I've posted more details on my (Italian language, sorry, I hadn't the time to
translate it in English):
http://theitaliansoftside.blogspot.c...cca-vista.html
Here is what happened. Italian Microsoft support is alerted (MSFT support
professional tried to help me for long hours, unfortunately in vain).
I have a Toshiba A100/750 (PSAARE), originally Home Premium OEM, Italian
localised, which I had upgraded via anytime upgrade to Vista Ultimate.
Install of language packs (I wanted to install English) kept failing with
code 1 or 2.
1) The day before yesterday I eventually installed a batch of updates and
voilÃ*, English Language pack finally installed.
2) I happily switched to English.
3) I installed dreamscene.
4) The system hung signaling a driver error and giving the Blue Screen of
Death
5) Any attempt to correct the problem using Vista tools failed. I mean that
Microsoft support person asked for a boot from cd. And it indeed booted from
cd, but any installer I got, kept reading some information from the hd, and
then crashed.
I tried with 3 Vista installers: a full vista ultimate DVD, an anytime
upgrade DVD, Toshiba's own reinstall disc. They all failed with the same BSOD
pattern after loading Vista's files from the DVD, after accessing data on the
HD (I saw it from led activity). Safe boot console was thus unreachable, and
I could not rescue anything.
I finally gave up and had to delete the boot partition from Linux.
At this point I finally managed to do a clean install on OS boot partition.
Morale:
1) a Windows Vista Ultimate upgrade can irremediably corrupt your machine,
in such a way that the provided rescue procedure DOES NOT WORK.
2) I strongly suggest this practice: when installing Vista, install the
operating system on a DIFFERENT partition from your application data. In my
case this made the difference between loosing completely my work or being
able to recover at least my documents.
3) Back up, Back up, Back up, Back up.
3b) Have at hand another operating system which you can boot in console mode
in order to perform a rescue. Vista's own console may be rendered unusable
and lock you out entirely.
4) The assumption that activation of automatic updates makes you safer IS
FALSE. Automatic updates in my case proved to be a nightmarish security hole.
5) Windows Vista and particularly Ultimate is a dangerosly unstable system.
Some of its features are not well oiled, to say the least: I mean upgrade
across versions, language packs, dreamscene (I suspect this can be considered
experimental, I strongly suggest you don't install it on a machine you use
for productive work).
6) In my case, following Microsoft indications meant spending for a full
additional license (600 Euros), loosing a full day of work solving the
problem and another one restoring my system. Had I owned a system with only
one partition, my loss would have been dramatic.
Last but not least: if you tried to install a language pack on Ultimate, and
Update kept giving you code 1 and code 2 errors, if all of a sudden it
installs, be wary.
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