I go onsite to lots of clients and I always hear “How do I do this” or “why is this different” etc. 75% of the time I have no idea…so I sit down and google it right infront of them and usually they are like “ohhhhhh, why didnt I think of that!”

BTW, thanks for this great article. Very entertaining. Unfortunately though it didnt work for me. Installed .Net, restarted and still same message…back to google I guess :)

Excellent, thanks for the advise… also, great read, made me laugh. I too am IT support and I totally sympathise with your comments on the industry.

@ Luke Maciak:
Hmm, I do hear people complaining about the slow-copy issue you mentioned, but back when I was using Vista, I didn’t really notice it. Moving files were instant for me. Same as in Windows 7. MS did some fundamental changes to the copying process it seems in Vista, so I would expect that the process would be polished in 7.

I’ve been using 64-bit versions of Vista Ultimate, 7 Home Premium and 7 Ultimate btw. (Those OSes are a mouthful to say and type. MS really, really needs to give better names to their OSes. Case-in-point: “Windows Embedded Compact 7”. Ugh.)

@ Ben:

Strangely enough, Vim works fine under Vista 64 bit. Go figure. Then again, I might be running a specialized build optimized for that configuration. I vaguely remember having some issues with it when I first installed it. :P

@ Mart:

I don’t mind UAC that much on my Vista machine. Coming from Ubuntu it is like those graphical sudo popups you get – just modal and retarded.

The thing I hate about Vista the most is that Microsoft somehow figured out how to make transferring files 200% slower than it was on XP. Hell, now even moving files takes time. I remember that on XP moving files between two folders on the same drive was almost instant (copying took time, but moving was fast). Vista has to go through the whole progress bar routing every time though.

Have they fixed that in Win7?

@ ths:

Fortunately I had another computer so I was able to quickly download .NET and transfer it on a USB stick. So it wasn’t so bad.

@ icebrain:

If I’m not mistaken, Vista and Windows 7 may actually have it slip streamed into the installation disk. I haven’t really done many clean Vista/Win7 installs though so I’m not sure.

@ Mart:

My company is desperately clinging to XP because that’s what everyone else in our industry is doing. We tested Win 7 not so long ago and it turned out that 4 different apps and templates we use wouldn’t even start. These were custom made by our clients btw, and have no plans to upgrade them for now.

Also our full disk encryption software does not support Win7. Last time I looked into this it seemed that switching over to the new version would be annoying and time consuming.

@ Ben:
I feel it’s a kinda like heresy to be saying this here, but I very much prefer Windows 7 over XP, which I am currently using in office. The icing on that cake is that Cygwin is Win 7 compatible. You can turn off UAC if you like. Having lived for almost a year without an anti-virus on my Win 7 desktop, I am thoroughly convinced that malware and virus infections on one’s PC is almost always a PEBKAC issue.

Haha, almost as bad as my WinXP restore CD that came with my eMachines box. It didn’t come with ethernet drivers. I had to boot a linux live cd to download the drivers to a usb drive to get them into windows.

@Mart: I know the business I work for isn’t switching from win2k and winXP for the downgrade to Win7. I don ‘t blame them, I hate the interface. Using default security settings I have to allow notepad++ every time I run it, no opening a file from a context menu.

Is it possible to extract the required driver files and manually install it using Device Manager?

Side note, Windows XP? That is sooooo 2001!! :P

Requiring .NET for drivers is already facepalm inducing, but they could have at least asked Microsoft if they could distribute the framework with the CDs -it’s not like Microsoft is going to be upset that more users have .NET installed…

you could try installing the MSI from the command line and avoid the GUI.
there are nice tools out which can decompile the MSI and check what switches it supports or requires.