Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is now available for download. If you previously registered for the Windows Vista Beta 2 Customer Preview Program 2 and received a product key (PID), that key will work for the Windows Vista RC1 release as well. You need not re-register. Update: A review of the RC1 version say that Vista is not ready.
Windows Vista RC1 Available for Public Download
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Windows sucks!!!
MS $ucks!!!!
Vista is a joke!!!!
No thanks I’ll stick to Linux!!!!
Closed Source is evil!!!!
Vista is bloated and slow and ugly!!!
Now, how about some actual discussion about RC1?
I wont be risking my main (only) system to Vista, especially a RC1 build. In fact, I doubt I will use Vista for at least 12 to 18 months afterwards. I have no confidence in it’s security, stability and any of my valuable data.
partitions? another HD?
From the things I’m hearing, I don’t even trust it in THAT situation.
Edited 2006-09-07 05:15
Oh, and who are these sources? whiney little 15 year olds with their 945G equiped machines from the $99 shop, and whining that it won’t fly on their machine.
So far, all I’ve heard so far is, “damn this is better than Beta 2” to “this is what Windows XP should have been” to “its about f*cking time they did something like this; fixed the problem!”
How about you actually USING it before craping on about issues you know nothing about.
Two points.
I’ve been running Vista on various laptop configurations since the early betas (leaked and otherwise). This has been at various stages on and off domains.
Secondly to answer you’re question, *one place* I’ve been hearing it from was a chap called Steve Gibson on his weekly security podcast. I won’t provide the link, however “Security Now!” through Google and you’ll see.
Steve Gibson is probably the worst source of information about Windows on the internet.
“*one place* I’ve been hearing it from was a chap called Steve Gibson on his weekly security podcast”
Too bad Steve Gibson has absolutely zero credibility, especially when it comes to security matters.
Excuse me, but Gibson is the pre-madonna who came out and claimed that if Windows XP with raw sockets were stipped, it would be the end of the internet as wel know it; 5 years on, and everything is peachy.
Please, don’t allow drama queens to cloud your judgement when it comes to security issues; asking his opinion on security issues is like asking Symantec or McAfee on what products they sould suggest to protect an end users computer.
I’m not really sure what your point is.
Asking Symantic or McAfee is exactly what you should do, about protecting your computer.
They *will* tell you why their product is the best, because they know their product the best. Look at all the kooky comments regularly repeated here and elsewhere on here about Linux that are not true or based on a misconseption.
The reality is after the spate of TCO independent studies(sic) where everyone plays how is it funded by Microsoft. Those are the worst, because of the subterfuge. Its true a company will show bias to its own product, but if the information is *from them* you expect bias.
All there is, is information from a verity of different sources, and through discussion and/or trial determine what is best for you, and in computing thats potentially a very short time.
“Gibson is the pre-madonna”
Yah, wir like, sooo post-madonna now.
Prima Donna, chief, Prima Donna.
Does anyone take Steve Gibson seriously, other than Steve Gibson that is? He basically predicted that XP would result in Internet Armageddon, due to its ability to manipulate raw sockets… I guess that his patented GRC nano-probes must have averted the disaster.
Didn’t Microsoft remove raw sockets from XP?
But it says I’m broadcasting an IP address?! Oh no help me Steve Gibson, help me!!!
As long as RC1 is better than Beta 2, then perhaps RC2 will be even better, until they reach a relatively final stable state. It’s nice to try these out and all, but the people who are dooming Vista should really wait for a little while. Remember all the people who were using Win2k and were down on XP when it was starting the release cycle. Now I see a lot of posts of people saying “Heck no, I’ll stick with my nice stable XP install”. I’m a Linux guy personally, but heck I’m even gonna give Vista (when it reaches SP1) a real honest try.
“(when it reaches SP1)”
Kind of my point.
And you trust Steve Gibson. You might want to take a look at http://www.grcsucks.com
It was funny to see Steve Gibson talk about “Blue Pill”. Blue Pill was developed by a very very smart person named Joanna (www.invisiblethings.org) and people like Steve Gibson discussing it…what an irony.
Steve Gibson has never been to any *real* security meetings like BlackHat, DefCon etc so i wonder till when he will be able to use gullible internet users and fool them into thinking that he is a real expert.
Edited 2006-09-07 16:29
I installed it first on Athlon 64 3400+ box which uses an Nvidia 7600GT w/256 GDDR3. The box has 2 gigs of Corsair XMS PC3200. It was a dog. Ok. It was slow, it blue screened durring install, and nothing I have is not name brand, common, everyday stuff that doesn’t work out of the box with SUSE, Fedora, Kubuntu, etc…
I then tried installing it on my Core Duo (1.83) w/1.5gig of Ram laptop and it was still slow and not very responsive.
I now have an Athlon 4400+ dual core to play with so we’ll see, but at this point I don’t think it is worth the upgrade.
I installed on a slower machine than yours. No name box I had built. Athlon 64 3200+, 1.25GB, Nvidia FX-5200. The video card is a bit slow for Vista. I chose Vista Basic as the color scheme and it runs just fine.
Considering the video card is over 3 years old, I’m not worried about it being a tad slow.
I upgaded from pre-RC1 to RC1. I’m using it as my default OS for a few days.
Isn’t the worst thing it could do would be to trash your bootloader?
The worst thing it could do is format your hard drive after sending all personal data to a website, disable the motherboard/processor fans in your computer and flash your BIOS… I guess
//partitions? another HD?//
I wouldn’t do that. Trying to install Vista in a separate partition of your HD, or indeed even on another HD is quite likely to hose one’s existing Linux installation.
only the boot loader which is no different than any other version of Windows.
“only the boot loader which is no different than any other version of Windows.”
Simply a lie.
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/windowsvista/library/85cd5efe-c349…
oh and a fun quote
Windows Vista introduces a new boot loader architecture; a new firmware-independent boot configuration and storage system called Boot Configuration Data (BCD); and a new boot option editing tool, BCDEdit (BCDEdit.exe). These components are designed to load Windows more quickly and more securely.
The traditional Windows NT boot loader, Ntldr, is replaced by Windows Boot Manager (Bootmgr.exe) and a set of system-specific boot loaders. In the new configuration, Windows Boot Manager is generic and unaware of the specific requirements for each operating system, and each system-specific boot loader is optimized for the system that it loads.
“”only the boot loader which is no different than any other version of Windows.”
Simply a lie. ”
Thats interesting because I’ve installed Beta 2 and the pre-rc1 build without it hosing my Linux install. It wiped out grub but after reinstalling grub Linux boots just fine. I can also boot into Vista from grub without any issues.
Consider yourself one of the lucky ones. I put Beta 2 on a seperate HDD just to be safe and set that as the first drive to boot in the BIOS. You’d think it would install it’s bootloader on the drive on which it’s installed – but it didn’t. It found my other drive with Windows and Ubuntu on it and put the bootloader there. None of the GRUB fixin’ tools seemed to do anything, nor did trying every combination of which-drive-boots-first possible.
A little Googling of Vista, Linux and Dual-boot should provide lots of similar problem examples. My final fix (with lots of advice from the guy who wrote the “vistabootpro” app, was to put grub on a third hard drive just dedicated to data and set that to boot first in the BIOS. Total dirty hack workaround, but better than reinstalling all three OS’s just to make Vista happy
That said, I AM going to try this release. This time with all but the dedicated Vista drive completely unplugged. *crossess fingers*
How about reinstalling grub where it was first? Bootloaders can be wiped and reinstalled. Do you think the Vista BL prevents you from installing grub again?
“only the boot loader which is no different than any other version of Windows.”
Simply a lie.
Reading through the thread history, I think that the clause “which is no different than any other version of Windows” was intended to refer to the hosing of the boot loader, which Vista apparently does have in common with any other version of Windows (and which was the topic of discussion at the time). Calling something a lie without any evidence is flamebait because it says that the poster is not just incorrect but also dishonest. For this reason, your post should have been modded down, not up, even though it included interesting information.
Reading through the thread history, I think that the clause “which is no different than any other version of Windows” was intended to refer to the hosing of the boot loader, which Vista apparently does have in common with any other version of Windows (and which was the topic of discussion at the time).
You’re right, with that clause I was referring to Vista replacing the boot loader as the commonality with previous versions of Windows, not that Vista’s boot loader was the same as the one in previous versions.
I was saying that Vista will only wipe out your Linux boot loader, not the whole OS as you suggested. I was saying that this behavior is the same as previous versions of Windows, not that Vista’s boot loader is the same as the boot loader in previous versions.
Gee, I must try this system that’s so good it can even replace Linux!
I wouldn’t do that. Trying to install Vista in a separate partition of your HD, or indeed even on another HD is quite likely to hose one’s existing Linux installation.
Just disconnect the first HD and run on the one with vista, thats what I did and nothing was damaged.
This isn’t rocket science guys!
“I wouldn’t do that. Trying to install Vista in a separate partition of your HD, or indeed even on another HD is quite likely to hose one’s existing Linux installation.”
Actually it did not hose anything on my system. The only thing it WILL do is to wipe the MBR and put it’s own in there. Just make sure you have a boot disk for whichever OS you are using to manage the MBR so you can restore the MBR. On my system there was no need, as the MS Boot Manager set itself up to launch XP and Vista. It is nice that you can finally specify exactly where to install windows.
I got a referrer-denied.html file using those two download manager…
I mean cant…:D
Edited 2006-09-07 05:13
You can use wget with –referer parameter set to RC1 download url, because it simply checks the referer. This is what i tried and succeeded downloading last build with wget. FYI
wget -cT 30 –referer=’http://download.windowsvista.com/preview/rc1/en/download.htm‘ ‘http://download.windowsvista.com/dl/preview/rc1/en/x86/iso/vista_56…‘
edit:
ewwh, the board sw truncated the url, but you should get the idea…..
Edited 2006-09-07 14:22
wget -cT 30 …
Just a question… why do you set the timeout to 30 seconds ? Is it necessary ?
wget has a very long default timeout(900 seconds). using that you wait 15mins before retry. MS download server has a far lower timeout. w/o a saner timeout wget will end up like dl 5mins every 15mins wait….
RC 1 is supposingly more responsive and stable than beta 2, but offers nothing new. I tried beta 2 and it worked ok, so I’m not going to bother trying this.
I’m not very impressed by Vista. Its still plagued with legacy code to maintain backwards compatability. Many of its features have been availible on other OSes for years. It basically is Microsoft’s “catch up” OS as far as I am concerned.
Microsoft needs to start fresh and take risks breaking compatability. A fresh OS without legacy subsystems, APIs, etc. and a whole new UI would be very nice.
Perhaps a new OS built from scratch using the existing NT kernel?
“Microsoft needs to start fresh and take risks breaking compatability. A fresh OS without legacy subsystems, APIs, etc. and a whole new UI would be very nice. ”
MS won’t do that ever. Both their consumer and corporate customers value backwards compatability far too much.
Edited 2006-09-07 09:01
History tells a different story as anybody who upgraded from win98 to win2k could testify.
How is this a “public” download if you have to be a member of the preview programme to download it?
Try clicking the text “is now available” in the news story and you will find out! I just clicked it and didn’t even have to register at all. I’m downloading the dvd .iso file now. It’s definitely a publicly available download.
Yea, the download is available, however you wont have a valid key unless your part of the preview program, wich is closed. And wont be opened back up for a few more weeks
however you wont have a valid key unless your part of the preview program,
The former release was publicly available and its key should be used.
Yes, but what if you didn’t get a key the last time around. I think that is the point everyone is trying to make.
Have fun installing it without a product key, which they aren’t issuing to new people at the moment, which was the original posters point.
I love Microsoft, they do some things well. Microsoft Customer Program has done more to get Vista/IE7 onto peoples computers than anything else.
I predict in a couple of months Microsoft kicking a stink about those “naked” computers(sic) again.
Its clear from all articles, and the *date* that Microsoft is cutting it fine, and the person in charge of saying thats good enough, will be losing their hair.
I want to see an article that gives a nice list in easy to understand what is wrong with Vista, in order of show stopper to Bug but quick fix. Something other than Upgrading from XP sucks, its slow or expensive. Something a little more solid.
See Paul Thurrott’s notes on the new “Wizard” interface for a start.
Yes, I know the man is generally an idiot, but this time he’s got a real point.
Well of course Vista isn’t ready. If it were, Microsoft would be selling it already.
For my testbed; the laptop.
So far no version of Vista has fared well on it. It’s not an outlandish laptop (Toshiba Satellite A20) without crazy hardware, yet most things have been broken with every install, including completely unusable crash-explorer-every-time-you-move breaks.
I hope this one fares better.
I haven’t tried my heavy-weight software on Vista yet, but as of the pre-RC1, three things bugged me just a wee bit:
1. After I install Divx, Explorer crashes the first time I open a folder with movies in it.
2. Video playback is often choppy.
3. UAC is extremely annoying.
Okay. Off to install RC1 for x64.
I found that WMP in Vista is still a bit buggy, but VLC runs great and I have had no problems with any DivX files since.
*** This is for pre-RC1 vista, I haven’t had time to use RC1 yet ***
Anyone got this working in Parallels on a Mac?
I downloaded the ISO and tested it. Seems like Vista still cant boot on it. I get the error about the machine using EFI, not BIOS (even with the latest beta of Parallels). Guess Parallels just need to make a bootcamp-esque fix.:)