I've just installed the Vista Beta (brilliant idea - it did fail, freak out, and leave me computerless for days... but I tried again). It's up and running fine now, although I'm having two problems, as follows:
1: On boot, I get a message asking whether I want to load an 'earlier version of Windows' or just windows. The second option gives me Vista, the first gives me an error message. When I used the windows memory diagnostics tool, it reported problems, but gave me no real advice on fixing it. I'm not sure if that's related, but I only had the chance to scan because of the initial problem.
The Vista beta is currently installed on one of two partitions (I would've liked to keep it more isolated, but it's a 200gig drive so that would've been ..silly). I don't have any other OSs installed, I wiped that partition clean for Vista.
2: My video card (ATI Radeon 9250) has no Vista compatible drivers available. I've noticed a reduction in the quality of my screen image, and this is bothering me, but I don't know whether it's ultimately a real problem. I'm not even sure what the drivers do, exactly, because I'm not a gamer and I've never really looked into it. I just put the drivers in because I assume I should have them Vista is also telling me that my ATI stuff, which Vista actually installed, is slowing down my startup, which indeed is horribly slow.
I know that's a lot to read in one go, so my apologies, but please help?! O_o Some general advice would be fantastic.