Upgrading from Windows 2000/XP to Windows Vista is not a five minute process. Plan to spend up to a few hours to perform the upgrade process, and even more if you have to perform tasks noted by the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.

The Windows Vista upgrade will reboot your computer several times. Just when you think it's finished, other tasks will ensue including checking your computer's performance, extracting files, etc.

While you may be able to step away for a while during the upgrade, you will have to answer a few questions from time to time. Keep checking back every few minutes.

A side note: on one Windows XP Media Center edition machine that I upgraded to Windows Vista, the performance evaluation tool seemingly crashed the upgrade. After being stuck in this process for a half an hour it finally stated that the upgrade couldn't continue. Luckily, clicking "OK" on the dialog box and rebooting the machine caused no problems and Windows Vista did function (although the performance evaluation tool still fails to work). However, this is another reason you need to check back on the upgrade every few minutes to ensure it is working smoothly.

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