Any reason not to replace Vista on laptop?

[AluminumHaste]

Ok, I've decided to wipe Vista off my laptop and install XP. I've contacted the HP people and got ahold of all the XP drivers that I'll need (hopefully).

 

The only last question I have is about installing XP onto an SATA drive. When I installed it on my desktop, I just had to make sure my bios setting had my onboard SATA chip (or something close to that) set to "native mode".

 

My laptop doesn't seem to have anything like that in the bios settings. Does that suggest I'll need to get sata drivers on a floppy?

 

Also, what is the best way to go about the actual process? What's the best way to get rid of Vista? Should I just format the drive entirely?

 

 

The best way is to slipstream SP3 and any required drivers onto your xp install disc. Google has some great links to some awesome tutorials on doing exactly what you need. I did this and it's quite easy, but looks complicated.

[Mortem Desino]

I had all sorts of problems installing XP (SP3) onto my SATA drive. Eventually, I just told my bios to mount the SATA drive as an IDE instead of a RAID setup. It stunk to have to do it that way, but worked.

 

I believe that XP is still the superior OS for programmers. The financial company my dad works for still uses Win XP for all their Java coders. No sense to use a dumbed-down OS for people who are already extremely proficient at computers.

 

What clinched it for me was when I tried using vista on a friend's laptop; I plugged in a flash drive, and it asked me for drivers. For a flash drive. I tried plugging in a different flash drive, and it would not read at all. I had into the command prompt and manually mount the volume. "Holy cow, what's the deal here?!"

[Domarius]

Um guys... Win 7 is free till June 1 2010, didn't you know?

 

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/download.aspx

[Crispy]

What clinched it for me was when I tried using vista on a friend's laptop; I plugged in a flash drive, and it asked me for drivers. For a flash drive. I tried plugging in a different flash drive, and it would not read at all. I had into the command prompt and manually mount the volume. "Holy cow, what's the deal here?!"

That's better than my experience doing the same thing. I plugged in my flash drive and explorer.exe crashed.

[greebo]

I've had not a single crash since I installed Vista x64 back in October, neither any problems I couldn't solve. I cannot follow the "dumbed down" arguments at all.

 

It took me a few hours to tune it according to my preference, but that's the same for every OS you're not used to.

 

(And for the records, for me this thread is the same as those popping up when XP came out back then: babysitting the user, comic blue desktop, not safe, I want my Win98 back).

[Mortem Desino]

You're definitely right that I'm being a little childish and short-sighted with the Vista-is-for-dummies business. Thinking about it further, I may be having so many problems because I've been test-driving Vista Home Edition with other people's PCs who got it pre-installed.

 

And sometimes I do like my Win98 pc build! How else can I play those fancy eye candy top-of-the-line games as "Lands of Lore 2" or "Elder Scrolls II - Daggerfall"? Don't say DosBox: even my 3.0 ghz dual-core struggles to emulate a system for those games.

[greebo]

I immediately wiped my pre-installed Vista and replaced it with my own installation.

 

The problem with pre-installed computers is that so much third-party crap is pre-installed there alongside. Like some oh-so-useful Web-Cam-Software, half-assed Picture Editing Tools, Instant Messaging, Browser Toolbars and (my favourite) Norton Internet Security. Also, all the default services are activated (Superfetch, Search Service) and the UAC is switched on.

[OrbWeaver]

Admittedly I only use Vista for games, but I too have not found it as loathsome as people seem to make out. Yes, the permission pop-ups can be annoying (particularly if they happen in the middle of a fullscreen game), but it took me less than 5 minutes to turn off all of the interface crap and get back to XP mode.

 

I was rather amused however that the first login to my pre-installed Vista took longer to complete than the entire Ubuntu setup and installation process.

[Stormbringer951]

I only use Vista for games (or when my laptop is in for repairs). It's not horrible, but everyone was used to the more clean-cut XP, and Vista is a big memory hog. Personally, I think that a better solution for laptops would be have XP for gaming and Xubuntu for work on a dual boot system. That's what I'm going to do over the summer anyway.

[Mortem Desino]

I'll probably do the very same thing: dual boot. But I think I'll use Ubuntu Studio; the college I'll go to has so many cheap, obsolete, A/V tools.

[Springheel]

Well, I decided to wait until after I get back from vacation to do anything with my laptop, as the very first thing that happened when I tried to remove Vista was that it refused to boot from my XP installation disk.

 

Anyway, in the meantime I was hoping someone who is comfortable with Vista can help me with this...I've spent 45 minutes *failing* to do something that should take me 15 seconds.

 

I have my Vista laptop plugged into my router, and all I want to do is be able to share files with the other computers on my network. I managed to get the *Mac* I brought home doing this in about half a minute. Vista, on the other hand, refuses to show any other computers on the network. After researching for about half an hour I found and installed a Link-Layer Topology Discovery update for my XP machine.

 

Then I restarted my desktop. Now my XP desktop shows up as an icon in the Network map of my Vista machine! Yay, I thought, finally after all this I can copy my files over. But oh no. There is an icon there, yes, but I cannot DO anything with it. I can't click on the icon, and when I list the devices on the network, only my laptop shows up in the list. WTF??

 

This nicely sums up my experience with Vista thus far.

 

Can anyone help me out before I pull my hair out?

[AluminumHaste]

Wow that sucks, don't bother with LAN transfer through router, maybe USB Flashdrive backup? I got a 16GB key a few weeks ago for 35$ from BestBuy.

Also if it's not booting from XP disc; when your computer boots up, there is usually an option in the top right of the screen that says like F2 for boot menu or something like that. When you press that you get a menu with options for which device to try and boot from. Just choose your cd drive and it should try and boot from it.

[Mortem Desino]

Also if it's not booting from XP disc; when your computer boots up, there is usually an option in the top right of the screen that says like F2 for boot menu or something like that. When you press that you get a menu with options for which device to try and boot from. Just choose your cd drive and it should try and boot from it.

Yes. Also go into your bios and double-check your boot-order. Generally you want floppy-CD-HDD.

[Tushaar]

Ive owned my laptop with vista for 8 months now and in that time i have had to reinstall vista 3-4 times and 2 of those times was the blue screen of death

Edited July 15, 2009 by Tushaar