc etc.
Yeah, I know...Ubuntu. Nice thing is, my wife can use it without much difficulty...although only "my" machine is dualboot, I run the WAMP stack on "her" computer, a dual processor setup (2x 2.0GHz Xeon.) She never even notices anything else running on the system...and it sits idle most of the time, happily running WAMP.
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:dual boot? (Score:3, Interesting)
I eat live puppies for breakfast.
Re:File based imaging format?!?! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:does vista break ghost then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Regarding the WIM imaging format, has anyone else here attempted to use the operating system deployment feature pack for SMS 2003 to build or deploy a WIM image? WIM is FS Based. Bad sectors on the hard disk, you still need ghost -FRO to make a safe backup. Great. There are other complications with this when imaging PCs as well, such as if the existing filesystem on the PC is reused (as ghost also may do by default, but can be changed on ghost though). If the FS is corrupted on the disk but it gets reused then you end up with systems you just imaged but are hosed. They say WinPE will work in RAM, but I haven't tried it. If it resides on the disk then it is corruptable and is a point of failure during image deployment. Then theres the whole issue of the slowness of the process. OS deployment feature pack process for building an image (when I tried it) was abysmally slow and involved a metric crapload of file copy overhead. Deployment of images is really slow... You could go on an extended lunch and it won't be done yet, while ghost will be done before you can finish a smoke break. The only to pros I can think of for the MS process is 1) You don't have to have whatever it takes someone to set up a deployment system set up around ghost (Great for SMS administrators, MCSEs). 2) You won't have to build custom boot disks with NDIS drivers to load ghost with networking support in DOS mode, which is actually easy to do but can be admittedly difficult for some folks to grasp. I've had to help just about everybody who started using ghost put together working bootdisks. 3) The MS process lets you inject scripts at various points in the process and stuff and makes automation tasks easy without having to do the work of putting together a better automated image build process. But you still need ghost for some stuff. Great gimmick...
Re:Max NTFS file size is 18 Exabytes or 576 Exabyt (Score:3, Interesting)