Inside Vista's Image-Based Install Process

KrispyGlider writes "Vista's installation process is dramatically different from any previous version of Windows: rather than being an 'installer,' the install DVD is actually a preinstalled copy of Windows that simply gets decompressed onto your PC. It is hardware agnostic, so it can adjust to different systems, and you can also install your own apps into it so that your Vista install becomes a full system image install. APCMag.com has published an interview with a Microsoft Australia tech specialist on the inner workings of it as well as a story that looks at some of the pros and cons of image-based installs."

Comments

dual boot?

[yagu]

This reminds me of other Microsoft installs I've done over the years, and it smacks of such disdain for the rest of the OS universe. Nowhere in the article, nor can I find evidence anywhere else is there an accomodation for an install where XP is just another OS. I remember my first experience with this, when I installed a Win98 on a linux box, and not only did Win98 not offer a dual boot, it (seemingly) gladly removed my linux MBR and formatted my partition without asking if it was okay, and without saying it had done so. That was quite a surprise.

Does anyone know if there is a way to do this? (Though, knowing XP can point to more than one OS to boot, I'm guessing Microsoft is more gentle if there is a pre-existing Windows OS there.)

I've googled for dual boot information, it looks to be similar to what I already know -- it's easier to set up a dual boot machine on a pre-existing Windows machine.

Re:dual boot?

[xtracto]

frankly im waiting for someone to give me the ability to "Alt Tab" between OSs. i'd love to run linux primary and just alt tab to windows when i need to do MS shit.

Have you tried VMWare (or any other virtualization system)?

MMM yes but no...

There is something interesting in what GP wrote. Of course virtualization exists but I think it would be quite interesting to have some kind of BIOS program that allowed you to change OS whenever you pressed a predetermined key combo.

How to achieve this?, well I think the "hibernation" faccilities of current Operating systems will do the trick. What should happen is that, when you turn on your computer you boot in whatever OS you had, then when you press the supposed ALT+TAB shortcut the BIOS function sends the current system to hibernate (saves RAM to HD file, etc , etc) and boots the second OS. Then, if you press ALT+TAB again the same process will be done but instead of booting the computer will just restore the state from the hibernation file.

It may seem something difficult but I think that will be way cool and unlike virtualization solutions you will not have any performance loss due to the software overhead (I am proposing some kind of software interrput which the guest OSs will call when the user presses the hotkey).

Now that I think of it, please forget what I said, I am going directly to the USPTO :)

At last

[Toreo asesino]

Hopefully this'll mean Windows may actually be able to deal with changing mainboard & cpu without freaking out and throwing its toys out of the pram.

XP takes a swift nose-dive for me when I upgrade my core components; it makes upgrading an even more painful process. As for Linux, I've yet to test this, but I gather it responds much better than XP to new hardware?

Fewer Choices?

[stealie72]

If this is basically going to just decompress windows onto your drive, where do the install options come in to play?

Still, anything that makes installs easier is probably a good thing, at least to the average user.

Knoppix - Kanotix - Ubuntu - Windows

[bfree]

I'm sure the idea goes back even further in time but I still find it interesting to see that the technique taken by knoppix, embraced by Kanotix and finally mimiced by Ubuntu is now being used by MS. The question is will you be able to carry around these vista images as a live system taking advantage of it's hardware detection to run your own copy of windows on any machine (real or virtual)? If not officially, will someone be able to produce a neat hack to do it? I would have thought everyone would like to have their own liveDVD of their system, featuring all the stuff they wanted installed and all their settings.

Smalltalk and Emacs did this.

[bobs666]

IMHO Imaging an OS install is a good thing.

The mother of all windows, Smalltalk, Did just this.
And when you where finished for the day ST did
a sort of core dump to disk. When you want to
start up it restored your workspace just where you left off.

Emacs was so slow to load all of its lisp macros
the authors did the same thing dumping the core
image into an a.out file and starting that each time.

Perhaps You think Imaging a disk is different.
But I propose that its just the same thing as a different
level of the memory hierarchy. You just install into
a 800meg partition and dump to CD. same thing.
Make it bootable, add a start up that rus the installer
and copy it to disk.