Laptop has vista,change os??

thegame

I got a laptop today and it has Vista on it.can i format the harddrive and put in Windows xp.is it possible or would it be hassle??

Alanstrainor

Yes you can, provided you have a licensed copy of xp. But you have to ask yourself why you'd need to downgrade to xp, if it were me i'd be sticking with vista.

partyatmygaff

thegame wrote: »

I got a laptop today and it has Vista on it.can i format the harddrive and put in Windows xp.is it possible or would it be hassle??

Why bother? Vista is miles better so long as you have atleast 2gb ram. Its muppets running vista on ancient 512mb. Dont be a sheep and downgrade, try it out and you will love it.

kikel

Have to agree with the previous posters. What the need for downgrading. I'm using vista and am very happy.

ytareh

This Muppet WAS using 2GB and even 4GB and still installed and uninstalled Vista 3 times .If you like a 'pretty ' and slow OS go for Vista .If you like a FAST and basic looking OS go for XP .

Startup time ,System Restore both WAAAAAAAAAAAY slower with Vista especially the latter which can take up to 10 minutes and certainly 5 ...what the hell is with THAT!?

I presume all you Vista experts know its got months to live and you know all about 7 ???

The key priority/theme in 7 is speed and simplicity ...nuff said .

Donald-Duck

ytareh wrote: »

This Muppet WAS using 2GB and even 4GB and still installed and uninstalled Vista 3 times .If you like a 'pretty ' and slow OS go for Vista .If you like a FAST and basic looking OS go for XP .

Startup time ,System Restore both WAAAAAAAAAAAY slower with Vista especially the latter which can take up to 10 minutes and certainly 5 ...what the hell is with THAT!?

I presume all you Vista experts know its got months to live and you know all about 7 ???

The key priority/theme in 7 is speed and simplicity ...nuff said .

Yeah I system restore my PC all the time. The differences in boot up times is barely a couple of seconds. Vista is a lot more secure if you run it with UAC too, which isn't annoying if you just disable it when you're installing everything on the PC at first.

You know Windows 7 is based on Vista?

kikel

99.9% of people won't be using system restore on a daily basis so i can really see any major issue with it taking longer.
Personally i find Vista to be equally as fast as XP. Supose it depends on the hardware your running.

partyatmygaff

ytareh wrote: »

This Muppet WAS using 2GB and even 4GB and still installed and uninstalled Vista 3 times .If you like a 'pretty ' and slow OS go for Vista .If you like a FAST and basic looking OS go for XP .

Startup time ,System Restore both WAAAAAAAAAAAY slower with Vista especially the latter which can take up to 10 minutes and certainly 5 ...what the hell is with THAT!?

I presume all you Vista experts know its got months to live and you know all about 7 ???

The key priority/theme in 7 is speed and simplicity ...nuff said .

Heh must be just you

thegame

not a vista fan at all thats why im changing.i have the xp black edition..dont know whats it like though

Overheal

If you just got the laptop today, give it some time. Reformatting is a hassle, plus you will have to search for XP-compatible drivers or your hardware mightnt work. Vista is at this stage miles better than XP. The only thing you really will want to do is disable the User Account Control: Just go to the start menu and click on your user icon. From the menu that appears simply click to disable UAC.

Within a week you'll begin to like it; within 2 weeks you will never consider going back to XP. Its all to do with learning the new features.

je55ie

Overheal wrote: »

. The only thing you really will want to do is disable the User Account Control: Just go to the start menu and click on your user icon. From the menu that appears simply click to disable UAC.
.

Hi just recently bought a dell xps with vista on it and having a lot of problems with it, dell have told me hard drive now needs to be replaced. Can you tell me why you disable the user account control?

Thanks

Donald-Duck

Because its annoying


(Its not really an issue for most users if you're not installing stuff all the time and it does make it a lot more secure)

Conor108

I got a laptop with Vista and installed XP. For a while I had Vista and XP dual-booting but I realised I never used Vista. Uninstalled it and now use XP exclusively. May try again after Vista SP2.

If you only want Vista for aesthetic reasons, you can give XP a Vista theme

ytareh

You would need to be very careful that the laptop has all drivers available in XP format.Some like finger pad can be frustrating , others like SATA and some that to be honest I dont even fully understand will turn your laptop into a brick!Vista and XP can be very tricky to install together/dual boot.

dub45

ytareh wrote: »

You would need to be very careful that the laptop has all drivers available in XP format.Some like finger pad can be frustrating , others like SATA and some that to be honest I dont even fully understand will turn your laptop into a brick!Vista and XP can be very tricky to install together/dual boot.

I did not find it that difficult to dual boot. I just formatted the drive partitioned it and installed xp first - it can be difficult enough I guess if you leave vista there and try to add xp but there is a lot of information on the net about a dual installation. But I tend to agree with most of the posters above you do get used to vista apart from the uac which can be a monumental pain.
Why would someone be wanting to use system restore so often?

Donald-Duck

dub45 wrote: »

Why would someone be wanting to use system restore so often?

I can't understand that either, the only reason I can think is for testing stuff. But theres virtual machines for that now which are even better

thegame

what if i used this method?

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-UPGRADE-from-Vista-to-Windows-XP-on-an-Acer/

daithijjj

been using vista for 7/8 months.........i prefer it tbh, wouldnt want to go back now.

Overheal

jessie37 wrote: »

Hi just recently bought a dell xps with vista on it and having a lot of problems with it, dell have told me hard drive now needs to be replaced. Can you tell me why you disable the user account control?

Thanks

if Dell told you the drive needs replacing you probably just got a lemon. Most hardware failures will happen in the first 30 days. Go ahead and have it swapped by them.

I disable UAC because its a bit annoying. The purpose of UAC is that it requires the User to authorise each program that tries to execute using Administrative Priveledges on the PC, so it is more secure. However, its just been implemented poorly in Vista: it never remembers which programs you have set to Allow or Deny so its constantly asking questions. Windows 7 has promised to fix this problem.

Without the annoyance of UAC, Vista is a lot easier to use than XP.

what if i used this method?

Do what you want, but unless you need XP because you are using some really old piece of pre-2k Hardware or Software that will otherwise not function under the new Vista Architecture; you're better off with Vista. Especially with laptops: The Wireless Networking and Power-Mode support is much improved.

thebman

Overheal wrote: »

I disable UAC because its a bit annoying. The purpose of UAC is that it requires the User to authorise each program that tries to execute using Administrative Priveledges on the PC, so it is more secure. However, its just been implemented poorly in Vista: it never remembers which programs you have set to Allow or Deny so its constantly asking questions. Windows 7 has promised to fix this problem.

Without the annoyance of UAC, Vista is a lot easier to use than XP.



Do what you want, but unless you need XP because you are using some really old piece of pre-2k Hardware or Software that will otherwise not function under the new Vista Architecture; you're better off with Vista. Especially with laptops: The Wireless Networking and Power-Mode support is much improved.

UAC isn't better in the beta Windows 7 I'm using Had to disable it. Everytime I started TVersity, it asked me did I want to allow it to make changes to the computer. There are several different levels of UAC in 7 though so you can set it to a lower one instead of turning it off completely.

Windows 7 is unbelievably faster than Vista with SP1 and all updates on my computer. Windows 7 may be built on Vista but it appears to fix all the speed issues Vista has. Vista wasn't ready to be pushed out the door, most people will admit that. Lets hope SP2 fixes most of those issues.

I still wouldn't bother going back to XP though since Vista will be supported for longer than XP or at least it should be.

Donald-Duck

brim4brim wrote: »

UAC isn't better in the beta Windows 7 I'm using Had to disable it. Everytime I started TVersity, it asked me did I want to allow it to make changes to the computer. There are several different levels of UAC in 7 though so you can set it to a lower one instead of turning it off completely.

Windows 7 is unbelievably faster than Vista with SP1 and all updates on my computer. Windows 7 may be built on Vista but it appears to fix all the speed issues Vista has. Vista wasn't ready to be pushed out the door, most people will admit that. Lets hope SP2 fixes most of those issues.

I still wouldn't bother going back to XP though since Vista will be supported for longer than XP or at least it should be.

I think XP is coming to the end of its support term, I'd expect support to be gone once 7 is released.

hobochris

Donald-Duck wrote: »

Yeah I system restore my PC all the time. The differences in boot up times is barely a couple of seconds. Vista is a lot more secure if you run it with UAC too, which isn't annoying if you just disable it when you're installing everything on the PC at first.

You know Windows 7 is based on Vista?

correction: Windows 7 was the original project being developed, Things weren't going as smoothly as far as development time was concerned and release dates got pushed back.In the mean time people were expecting something from Microsoft, so they released Vista in the mean time. Which was basically a stable(rushed out) beta of windows 7(without the yet to be developed features).

Vista is an under developed version of windows 7 (the pretty face without the brains)..

thebman

The new taskbar is so intuitive, you'll wonder how you ever lived without it in Windows 7.

Swear to god, its a tidying up of the entire interface of Windows to be much better layed out. Control Panel has changed again and for the better. Everything you expect to be customisable on the interface is and the notification area appears to be fixed of its bug of missing icons at long bloody last.

I've not returned to Vista since I installed it TBH.