Vista: Burn!
I've neither loved nor hated my Vista experience. It's got lots of GIFWOM (Gratuitous Interface Fluff/Waste of MIPS*), but on the whole it hasn't radically changed my computer-using experience.
Today has been extremely frustrating, though. We're participating in Microsoft's Server 2008 Early Adopter Program, and we're excited to get the RC0 of Server 2008 installed on some of our machines for testing.
They haven't released a VHD yet, though, so we're stuck with downloading a 2.6GB ISO file, burning it to DVD, then installing from DVD. Fine.
However, my machine (a Compaq nc8430), my OS (Vista Business), my DVD drive (an "HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-4084N ATA Device), and Roxio 9 all seemed to get in an enormous fight. And when they fight, I lose.
Burns got 95%, then stopped. Burns got 1 sector in, then stopped. The drive stopped ejecting. Roxio wouldn't shut down for any reason.
After several attempts and several reboots, I got pretty frustrated. A little Googling Live Searching brought me to this post from Rick Hallihan.
I downloaded the Windows Resource kit, and had at my disposal a command line DVD burner.dvdburn.exe d: en_windows_server_2008_rc0_enterprise_datacenter_standard_x64_dvd.iso was all it took. A few minutes later, I was installing.
If it's this easy on the command line, why is it so hard through a GUI?
*credit for the term GIFWOM goes to my old friend and colleague Jeff Weidner (and if you want to remember what the internet was like in 1997 and people were first putting up "home pages," I highly recommend that you click on that link!
Updated 2007-11-08: added a link to the WRK.
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