Well, I now have an all-Microsoft system running after doing a clean install of Vista Ultimate, with the new Live Care protection package, and Microsoft Office Professional.

The Vista install took two and a half hours, and neatly packaged my previous setup into an 11.6Gbyte folder marked Old Windows, which I propose to move off the disk very soon. One aspect that does not seem to have improved since the beta install process was that the screen repeatedly went blank or froze for minutes on end with no reassuring messages.

I installed Live Care next because Microsoft has sent me a trial package and I wanted virus protection before going loading Office. I opted for an instant tune up and Live Care defragged the hard disk, but I stopped its virus scan after the system spent what seemed like a couple of hours digging in the Old Windows folder.

During this time the progress bar did not shift from zero, so whether the scan had frozen or was taking its time I have no idea. I reckon the chances of an infection in the old files were slim anyway.

Then I found  Vista could not see my home network, which had one XP machine live. When I tried the connect wizard, it kept telling me no wireless devices were attached, which was no help at all. XP registered the Vista machine as a workgroup but said I could not contact it.

This morning I did a trawl on the web and found a part-answer. I had to download something called a Link Layer Topology Discovery (LLTD) module from the Microsoft site - see here.

Vista could then see my XP machine and XP could see the workgroup but still neither could contact the other. (Blog updated here) The answer, as usual, is obvious after I have trawled through newsgroups, Vista help and a Microsoft support page. The default workgroup name in Vista is WORKGROUP, not a good choice because in my irritation I took this to be a description rather than a name - and so have others, judging by posting in the newsgroups. So by changing this name to that of my home network, everything fell into place.

Why the Vista wizards, which had impressed me in the betas, could not have sussed this out and warned me I have no idea. It is clearly going to be a very common problem, so be warned. Incidentally Microsoft insists on validating your machine before you can download the LLTD code.

The Office install was problem-free except when I was asked to register, when Vista flagged the Microsoft site as untrustworthy (see screen shot left). Maybe all those anti-trust suits have been getting to the company...