I faced a unique problem yesterday, while installing RAID drivers for Windows Server 2003. I have setup RAID on many Linux distributions but this was my first chance with Windows Server.

As we know, the option is to press ‘F6′ as soon as the windows setup starts and we will get a prompt at later stage to provide RAID drivers. I tried that option and was surprised to find that it asked me to provide a floppy with drivers. I was rubbing my eyes to see if I have read it properly or not, but it was written clearly – No floppy drive found, please install floppy drive or F3 to quit or ESC to install OEM drivers. I thought ESC was the best option but that gives a BSOD in few minutes with error code 0x0000007B. Googling it I figured out a lot of people have faced similar issue.

To solve this problem, one needs to find a floppy drive and fit into the system. Then comes the challenging task of finding a floppy which works properly and does not ask to format every time you insert it in. If you are trying to install Intel Matrix Storage system, you can find the instructions here (PDF). After preparing floppy, it will give few more options and installation will continue in general fashion.

My question to Microsoft is – Why in a advanced server system would you put only floppy as a medium to install drivers? What purpose does that solve? Even if we say it was in 2002 you build that OS, why don’t give other medium to install or provide a patch that will fix the issue and we won’t face a problem in 2009. At what blood alcohol concentration level MS developers work?

source (XKCD – http://xkcd.com/323/) 

Experience

1. Really liked the installation, it was easy and fast. I would say fastest windows installation ever.
2. Looks very neat and clean. It is definitely a much improved version of vista. It does not have too many irritating pop up messages prompting us to say Yes every time.
3. Windows 7 taskbar (or as people call it superbar) is amazing. Very fast and handy, makes transition from one window to another very easy. Preview adds to the functionality. It also has a jump list option, by right clicking on any icon we get options like ‘close’, ‘pin to start menu’ etc.
4. USB detection of external devices and installation of drivers, very fast.
5. Network setup was a ‘piece of cake’ no efforts at all. I could set up ‘home groups’ and can share folders/music/pictures in single click. 
6. I could install other Vista compatible software (AIR, Firefox, Tweetdeck, Live Writer, Antivirus) and they worked perfectly.

Issues

1. I am unable to access my Vista partition. Winmatrix forum suggest this
   

   By default, Vista is C:. When you install Windows 7, it temporarily becomes "C:" when it is in use.
   So unless you can change the drive letter of C: you won’t be able to see it.

   I tried this approach, but could not change the Vista partition. Other approach was to disable UAC but could not figure out that too. 

2. Could not use SD / Sony pro cards directly on my laptop. (I suppose the drivers are not put in this beta versions)
3. While creating a user, we cannot skip the ‘hint’ input, that is very irritating.

Conclusion: This is the first try, but I loved the system. It is definitely what Vista should have been. I don’t mind if Microsoft would have taken some extra time to ship it, but I will definitely mind paying extra for this since I already bought Vista 6 months back.