Vista to XP

Flamed Diving

I'm considering doing this. Vista just seems to clog up all too easily, and from what I see it is only a bloated version of XP anyway. I had zero issues with XP on my old laptop, which had inferior specs to my current hardware. The only hold-up is that this laptop did not come with installation discs, which I would have to purchase from Sony if I decided to go back.

Anyway, has anyone done this before?

ED E

Flamed Diving wrote: »

I'm considering doing this. Vista just seems to clog up all too easily, and from what I see it is only a bloated version of XP anyway. I had zero issues with XP on my old laptop, which had inferior specs to my current hardware. The only hold-up is that this laptop did not come with installation discs, which I would have to purchase from Sony if I decided to go back.

Anyway, has anyone done this before?

Doing it now on an old 120GB drive that came with my laptop, I mainly use Vista on the new 500GB thats normally in it, but I'm going back to XP pro to try something as the other install slowly grinds to a halt yet again.

Flamed Diving

So it's the hard drive size that hold things up? Mine is a dual-core 1.73 GHz, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM and a 180GB HD.

ED E

Flamed Diving wrote: »

So it's the hard drive size that hold things up? Mine is a dual-core 1.73 GHz, 2GB DDR2 SDRAM and a 180GB HD.

No, the seek times on the 500 is slightly longer but thats not the issue I was having, there was something slowing CPU processes, not sure how or why but XP is smaller and lighter and should do what I need it to do.

dun79

if vista is slow you should try Windows 7 90 day trial then run (slmgr /rearm) when the trial runs out. you can rearm 5 times.

Flamed Diving

Hmm, I should have mentioned that I am on 10GB O2 broadband and my limit is almost reached. How big is the file, and do I need to have Vista to access this? If not, I might pop back to XP and if I'm not happy there, I will give W7 a go.

Flamed Diving

Unexpected problem with the move to XP. So, I booted up the setup disk and it loaded up various drivers and then said it was loading windows. (This was in the blue setup screen, it wasn't something else.) Anyway, once this process began setup told me that it could not detect a hard drive. Odd. What does that mean?

kippy

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Unexpected problem with the move to XP. So, I booted up the setup disk and it loaded up various drivers and then said it was loading windows. (This was in the blue setup screen, it wasn't something else.) Anyway, once this process began setup told me that it could not detect a hard drive. Odd. What does that mean?

What is the model of your laptop?

You'll generally find specific guides online about how to instal XP onto one of these newer laptops.
You'll either have to install a SATA driver during the install or possible change some BIOS settings so the XP installer can see the hard drive. You'll also possibly have issues getting XP drivers for some of the hardware on the machine once XP is installed.
As I said, do a search on google "LAPTOP MODEL install XP".......
Some kind soul out there will generally have done up a specific guide for that specific laptop.

Best of luck,

dun79

you need sata drivers.
you can use nlite to slipstream the drivers in to the windows cd. or you can use a floppy to load drivers during windows install

spider guardian

don't forget if you are having any trouble identifying hardware in your computer you can use a linux live cd (such as ubuntu or knoppix) to run the lshw command, this will list the hardware components in your computer and might make it easier to hunt down windows xp drivers

Flamed Diving

dun79 wrote: »

if vista is slow you should try Windows 7 90 day trial then run (slmgr /rearm) when the trial runs out. you can rearm 5 times.

So, I decided that the drivers thing was a lot of hassle and to go straight into this plan. However, when I go to the "Springboard Series" page I just get a bunch of spinning dots on a blank page as if to signify that something is loading. It has been taking ages, is this normal?

EDIT: Seems it just wanted me to use IE and now Chrome. In addition, the file is 2.24GB.

Flamed Diving

Ok, I am now on Windows 7! I hope this rearm thing works!

I like what I see, so far. It feels a lot less heavy than Vista, yet it has a sleeker feel with better features.

Flamed Diving

dun79 wrote: »

if vista is slow you should try Windows 7 90 day trial then run (slmgr /rearm) when the trial runs out. you can rearm 5 times.

So, my trial has 22 days left. I simply copy & paste 'slmgr /rearm' into 'run' and hit enter?

dun79

Hi Flamed Diving

Open Command Prompt as administrator then type (slmgr /rearm) then press enter.

PogMoThoin

To open command prompt just type "command" in the run box, then right click command prompt under programs and click open as administrator

Capt'n Midnight

How to extend the Windows Server 2008 evaluation period
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948472

Evaluating Windows Server 2008 software does not require product activation. Any edition of Windows Server 2008 may be installed without activation, and it may be evaluated for 60 days. Additionally, the 60-day evaluation period may be reset (re-armed) three times. This action extends the original 60-day evaluation period by up to 180 days for a total possible evaluation time of 240 days.

Beyond the evaluation period you must buy a license


Don't forget Vista is a lot better when service packed up to date and you tweak the settings

Flamed Diving

I have found the experience of moving from Vista to W7 akin to having lead boots removed.

Fysh

Flamed Diving wrote: »

I have found the experience of moving from Vista to W7 akin to having lead boots removed.

To a certain extent that's fair enough, but I feel compelled to ask whether you spent any significant time fine-tuning Vista before junking it. (Don't get me wrong, I understand the frustration that an un-tuned, SP0 install of Vista can lead to, my point is just that this frustration can be remedied without having to migrate to another OS).

Contrary to widely-held belief, it is possible to get Vista to run very well on suitable hardware. As with XP way back in the day, Vista SP0 was pretty damn shonky and had all sorts of issues, especially if it's running on hardware that only just supports it. However, Vista SP2 with fine-tuning will run considerably better.

Flamed Diving

Well, the way I see it, if you have to fine-tune an OS just to get it to start-up in less than 74mins, then there is a problem right away, there. I mean, W7 is as light as a feather, and it does this right out of the box. That's how it should be.

In addition, I like some of W7's features. Particularly how you can snap the windows to the edge of the screen. I am constantly using that.

Fysh

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Well, the way I see it, if you have to fine-tune an OS just to get it to start-up in less than 74mins, then there is a problem right away, there. I mean, W7 is as light as a feather, and it does this right out of the box. That's how it should be.

In addition, I like some of W7's features. Particularly how you can snap the windows to the edge of the screen. I am constantly using that.

I don't think you're quite getting my point - Microsoft has a history of its RTM-versions of Windows being a bit rubbish. It's important to remember that Windows XP SP0 was a bloody awful OS in comparison to Win2k at the time - it didn't have any significant advantages that were easily visible, it was unstable, and driver support was patchy at best. SP1 sorted out the stability issues and brought native USB2 support with it, and SP2 brought additional changes like enabling the firewall by default and improving the native wireless support. This means that it was actually 2004 before XP got to be the decent OS that it's usually hailed as - despite having launched in October 2001.

The same thing happened with Vista - it launched in December 2006 and was pretty damn bad unless you bought a top-end machine with it preinstalled, and even then it was pretty shonky. It wasn't helped by the "Vista Ready" fiasco where Intel basically said "Errr...we've manufactured a load of chipsets with integrated graphics that can't really handle any of this Aero stuff. Can you sort of relax the requirements a bit so we can lie and say that the chipsets are suitable for Vista?" and Microsoft agreed. Fast forward to early 2008 when SP1 came out, and it was a significantly different situation - Vista SP1 now had significantly better (though still far from perfect) driver support, and was a lot more stable. People had started to figure out how to fine tune it (in the same way that plenty of us, myself included, had had to previously figure out how to fine tune Windows XP to improve performance on systems whose hardware couldn't be upgraded). But Microsoft had also accepted that their ridiculous "The wow starts now" campaign had failed, and instead opted to just bet the farm on Win 7, which is based on an improved iteration of the same kernel that Vista is built on.

What I'm getting at is that with Microsoft, getting good performance on modest hardware with a new (ie. SP0/less than a year old) version of Windows is the exception rather than the rule. The tried-and-tested way of ensuring good performance with Windows is a combination of the following:

• Run the most-recent-but-one version
• Use hardware that has been bought at least 1 year after your OS was released, and which significantly exceeds the recommended specifications
• Spend a little time familiarising yourself with the under-the-hood components of your OS and learning how to turn off anything that you don't need

Now, you can argue that this is something a consumer shouldn't have to do with a product they've bought - but I would argue that a computer is a complex tool, and thus the expectation of having it behave as a magic box is based on a fundamental misunderstanding (compounded by marketing from various companies) of what you're actually buying.

Flamed Diving

I get all that. But W7 seems to operate in a way that switches off any non-essential (unless user-specified) services when it doesn't need them. I can see that anytime I click on task manager and note the lack of programs running and the way my computer has stopped making that "i'm working" noise that I had become so accustomed to with Vista. Fine-tune away, if that's what you like doing, but I really don't have the time to learn stuff like that. I want an OS that works out of the box, and doesn't slow things down.

Vista fails at that, and W7 succeeds. So I'm happy where I am.

Fysh

Flamed Diving wrote: »

Vista fails at that, and W7 succeeds. So I'm happy where I am.

That's good, especially if you're finding new things in Windows 7 that are useful for your experience.

In general migration from one Microsoft OS to another involves spending money (extended usage of trial versions aside). What I was trying to get at is that you don't have to spend money to get the improved experience that is promised by migrating to a newer "shinier" OS - if you're instead willing to put some time into investigating fine-tuning of the OS. It doesn't take that long to learn - for example, mukki has detailed a great set of steps on getting better performance out of Vista here.

Flamed Diving

As it stands, Vista is gone from my system. For some reason, the back-up partition did not contain what i needed to create a Vista recovery disc, and Sony were blaming me for this. So as you can read above in the thread, I was going to go back to XP. Thankfully, I got this trial on W7, and if things continue this way, I will certainly be paying for it.

Thanks for the help, though.

dun79

Hi Flamed Diving

Did the rearm work ok.