Vista is gone - but it went down kicking and screaming

Saturday, December 6, 2008 by Fuzzy Logic | Discussion: Personal Computing

Some time ago I decided I'd had enough of Vista and would go back to XP. After 2 BSODS and explorer crashing when I tried to rename a file, I decided now was the time.

Sounds easy... I disconected 3 of my four drives, partitioned and formatted my O/S drive, and started the XP install procedure. Hmmm, evertime I got to the part where I expected it to say 'Press any key to boot from disk...' it just went straight into setup again. Nothing I did to the drive with either formatting or partitioning would get past this. Clearly, Vista still had it's grubby little paws on this disk.

So, back to basics. Thankfully when I built this pc I kept a floppy drive... Out came my Windows98 boot disk and straight into DOS. From there I used my equally ancient Killdisk. It took an hour and a half for Killdisk to finish, but it took Vista and erased its ass. Vista is no more, it has ceased to be - it is an ex O/S.

XP installed as smooth as ever. So here I am, in an O/S which so far has no drivers or programs installed. I'll get to that later. Meanwhile I can stick two fingers up (in the form of a 'V') to Vista. Hasta la Vista Vista, as they say

First Previous Page 7 of 9 Next Last
pseudomelon
Reply #121 Thursday, June 4, 2009 2:36 AM

MasonM
LOL and people claim Linux is difficult....

Who on earth told you that?XPSP3 = great, Vista Ultimate = serviceable, and necessary in some specific cases, Ubuntu = Godlike.

Note: I actually use XP myself, despite my raves for Ubuntu. I just don't want to bother converting files for an hour or running an XP emulator every time I want to play some srsgaminz.

Fuzzy Logic
Reply #122 Thursday, June 4, 2009 7:51 AM

Interesting how misconceptions get spread around.

I'm not running Vista on a dinosaur, it's a dual core 4400+ with 2Gb memory, 8800GT and 1.5Tb of S3 drives, Vista rating 5.9.

Simply put, it doesn't matter what super OP spec you have, some games run faster on XP than Vista.

And no matter what you say, the Vista start menu is crap and the folder mouseover is annoying.

I have Vista 64 installed on a second partition - I can find no good reason to use it...

RottGutt
Reply #123 Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:32 AM

All you folks that have "Vista problems" either have:

 

1) A PoS computer/computer hardware

2) Substandard computer hardware

or

3) Computer hardware whose Vista drivers are sh*t

 

The OS itself is the best Microsoft ever released, and will continue to be, until Windows 7 is RTM. Don't bitch about the OS, when it is your hardware or your hardware drivers fault!

 

RottGutt

gmc2
Reply #124 Thursday, June 4, 2009 9:36 AM

The OS itself is the best Microsoft ever released, and will continue to be, until Windows 7 is RTM. Don't bitch about the OS, when it is your hardware or your hardware drivers fault!

I was thinking about this aspect also and I think that for those that have just upgraded their OS, they would be able to discern a difference using the same hardware, in a general sense. my old graphic card was good enough for XP but for vista, forget it. now with a new CPU running vista 64bit, gtx285 video card and 12 gigs ram, I have no problems. I find vista to be annoying with all of it's "are you sure you want to do this" pop-ups or reminding me that I have a specific "security feature" turned off every time I boot. I'll be taking a good hard look at win7 when it gets released, to upgrade.

The_Regicide
Reply #125 Thursday, June 4, 2009 10:03 AM

RottGutt, you are funny man.

Makerz
Reply #126 Thursday, June 4, 2009 2:50 PM

The_Regicide
Windows 7 x64 RC, build 7100. Rules.

Linux isn't the only free alternative to Vista

 

You paid for Vista? Lol

The_Regicide
Reply #127 Thursday, June 4, 2009 5:21 PM

I didn't even have Vista until I bought my laptop with a Vista Home 32 preinstalled. It lasted about 2 minutes, before being axed by 7 last week.

Lol

Makerz
Reply #128 Thursday, June 4, 2009 7:33 PM

32? ew ew ew.

OldMsgt
Reply #129 Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:17 PM

I have vista on 2 machines much better than XP, I have one machine set up in a dual boot congiguration Vista on one hD and W7 Rc1 on another HD, I like what I have seen of W& infact I am using it more than Vista right now., of course WB and Icon Packager does not work on the W7 machine it is 64 bit. I used Winstep for Start bar on both vista and W7

starkers
Reply #130 Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:27 PM

Interesting how misconceptions get spread around.

I'm not running Vista on a dinosaur, it's a dual core 4400+ with 2Gb memory, 8800GT and 1.5Tb of S3 drives, Vista rating 5.9.

I knew that, Fuzzy, I remember when you built it... around about the same time I went AMD.  Hope you don't think my earlier post was aimed at you, cos that was more a tongue-in-cheek dig at the general dislike of Vista, that many people tried to run it on below par hardware and were thus disappointed when it ran like a hairy goat with its legs hobbled.

For me, it's a case of 'each to his own', and as I recall, you prefer XP for gaming reasons and not particularly liking the Vista GUI, which is fair enough.  What I could never understand was people blaming the OS when they had installed it on pre-P4/pre-dual core equipment with 512mb of RAM and expected it to fly... was much like putting a Mini Minor motor under the hood of an E-Type Jag and expecting it still to do 0 to 60 in under 10 seconds.... then blaming Jaguar because it can't.

Oh well, Vista is old hat now.... gotta get ready for the raft of Win 7 haters.

NightTrainthedark
Reply #131 Thursday, June 4, 2009 8:47 PM

When i went to Vista I lost all faith in Microsoft. I was done with em.

Now running Win7. that has changed. Win 7 has been fantastic for me (still can't print). If it only gets better from here on I would say Microsoft has a good future ahead. I'll be skipping Win 8 though based on Ms's record.

Uncrustable
Reply #132 Thursday, June 4, 2009 9:16 PM

My only problem wih vista is its unnecisary large size. Its like my pc is a cripple. I buy it thinking wow-this is plenty fast and powerful for anything i do on a pc. Only to later find out that vista hogs about half of it to itself.

And the milllion prompts of 'are you SURE youi want to do that?...' are getting a bit irritating...

Makerz
Reply #133 Thursday, June 4, 2009 10:33 PM

Derek06
My only problem wih vista is its unnecisary large size. Its like my pc is a cripple. I buy it thinking wow-this is plenty fast and powerful for anything i do on a pc. Only to later find out that vista hogs about half of it to itself.

And the milllion prompts of 'are you SURE youi want to do that?...' are getting a bit irritating...

 

You do know you can turn that off right?

 

1) Go to Control Panel.

2) Go to "User Accounts" (i use the "Classic View of the control panel)




3) Then at your user account simply disable it.



BirdForce
Reply #134 Thursday, June 4, 2009 10:58 PM

I got BSOD with vista.. but that wasnt because of vista.. it was because i needed to update my bios.. I had the same issues when i tried running XP(before i figured out i needed to update my bios) But my pc would just reboot in xp.. no bsod(and i turned off the auto reboot too)

Other than the bios problem i've had ZERO problems with Vista.. No software issues.. nothing.. People just need to learn how to use it properly.. and it isnt even very hard.

NightTrainthedark
Reply #135 Thursday, June 4, 2009 11:39 PM

Most of the business world skipped upgrading to Vista based on recommendations from their IT professionals. I suppose they could all be wrong.

kona0197
Reply #136 Friday, June 19, 2009 8:44 PM

Some how saying I told you so is just not enough...

NightTrainthedark
Reply #137 Friday, June 19, 2009 9:02 PM

Some how saying I told you so is just not enough...

 

Seeing how all you do is bash microsoft it is pretty lame to say I told you so. You are wrong the other half of the time.

kona0197
Reply #138 Friday, June 19, 2009 9:08 PM

Lately I really don't bash anything. No fun in it no more. I used to bash MS but yet I use XP. Many of my arguments were flawed. Bit of a different person these days. I don't have any energy to argue...

Wrong about what?

kenwin
Reply #139 Friday, June 19, 2009 9:09 PM

On my hp mediacenter PC Vista ran better than XP, When I upgraded the video card even better.

My notebook with vista 64, I'm loving it and for $1200 it's as good a game machine as many costing over $2500 (4 gig of ram, 1 gig dedicated vid, and HD over 4 gig.

I got the desktop about 1 year before Vista was out.

Nuttygamer
Reply #140 Friday, June 19, 2009 9:23 PM

I doubt that vista will go down kicking, XP is great, uses less ram than vista, less bugs. Windows 7 looks great but till SP1 or SP2 come out, XP FTW

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