Frankly, if you lost anything, I have no sympathy for you. It was
idiotic to do this without an image backup, and an image backup would
have restored EVERYTHING to EXACTLY the way it was before you started.

Beyond that, I don't think that your story will prove to be typical. I
think that most people will get through the upgrade without extreme
difficulty. Now as to whether, having made the leap from XP to Vista,
they are happy, well, that's another matter, and quite a few may elect
to go back to XP. Partly, that will reflect Vista's strengths and
weaknesses, and partly it may be the normal aversion to anything that's
different.


Ray wrote:
> I got a new HP Pavilion dv6000us laptop for Christmas with a free upgrade to
> Vista premium.
>
> The other day the upgrade disc came, and it seemed easy enough to install.
> As urged, I made one of those "All-in-One" recovery disc sets -- just in
> case.
>
> I was no more than three or four steps into the install before things
> started to go haywire. I finally got Vista installed, but all my files were
> lost. And in addition, it allowed me no more than 1040 by 768 screen
> resolution.
>
> So I used the recovery discs to go back to XP. I could only get a clean new
> reinstall -- all my files were lost.
>
> Just a cautionary note. If you want Vista, buy a machine with it already
> installed.
>
>