Vista Beta 2 available to public

[Paul Adams]

Customer Preview Program - in case anyone is interested.

Install on a virtual machine, or a spare physical one if you have one lying around - don't flatten your main rig and only dual boot if you're sure you can handle rebuilding if you need to

I have this installed on my Asus A8N-SLI Premium at home on my secondary partition on RAID0 - I ran into an issue where it would hang (including the installer) if the Marvell Yukon gigabit NIC is enabled.
(Though another guy with the same machine said he didn't have that issue.)

[mrbanana]

I had a play withthe x64 version when it came out. It lasted a day. You need at least 15gb just to install it because it includes everything, including Windows media centre. I got a lot of disk thrashing too, which could have been the indexer, could have been the nvidia drivers. Aero is pretty good, but I prefer XGL in Ubuntu.

[RavenNight]

My Main Rig takes one hell of a punishing, all the important stuff goes on the laptop. So its going on as soon sa its downloaded. How Did you get on running it on a partition on your RAID 0 partition? I plan to do the same on my array, on my Asus A8N-SLi Deluxe. Luckily I have the Marvell Yukon adapter disabled by default.

[Skinleech]

Do you need to burn this to disk? A leak of this prior to the official CPP release stated you could mount the image and install that way, but I'm skeptical of that.

If you do need to burn it, how big is the image - dvd5 or dvd9? I might give it a blast. I need to reinstall my main machine anyway.

[Splash]

I'm gonna build a machine at work if/when I can get a download (the servers are taking a hammering right now...)

Also if anyone could confirm if this will play happy with VMWare Server that would be cool. I heard that the early CTPs weren't happy in a virtual machine, but that could just be conjecture and hearsay. And shenanigans.

Also the download is 3.5Gb for the 32bit, 4.4Gb for 64bit.

[8bit]

I'm gonna build a machine at work if/when I can get a download (the servers are taking a hammering right now...)

Yeh they've been slashdotted. Or Hexus'd. Or Hex'd. Or... OK, you get the idea

Also if anyone could confirm if this will play happy with VMWare Server that would be cool. I heard that the early CTPs weren't happy in a virtual machine, but that could just be conjecture and hearsay. And shenanigans.

Dunno about VMWare Server but i got a couple of the CTP editions running in VMWare Workstation. Well, when I say "running" it was more like strolling. Or ambling. Or meandering. Basically it did work but performance was absolutely pitiful.

Also the download is 3.5Gb for the 32bit, 4.4Gb for 64bit.

For an OS this is bloatware of disgusting proportions IMHO, but then, why should Bill break the habit of a lifetime?

[Paul Adams]

mrbanana:
"I got a lot of disk thrashing too, which could have been the indexer"
Most likely the indexing service - a lot of people find it best to leave it after installation to index everything it wants to, and it dies down.
If you go with an Ultimate key then yes, you have everything in the image installed
It was actually the first time I used Media Center - I now watch DVDs with my remote control from bed.


RavenNight:
"How Did you get on running it on a partition on your RAID 0 partition?"
nVidia released beta 2 NVRAID drivers on 2006-05-25, I used those - make sure to only pick the ONE driver it recommends in the text file (I didn't read it at first and loaded both listed drivers, the disk array is subsquently not found).
Drivers were installed by using a USB memory stick.


Skinleech:
"Do you need to burn this to disk?"
Not for virutal machines, of course - for physical machines I've only played with clean installs, no upgrades so I had to burn a DVD for it.
I have a collection of DVD-RWs that I use for this kind of thing as it makes sense to reuse the disks for backups & betas, just aregular 4.7GB disks.

(Assuming these are the same as the ones I have locally, the image sizes are 4,309,368,832 bytes for x64, and 3,355,598,848 bytes for x86.)

Splash:
"if anyone could confirm if this will play happy with VMWare Server that would be cool"
Not played with VMWare Server, but I can confirm I have it working on both VMWare Workstation 5.5 and Virtual Server 2005 R2, running on my XP x64 installation.

8bit:
"For an OS this is bloatware of disgusting proportions IMHO"
Installation is now deployed via images, the key you specify determines which image is deployed to your disk.
The image is copied to disk, then expanded, so you need a fair amount of space to hold all this data, plus the swap file, then have room for configuration.

[5lab]

to be fair, beta versions are always huge, and always have a very slow/buggy install. will probably be better in retail

[dangel]

I've been using this full-time for about a week (typing on it now) and it's rather good in many ways (but still unfinished).

A tip for installation - if you experience problems on the first reboot (after file expansion) when booting from the DVD directly, try installing from WindowsXP (you can still select another partition) and allowing it to connect to the internet for updates. It wouldn't install initially for my on my dell 3.4/2gig/6600 at work until i did this.

RAID drivers - you can use drivers for windowsXP and yes a USB memory stick is understood by vista (THANK YOU MS!) so no need for a floppy. Click on advanced on the partition selection page.

5 solid days of development use and no crashes or lockups. The graphics system is plain addictive - it's so more efficient than XP and it's opened all sorts of fanatastic possibilities for our apps... It's still quite lardy but it's nothing like as bad as previous builds.

[RavenNight]

Dang... I can't find the new NVRAID drivers any chance you could give me the link?

EDIT: Scratch that, drivers found, now If only I can just download the dang thing...

[Paul Adams]

Dang... I can't find the new NVRAID drivers any chance you could give me the link?

www.nvidia.com -> Download Drivers / Download Drivers -> Beta Drivers

Takes you to:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_do...etadriver.html

"nForce - Windows Vista Beta 2 Drivers

Windows Vista x86 Beta 2
Release Date: May 23, 2006

BETA Driver Windows Vista x64 Beta 2
Release Date: May 24, 2006
BETA Driver"

[dangel]

Dang... I can't find the new NVRAID drivers any chance you could give me the link?

I should of mentioned that the dell i'm using has intel raid, not nvidia.

Follow the instructions here: http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_28653.html

[Atomic]

Thank you for your interest in Windows Vista Beta 2.

We are currently experiencing a high level of demand and cannot process your request at this time.

Please check back later for availability. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Not surprising the servers are getting thrashed! Wish there was a mirror for this.

[Robert]

Same here. How do you guys think it'll run on this:

Pentium-M 1.7ghz
512mb ram
Intel graphics

[UKMuFFiN]

Doesnt the premium need 1 gig of ram?

[imroberts]

Doesnt the premium need 1 gig of ram?

It's recommended but I've had it on my laptop for a couple of weeks with only 512mb