Install times for Vista RC2 (from DVD)

Last week Vista RC2 (build 5744) was released. This week I spent some time testing RC2. One interesting aspect to testing Vista is seeing the different installation times. With RC2 I was seeing sub 20 minute installs from DVD, so I did some more thorough testing with RC2. The details of those tests are shown below. The numbers below each test indicate the time in minutes

Test #1
HP NC8000 laptop (Built-in DVD reader; 5400RPM disk; Pentium-M 1.7)
Default install of Vista Ultimate from DVD+R media (fully automated with autounattend.xml on a USB stick)
00 - Boot
04 - Expanding files (0%) ...
14 - Expanding files (75%) ...
29 - Installing updates
29 - First reboot
23 - Completing installation
28 - Second reboot
31 - Windows checks performance
32 - First logon prompt

Summary: 32 minutes for a 2.5 year old laptop isn't bad

Test #2
HP NC8000 laptop (Built-in DVD reader; 5400RPM disk; Pentium-M 1.7)
Custom Vista Ultimate image from DVD+R media (partially automated install with autounattend in the root of the DVD)
Image was created according to steps outlined in an earlier post to this blog.
Image includes Office 2007, VPC2007, and some other software
The core difference here is that the WIM is 3.42GB (versus a 2.40GB WIM on the default RC2 DVD)
00 - Boot
03 - Entered PID, formatted existing partition
08 - Expanding files (0%) ...
26 - Expanding files (19%) ...
28 - Expanding files (98%) ...
30 - First reboot
33 - Completing installation
37 - Completing installation
42 - Second reboot
44 - Create local admin, enter machine name
44 - Windows checks performance
47 - First logon prompt

Summary: This test shows that the size of the image is a key factor with installation times.

Test #3
Toshiba M5 laptop (Select bay DVD writer; 7200RPM SATA disk; Intel Duo)
DVD+R build of Ultimate (fully automated default install)
00 - Boot
03 - Expanding files (0%) ...
10 - Expanding files (78%) ...
14 - First reboot
17 - Completing installation ...
20 - Second reboot
22 - Windows checks performance
25 - First logon prompt

Summary: 25 minutes for a 6 month old laptop is pretty good. With the optimizations expected at RTM, this build time may be significantly faster.

What sort of times are you seeing for the installation of Vista? Post the results of your tests in comments to this blog.

Rob Campbell