Another of the ‘10 Things’ that the Windows Vista Team Blog is covering. This one is the Volume Mixer, which allows you to selectively change the volume on certain programs and features in Vista. Keep reading →

On a Windows Vista-based computer, the Volume slider and the Balance sliders may unexpectedly display different numeric values. For example, the Balance sliders may all display a level of 23, even though the Volume slider displays a level of 24.

Note: You can find these sliders in the Sound item in Control Panel.

When you try to install Windows Vista, you may receive the following error message:

Windows is unable to find a system volume which meets its criteria for installation.

You experience this symptom if the following conditions are true:

• In the BIOS, a universal serial bus (USB) removable device is set as the start device, or the USB removable device is set to a higher priority than the first hard disk drive in the start order.
• You attach a non-bootable USB device to a USB port before you start the computer.
• You try to install Windows Vista from DVD installation media.

When you open Volume Mixer in Windows Vista, the volume slider may appear with a black background.

Consider the following scenario. You restore a computer by using the Windows Complete PC Restore program in Windows Vista. You use the Format and repartition disks option. In this scenario, all dynamic disk volumes are removed and then re-created. This behavior occurs even if the dynamic disk volumes are not included in the restore process.

Consider the following scenario. You run the List Volume command in the Diskpart.exe command-line utility to display all the volumes on a Microsoft Windows-based computer. (This command also displays the drive letters that correspond to these volumes.) Then, you exit the Diskpart.exe utility. Next, you restart the Diskpart.exe utility, and then you run the List Volume command again to display all the volumes on the computer.

In this scenario, the volume-numbering scheme that appears in the Volume ### column the first time that you run the List Volume command may not match the volume-numbering scheme from the second time that you run the command. This behavior may cause problems if you rely on Diskpart.exe volume-numbering when you process scripts.

Note: On a Microsoft Windows Server 2003-based computer, you may first notice this behavior after you upgrade from Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to Windows Server 2003 Service Pack (SP2). This behavior may also occur after you install the 923076 hotfix. Windows Server 2003 SP2 and the 923076 hotfix both install a newer version of the Diskpart.exe utility.

When you adjust the Volume slider or the Balance slider in the Sound item in Control Panel in Windows Vista, the level setting may change slightly after you click OK. The exact setting for the Volume slider or for the Balance slider is not retained.

For example, the level setting may change slightly in the following scenario:

• You open the Sound item in Control Panel, you select a device on the Playback tab, and then you click Properties.
• You click the Levels tab, and then you adjust the Volume slider level or the Balance slider level.
• You click OK, and then you reopen the dialog box.

Note: This issue may be easier to detect if you switch to decibel (dB) view. To do this, right-click the value box that shows the current level, and then click decibels.

When you try to install Windows Vista, you experience the following symptoms:

• In the Windows Vista installation program, you receive the following error message at the bottom of the Where do you want to install Windows? dialog box:
  

  This computer’s hardware may not support booting to this disk. Ensure that the disk’s controller is enabled in the computer’s BIOS menu.

  If you click a different drive in the Name list, the error message remains.

• If you click Next, you receive the following error message at the bottom of the Where do you want to install Windows? dialog box:
  

  Windows is unable to find a system volume that meets its criteria for installation.

Therefore, you cannot install Windows Vista.

This problem occurs if the following conditions are true:

• The computer contains multiple RAW hard disks.
• The hard disks are all the same size.

After you try to complete a full format of a hard disk or a removable media in Windows Vista, the full format is not completed. When you try to access the hard disk or the removable media, neither can be accessed. The hard disk or the removable media is a RAW volume.

Note: A RAW volume is a volume that has never been formatted and does not contain a file system. Examples of file systems are FAT, FAT32, and NTFS. Typically, programs that do not require a file system write to a RAW volume. These programs perform direct I/O operations to the RAW volume.

In Windows Vista, there is no option to control the volume when you click to select the Hear text on screen read aloud (Narrator) check box in the Ease of Access dialog box.

Additionally, internal speaker controls may not change the narrator volume level. These controls include volume controls on a multimedia keyboard and Fn keys and volume knobs on a portable computer.