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Vista to XP
donut - 23/10/08 at 10:22 AM

I'm sure there is a way to convert vist back to XP. any ieas fellas?


austin man - 23/10/08 at 10:27 AM

Though it was only me who thought Vista is Crap. My understanding is a format is required and a new install Can 2 operating systems be used ??


Jubal - 23/10/08 at 10:27 AM

Yeah, format disk...stick XP cd in and away you go.


graememk - 23/10/08 at 10:29 AM

not always that easy with sata disks.

google your pc first


chrism - 23/10/08 at 10:29 AM

According to Microsoft this is not possible and to go back to XP you will need to start from a fresh install.

Dont know if anyone has managed to unofficially to downgrade.


donut - 23/10/08 at 10:32 AM

I must have got it wrong then as i thought Vista had an option to downgrade itself!! I'm sure i read it somewhere!


RichardK - 23/10/08 at 10:48 AM

Think you are thinking about when some manuafacturers used to supply a downgrade cd.

Rich


austin man - 23/10/08 at 10:49 AM

a friend of mine has removed Vista home premium wit the fresh install method and now runs XP says its the best thing hes done laptop 3x faster initialy had a few problems with locating drivers as Laptop was new but since sourced them now he has a beast of a machine


tegwin - 23/10/08 at 10:53 AM

If you have a vista Proffesional(business) liscense you CAN install XP..

If you have vista home.. you cant...

You will need an xp CD...and do a fresh install...you need to wipe, and extra wipe the hard disk to remove the awful vista...


If you have issues getting it to work on a newish laptop with sata disks....just go into BIOS and make sure the hard disks are in compatibility mode or somesuch...

And if you have a recovery partition on your machine with vista in it...nuke that to hell as well before you isntall XP


trogdor - 23/10/08 at 10:57 AM

I really dont know what peeps problems are with Vista, I have been using it for awhile now on a cheap spec Dell laptop and its fine!

Much better than XP thats for sure, Its so much easier connecting to networks and things like that. XP looks clunky by comparison too.

I do admit it has it problems, the most annoying of which is that you have to disable UAC to unistall programs otherwise it says you do have permission, even if your on the admin account.

but honestly i wouldn't go back.

Also the other annoying thing is that quite a few programs don't work with Vista, the copy of goldmine we have doesn't. This is to be expected tho.


rayward - 23/10/08 at 11:04 AM

Just gone from Vista to XP on my new pc, just check all the drivers for your hardware are available for XP, as some of the bus drivers for my pc were only written fo vista!

Ray


Benzine - 23/10/08 at 11:09 AM

Trogdor ftw ^

I rebuilt my pc last week after I had used Vista for a year. I couldn't find my vista disk so I installed XP again. Jeeeeeez what a piece of crap. It was so buggy. Found my vista disk again though so it's all good. I don't understand vista being slow either, I can go from the boot up screen into windows (& everything is fully loaded) in about 15 seconds. In a year of using vista it's never once crashed/frozen. It pwns


XP is like a blind old incontinent sheep dog, he's had his day. Take him out to the barn with a double-barrelled shotgun and blow the mother away.

[Edited on 23/10/08 by Benzine]


donut - 23/10/08 at 11:30 AM

Cheers chaps, i'll pass the info on to me mate!!

Much appreciated.


britishtrident - 23/10/08 at 11:36 AM

Vista is usually fine if it has enough memory ie 4gb+ and most of the options turned off.

XP as an operating system is OK these days as long as you have at least 512mb and avoid SP3 and IE7

Best operating system MS ever produced was Windows 2000 with NT4 close behind but running either these days isn't practical because of driver issues.

IF you want a bullet proof operating system put either Mint Linux or PC Linux OS on.


David Jenkins - 23/10/08 at 11:36 AM

quote:
Originally posted by rayward
Just gone from Vista to XP on my new pc, just check all the drivers for your hardware are available for XP, as some of the bus drivers for my pc were only written fo vista!

Ray


Last weekend I had the opposite problem! I was looking for a cheap USB phone for use with Skype (around £10 - £15 in Maplins & some others on-line). Almost everyone I found had drivers for every Windoze OS apart from Vista.

If I could find a suitable USB phone that works with Ubuntu I wouldn't even bother with Windoze. I'm seriously considering trying this out... I've got all the bits I'd need.


flak monkey - 23/10/08 at 11:37 AM

Just installed vista ultimate 64 bit on my pc, but done a dual boot with XP Pro for progs like SW06 which just wont work on Vista.

As of yet I havent had any problems, infact I am quite liking Vista, and even in its infancy it doesnt seen half as buggy as XP after SP3!

David


Peteff - 23/10/08 at 12:25 PM

My only bug with Vista is my scanner which is incompatible but it is 5 years old and we have a 2000 pro which runs it fine.


graememk - 23/10/08 at 12:31 PM

quote:
Originally posted by flak monkey
Just installed vista ultimate 64 bit on my pc, but done a dual boot with XP Pro for progs like SW06 which just wont work on Vista.

As of yet I havent had any problems, infact I am quite liking Vista, and even in its infancy it doesnt seen half as buggy as XP after SP3!

David


arghghghgh just remembered why my sites been so busy its stilll on trade from your order lol...woops


bimbleuk - 23/10/08 at 01:06 PM

I've installed Vista a few times to try and it has got better over time but I did it last week and still ended up going back to XP. I don't need to upgrade my PC to 4GB RAM under XP so I see no reason to under Vista but constantly tries to cache things to RAM after startup even though I turn off a lot of indexing services etc.

Which drives me nuts as I have a Raptor boot HDD and they sacrifice fast heads seeks for quiet operation. My other issue is the network transfers speeds. I can't remember the exact details off hand but basically its slower compared to XP unless you make various OS changes and the network stack has a low prioity so can easily be affected by other processes. I do quite a bit of network transferring so prefer XP in this case.

As i usually go for a minimal, uncluttered desktop appearence I always turn off the glass interface and other effects so again I might as well stick with XP.

I do though quite like several features on my HTPC and so will stick it on their instead.


flak monkey - 23/10/08 at 01:06 PM

quote:
Originally posted by graememk

arghghghgh just remembered why my sites been so busy its stilll on trade from your order lol...woops



!!!!!


trogdor - 23/10/08 at 03:54 PM

my laptop has 1gb of ram, and is only a single core processor, cheap as chips and it runs vista fine, certainly no slower than XP and thats with all the vista pretty stuff running.


RK - 23/10/08 at 08:13 PM

Can I go to 64 bit after initially having it 32?


locogeoff - 23/10/08 at 08:30 PM

quote:
Originally posted by RK
Can I go to 64 bit after initially having it 32?


Wouldn't have thought so, it will be a new install/licence milarky, I picked up Vista 64 as an OEM version with a couple of other pc components for around £60 a few months ago, some places will sell you an OEM version with a floppy drive or some other low cost pc component, to satisfy some regulation or other due to it being OEM, don't expect support though as you are effectively the OEM and should know what you are up to.

Vista runs fine on my partners low end dell laptop, though not as snappy as my desktop of lower spec running XP, though not truculent enough to go XP on it.

[Edited on 23/10/08 by locogeoff]