Installing Vista RTM and troubleshooting multiple-monitor issues
Today I spent my time between meetings and setting up a machine to run 64-bit Vista (which should become my main development machine once I get everything installed).
Installation began very smoothly. I didn't want to bother burning a DVD so I copied the files locally (to the 2nd hard drive), booted from a Windows PE CD, ran the installation program, selected to format the hard drive (I was running a 32-bit version of the OS previously so I had to do a clean install anyway) and let the installation proceed.
It finished copying, uncompressing, doing some configuration, rebooted, the startup screen came up and then... nothing! The screen was blank (actually the monitor went into power saving mode). In the past, I have had good success with the usual setup recovery (power off, power on and let setup detect what went wrong and then continue), but I tried it a couple of times and it didn't help this time. Safe mode wasn't useful either (I could get to a screen but I couldn't do anything because setup hadn't completed). It looked like a video driver problem, somehow the rest of the installation seemed fine but it just couldn't output to the monitor. I contacted helpdesk to see if there was a known issue but no luck.
Thinking about what could be confusing to the video driver, I decided to unplug the second monitor. I rebooted and that was it! The welcome screen came up normally, I could configure a user account, log in, plug back in the second monitor, configure it and everything was fine.
I know that we are lucky to run multiple monitors and it is not a configuration that majority of users will have however, if you're having installation problems and have a multi-monitor setup, try unplugging one of them, it may help you get past the problem.
I felt that this problem is a good example of a classic chicken-and-egg problem with setup programs: at install time some configuration items are not yet ready and related features cannot work as expected. In this case the driver was probably trying to determine which output was primary and which one was secondary but it often happens with other seemingly simple things. All those support libraries and frameworks that are extensively used at program runtime are not that simple to use from setup routines, because at the beginning they have not been configured yet.
Regardless of this issue with multi-monitor setups, I have thought for a long time that the Windows Setup was an impressive piece of engineering. I'm not just referring to the software but also to all the work "behind the scenes" with the hardware vendors. It is not easy to succeed in detecting and configuring all the huge variety of hardware as it does. The Vista installer may seem deceptively simple to many people but system-level software that is "invisible" (as in "it just works") can actually be a sign of excellence :)