Vista Arrives Tonight: Find Drivers, Upgrade Warnings

In a matter of hours, Vista will officially be upon us, after a six-year wait. Those of you planning to upgrade an existing PC have my best wishes for a positive experience, but if you're planning on running the upgrade, keep a couple of issues in mind before you put that DVD in the drive.

First, and most importantly, make your backups. Create multiple backups if you can, because you never know what could happen.

Second, get your drivers ready before you install. Burn them all to a disc for future use. If searching the web manually or digging around in those awful vendor websites doesn't really float your boat, check out RadarSync, which is offering a free, easy-to-browse clearinghouse for Vista drivers.

Also on the upgrade front, news has just arrived that Microsoft has changed the way that upgrade DVDs (available at a significant discount to standard versions) can be used. Namely, you have to have an older version of Windows (XP or 2000) already on the machine before installing. This is a change from the prior policy which let you install on an OS-free system with an upgrade disc if you still had your old Windows disc for Vista to check during a verification process. In other words: You can't wipe your drive clean (which most people, including myself) recommend you do when you install Vista from an upgrade disc.

Finally, want to know if your software will work on Vista? Microsoft hasn't announced a compatibility list, but the Vista Compatibility Wiki (also covered here) probably has you covered. Check it out, and good luck everyone.