In the Windows world, Vista is the current rage. And you can define “rage” in a couple of different ways, in this case. On one hand, “rage” can be defined as what is hip and new. On the other, “rage” can be defined as that white hot hate you feel when it takes 5 boot-ups to get the proper screen resolution under Windows Vista.
So, here’s the deal. As I type this article on my laptop, my desktop machine is in the process of downloading all the updates for Windows XP. Yes, Windows XP. I am in the process of downgrading (or should I say upgrading) to Windows XP on my primary desktop. Now, in my case, this computer had two hard drives in it. So, I am keeping Vista intact while I am installing XP back to the second drive. If I need Vista for some reason, it’s there. I don’t like burning bridges.
So, why did I do it?
Well, in my case, here are my primary annoyances:
- I have three monitors attached to this computer. When I booted Vista, it would take anywhere from 3-5 restarts for all three screens to light up. The first or second start would usually light up only the center monitor at default resolution. I can’t tell you how annoying that is. Turning on the computer was more of a process than a flip of a switch.
- The computer was significantly slower than when it was running XP. And this is a dual core machine with 2 gig RAM.
- Running the IIS7 server software resulted in a constant barrage of erroneous error messages about the server. I eventually had to disable the IIS service to make it stop.
- I use Quickbooks and a utility called THUB to get store orders into my accounting setup. With Vista, I was forced to log out as my own user and log in as a fake, LESS privileged user in order for it to work. Yes, even though I was an Administrator on this computer, I apparently didn’t have privileges to run this frickin’ thing.
There are other annoyances, but these are the primary ones in my world that really affect the way I work.
Now, the laptop I am typing this on is running Windows Vista. Strangely, though, Vista runs almost flawlessly on this notebook. I actually LIKE Vista on this notebook. But, on the desktop, it is a different story.
Microsoft released Vista too early, in my opinion. A new version of Windows was long overdue, yes, but I think in the rush to get something out there, they released this thing before the kinks were worked out. Do I really fault Microsoft for this? Yes and no.
I am not a Microsoft basher. Linux works for those who want the ultimate dork operating system. Drivers are not much fun to work with when you’re dealing with Linux. Apple folks like to make fun of Microsoft, but come on, get real! Apple controls the entire computing environment, so OF COURSE their operating systems works well. So would Windows if Microsoft built the computer it came on. But, they don’t. Microsoft is in the position of making an OS which has to work across the board, on a WIDE variety of system configurations. I guarantee you OSX would not be as raved as it is if Apple couldn’t control the entire user experience (hardware and software).
For those who are thinking of jumping to the Mac because of Vista, take that into account. When you go Apple, you never go back….because you can’t. Apple is like the big brother of the computing world, controlling all and telling you nothing. Yeah, it works. As long as you don’t rock the boat.
Given the feat that Microsoft has to pull off, I think they do an amazing job.
That said, they still dropped the ball. People have high expectations of Microsoft, ESPECIALLY when Microsoft basically forces the issue by getting all the manufacturers to install Windows Vista. It is in that area where I do place blame on Microsoft. When a new Windows version hits the market, you can’t force people to use it when it just isn’t ready. Microsoft knows it wasn’t ready, too. The sheer size and speed of the SP1 service pack for Vista tells me that Microsoft knew it was faulty and is now trying to correct course mid-stream. So, essentially, the appearance is that Vista pushed this thing to market early. Not in the interest of their customer, but in the interest of their bottom line.
Vista is a great OS – for a BETA. And that’s what it is. If you think of it like a beta, you’ll be happy. If you expect it to work exactly like XP, but better, you will be disappointed. Windows XP wasn’t exactly solid either until after the second service pack. My guess is that, eventually, Vista will be in the position XP is in now. It will be tried and true and it will just work. But, it isn’t there yet.
And since I need something that just works, I have decided to throw XP back onto my desktop.
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Hi all,
I have read this topic with interest. David Risley is right in what he says & I agree with him.
Dell are offering their PC’s with Vista, XP, Linus or NO OS at all. I’d choose the last option if I were to buy from Dell, a good company, & install my own copy of XP.
I have tried to use Vista….I really have! But ‘nothing works’:
1 – My AV software needs to be poked with a stick to run. Sometimes it will & sometimes I just get an error about how the application failed to execute (or whatever). Poking it with a stick usually does the trick but it’s a pain in the ass.
2 – ZA needs to upgraded to V7. My license for V6 won’t work for V7 so I have to buy ZA AGAIN!
3 – Everytime I do anything I get the UAC. This is not too bad until:
4 – For security reasons I made myself a member of the Power Users group (HUGE mistake). Now when the UAC pops up I can’t ‘run as’ the Administrator….because the Administrator account is disabled BY DEFAULT. I am now SCREWED. I can now officially do NOTHING on this PC. Re-install? I don’t think so. I pulled the disk & went back to XP.
This OS seems like MS deliberately went out of their way to make everything so difficult at every hands turn as to make the OS unusuable. AN OS is a TOOL for working….whatever you may define as work. Vista is not a tool because you have to put up with so much unnecessary BS that you forget what you were trying to WORK on in the FIRST place.
NO. I won’t be going Vista anytime soon Just give me XP SP3 please. Mind you I’ll do a system restore point before installing….just in case
Hmmm, like ever : The Problems start in front of the Display…
Linux a Dork OS ? Are u kidding? If you dont know what your talking about, please dont!
Vista is still a beta to mee, and MS has a plan to bring out the new OS 2010…why should i install that beta Crap?
Im using WinXP MCE and PCLinuxOS , both work greta 4 me
Bizarre. You’re blaming Microsoft for producing a new operating system that old software produced by other companies doesn’t work on?
Microsoft should make the OS backwards compatible back to when and for how many products?
Honestly don’t get this kind of whining and ‘rationale’ for labelling the product “beta”.
“You’re blaming Microsoft for producing a new operating system that old software produced by other companies doesn’t work on?”
Personally I think it’s a brilliant idea, with one slight caveat — for MS to totally drop their kernel design and go Unix-based like Apple’s switch with OSX.
I also think code should be treated for what it is — text. And as such just like a book it should be covered exclusively under copyright law and be openly viewable to all, again, just alike a book.
Hey, a man can dream big.
hia
i have recently bought a compaq presario sr2109uk and downgraded from vista to xp
the computers graphics have improved very much
and is alot faster
but i am haveing problems with my sound because i cannot get hold of the right drivers form the sound card
if there is anybody who can find the drivers for this please let me know
if not i will have to buy new sound card
thankyou
I have been using computers since 1974. I have several machines running XP and two that use Win98. A friend brought over a laptop running Vista Home Edition tonight that they were having problems with and I must say it was sheer hatred at first bite. First of all it was slow as heck, and secondly there were all these warning messages and security messages and layer after layer of nonsense. I finally found out how to get to a C:> prompt in the help section.
I cant believe that anyone would like Vista.
Windows Vista = Windows Buenavista; Buenavista = Disney; Disney = Donald Duck therefore Windows Vista = Donald Duck OS. Good for a ten year old girl o a sixty year old clerk who only write a couple emails a day and watch a few pics of her grandsons. Use only on a V-Smile, if you can.
Get that Windows XP 64 fully and decently functional, fix the XP 3 gigs memory issue and toss this Vista daffy duck crap where it belongs, to your closest dustbin.
How can I take off vista and replace it with XP? Thanks
You’ll have to get an XP installation disk and install it, then activate with your Vista key (and call Microsoft tech support to manually activate). No automated process for it; you’ll have to back up your files and reinstall OS, drivers, software, everything. Wee!
While the Linux ‘driver problems’ are still there (primarily because some hardware makers still don’t make Linux drivers, preferring to suckle at Microsoft’s puss-filled, fecal stained teats), it really took Vista to make Linux look good (or at least comparable) in this department.
I went the Vista -> Linux (Ubuntu 7.10) route myself after a year of ‘dealing with’ Vista and its many quirks and incompatibilities on my Dell Vostro 1700.
To be precise, I went from a Windows system running Linux part-time in a VMWare box to a Linux system running Windows part-time in a VMWare box. I still run a few Windows apps, but now they live in a sandbox with limited access to the rest of my file system. Vista runs just fine in a virtual machine (though it’s a resource hog), and Microsoft was only too happy to ‘activate’ it over the phone when I explained it was going to run on the same system it came with.
One thing I DEFINITELY fixed was the clicks and pops in my MP3 files (and, everything else) that Vista so helpfully inserted to ‘protect me’ from music piracy.
There’s always a thousand geeks in the Linux support forums who want to prove how much smarter they are than everyone else, so support is free and fairly rapid, and usually competent if you wait a day or two. Usually if you do a quick search or two you’ll find someone has already answered your question, and see that several people have tried the fix and it worked… unless you have brand-spanking-new hardware nobody has seen before, or ‘unsupported’ hardware, which does still come up. I was fed up enough to simply replace whatever was incompatible, but there were work-arounds for almost everything and I only had to get a USB bluetooth dongle for my second machine.
BTW, all that extensive and expensive DRM crap in Vista was cracked a month after it was shipped, and Microsoft is still concentrating on fixes to THAT as much as or more than fixes to the security exploits that can expose YOUR OWN files to theft. I still recommend you put the ‘most sensitive’ stuff on a Flash drive and leave it disconnected unless you need to work on the files.
Great article and posts, I can’t wait to get vista off my new laptop – asus w7s. Cant run my old printers, adobe software or accounting package. Not impressed with being forced to upgrade software just because I bought a new laptop. The Asus w7s doesn’t come with an xp option. Asus doesn’t provide xp drivers for the w7s, but I have found a post on some work arounds. The last straw was trying to type a report where the cursor couldnt keep up with my typing. The machine has more than enough computing power to put man on the moon, but microsoft bloat it with so much crap I couldn’t type a letter. I am a fairly educated user with a masters in business systems and computing, and my recommendations to anyone considering a new computer is buy anything except vista.
Let’s watch the microsoft share price slide. Customers don’t respect greedy companies. When is the google OS coming out?
I went to buy a new laptop today, because my old XP vaio is slowly breaking (bad HD, CPU looks like will give up). I asked the seller, who supposedly is a “tech professional” if I the laptop was downgradable from Vista to XP (I almost bought Fujitsu’s instead, which came with XP and was new, but the screen was 4 square inches too small (11inch screen). He said that Vista was much better and was about to be ready to say more things when I told him “I have a Vista” (my gateway PC, which I hardly use since I found that stuff from my old XP PC wouldn’t run on a vista). His response? “Well, that’s technology, you’ll get used to it [I assume he was talking about the GUI].” But never before, MS users felt the need to downgrade, because never before MS just simply released a BETA operating system to the public. A lot of new hardware (example: the popular eReaders) and software will not support Vista. It’s a huge problem that in Me to XP was very minimum. At least, I received news that Vaio is already working on Downgrade packs. Unfortunately, I am still stuck with Gateway’s way to say “that’s technology, you’ll get used to it.”
I did downgrade Gateway for a while, and I had lost my sound, which was okay (yes I was that desperate), but when the video was a problem and the system would hang up because of it, then I had to reluctantly go back to Vista. What a sad way to release a product, Microsoft. Quite frankly! Vista can KISS IT!
I recently bought a Toshiba Satellite Notebook U305-S7446. The notebook came with Windows Vista Home premium Edition pre-installed in it. I want to move back to Windows XP SP2, can anybody please tell me how that can be done. You can email me the procedure @ vikramdeo@gmail.com
Thanks for your help in advance.
Good article David. I read thru all the MS fanboy posts bashing you for downgrading. I have a dual boot XP/Vista system. So I use both OS’s on the same hardware platform. I decided to try Vista Sept. 07. For around a month I used mostly Vista. Too many things were not working right making my life hard so I went back to mostly XP. I probably use Vista about 20% of the time. Mostly for experimenting. All serious things get done with XP.
I have not installed SP1 yet and probably won’t for a while. But I did an interesting experiment this afternoon. I copied 2 files from a second hardfile to the system disk of both Vista and again to the system disk of XP. I use seperate 200 GB Seagate drives for the system disks but they are were purchased together and are the same model. So everything is the same in these 2 environments. Same disks, motherboard, peripherals… everything..
I copied 2 large files. one was 500 MB the other was 700 MB. On Vista this took me 31 seconds. On XP SP2 this took me 24 seconds. That is a 25% performance hit for doing something quite simple. I have read that V-SP1 should improve copy performance around 10%. That will still make it much slower. Hard to imagine what they are doing with all this extra time.
Puzzled…….
Okay folks, here’s the deal. I aquired a Sony VAIO VGN-CR140E. This model was released with Vista. (I personally believe that Vista is the DEVIL, but it’s new so I’ll give it a chance…..or something.)
I’m not exactly sure what happened or if it was simply by choice of the previous owner, but the downgrade to XP Pro was completed.
Pretty much everything is running smooth with XP, (no suprise there) but the integrated cam won’t work and I can’t find XP drivers for it ANYWHERE.
Are there any generic drivers or patches that can help me with this?
Well, you can’t find those kind of specialized drivers through anyone but the manufacturer. If they haven’t written a driver for xp, you’ll have to either live with Vista or no integrated webcam. I personally hate windows Vista. I must say I tried some lite versions of vista that I was able to download via some torrents just to see what the appeal was with the other hackers, and I can now see the appeal. The hackers have created a lite version of vista, which uses 20% less resources than xp pro and it has almost all of vista’s features. It’s too bad it’s illegal to use. If I had the expertise, I would take out the cracks and stuff that make the copy illegal so I could actually use it legitimately. I guess I’m stuck with xp since I can’t do that. I wonder why Microsoft didn’t release a slipstreamed version of vista like the one they have on the pirate networks.
I wouldn’t think the stripped down version is necessarily illegal. Have a look at nlite, it would have been shut-down by microsoft in a second if it where illegal to do.
I would say it is only illegal if you are using a stripped down version on a pc that you don’t own a license for that stipped down version (ie it is stripped down vista ultimate, and you don’t own any vista license or only a vista home license).
That all being said I prefer to just steer clear of the license lock-ins and go Linux. Then I can lighten or load it as I see fit.
http://www.nliteos.com/
My friend just received her new laptop with Vista Basic since it was a low end one. It was terribly slow so I wipe the drive clean and installed Windows XP Pro now it runs great. I just cannot understand why put out such a bloated system,
Vista is major work in progress right now Windows XP is still good
Upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows XP. You won’t be sorry.
No DRM, no I need 8gb memory just to stop pagefile swapping every 2 seconds, no I need 4 x 256gb SSD’s in RAID array just to boot up in a sensible ammount of time.
And Windows Aero sucks.
can you tell me how to down grade from vista home premuim to xp pro. it won’t let me do FDISK or format the c drive. and if so will i have to change any thing in the bios setting. i have a gateway p6312 laptop, and i hate vista
thx Joe
I just did the same thing to my PC. I can’t believe I tolerated Vista for as long as i did.
@Joe: The XP Pro disk should give you the option to configure partitions/ format the partitions before it asks you where you want to install.
Well first its kinda of stupid to have 3 monitors.You only need one.Whats the purpose of 3 no wonder your computer messes up.Vista is ram hunger and if you apply to much to it will overload and restart.I can tell you from my own exprience.I have a vista desktop sitting right next to me.