Inspired by Microsoft's public release of Windows Vista Beta 2, I decided to install it on on my old Hewett Packard Pavilion 522n. Technically, the 522n fails to meet Vista's minimum requirements. You can read its specifications; to install Vista, you need at least 512 MB of memory; the 522n only has 256 MB, and some of that is used by the on-board video (so do not even think about running Aero).
The lack of memory might have been the cause of the several strange error dialogs that I receive while trying to install Windows Vista after booting from the DVD. The screenshot to the right displays an error dialog that appeared when I attempted to click on the "System Recovery Options" button displayed in the lower left hand corner of the screen. Its completely useless text:The exception unknown software exception (0xe0000100) occurred in the application at location 0x76f73f63.
Which application? What kind of exception? Why? None of these questions are answered. Even worse, once I clicked "OK," the computer rebooted.
If you are wondering why the colors on all of these screenshots look so washed out, the installation screen was in 4 bit color, because graphics drivers for the motherboard's video adapter were not on the Vista CD.
My favorite error dialog from the installation would have to be the "empty" error dialog, seen to the left. After trying to use the mouse cursor to move this dialog, it gave me a bit more information, although not enough to explain what was wrong. As you can see in the screenshot to the right, the dialog would probably have been more helpful if it was a bit bigger. Since there is no way to resize the error dialog, though, it is impossible to know what the error message was and why it refused to appear until the dialog was clicked with the mouse.
Some research with Google suggested that the error dialog that ultimately prevented me from installing Windows Vista while booting from DVD was due to the computer's lack of memory, although it initially made me suspect that my DVD was somehow corrupt. Its full text is below.The file WinSetup.dll could not be loaded or is corrupt. Setup cannot continue. Error code is [1114]
At this point, I assumed that Windows Vista was not going to install. As a last-ditch effort, I decided to boot into Windows XP (already installed on the computer) and install from there. Running the installation from within Windows was surprisingly easy. There were no strange error dialogs. The only thing I can say about it was that the installation was very slow, lasting over an hour. Considering the specifications of my test machine, I do not seriously think that I have the right to complain.
Once Vista had finished installing, I was able to install video drivers in order to get proper color. Although the computer's 1.8 Ghz Celeron (Willamette; ridiculously slow) processor technically surpasses the minimum requirements, I found that it was the main bottleneck on the system, not the 256 MB of memory. Go figure.
# At 10:26 on June 23, 2006, Atul Varaskar wrote:
got a link to this post on google yeps was trying to install vista on 256mb ram got the error "The file WinSetup.dll could not be loaded or is corrupt. Setup cannot continue. Error code is [1114]" i thought my dvd was corrupt so as usual googled it and found out that error was due to less Ram as postedby you too hehehe this world is sure cruel to us low end pc owners lol :P
# At 23:06 on June 25, 2006, BananaAcid wrote:
The specific setup error 0xe0000100 at program location 0x77493f63 means:
error enumerationg hard drives. (setup could not collect and validate the harddrives +information)
usually it is: any of the HD has a faulty/broken MBR ( masterboot record ) -> use partitionmagic's "fdisk /x" to delete all displayed partitions if winXP's bootCD-repairconsole command:"fixmbr" option does not work
you won't probably realize if it is not your boot HD. use partitionmagic to see if a #104 error is displayed.
# At 12:44 on June 27, 2006, Nightfire wrote:
I've successfully installed Vista on 256 MB of RAM (Beta 2) just to see what it would do. With 256 MB of SDRAM and a 128 MB GeForce FX 5200, and an Athlon 1700+, it runs at 1024x768 and Aero with minimal slowdown. I don't want to turn it down to 800x600. For regular tasks such as e-mail etc. and not for Media Center (which I run at only 1024x768), then I run it at 1600x1200 (still with Aero), so it is possible to manage Vista with only 256 MB of RAM. I have yet to test it on an Athlon MP 2200+ with 792(?) MB of DDR, but it should be ALOT better.
~Nightfire
# At 19:10 on June 30, 2006, haris wrote:
but how did ya manage to install it on 256 mb ram cuz i get an error msg sayin dat my memory is lower than stated by ms!
# At 23:53 on June 30, 2006, Martey wrote:
If you were trying to boot off of the Vista DVD, it might be worth running the installation program from Windows.
Also, note that some computers' on-board video use shared video memory which could decrease the amount of RAM available to less than 256 MB.
# At 17:44 on July 21, 2006, andy wrote:
can you do an install from Bart PE / Win PE perhaps ??
# At 17:55 on July 21, 2006, Martey wrote:
Maybe. I have never used WinPE, but I know that BartPE can be difficult to use if the program you are trying to run relies on a part of Windows that you have failed to include on the CD. I would not recommend it if you were low on memory, since BartPE would be using a substantial part of it to run other programs and as a ramdisk.
# At 7:00 on August 1, 2006, Andrew Washington wrote:
Thanks for this post, I pulled an old Acer Veriton 5100 (PIII 933) out of storage and added three 256MB chips from my box of old memory and fired this up and got the same message.
After reading here that the error is generated by lack of memory I inspected the PC closer and although the BIOS Setup clocked 3x 256MB chips the summary screen only showed 256MB total RAM.
I mixed and matched the memory I had and found 2x 256MB PC133 CL=2 chips and away I went so just a warning to those IT Managers like me utilising old bits of kit!
PS. This page shows an unnamed field, a mail field and an e-mail field using IE7 Beta3, had to goto a PC with IE6 to post.
# At 23:22 on December 14, 2007, Joshua wrote:
i Just installed Windows Vista Ultimate and it took 40 mins to fully install and i thought my grapics card was not compatible with vista but it actually worked for me i have 1.00 GB of ram and NVIDIA 6150 LE Grapics and i don't understand that ur screen is in 16 color mode which was the setting of low ram and low grapics. Microsoft Removed the 2,16,64 colors in 2001 so i dont understand y it's like that