How many of you have "downgraded" from Vista back to XP?

[redwudz]

mazinz, the new Zone Alarm runs fine on Vista. They also have a free firewall available for Vista: http://www.zonealarm.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp?dc=12bm...=staticcomp_za Just check the 'I only want basic ZoneAlarm protection' box. It works a lot better than Vista's firewall, IMO.

[bobogs]

I installed those two Vista updates (Performance and Reliability packs?). File copies across the G network don't seem to be any faster getting started (with the Calculating Time dialog) or finishing any quicker (the copy dialog still says ~1.5MB/s).

Interestingly, one or both of the packs *might* have created yet another sore spot with my Vista. I can't select multiple items in an Explorer window. CTRL or SHIFT clicking and CTRL+A do nothing. In fact, the Select All item under the Organize menu is disabled in all folders.

I tried changing to the Use Checkboxes to Select Items under Folder Options (might be something I could get used to ), and while it seems to have worked for the first folder I tried it in, it stopped working when I changed to another folder, and when I went back into that first folder, it was still not working.

This Microsoft support article's suggestions did not work, and I especially like how they mention some mystery registry key that gets modified by third party apps, but they never tell what the key is.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/934548

Very frustrating.

Gary

[mk2006]

Thanks for all the comments.

Regarding redwudz's comment about all the security sw slowing down the OS, I can attest to that. I run Trend Micro 2007, and there's a big difference between pre-install post-install performance.

Use NOD32! top notch antivirus, with the lowest performance impact

[Richard_G]

Where's the poll option for, 'got a new computer pre-installed with Vista but it was so sluggish I installed XP instead and now it flies'?

This was the situation a friend found himself in. His old machine was beginning to show it's age so he bought a replacement that was on offer. He went from a 1600 Athlon with XP to a 3.2GHz Pentium D with Vista Home so was expecting a dramatic increase in speed. In actual fact the new machine was considerable slower, almost certainly due to it only having 512MB of RAM (only! my first pc was considered high spec as I paid extra for 2MB of RAM and not the 1MB that came as standard...). It also refused to run his older copy of Photoshop (which is not good news for a graphoc designer....) and no drivers were available for his printer or scanner.

Format the drive and installed XP SP2 and it absolutely flies, boots in a matter of seconds, runs all his software and works with all his hardware. Now, I know that most of the low performance was down to the lack of RAM, but this was an off-the-shelf machine supplied with Vista pre-installed. Not the way to encourage people to switch.

[rotten apple]

.....When Microsoft eventually forces us to switch over I do not want to be without it. No longer made or supported (thanks a lot Norton) but still a damn good firewall

I think Norton stopped existing eons ago just like the imaging prog Ghost stopped existing eons ago - Symantec merely used there previously good + respected names to shift their own renown diabolically bad,buggy,bloated,inefficient and/or overpriced "products"(with the worst customer service conceivably possible) more effectively to the PC niave ( apart from the insane the only ones who even THINK about buying stuff from Symantec).

Considering that M$ have only just stopped support for win 98 and support for XP is planned for many years in the future including sp3 i think its unlikely we'll be forced over to Vista - that leaves an eternity of time for evolution in IT terms , who knows what the landscape and the potential will be like then eg Vista is speculated to be the last of it kind of the desktop OS we are familiar with today ( including OSX + Linux). Hopefully M$ might learn from the agravating pointlessness that is Vista that they can't get away with releasing such a half-arsed effort anymore and this will benefit the post Vista OS which we could move to from XP if it offered highly superior advantages (unlike Vista) - who knows by then a company that Apple always has failed and will always fail to be, will be able to promote a genuinely great next generation OS that competes significantly (ie in cf Apple's couple of % LMFAO "domination" of the market ) with M$ ??? People have always 'jumped' win releases, its nothing new.....

[rotten apple]

I use Vista at work and at home. It is not as bad as people think.

WHY thankyou Mr. Gates for gracing us here at videohelp, i've seen you around the place promot.....*coughs*, sorry, extolling how ill informed and unable to think for ourselves we are.


Just think if people weren't so useless and inefficient at thinking and having opinions as you've gratefully enlightened us, it would mean you latest product is an aborted foetus of an OS.....but as you've said its our recorded experience bears no resemblance to the products real performance ie you can sell us any old cr*p in the future and get away with it - we can all rest easy that every single future M$ product we buy will be perfect and we can disregard any negative personal experiences about it.....ahh BLISS!

[rotten apple]

When they "force" go to OSX
Screw Microsoft!

Rather illogical as Apple will likely be screwed long before M$, especially as Rotten depend wholly(unlike M$ who sometimes do come up with a product masses can benefit from+ enjoy) on hype and slick propaganda to move their ridiculously over priced, limmited potential, packages that craftilly LOCK in the consumer so that Apple has the monopilly on online services used,maintenace,repair + replacement AND OF COURSE upgrade(if brainwashing hasn't taken effect yet a strong enticement is needed to compensate for the drastic reduction in freedom + variety of choice that Jobs' cult "offers".) Preaching to a tiny already converted minority is easy as the delusion is so strong the negatives are easilly overlooked.... trying this on the larger scale is more difficult and potentially fatal as if you depend on image alone you can't fall back to your product + U R screwed - game over. Such deceitful promotion and dishonesty can only be due to greed and selling product on a bigger scale is something that desire will find it hard to resist despite the high risks.

So now the public have seen all the negative reviews from "users" on Apple's latest money scammer (except the odd freaky apple fanboi) its blatant to a majority how Rotten criminally overcharges for its products - HOW on earth will they get new blood now? For a company so image/hype based it looks like one the final nails in the coffin and a slow humiliating Death for Apple - surely only fair for a company with such a renown lack of integrity...

[anosis]

I've had Vista Ultimate installed on my newly built Core 2 Duo (E6600, 2gb ram) since March, and in all honesty, I just don't know what to make of it, performance-wise. I'm not a pc gamer, but I do my video and photo editing, dvd ripping and transcoding, the usual Outlook 2007 stuff, and email and web browsing. I came from a 1.8ghz Pentium 4 with 1gb ram, and while the new pc is definitely much faster in all aspects, I can't help but think that Vista is holding a brotha down. It just seems sluggish for what I was expecting from what should be considered quite a powerful pc (right?).

I see excessive hard drive access when there really shouldn't be that much, network issues (file copying across a G lan at KB/s, not MB/s), slow local disk file copying, app incompatibilities, driver issues (expected, but still bothersome). Not sure if this is reasonable, but I expect that a launched program should come up pretty darn fast on the new pc, given its raw horsepower, but I still see apps like iTunes and Outlook taking a while to appear. Connectivity/sharing problems on my home lan, and UAC have all been a pain in the a** (I gave up and changed mine and my wife's accounts to admins...at least the prompts are easier to handle now).

Given that Microsoft is apparently holding off until mid-to-late-2008 for Vista's SP1, maybe it's time I went back to XP Pro? I can always reinstall Vista later if I get the itch. I know there are many here that advocate not installing Vista at all, but has anyone else been down the Vista road and then gone completely back to XP? If so, for what reasons?

I know I could dual-boot Vista and XP, but that doesn't appeal to me. If I go back, it'll be a clean break from Vista.

Thanks!
Gary

I completely concur. My system sig even says that Vista is not yet ready for primetime. I still have my ASUS tablet running with Vista Business primarely because of the handwriting recognition and some other features that WinXP did not have, but if I need to transcode X.264 XP is quiet a bit faster.

I did like the fact that I no longer need to keep an archive of drivers around after a complete re-install as Vista goes online and picks drivers up on it's own.

Just my 2 cents

[Faustus]

Where's windows 2000 in the poll?

I use Win2K at home because that's my perferred OS
I use WinXP and Vista at work, because XP it is the OS of choice and Vista will be the upgrade after SP1.

Most people prefer proper support of new things especially game copy protections.

[Dv8ted2]

I use Vista at work and at home. It is not as bad as people think.

WHY thankyou Mr. Gates for gracing us here at videohelp, i've seen you around the place promot.....*coughs*, sorry, extolling how ill informed and unable to think for ourselves we are.


Just think if people weren't so useless and inefficient at thinking and having opinions as you've gratefully enlightened us, it would mean you latest product is an aborted foetus of an OS.....but as you've said its our recorded experience bears no resemblance to the products real performance ie you can sell us any old cr*p in the future and get away with it - we can all rest easy that every single future M$ product we buy will be perfect and we can disregard any negative personal experiences about it.....ahh BLISS!

I have never been and never will be Bill Gates.

You can think what you want, but as someone in IT, I have to try and stay as current as possible. I just mentioned that I have two machines that run Vista and they run very well. That is my opinion. Make of that, what you will. The people in IT that do not stay current get lost in the shuffle.

[trossin]

Add me to the list of downgraders! Vista is junk. File copy performance is great in XP. It sucks in Vista.

I bought an HP m8100y machine and now I have to figure out how to find all the XP drivers for the toys in it. HP offers no XP driver support. It's Vista or Dell as far as HP is concerned. I think this is a bad choice on their part.

Anyone know what video capture card from Hauppauge is in this thing so that I can get a driver? It has analog TV, digital TV and and FM antenna inputs as well as an S-video and audio L and R.

Now that I've wiped Vista off the machine I have no idea what it is. Maybe if I open the case I can get a number. I see no board like it on the Hauppauge site.

It is just a mess! If you are thinking about getting a new machine you should really skip Vista. There is a daily pouring of 10 to 20 Mbyte patches and reboots. This is untolerable with a dial-up modem. The bottom line is that the OS is unstable and sluggish.

It is pretty but that is not what I need. I can spend the money on a nice painting for that.

[redwudz]

I've used the freeware program SIW to tell me more about the internals of a computer. It may give you video card info in the hardware section: http://www.gtopala.com/

[nTekka]

Dv8ted2 - I may not be an IT "expert" but maybe your thinking is what f**ked up IT. Its not staying current with new technology that drives IT... shouldn't it be what works best and well? If staying current means a hit in productivity and performance or costly, then screw this particular IT concept or its badly misinterepted!!!

I think the idea of staying current is for when the "current" technology is more beneificial than previous technology, so I wouldn't take that idea too litterally. Just my 2 cents.

[Dv8ted2]

Dv8ted2 - I may not be an IT "expert" but maybe your thinking is what f**ked up IT. Its not staying current with new technology that drives IT... shouldn't it be what works best and well? If staying current means a hit in productivity and performance or costly, then screw this particular IT concept or its badly misinterepted!!!

I think the idea of staying current is for when the "current" technology is more beneificial than previous technology, so I wouldn't take that idea too litterally. Just my 2 cents.

I have no problem with your philosophy, but software is insecure by nature and you must constantly update to stay somewhat secure. If not, then you fall into the security through obscurity method. That method does not work well. It is what it is. You are entitled to think what you want. I have a more practical mindset. If you were content with the status quo, things would never change.

[Supreme2k]

I have Vista on our "accessory" laptop (Gateway for surfing, mostly), and I can't downgrade. There are no XP drivers for the components built in. It works well enough, though.


My biggest gripe is OS bloat in general. I have a 700Mhz server with DSL (Damn Small Linux), and it works great, as well as seeming as fast as my 2.5Ghz laptop. How about the iPhone? Look what it can do with its minuscule system specs.

Most OSs need to go back to basics and give us more bang for the hard drive space. Does XP really need 3-5 times the space of 95? Or Vista need a gaming rig just to run some of the basic "fun" features?

I may actually try to find that 3.11 (now on CD) 8)

[edDV]

When Microsoft eventually forces us to switch over

When they "force" go to OSX
Screw Microsoft!

As if Apple supports old OS versions? Not!

Older version support is Microsoft's strong suit (as demanded by their customer base). Apple's strong suit is creative destruction with limited loyalty to past hardware or OS versions. They appeal to the trendy and only look forward.

Each strategy has a place and I own both stocks.

[gll99]

Sorry for the OT but.....

I've used the freeware program SIW to tell me more about the internals of a computer. It may give you video card info in the hardware section: http://www.gtopala.com/

How well do you know this tool? Are you sure about this software's security?

As soon as I checked all my software licenses with it and the list was propagated my firewall warned that the software asked for internet access using multiple dll's at least a dozen times. SQLSERVER, SQL String Function, NetWork DDE Share, Winsock oriented Net DLL, Client Side Inter process communication, Named pipes net dll, etc...

Funny it didn't ask for access when I checked anything else

Very suspicious when all the software and os licenses are exposed.

[redwudz]

No, perfectly acceptable to be cautious. I've never noticed any Internet access, but i admit I haven't ever checked my software licenses. I agree, it can find passwords to programs. But it has been around for several years and I'm not aware of complaints or problems.

But with your experience, I would delete it immediately. It's never done anything odd to me, but it does look into several 'dark corners' of the OS. I'll do some further research on the program

There are likely other similar programs that can also see the attributes of your GPU and other sections of your computer.

[burnman99]

I dual boot win2k and Ubuntu Studio. Only use windows when I absolutely have to and have no plans to upgrade windows anytime soon, no need.

Rog

[happydog500]

I've had Vista since about a month before it was released. I still have the disc on my shelf, not installed. I like XP and I don't want to buy more RAM or Video card.

I dual boot XP and SuSE but hardly ever use SuSE since most stuff I do doesn't work in Linux.

[dcsos]

Be careful all you dual booters out there..
Each time you boot into XP after loading VISTA,
XP wipes out any restore POINTS in SYSTEM RESTORE that VISTA wrote to disc!
This is a FEATURE!!!

Microsoft on XP's & Vista's restore:

In this version of Windows, restore points are created differently and are not recognized by earlier versions of Windows. If you have a dual-boot configuration and you start an earlier version of Windows, the earlier version will delete any restore points created by this version of Windows. If you start this version of Windows, restore points will resume being created automatically.

if i hav'ta run Windows, its 2000 for me, also

[Faustus]

Be careful all you dual booters out there..
Each time you boot into XP after loading VISTA,
XP wipes out any restore POINTS in SYSTEM RESTORE that VISTA wrote to disc!
This is a FEATURE!!!

Microsoft on XP's & Vista's restore:

In this version of Windows, restore points are created differently and are not recognized by earlier versions of Windows. If you have a dual-boot configuration and you start an earlier version of Windows, the earlier version will delete any restore points created by this version of Windows. If you start this version of Windows, restore points will resume being created automatically.

if i hav'ta run Windows, its 2000 for me, also

eh I can't think that I've ever had to use the restore points on my own computer before really.

[dcsos]

Yeah but they should fix this...from the
Microsoft help site it indicates they are ok with it
almost like they designed it to discourage booting back into XP once you get VISTER on there

which is why I stay with 2000 it doesn't have or need restore points (they take up to 10% of each of yer 'monitored' hard drives in SYSTEM VOLUME INFORMATION in XP)

[TBoneit]

That 10% can adjusted or a drive can be excluded. Not a reason to stay away. I stayed with 200 til SP1 then jumped ship to XP gladly.

As for IT types net needing to run Vista.

To Quote Ntekka "Its not staying current with new technology that drives IT... shouldn't it be what works best and well? "

Not staying current means that how can you tell whether or not any upgrade will benefit your company. How can you explain to the bosses when they ask what about Vista? Do you stand there and say wll I tried it and didn't like it so I've ignored it. Sooner or later, most likely sooner Vista on computers will creep into the organization and you will need to support it.

[dcsos]

theres a bad bug in XP post SP2 that enables XP to "MONITOR ANY DRIVE PLUGGED IN BY DEFAULT"
no matter how many times you disable monitoring on an external drive, XP will re designate it as 'monitored' if you so much as boot once with it unpowered!

Also don't get me started on how if you turn on and off drives that are monitored how it affects you ability to RESTORE effectively. If you want stystem restore to work properly, you must make certain only your boot drive is monitored each time you boot.

Just run features that work , unlike System Restore !!!
They fixed the wanton monitoring of external or secondary drives in VISTA, but these points, once again, are overwritten each time you boot back to XP

Jim Louderback head of PC MAG just resigned partly due to VISTA
seems he couldn't network his home computers anymore under VISTA

The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2170276,00.asp

[Dv8ted2]

Jim Louderback head of PC MAG just resigned partly due to VISTA
seems he couldn't network his home computers anymore under VISTA

The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain't cutting it.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2170276,00.asp[/quote]

That sounds more like incompetence than anything else. I have Vista networked with about 80 machines in the company I work for. I am nobody special. If I can do it, anyone can.

This is also not the reason he resigned. He became the CEO of Revision 3.

[gerryc]

I have hundreds of dollars invested in software that I know works on XP. When I purchased a new computer a few months ago, I ordered it with XP for that very purpose. The clincher for me was when I was checking reviews for computers, the model I bought actually scored better in performance tests with XP than with Vista.

[dcsos]

he's not incompetent, he's the former editor of PC MAG and an expert in matters pc for the past 12 years at PC MAG

In response I can only say that he's not networking VISTA Machines together, that worked, it was networking the VISTA machines with XP that didn't work reliably and also the unacceptable speeds over the network

as everyone knows VISTA has a documented bug that makes GIGABIT ethernet slower than 100

this has been researched very recently by MICROSOFT:

Many people have correctly surmised that the degradation in network performance during multimedia playback is directly connected with mechanisms employed by the Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS), a feature new to Windows Vista. Multimedia playback requires a constant rate of media streaming, and playback will glitch or sputter if its requirements aren’t met. The MMCSS service runs in the generic service hosting process Svchost.exe, where it automatically prioritizes the playback of video and audio in order to prevent other tasks from interfering with the CPU usage of the playback software.
This is what reduces Vista's network speeds unpredictably.

http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/archive/2007/08/27/1833290.aspx[/quote]

[Faustus]

To Quote Ntekka "Its not staying current with new technology that drives IT... shouldn't it be what works best and well? "

IT people do not always get to make the call though. Its important to stay upto date and know about whats out there and how to work with it and what problems may turn up when someone in your company high up demands something. Or whats gonna happen at the end of the year when all your Dell or HP laptops come with Vista preloaded and there are no more XP licenses for sale.

I once took a non tech job for only about 6 months and was f-ing lost when I got back into it and I'm not even IT.