Well I broke against my own best practices when I installed Vista as an upgrade over XP Pro earlier this week. I have always been a big believer in installing a clean version of an OS instead of doing an upgrade, but I figured since this was a fairly clean install of XP I was safe. I had no real problems other than the sound issues I complained about and fixed after my original install, until today. I was trying to install Creative Labs software (supposedly Vista compatible) for my Zen Vision:M 30 GB (a great device I will write about one day), and the installation kept failing. I went back to the CD an dwas able to install the older softer with no issues, but then still couldn’t update it to the Vista version. Again I hit the web and found a thread on Creative’s forum where someone was having the same problems so they did a clean install.
I had nothing to lose as I just was starting to get the PC ready to where I wanted so I had nothing to lose. If you read my earlier post you may know that I have an upgrade Windows Vista Business Disk and purchased the Windowsanytimeupgrade to Vista Ultimate. One thing about the Vista upgrade DVD is that it is designed to run as an upgrade from the previous OS and not for clean installs. There is away that has been widely published on the net so I am not going to describe it here but it is a little cumbersum, but in the end it works just fine. Anyway my suspicions were confirmed and my creative software installed cleanly and is no longer an issue. In short some of the files from XP were interfering with the installation of the Creative software.
 For my clients, I strongly recommend doing a clean install over doing an upgrade to help reduce the possibilities of future problems. Please feel free to contact me if you want to attempt this on your own and I can provide you with instructions, or if you prefer I can handle the upgrade for you!
Stephen
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