Ultimate Edition Forum

Cell wrote:Now I'm confused....All this time I thought you were unable to boot into vista.

I fixed it when I tried putting the "Windows Anytime Upgrade" DVD that came with the laptop into the drive to see how much it was going to cost me to "upgrade" to a working Vista - turns out that it's got the repair stuff that a regular Windows install disc has. Whoops ! It allowed my computer to boot to a point where Vista asked me if I'd like to try to fix my still non-booting system. Well... I guess I had the M$ repair tools all this time. The ones that I read about days ago and didn't think I had.

With jaunty people have had bad experiences letting the installer do the work for em...over writing their Microsoft partitions.(this is that 1% were linux might not do what you ask )So use the installer,and edit the partition manually.

Oh, ok. I tend to look for manual/advanced options. I probably should stop doing that . But I'll not be using the auto-pick option so if the M$ partitions get overwritten, it won't be the installer program's fault.

During normal use a microsofts os will make backup images(not everything,but just system folders.) without the user knowing.It can be shut off,but is not by default.Over time theses images will eat hard drive space...without a user's knowledge.

edit:I should add that you should turn it off,and delete those recovery files if your trying to gain disk space.

If you are talking about the System Restore points and VSS, yes those are set up on my system. I might want to leave them enabled for a week or so to make sure that Vista has truly repaired itself. It must have used them in the repair process because I got told that I needed to update to the service pack that I already updated to (so it must have regressed).

I installed a trial copy of a Vista system optimization tool (no, it doesn't just do a format of the c: drive and tell you to install linux - although that would fit the definition of optimizing it ) and used it to consolidate free space. It did a great job - and then a reboot and Firefox run put a block of data almost on the end of the free space. Windows, lol. I'll run it again and immediately shut down and pop the Ultimate Edition DVD in and see what happens. Going to write down a few passwords and export my bookmarks to an html file first this time though.

Used downloaded trial software to consolidate free space on the Vista partition (from Vista).

Used Vista's built-in partition manipulation tool to shrink it.

Created 1.5 gig (1.5x physical memory) swap partition and the rest as "/" ext3 partition.

Booted from UE2.3 DVD and ran the install tool.

Noted that doing so from DVD is FAR slower than from a USB flash drive.

Rebooted and...

It WORKS!!! Boot menu and everything. I have permanently installed the Broadcom driver and yes it is there after a reboot.

Oh - the updater thing that automatically ran... It suggested a large list of updates and I allowed it to do its thing. It did but notified me that some couldn't be installed. I assume that I'll be able to manually run the updater later and try again.

WooHoo!

Listening to a free audiobook from librivox.org and typing this message without being chained to the router/modem now.

Driver is a happy camper. I better put on my hiking boots - it's time to explore. If I pooch it, all I have to do is reinstall. No stress now.

One question I probably should ask before this thread is closed is... If I ever decide to remove Ultimate Edition temporarily in order to expand the Vista partition back, what is the proper method of doing so that the bootloader is removed and the system boots normally like any other single-OS Vista one?

Cool,man.Glad you got it.

How big is your linux partition?Might want to keep an eye on it if its around the original 10 gigs.Linux has a bad habit of not letting you log in if the drive(partition) is full.

If you have any questions on how,and why of Ultimate Edition please start a new thread.

It has been almost four years since I found Ultimate Edition. I just wanted to revisit this thread and mention that my impression of Ultimate Edition - and linux in general - remain very high.