Windows Vista/Installation

Windows Vista introduced a new interactive first-stage setup experience, replacing the outdated and unusable text-mode program used by Windows XP. The user will be prompted to run the installer after booting off of the DVD; no other tasks are available. The display language, locale, and keyboard layout selected here will be applied to the installed system; there is no way to change this setting after the installation is completed short of reinstalling Windows. This installation user interface was reused in every subsequent version of Windows to date.

Upon initiating installation, the user will be prompted to enter their 25-character product key. If the user clicks Continue without entering a product key, the installer would prompt the user to select the Windows Vista edition they want to install. As the dialog warns, should an edition be chosen through this interface and a product key for a different edition be entered later, Windows Vista would not activate. (If this happens, the only recourse is to reinstall the correct edition of Windows and activate that.)

A legal agreement would then appear, followed by a prompt to upgrade or custom install. The upgrade option migrates most settings, programs, and files from an old copy of Windows, placing the files that couldn't be migrated into a folder called Windows.old. If you boot off the install DVD, then Upgrade will not be available. To upgrade an existing Windows installation, you must run the setup program from within that copy of Windows.

Selecting and editing drive partitions

If the custom install option was chosen, the user would then be prompted to select a drive partition to install Windows onto. If a storage driver was required to load this list, a link to install one was provided. Normally, the user would click a partition in the list, then click Next to continue. If the user clicked the Drive Options link, further links to create, delete, reformat, and extend disk partitions would be provided. The user might be shown a partition called “Unallocated Space” here. This option represents the space on a storage medium that does not belong to any partition. An effective way to perform a completely fresh installation of Windows onto a pre-existing computer was to delete all the partitions, select Unallocated Space, and click Next. Windows Setup would then create one partition out of all the free space before continuing.

The actual installation

At this point, Windows would display a progress screen while the computer actually installs Windows. Once this process is complete, the computer will present a Restart link. When this link was clicked, or after a timeout in case the computer was unattended, the PC would reboot into the new Windows Vista installation. (Note that, should the PC prompt the user to press a key to boot off of removable media during reboot, the user should not do this, or they will return to the first step of the installation again.)

First-Time Setup (Out-of-Box Experience)

Once the computer finishes rebooting, a “Set Up Windows” wizard dialog would appear. The user was first asked to choose a name and specify a password for the first administrator account to be created on the PC. The user also had the opportunity to choose a user picture from one of eight pictures. If the user does not select one, a flower picture is used by default. The user would have the option to use any picture they wished after first-time setup is complete.

The user would then be prompted to select a name for their computer. This would be used in Windows’ peer to peer networking features to identify the computer from another computer running Windows elsewhere on the network. The default name would be the username entered in the previous step, followed by “-PC”. On this screen, the user is also prompted to choose between one of six preselected desktop backgrounds (wallpaper images). Again, the user would have the chance to supply any picture they wanted once first-time setup has been completed.

Windows would then ask the user about configuring update settings. Windows Vista, as with modern versions of Windows, downloads and automatically installs software updates from Microsoft. As with current versions of Windows, the computer sometimes requires the user to reboot to install updates whether they want to or not. A small dialog will appear stating that the computer will reboot automatically in 15 minutes; the user could choose to delay this reboot for up to two hours, but not cancel it completely. Unlike with current versions of Windows, the user had the ability to specify updates they did not want to have installed.

The computer would then ask the date, time, and time zone. As with modern versions of Windows, Pacific Time is always used as the time zone when this page appears.

As the last step, the user would be given a choice of three “locations” for their computer: Home, Work, or Public Network. This would configure the Windows Vista firewall regarding computer-to-computer access and automatic device discovery. The Home and Work options are actually identical.

Despite the user having completed first-time setup, one more step must be taken before the desktop appears. Windows Vista will run performance tests on the computer while displaying a rotating full-screen advertisement for the features of Windows Vista.

The Welcome Center

When the desktop appears, the computer will automatically open a window called the Welcome Center. This window was mostly used to contain advertisements. Every item under “Offers from Microsoft” would be an ad for some kind of online service. A section containing offers from your PC manufacturer may also appear, if your PC was purchased with Vista preinstalled. Interestingly, the “Go online to find more ways to help protect your PC” advertising link was not an ad for a Microsoft service. At the time, Microsoft was selling a subscription antivirus program called Windows Live OneCare. A link to this program was provided in the Welcome Center. However, firms selling competing antivirus products complained that Microsoft was using product placement to unfairly push OneCare to their detriment. If this link is clicked, a Web page will appear containing advertisements for competing consumer antivirus software packages.

The Welcome Center will always open when the desktop appears for the first time. It can be closed easily. Upon subsequent logins, the Welcome Center would return, but there would be a checkbox in the corner labeled “Open Automatically.” If this box was unchecked and the window closed, Windows would stop presenting the Welcome Center upon login. (It could still be accessed through Control Panel.)