How to install Vista Business 64 properly?

I looked at Les's guide for doing a clean install but I dont see anything for AHCI drivers nor do I have anything called a MediaDirect 3.3 CD anywhere in any of my boxes that Dell sent.

I'm trying to install VB64, do I need any special steps to do a clean install? That 15% AHCI performance increase sounds interesting, but I'm not sure what to do here. As of now, I am just following the steps to reformat this. Also the LED screen is VERY intense when on full power. So glad I whipped out the extra cash for it. Makes all the other screens in this room look like trash.

Thanks for any advice.

** Doing two partitions btw, a 50GB primary for OS+Apps and a 182GB for all my important data.

 

AHCI drivers are not needed for Vista; it supports AHCI right out of the box. Installing 64-bit Vista is exactly the same as installing any other kind of Vista; pop in the disc and boot from it.

 

Got it thanks.

And if I go to COMPUTER and find that there's only a C: drive under the LOCAL DISK section with 50GB and I dont see any other partitions, I've partitioned it wrong haven't I...? Not sure where the other 182GB went lol...

 

The OS doesn't represent the rest of the space as a volume because it is unallocated. You have to create partitions out of the remaining space.

 

Oooh...that explains it. During setup I thought the UNALLOCATED one would be the secondary partition. I'll reformat again x_x.

 

lol,

Iram, let me know how the installation goes cause I am going to install that on my friend's laptop (if I ever receive it)

 

Installation took 10-15 minutes. Easy, works great. Startup time is now 20 seconds w/o tweaks! Shutdown about 3 seconds.

 

Finished step 2 of Les's guide. Startup time (time it takes from power on to finish loading all processes) down to 15 seconds now (I counted, lol).

 

In theory this is true, but my drive didn't seem to be working in AHCI mode for some reason... so I installed Intel Matrix Storage Manager and that fixed it.

But... I suggest you run HD Tune, and only if the graph suggests that the speed is being capped, or if the info page says it's in ATA mode... only then bother to install Intel MSM.

 

Tell that to everyone who says vista is slow! I use business 64 too and it is awesome!

 

Well Im a believer now, I've stripped the stupid themes off and made everything "xp pro"-like, it's lightning fast.

 

I just Installed Vista Ultimate 64 Bit sp1 on my 1720 and it was like night and Day, even with the Areo and sidebar enabled. It's faster than my XP desktop............

 

Instead of reformatting everything to allocate the 182GB for Vista to use, you could just go to the Control Panel, then Administrative Tools, then Computer Management. In that utility, you can navigate to the Disk Management part and it will show you both partitions. Select the one marked as "Unallocated", and right click it. Choose 'format' and follow the wizard. Have the wizard format it in NTFS style, to ensure maximum performance on that brand spankin new partition.

 

cool, i have to wait until my buddie's computer is ship to get the vista software

 

When I get my laptop with Vista64, can I make another partition of the HD?
Or do I have to Do a reload? I haven't used Vista yet... I Get my E6500 later this week.