The Vista/Longhorn Network is simply two PC's running Windows Vista Ultimate Edition Beta 2 Build 5384 and Longhorn Server 2007 Enterprise Beta Build 5384 (GUI). With all of the data moved and isolated I was able to start the entire process with a clean slate hitting reset or pulling the plug and starting again without having to concern myself about protecting data. I would strongly suggest that you install Vista on a separate hard drive to that of your primary operating system so you can start-up and shutdown either operating system disconnecting the hard drive that is not in use from the power and SATA/IDE cable eliminating the chance of cross contaminating either hard drive from any un-foreseen issues that may arise as we are still talking about Beta software and things do go wrong always at the most in inopportune moments.

I will get out the screenshots for installing Vista when I run through how to setup Vista in a Virtual Machine using Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2 and VMWare Server, once I get them installed myself and can then bring my virtual machines 'back up online' that I have such as a WSUS server for keeping local copies of Microsoft/Windows Update on the network and a XP Visual Studio Development Machine that I write and play with code in.

With 4 clean systems sitting on the benches all firing and ready to go (the 4th machine is of a mate of mine who quite happily came over to see how Vista would go on his machine). We fired up the first two boxes with the Vista Boot DVD entered the Registration keys and clicked 'Advanced' at the disk configuration and removed any partitions that were on the currently installed drives, created the partitions and formatted them in the 'advanced' section more as integrity checking our install process rather than just clicking install which was all we did next and away they went, reboot, reboot, enter your username, region, locale, time zone and your desktop opens up and you are done. I lost the install race though I won a couple of other comparisons later and with the overall second place it starts making me contemplete that 'Virtualization Enabled CPU' purchase again that I have started to ponder upon in the forum and that just blows the budget straight of the bat at the thought of what I would want to add to that CPU, Dual Raptors RAID Boot Array, SLI 512MB Graphics... It aint gonna happen for a while yet.....

First step after you boot is too get Windows Update up and running so you can get your device driver updates that are 'designed' for Vista, I am yet to use a single driver that came on CD with my hardware, all my device drivers are either supplied with the Vista ISO/DVD or are installed during the first Windows Update, these are primarily updated display drivers, updated audio device drivers and TV card drivers.

In a 'future' post I will go through some of the advanced networking configuration I am using that shows of some of the new ways that two Vista PC's networked together can do things together. Network Discovery, Network Maps, Network Diagnosis, Windows Media Player 11 Playlist sharing, Media Centre Recorded TV sharing, Photo Sharing and what ever else may turn up as I run thought it all and we may have to just skip the PC2PC Syncing though. For now if you chnage your network card to a configuration that is in the same C-Class address space(Eg IP Range 192.168.1.1, 192.168.1.2, 192.168.1.3 etc) as your current network and your IP address for your Gateway and ISP DNS servers that should get you up and running with your existing broadband connection to head over to Windows Update, if you use DHCP from your Modem/Router you should be right to go straight away.

As I am running Windows Vista without Anti-Virus protection, as I have found that both the Trend Micro and Computer Associates Beta AV packages put too high an overhead on my system so I am going without at the moment. I am yet to try the offering from McAfee as all three of these beta products were only released last week and in the same term again "It is beta software!". Just using Windows Defender and Windows Firewall for protection along with my internet gateway protection I feel I am quite safe until someone writes a virus that can take down Vista which no doubt many of the unfavourable of society will be hatching ideas to try and succeed with this, though the first 3 month impression is it will be a tough call as security is excellent from what I have used thus far and only time will tell and we can only cross our fingers and hope that Microsoft have now got the pre-internet computer and post-internet computers of today worked out properly.

In the next few days some of the tasks that I need to perform are a Windows backup to DVD of my data from a USB HDD device to DVD using the new Windows Backup that fully supports 'Shadow Copy' and can backup to a network connection, USB device CD or DVD including spanning across multiple DVD's and from as far as I can tell if you have 500GB to backup best you get down and grab 150 blank DVD's and limber up the arm muscles for a long and gruelling haul of DVD disk swapping.

When I do the backup I will be doing screen shots so that you can follow along visually and as a picture tells a thousand words I will be able to write a little less on things that can be explained easier by looking at a screenshot.

Windows Update

Windows Update - Updating

Windows Update History

My Network

My Network Map

Vista now includes independant application volume control which is one of those little things that gives control back to the user of what comes blearing out of the speakers.