Stupid Windows 7 Install

During the Christmas break I bought Windows 7 upgrade for Jan's Dell Vostro 1400. This laptop came with Vista Home Basic, and I have never liked it, and prefer Windows XP. One of the annoying thing is that when you close the lid, open it sometimes later, the last desktop would pop up real fast, and then it goes blank dark for at least 30 seconds, before flashing back, goes blank again for a couple of seconds, then finally became usable again. As in XP though, you can't just continue surfing until the wireless cared re-establish iternet connection to the local network. With the MacBook, as soon as open the screen back up, within 5 seconds or so the system is ready to use. But I digress.

Today, I attempted to do a clean install without destroying the data. The instruction says to boot from the DVD and wait for the setup prompt. Well, guess what, it says I can't do it. To do that I need to boot back to the old Vista and start the setup from there and select upgrade.

I dutifully did that, the disk churned for a while, and for about 1 minutes it shows a windows that says copying files, and then it says "no can do". The laptop needs a newer BIOS version. Unfortunatey, somehow in the process, it got the wifi card confused and altough it was able to connect to my network, it cannot get access to the internet (Signal strength near 100%). I had to disable the card, re-enable it, and goes thru this cycle 4-5 times before it finally connected. I then downloaded and install the new BIOS firmware (version A09) which of course require a reboot.

I started the upgrade again, and after another 15 minutes, another error pops up saying that now I need to get Vista upgraded to SP1. What the heck? I don't care about SP1. I just want to get to Windows 7.

Having paid the money to go to Windows 7, I am now forced to go on, so as I type this, I am now waiting for the Vista SP1 to finish installing. The prompt says, it will take several reboots before it finishes.

I'd be curious what else it wants once I get past this hurdle. Elapsed time so far: 3 hours.