In the light of Microsoft’s release of Windows Vista’s first Service Pack, I was inspired to finally format my laptop’s hard drive. I had been using it non-stop since September. My laptop, a Dell XPS M1710, thankfully shipped with a Vista DVD, as opposed to the usual ‘recovery partition’. I popped in the disc and rebooted.

A few dialog boxes in, right before I was able to select a partition for Windows to inhabit, Setup exclaimed with great fanfare:

Windows installation encountered an unexpected error. Verify that the installation sources are accessible, and restart the installation. Error code: 0xE0000100

And.. That’s it. No Vista for me, I reckoned. In search of solutions (of which I found none), I ended up doing some research on this glitch in the Windows Vista installation process. It turns out this exception doesn’t pop up very often due to its extensive prerequisite conditions (taken from Microsoft’s Knowledge Base article):

Install media is based on an image the manufacturer created.
The manufacturer used the System Preparation tool (Sysprep) to create this image.
The hard drive is partitioned into 2 or more partitions.
The Windows partition is larger than 40 GB.
The size of the partition is a multiple of 4 GB.

Admittedly, these are a lot of prerequisites, which explains why so few on the Internet have encountered it, let alone found a solution. Nonetheless, many people buy pre-manufactured computers, especially in the realm of laptops, so the vector for this issue is larger than you think.

Microsoft’s bogus fix

Here’s the funny part.

Microsoft proposes the following solution: a hotfix to the DVD image. Great, but the catch here is that normal consumers are incapable of making such modifications to the image. Only official system builders, who own of the appropriate software - acquired from Microsoft, through their licensing program - are able to make these alterations.

This basically translates into: tough luck. You’re pretty much left in the cold with this largely undocumented issue.
It turns out, though, that Microsoft isn’t entirely to blame.

P.S.: In case you’re interested, this hotfix has to be requested from Microsoft through a special form. Just for the heck of it, I made an attempt at getting my hands on it. Of course, my request got denied fairly rapidly.

Solution

After having mucked around for a couple of hours, I came to the conclusion that Dell’s custom MediaDirect partition (their pathetic attempt at media center software) was invoking this. It somehow managed to corrupt the partition table, rendering Setup incapable of reading it.

Fortunately, there are things you can do to solve this. First off, check whether your computer/laptop is still eligible for warranty. If so, you can take a chance at trying to repartition the drive (this is what I did):

• If you still have access to a working version of Vista, be sure to try out Windows’ own partition manager and remove the conflicting partition. I don’t guarantee this’ll work, but it’s worth a shot, since it can be done while Windows is running. At this point, make sure you have BACK-UPS.
  Start > Control Panel > System and Maintenance > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > Disk Management (left pane)
• In case you don’t have access to Windows, try a third-party partitioning app. A great open-source one is GParted. This is a 50 Meg live-cd that can be downloaded for free. Again, this may not work and you may need to try a whole slew of other software.

You can also (try to) request a new install DVD from your manufacturer. Most are hesitant to this, though, so be prepared. They’re most likely going to charge you an unreasonable amount of money or brush you off entirely.

If all else fails, you could also try to request a new hard drive to replace the defective one.

And meanwhile?

If you’re unlucky and you have to wait for a new install disc or hard drive, you might still be able to use your computer in the meantime. Without Windows. You could try to install a flavor of Linux. It’s free and not by any means perfect (like Windows), but it gets the job done fine. I’d suggest you try Ubuntu Linux, the most popular Linux distribution of this time. It’s newbie-friendly and loaded up with a lot of stuff to get you going. You may like it. And in case you run into trouble, there’s a great community waiting to save your ass, any time of day/night.

If you’re one of the lucky ones to have encountered this error, I’m curious to hear from you!

In this inter-connected world it’s sometimes hard to keep track of time — literally. With international communication spanning across the entire globe, you’re able to talk to people you’d probably never encountered without it. The only culprit to real-time communication is the differing time zones, though. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to keep track of multiple zones at the same time?

In Vista, there are at least two ways of incorporating this.
The first one is to use the Windows Sidebar. There’s a variety of gadgets available, amongst them various clocks. You’re not limited to one clock! Place as many as you are able to deal with on a day-to-day basis. The only prerequisite here is that you must be a Windows Sidebar user (and some resources to spare, perhaps). It does take up some screen real-estate, so it might not be suitable for normal aspect monitors (4:3 — as opposed to 16:9).

For those who don’t share an affinity with the sidebar, there’s also a built-in option that integrates with the system clock. Make the system clock visible by clicking on the the clock in the taskbar. Then, select the "Change date and time settings" link. Choose the "Additional Clocks" tab and voilà. Windows allows you to add two auxiliary timezones alongside . They’ll be displayed next to your local time when you click on the clock.

As a power user I greatly value every effort to simplify common tasks like file operations and other every day stuff. Copying and moving files/folder is one of those things and Windows XP used to do a great job at this with its dynamic ‘File and Folder Tasks’ side-pane. I got used to the fact that these shortcuts appropriately adapt to whichever file type is under your cursor and presents you with a list accordingly. Until…

The new Explorer Shell in Vista incorporated a lesser dynamic sidebar that limits your options to well-known shell destinations like Documents, Music and Searches. The horizontal blue-greenish bar that runs across the window allows for some dynamic behavior, yet it’s limited to only opening stuff with certain applications.

Out of the box, there’s not much you can tag on outside of your own Favorite Links. Which, in retrospect, could come in handy.

1. Open up an Explorer Window, right click on some empty space and select ‘Open Favorite Links Folder’
2. Add new links by right clicking in an empty spot and selecting New > Shortcut
    
3. Follow the Wizard and presto!
   

The shortcut be anything, not just folders.

If you’re set in your ways, like me and many others, it might bug you that windows and applications seemingly always return to their default position and size after having closed them. Windows XP used to do a great job at this and Vista certainly didn’t lose this capability, although it might seem that way sometimes.

A quick fix:

• In an Explorer Window, make sure you have Vista remember Window Settings:
  
• Select ‘Remember each folder’s view settings’ in the ‘View’ tab:
  

Sometimes Vista still forgets the position.
In that case press and hold CTRL while clicking the Close-button and all should be well again.

You can select multiple files and folders in different ways. Dragging a box around them with your mouse is one of them. Selecting one and using the arrow keys in conjunction with SHIFT is another. Clicking and dragging with a touchpad hasn’t proven handy and needs some precise fingerwork. There’s a way to make it easier if you’re stuck with a trackpad or just prefer handy clickitry.

Windows Vista has the option to make selections using checkboxes familiar from webpages alike. This feature isn’t enabled by default, but is reachable in just 2 steps. Here’s how to:

• Open an Explorer Window, it doesn’t matter which, and click through
  Organize > Folder and Search Options
  
• Click the View-tab and look for
  ‘Use check boxes to select items’
  
• That’s it!
  

Sometimes dragging and dropping is just more fun. When you do this, usually the file usually gets copied or moved depending on the location of the file and its destination. What many don’t know is that you can toggle between copying and moving by pressing CTRL during the drag. Try it out!