Just finished downgrading...

[joe62890]

my girlfriend's laptop to XP from god-awful Vista. She's had the laptop a little over 8 months and it's been nothing but problems. Between the 5 minutes it takes to start up or the 1-2 just to get any program loaded I think I might have thought about throwing it through the window at least once... maybe twice. Even with all of the updates Microsoft has been releasing, this is by far their worst OS to date. I remember when XP came out and yes it had bugs but by SP1 it was fine and dandy.

Any who, the swap was pretty easy. Used my Microsoft XP disc from my Dell I bought 3 years ago. Something is wrong with the CD because it's let me put XP on 5 different computers, 2 custom built ones at that. Took me about 5-6 hours to find all the drivers, start the install and reformat the hard drive. Everything runs prefect. It takes less than 30 seconds to hit the power button and be at the desktop.

My recommendation to everyone with Vista... downgrade. Get out while you still can!!! If any of you have Vista or are getting a PC with one and need help downgrading, let me know and I'd be more than happy to help.




Joseph

[Landshark]

.....or you could have just installed some more memory.


Vista's minimum requirement should be 3 gigs.

i'm running 4 gigs + 8 gig "Readyboost RAM" USB flash drive, no problems.

[joe62890]

Originally Posted by Landshark

.....or you could have just installed some more memory.


Vista's minimum requirement should be 3 gigs.

i'm running 4 gigs + 8 gig "Readyboost RAM" USB flash drive, no problems.

Running 2 gigs and I don't want to waste half a gig on an OS.

[RSVX]

Vista isnt that bad, surely you have kept it up to date?

I would be interested in see your windows experience scores as well as your system specs.

[joe62890]

Originally Posted by RSVX

Vista isnt that bad, surely you have kept it up to date?

I would be interested in see your windows experience scores as well as your system specs.

It's not that bad but it was kept up to date. The laptop is a HP DV6000 Special Edition.

I kept the laptop up-to-date and kept it free of viruses, spyware, and adware. It never seemed to be quick enough for me.

I'm going to assume it's because I built my desktop and it's a ton faster.

[RSVX]

6000? If I remember my number correctly, thats a pretty old laptop, and near EOL... That would explain a lot of your issues, as Vista is a resource hog.

[Subix]

or you could have just completely downgraded, properly ;-), to Ubuntu with Beryl 3D

[ShiuludeSVX]

Originally Posted by Subix

or you could have just completely downgraded, properly ;-), to Ubuntu with Beryl 3D

I've been looking long and hard at anything Linux based for some time now.
I have worked on and used everything from IBMDOS 3.0 to this point, and my personal feelings after dealing with the same old MS routine for years is that this time they really BAGGED it. As in NOT GOOD.
I don't know what the ultimate goal of Microsoft is, but it seems they just love having us fork over enough to keep them Fat and Happy for the next 2 years. Then they just do it again.
I have grown tired of the same old thing everytime.
Just my opinion though, and you are very welcome to have one also.

[joe62890]

Originally Posted by RSVX

6000? If I remember my number correctly, thats a pretty old laptop, and near EOL... That would explain a lot of your issues, as Vista is a resource hog.

Not that old. It seems that HP has released a piss load of laptop's in the past year. The laptop is a year old, she bought it right before school started last year.

Originally Posted by Subix

or you could have just completely downgraded, properly ;-), to Ubuntu with Beryl 3D

Never understood Linux. I'd do it on my desktop but I'm a moderate gamer and know nothing about the compatibility of most of my games/programs and Linux. Care to go into depth about it?

[Cynic]

My .02
Apple

[Landshark]

Originally Posted by RSVX

6000? If I remember my number correctly, thats a pretty old laptop, and near EOL... That would explain a lot of your issues, as Vista is a resource hog.

since Vista runs fine for me and a bunch of other people, the problem must be Vista, not the laptop.


Vista starts up for me WAY faster than XP ever did, but then again, my new computy is a bit beefier. Vista uses whats available. you can turn off the pretty stuff, UAC, indexing, auto defragging and other stuff if you want it stripped down a little.

[joe62890]

Originally Posted by Landshark

since Vista runs fine for me and a bunch of other people, the problem must be Vista, not the laptop.


Vista starts up for me WAY faster than XP ever did, but then again, my new computy is a bit beefier. Vista uses whats available. you can turn off the pretty stuff, UAC, indexing, auto defragging and other stuff if you want it stripped down a little.

Unfortunately women like pretty stuff. Lol.

[ShiuludeSVX]

Originally Posted by joe62890

Not that old. It seems that HP has released a piss load of laptop's in the past year. The laptop is a year old, she bought it right before school started last year.



Never understood Linux. I'd do it on my desktop but I'm a moderate gamer and know nothing about the compatibility of most of my games/programs and Linux. Care to go into depth about it?

The point is that you now do have an OS that will allow the machine to run at a better performance level based on its inards. The DV6000 was built to address up to 2Gb of RAM, and normally shipped with 512M, and a 3200+ brain. I would say that if that is the level you have, then the RAM was the problem.
Vista will run well on Very Recent machines, and your production run appears to be right about the time Vista got on it's feet.
Linux takes a bit of work to get used to, so if you don't like the effort, I would suggest waiting. Not enough of us are re-writing the programs yet.

[Mike621]

I run Vista on my desktop w 4GB of ram and zero problems. I love it.

[Tim]

My only gripe with Vista is that Media Player and a bunch of other programs are integrated into the OS, so it can't be removed/repaired. So far I've had a few issues with my Media PC regarding Media Player and the networking status exception problems.The only way to fix a lot of these issues seem to be restoring back to a previous date, so make sure you all leave system restore on (although I've turned of UAC and a lot of the other unncessary services.)

Also Trend Micro Antivirus is notorious for bringing Vista to a crawl, particularly on HP machines.

2gb is really needed to run Vista smoothly. On machines with 3+ gigs, it is pretty fast.