As I write this on my notebook at 11AM Sunday morning, I’m watching my the black screen of my Dell 9200 Desktop as it attempts a clean install of Windows Vista Business.

I started to upgrade from XP on Friday at 6PM using the Upgrade Assistant disk supplied to me by Dell along with the Vista upgrade also supplied by Dell. I’d been waiting since late November to receive these disks. And although I was impatient to upgrade, I was happy to wait two months after the consumer release of Vista in the hope that Dell would have matched all the drivers to my system and I would have a smooth upgrade.

But it didn’t work out that way. So, 41 hours after starting the upgrade and three support calls to Dell, here I am, doing a clean install.

This is not a “Dell Hell” rant. The system seemed to work OK upon first being upgraded. At least until I shut it down and then tried to start up again. Actually, the Dell support centre people were great. They helped me work through all possible problems that might result from a Dell-installed driver before opting for the last resort – a clean install.

It just appears to me that Microsoft released software that simply wasn’t ready for prime time. One of the drivers on the software I had installed on XP – Adobe Acrobat 8; Adobe Phososhop Elements 5; Adobe Premiere Elements 5; Mozilla Firefox; iTunes; Canon ip6700D printer; Linksys-G Broadband router; iomega USB Hard disk drive – must have conflicted with Vista. And that’s it. Two days and I’m back to square one. A clean install and adding the peripherals and software one at a time.

So, if you’re planning to upgrade to Vista. Beware! Beware!

UPDATE: Chip Griffin emailed me to tell me that he has worked through similar problems. Only not with an Upgrade, but with OEM Vista from Dell.