Windows Vista Team Blog : Release Candidate 1

Windows Vista Beta 2, RC1 and RC2 set to expire

Nick White — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:36:00 GMT

On 31 May 2007, all Customer Preview Program (CPP) pre-release versions of Windows Vista will expire. If you are running a pre-release version of Windows Vista (Beta 2, RC1 or RC2), you will begin to receive warning notifications about the upcoming expiration on 18 May. To avoid work disruption and loss of data, we strongly recommend that customers running any of these pre-release versions of Windows Vista migrate their PCs to the final version of Windows Vista prior to 31 May.

For more information on migrating away from CPP versions, please go to http://www.windowsvista.com/preview.mspx. We've included below a listing of frequently asked questions to help those of you still running a pre-release version of Windows Vista on your PCs to get started.

CPP Expiration FAQ

1. Can I install editions of Windows Vista other than Windows Vista Ultimate?

Yes, it is possible for you to install other editions (except for Windows Vista Enterprise) of Windows Vista (e.g., Windows Vista Home Premium). To install a different edition, you will need to purchase the Upgrade version of that edition and perform a clean installation. You must back up any data, as this process will overwrite all data that you have on your hard disk or on your installation partition. The overwritten data will be lost and unrecoverable.

2. Are there any discounts available to Customer Preview Program participants?

There are no product discounts specifically for participants in the Customer Preview Program; however, because you are using a pre-release version of Windows Vista Ultimate, you can purchase and use the Upgrade version of Windows Vista.

3. What will happen to my data after the expiration date?

After 31 May 2007, customers who continue to use pre-release versions of Windows Vista will be able to log in for 2-hour sessions to retrieve data. After 2 hours of use, the PC will automatically reboot without providing the opportunity to save data. The opportunity to log in normally for these 2-hour sessions will be available only until 28 August 2007. It is strongly recommended that PC users running any of these pre-release versions of Windows Vista migrate their PCs to the final version of Windows Vista or another operating system prior to 31 May.

4. What will happen to my PC after the expiration date?

After 31 May 2007, customers who continue to use pre-release versions of Windows Vista will be able to log in for 2-hour sessions to retrieve data. After 2 hours of use, the PC will automatically reboot without providing the opportunity to save data. The opportunity to log in normally for these 2-hour sessions will only be available until 28 August 2007. It is strongly recommended that PC users running any of these pre-release versions of Windows Vista migrate their PCs to the final version of Windows Vista or another operating system prior to 31 May.

5. Is there a breakdown of the upgrade options available to users of the various CPP pre-releases?

From/To

Windows Vista Ultimate RTM

Other editions of Windows Vista RTM

Previous version of Windows

Windows Vista Beta 2

Clean install with Ultimate Upgrade

Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition

Clean install with full version

Windows Vista RC1

In-place upgrade or clean install with Ultimate Upgrade

Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition

Clean install with full version

Windows Vista RC2

Clean install with Ultimate Upgrade

Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition

Clean install with full version

A clean install means your current version of Windows, including all of your files, settings, and programs, is automatically replaced. You must back up any data as this process will overwrite any data that you have on your hard disk or on your installation partition. The overwritten data will be lost and unrecoverable.

An in-place upgrade means you can install Windows Vista and keep your programs, files and settings from your current version of Windows. It is still strongly recommended that you back up any data prior to initiating the upgrade.

6. Can I install Windows XP on my PC?

Yes, it is possible for you to install any operating system including Windows XP on your PC. To install Windows XP on your PC, you will need the CDs of the full version of Windows XP or the original OEM CDs that came with your PC (if any). You must back up any data as this process will overwrite any data that you have on your hard disk or on your installation partition. The overwritten data will be lost and unrecoverable.

7. Can I "roll back" to Windows XP?

As was noted at the outset of the Customer Preview Program, you cannot roll back to the previous operating system installation -- you will either have to purchase and install the final released edition of Windows Vista or re-install a previous version of Windows.

Please, do yourself a favor and upgrade to any edition of the RTM version of Windows Vista before 31 May.

Windows Vista Imaging and Installation Performance

Nick White — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 19:18:00 GMT

PC World got the conversation going on installation times in Windows Vista. While they quote Jim Allchin that Windows Vista can take as little as 15 minutes to install, my installs have been more like 20 minutes (still rocking fast), so I thought I would talk with David D'Souza who manages our Deployment and Installation team to get some more information about the different deployment scenarios and their installation time. In his own words ...

Hi, my name is David D’Souza and I am the Director of Development in the Windows Core OS Division. I run the development team responsible for the deployment technologies in Windows Vista.

Windows Vista Setup has dramatically improved since Windows XP. This has been one of the deepest and most comprehensive investments Microsoft has made in deployment. Our goal was to dramatically enhance the reliability and performance of OS deployment across end users, OEM, and Corporate scenarios. Windows Vista deployment had to be fast and reliable across a wide variety of scenarios and it had to easily integrate into the deployment processes our customers already used. Generally, our internal goal that rolled this all together was “15 minute OS installation using imaging”. Technically, we focused on three things:

1)       End to end tool set for local and remote image based deployment of Windows Vista.

2)       Reduction in number of images due to easy addition/removal of language packs and drivers.

3)       Modularization to facilitate agility in engineering, deploying, and servicing all the new Windows Vista flavors.

In this note, I will cover the first item.

Why Imaging

Ideally, installation of an operating system is two fairly simple steps. First, copy all the OS files to the hard disk. Second, configure the machine dependent files & registry settings such as security identifiers, machine name, and specific hardware drivers required for the system. Install time should scale with the size & number of files in the operating system.

However, the software development process is structured around smaller, isolated, components – kernel, file system, shell - that combine to produce the full OS. Thus, our developers create an installation script that is a long list of individual components, each with their own state, configuration, and instructions for installation. Each component copies its files, builds its databases, and individually adds its registry keys. This makes it easy for Windows developers to change one component without disturbing other components. Unfortunately, this means install time scales with the number of components, files, and registry keys. This is the process we used to install Windows XP.

Imaging allows us to execute the “slow” installation process internally at Microsoft and capture the resultant files and a list of machine dependent state. Subsequent installs simply copy all the files – the OS image - and reconfigure the machine dependent state. The imaging process allows us to have the best of both worlds – an agile internal software development process that is component centric and a final installation process that optimizes towards installing the full operating system. Additionally, imaging is highly reliable because significantly fewer & simpler operations are performed to install an image. Imaging is the default installation process we use in Windows Vista.

How We Image

Windows Vista supports a collection of imaging tools & file formats to enable image based deployment by OEMs & Corporations.

Windows Imaging technologies (WIM) – Also includes the Windows Image Format that contains all the files required to install the operating system. WIMGAPI is an API set developers can use to read or write WIM image files so more tools can be developed around this. This is a file based imaging technology that enables a greater degree of hardware independence.

ImageX is the tool that allows users to capture a WIM image, edit certain files offline, deploy it onto a harddisk, and configure the machine dependent state so the OS boots & runs.

Setup provides a friendly user interface around ImageX to install the Windows image stored on the DVD. Setup can do a clean install or upgrade an existing operating system such as Windows XP or Windows Vista. When doing an upgrade, Setup first captures all your documents, settings, drivers, & applications, lays down the clean image, and then reapplies your state into the new OS. Supporting upgrade scenarios via imaging ensured our imaging technology worked across a huge variety of hardware configurations. This helps reduce the number of images corporations & OEMs need to maintain.

Windows Deployment Services (WDS) – is a server product that allows you to boot your bare metal PC from the network and install an image onto your hard disk. This is primarily used by corporations & OEMs for large scale, remote image deployment.

Performance

Let’s first look at the overall performance numbers we are seeing from our latest RC builds:

Overall “Mode” External Installs

% of RC1 installs

Mean Time

Comments

All Clean Installs

100%

20 minutes

Overall clean installs using any mechanism described below

Clean Installs starting from XP

17%

26 minutes

Overall clean installs starting from XP (DVD, Net)

Clean installs starting from WinPE

82%

20 minutes

Boot from DVD or boot from external media (USB etc.)

Clean installs using WDS

1%

8 minutes

Windows Deployment Services (network boot) installs

This data represents Windows Vista Ultimate clean installation times across hundreds of thousands of RC1 installations on diverse hardware with varying DVD drives and network traffic. The time is based on the start of copying the files to the disk to the time the OS is ready to run – the time to enter the product key (PID), select your drive, and enter the language and do the performance check during OOBE is not included.

Overall, we come very close to our 15 minute install time goal across a broad array of hardware and installation mechanisms using the Windows Vista Ultimate product. There are many things that influence this time - speed of the network or dvd drive, the flavor of Windows Vista you install (Home is smaller than Ultimate), and the number of PnP devices on your system.

Additionally, we also support in place upgrades from Windows XP to Windows Vista. During an in place upgrade, we install the image and ensure your applications, drivers, settings, and documents are properly moved into Vista. This process of finding and moving your state adds at least 30 minutes to the upgrade process. And some machines with large numbers of files, applications, or drivers can take up to 120 minutes.

The deployment team has put a lot of effort into the install process, and in some scenarios installation is going to be as short as 20 minutes and in others, it will be longer. I hope you all have a better understanding of installation and the great progress we have made. Please install RC1 and try it for yourself. To get all the deployment tools I mentioned, go to connect.microsoft.com and download the Business Desktop Deployment solution (BDD 2007) – this has best practice guidance on how to use these tools as well.

Another Update on Interim Windows Vista Build 5728: Japanese Version Available

Nick White — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 23:17:00 GMT

Another follow-up to my original post on Build 5728: the Japanese download page for both 32- and 64-bit versions is live.

That means that this link is now active!

Update on Interim Windows Vista Build 5728: 64-bit Version Available; Build Availability Window Closing Soon

Nick White — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:11:00 GMT

Per my post from last week, I've got some news for you regarding the release of interim build 5728:

The 64-bit version of build 5728 is now availabile in both German and English.
The window is rapidly closing for download of the English build, as we're nearing our targeted download quantity. If you've not yet downloaded the build, I would suggest doing so today.

Thank you to all of our beta testers who've downloaded this build to date -- we didn't expect your response to be so rapid and enthusiastic!

Interim Windows Vista Build 5728 Released Today

Nick White — Sat, 23 Sep 2006 02:12:00 GMT

Today we released an interim build of Windows Vista, also known as an EDW, or External Developer Workstation. This build is number 5728 and serves as an update to RC1 and runs in parallel with that release. The build is available to the public.

Here's our official message to our testers:

Updated Test Build Available (September 2006): Microsoft is looking for volunteers to help test an updated, interim release of Windows Vista. This build (5728) has a number of improvements and updates from RC1, but has not been put through the same internal testing process as RC1. We are making this release available for a limited time only in order to get broad distribution and testing in a variety of PC configurations. Click here if you are interested in testing this release. Otherwise, please use the links below to download RC1 (build 5600).

You can get the new build in the following languages:

(Due to localization lead times, links to the German and Japanese downloads will not be ready at the same time as English, so please be patient.)

Links to ISO files for the new build will be labeled in this fashion: "Windows Vista RC1 update (5728), English 32-Bit Edition."

One more thing to note: users of Toshiba models M400, M4 and M5 should do a clean install (not upgrade) of this build.

If you're interested in the seeing the changes that have been made since the release of RC1 on 1 September, then I'd encourage you to check out build 5728.

Silicon Valley Campus Windows Vista Install Fair CLOSED

Nick White — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 18:07:00 GMT

Regarding my post from last week, please note that the Silicon Valley Campus Install Fair is now closed.

Please also take into consideration that we're not simply giving away copies of Windows Vista at this event -- it's necessary to register for it and then when present at SVC, work with our tech staff to ensure your copy of RC1 is correctly installed on your particular machine.

Silicon Valley Campus Install Fair Invitation

Nick White — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 15:55:00 GMT

The folks at the Silicon Valley Campus asked me to share the following invite with you. If you find yourself in the San Francisco Bay area on one of these dates, feel free to drop in and pick up the latest version of Windows Vista for your current workstation. Everyone who participates will be given a copy of Windows Vista Ultimate once it's released.

Install Fair Invitation

Participants will receive a free copy of Windows Vista Ultimate after release!

Dates: Saturday October 7^th & Sunday October 8^th, 2006

Two Locations:

Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus / Mountain View. Email us to register.

Silicon Valley Code Camp / Foothills College in Los Altos – Visit this site to register.

Timeslots: There are a maximum of 80 openings per timeslot each day.

9:00 AM to 12:00 PM
1:00 PM to 4:00 PM

The goals of the Install Fair are to:

Upgrade Windows XP SP2 (Home, Professional, Tablet PC and Media Center Edition) PC’s or Laptops with unfamiliar applications, configurations and devices to the latest pre-release version of Windows Vista Ultimate Edition.
Acquire valuable feedback about the Windows Vista Upgrade experience from the broader community to ensure that Windows Vista will be the most rock solid release of Microsoft Windows ever.

Checklist/Criteria to attend:

All important data has been backed up!
My PC’s Operating System is Windows XP SP2 (Home, Professional, Tablet PC or Media Center Edition) English x86.
My PC has an Intel/AMD Processor running at 1 GHz or higher.
My PC has a minimum of 512MB of RAM.
My PC’s Video adapter is AGP4x/8x or PCIe with a minimum of 64MB of RAM.
My PC’s Hard Disk has a minimum of 15GB of free space (on the same partition as Windows XP) to allow for upgrade.
My PC has a DVD-ROM Drive.

Resources we provide:

Monitors, Keyboards, Mice, Network Cables, and Speakers.
Windows Vista Ultimate Edition DVD.
Food, beverages and a gift for participating!

You need to bring:

Your PC, its power cable and a DVI-to-VGA converter if necessary…

We hope you will be able to participate! J

~The Windows Vista Install Fair Team

From/To	Windows Vista Ultimate RTM	Other editions of Windows Vista RTM	Previous version of Windows
Windows Vista Beta 2	Clean install with Ultimate Upgrade	Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition	Clean install with full version
Windows Vista RC1	In-place upgrade or clean install with Ultimate Upgrade	Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition	Clean install with full version
Windows Vista RC2	Clean install with Ultimate Upgrade	Clean install with Upgrade version of desired edition	Clean install with full version

Overall “Mode” External Installs	% of RC1 installs	Mean Time	Comments
All Clean Installs	100%	20 minutes	Overall clean installs using any mechanism described below
Clean Installs starting from XP	17%	26 minutes	Overall clean installs starting from XP (DVD, Net)
Clean installs starting from WinPE	82%	20 minutes	Boot from DVD or boot from external media (USB etc.)
Clean installs using WDS	1%	8 minutes	Windows Deployment Services (network boot) installs