Weird Experience Installing 2nd Vista Ultimate

Ex_Brit

Ex_Brit

Moderator
Staff member
Technet Vista Ultimate With SP2 Downloads Corrupted?

Just underwent a zillion reboots and finally undid this weirdness - read on.

I decided to format my second XP on partition D: and install Vista Ultimate w/ SP2 obtained from Technet Plus where I'm a subscriber.

I installed using "Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (x86) - DVD (English)" ISO from Technet burned to a DVD and used the key I obtained there, not the "Windows Vista Ultimate with Service Pack 2 Checked Build (x86) - DVD (English)". Actually not quite sure what "checked build" is.

It installed OK but while booting I noticed right after the initial scroll bar when the screen is normally all black for several moments, registry entries (?) in white print flashing across the top of the screen, then it booted normally, but I had "Test Mode" in all 4 corners and "Windows Vista...blah blah" in the centre top of the screen.

I thought maybe I need to activate which I did, I had entered the key during the initial install. It updated normally, some failed. I rebooted and could only boot either into that or XP. My main Vista on M: & Windows 7 on N: had vanished.

Anyway I formatted D: again, removed a few Vista boot files, re-did the EasyBCD number (in XP on C: ) and finally got my old boot menu back.

(I'm now in good old original Vista on M: ).

What was with this "Test Mode"? Plus I seemed to be unable to add M: or N: back to the EasyBCD menu during this weird period.
:tongueout:oint::evil::wtf:

Addendum: It appears the "Test Mode" maybe has something to do with driver signing or it didn't read my key? Anyway I've now attached a pic someone else posted online for a similar issue, except in mine the build was different.
I gather doing the following can clear it, although I'm reluctant to start over with this abortive attempt.

windows key] > type cmd | press CTRL+SHIFT + ENTER (to enter an elevated command prompt)
> type bcdedit.exe /set testsigning off then press ENTER > Restart your machine.
Click to expand...

What did I do wrong and dare I try again?
 

Attachments

  • testmodeps8.png
    testmodeps8.png
    1.4 MB · Views: 6
Last edited:
Is SP2 supposed to be out yet or they still beta testing? I havent seen it on WU anyway though they've been sending out the "install for future updates" type patches again which I can only assume well mean it won't be long if they havent. Perhaps you should download the other build to see if you get different results?

Well I'd say give it another go if you want to try out SP2 since you know how to fix it (supposedly...)
 
Yes it's final but it's only out for Technet and MSDN subscribers but shouldn't be long before it appears publicly.

My emergency is over, it installed without a hitch at the second attempt. There is one update that keeps "succeeding" at 100% then rolls back every time, I think it's IE8 but I'll sort it out.
 
I had an isue with IE8 on XP after it came up as a WUD option. It broke my dual-boot version ("website unavailable" universally) including WUD which, of course, uses IE pre-Vista.
I had to uninstall it to make XP usable again.
It works fine on W7 and Vista.
Anyone else had problems ?
 
Not me, I have IE8 installed on all the boots, including XP SP3. I wonder if you have some add-on that doesn't agree with it? I found on this most recent Vista installation that IE8 wouldn't install until I disabled anti-virus.
 
No, my IE7, which it replaced, was vanilla (I hardly ever use it. 95% of the time I'm in Maxthon, 4% Opera), so the IE8 should have gone in clean.
It said it had installed perfectly, but it just wouldn't access the web. Opera continued to work (but MS doesn't allow "foreign" browsers to access WUD, so that was out of reach) and Maxthon (which uses the IE engine), was broken by it too.
At least add/remove programs uninstalled it without fuss, so no lasting problem.
I've "hidden" it in WUD and am quite happy to continue with IE7 for the rest of the lifetime of XP, since I use it so little.
 
These things are sent to try us. Here I just got a BSOD when changing to another boot and it was my external drive. Tried again - no BSOD. Mystery. Gremlins?
 
IE8's been working just fine on my XP install as well. Perhaps you should download the installer manually vs. using WU for it?
 
I might give that a try Jus, but at the moment I'm beginning to think this machine is cursed.
2 weeks ago I had a beautiful 4-way boot with all 4 systems humming along perfectly.
Then I tried updating W7000 to W7100 with the results I've discussed elsewhere.
XP offered me IE8 which broke the system, though hopefully is OK again now.
Today I noticed WMC in Vista was giving me "tuner unavailable" (in use by another application) on a freshly booted system, something it wasn't doing a day or 2 ago. WinTV was able to access both tuners, so no hardware problem, definitely WMC, but a suggested reg hack in an MS forum seems to have completely broken media center.
No problem, I thought, just sys res back before the hack.
I look in sys res, and despite giving Vista 25Gb spare space when I reorganized a few weeks back (specifically to give myself a bigger system restore point pool), there are only 2 points available, from 10 and 12 hours ago, instead of the week's worth I was expecting, so now I've got to start investigating if XP is somehow getting at Vista again.
Never mind, 10 hours should suffice ..... NO ...... OK try 12 hours then ...... What the h*ll's going on, both restore points leave the media center problems untouched and now WinTV is broken too.
That only leaves XP with a working TV app (as far as I know since I last looked), both W7 and Vista completely b*ggered and unrecoverable media-wise.
Anybody know if Ubuntu has TV card capabilities ?
 
They have a tuner specifically for linux. Can't think of the model. MythTV seems to be the most popular MC application for linux, available here. There's also a customized project based off Ubuntu known as Mythbuntu, which is basically Ubuntu with MythTV pre-installed and configured. The pre-installed linux distro may already have support for the common tuners but I'm not sure.

What I do is have a splitter on cable between the TV and my tuner since my TVs my computer monitor anyway, so I can watch TV both with or without having the computer on/tuner working. Its quite nice this way so I don't need dual tuners and can still watch something while having the tuner record a show for me.
 
A bit of further info, some of which might be useful to anyone reading this in future.
My twin-tuner (working perfectly using the included software), steadfastly refused to find any channels in the Media Center Setup on Vista.
No amount of driver updating/rollback, removal/replacement of the PCI card, uninstalling/reinstalling the bundled software made any difference, and intensive search of the web revealed no similar problem.
I noticed a problem reported in the event log (nothing reported by MC itself) on the second tuner, so I reran setup and unticked the 2nd tuner at the setup screen that detected both and asked which one(s) were to be used.
The scan immediately worked and detected all the TV channels, and a second run ticking only the 2nd tuner this time, also worked. So despite offering to configure multiple tuners simultaneously, MC doesn't seem capable of doing it. (though it always worked in the past, so some new bug must have been introduced in a recent MC update)
The problem of my missing restore points was nothing to do with XP.
It turns out that Vista doesn't use the extra space I just gave it for that express purpose. Once it sets a tiny limit (based on the previous space available to it), it doesn't dynamically reconfigure when more becomes available, it continues to delete the oldest points as if no space is available.
You need to run the command-line utility VSSADMIN to resize the amount of space Vista can use, unlike XP where you could just move the slider.
You learn something new every day with Windows.
Anyone having trouble with inadequate system restore space (or if it's gobbling your entire disk), google vssadmin and you'll find the syntax necessary to tailor the shadowspace.


Addendum:


Oh, and to get back to the original subject of this thread - WUD just presented me with Vista SP2, and it all (576 Mb !) went on clean as a whistle in about 30-40 minutes.
Not a problem at all (much less scary than SP1) and due to my new philosophy of having a dedicated boot partition and independent OS installs, it didn't affect my multi-boot in any way. (unlike SP1 which broke HnS)
 
Last edited:
That Tuner issue is very reminiscent of what's been happening with a lot of us in the Windows 7 forum. Very hit and miss if the tuner works at all in Win 7 but of course, beta, one has to expect that.

Interesting, I'll note the issue of having to install the channels for each tuner separately as I'm getting a dual tuner Hauppauge HVR 2250 PCI Express x1 when I buy my new PC, whenever that may be, as my current card use PCI and there'll be a dearth of PCI slots in the new one. My FAX modem will take the only free one. Of course I'm guessing here and wont really know until I get it.

I was just reading up about that issue with restore points. What a bummer.


Addendum:


Forgot to add, someone over in the Vista64 forums reported getting that self-same "Test-Mode" that I originally got when doing a fresh OS install after merely installing SP2 for Vista.
Very weird.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top