You made Vista cry...

Well, actually Vista nearly made me cry. You'd be surprised how hard it is to actually update a PC...

It all started about 3 weeks ago when I ordered a Samsung Spinpoint F1 750GB from Dabs. From what I read in Tom's Hardware, this piece of kit was meant to be super fast and more reliable than other hard drives out there. After waiting for over two weeks, the package finally arrived. Installing a new hard drive is pretty easy, you just have to slot it in , put a screw in and attach the power and SATA cables. The hard part comes when you try to install Windows Vista Home Premium 64.

I had bought Vista 64 about a month ago hoping to upgrade the whole PC. Vista 64 is meant to be able to handle over 4 Gigs of RAM and it's also meant to make your computer a whole lot faster. Its a shame Microsoft forgot to say "Vista 64 only works if you have a lucky horseshoe nailed to your motherboard". After doing 4 clean installs of Vista 64 and getting massive problems with a file called “nvlddmkm.sys”, I eventually gave up and installed the 32 bit version.

Trying to go to a 64-bit operating system is a bit of a hit and miss affair. My brother, who had bought a Dell, upgraded to vista 64 without a problem. But if you have the slightest hardware compatibility problem , everything will break and overheat. The most common problem with trying to install Vista 64 seems to be something to do with the RAM and your BIOS. This will cause problems with graphics and it'll stop you from connecting to a wifi internet connection...at the very best.

So all in all, don't even bother upgrading to Vista 64-bit unless your 100% sure that your PC can take it. In fact, don't even bother installing Vista on a computer that hasn’t come with it as standard. One good thing about this whole experience, other than having spent £70 on a piece of software I can't use, is that the Hard drive is very good. You'll get something like 695 GB after formatting, and that’s not bad for just under £70. It's a little noisy when its reading/writing on full load, but that can't be avoided with high performance hardware.

Final Thought Byte : Upgrading your PC isn't as hard as it seems anymore, but if your unlucky it can be just as frustrating . Be sure to make a checklist of things to download and install when upgrading your system, whether it be extra drivers or a new BIOS. Always do your homework before fiddling with the innards of your metal pet...

Tags : 64-bit, Computer, Microsoft, nvlddmkm, Samsung, Spinpoint F1, Upgrading, Vista