XP to Vista to XP - the rant of an angry user

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XP to Vista to XP - the rant of an angry user

Thursday, February 21, 2008 6:00 AM | Humor Technology

XP to Vista and back to XP

Okay the title of this is a bit melodramatic but with good reason. After nearly a year of using Microsoft Vista I finally threw in the towel. I ended up clearing Vista off my PC faster than an angry wife deleting her husband’s hidden porn stash.

The last ten months of using Vista was one of the most unproductive periods of time in my life. If Vista wasn’t freezing up, the video would flake out, or external devices that I plugged in would stop working. You don’t even want to get me started talking about drivers (but I will later).

It all started on a cool February morning, I was sitting quietly at my desk watching the steam rise from a freshly poured cup of coffee. Microsoft Vista had just been released and was available for download from the MSDN developer website. I had been pondering upgrading from XP to Vista for several days, today was the day, I was going to upgrade. I am about to get screwed and I never saw it coming.

I now regret that I ever upgraded to Vista.

I tested beta versions of Vista on a laptop before the final version of Vista was release for retail sale, it wasn’t too bad. I wished though that I had spent more time using the Vista laptop before deciding to upgrade my daily work computer. I think if I had I would have kept XP as my preferred Windows operating system.

My first mistake I believe was upgrading from XP to Vista. The Vista upgrade inherited some issues I already had and added quite a few more. The first thing that disliked was the enormous amount of hard drive space Vista required to begin the installation, and afterwards Vista gobbled up disk space like a fat guy tearing into a bag of jelly donuts. XP on the other didn’t take up a lot of space and didn’t consume hundreds of megabytes ever week or so like Vista does.

After moving and deleting a lot of files, restarting the Vista setup up numerous times, Vista finally began the upgrade process. It is a slow process to upgrade from a previous operating system to Vista.

Once Vista was installed I found much to my disdain that most of my external devices would not work. While a good many of them such as my Microtek scanner and my Kodak 1400 professional photo printer didn’t have drivers, several peripherals once plugged in, would not work when plugged in subsequent times. Ironically one of my older serial port graphics tablets did work. I had a fairly new Maxtor firewire external drive that would work, but often times I got aggravating multiple balloon pop-ups telling me there were no drivers even though the drive worked as it should.

Did I mention the dratted and infinitely aggravating User Access Control (UAC) dialog? They should call it "Useless Aggravating Communications". If there ever was a way to completely frustrate a computer user UAC would be it. Computer users want to be productive; UAC is the antithesis of productivity. Once I discovered how to turn it off, I still got warnings every time I booted the computer up that there was a problem. I now began to hate useless balloon messages. It only took one full day of using Vista to become quite frustrated with it. If I had been smart I would have deleted Vista and returned to using XP. Of course forever being an optimist I felt that I could embrace Vista, I was so wrong.

Vista is definitely slower than XP, a *lot* slower. My daily use PC is a dual processor XEON system with 2 gigabytes of RAM, XP runs like a scalded cat on it. Vista makes my computer feel like a three cylinder Hyundai car pulling a steep grade. I’ve seen Pentium II computers run faster than what I was experiencing at the moment.

The user experience in Vista is dreadful, supposedly it is more user friendly that XP. Microsoft can claim that all they want, I think they are full of hooey.

Most of my video editing and post production software will not run on Vista. Even Photoshop CS3 will crash a couple of times a day, and of course it happens right when I am working on something. I haven’t seen this many program crashes since Windows 3.1. My scanner software refuses to install, about half of the software I ran on XP no longer works on Vista. What I have that does run on Vista crashes, hangs or freezes. The only software that seems to run okay on Vista is Office 2007 and you know who makes that. That’s ironic if I do say so myself.

I have a high-end ATI FireGL video card, I have to use the Microsoft Vista OEM drivers because the ATI third party driver crashes and recycles my PC every couple of hours. Not fun when you are working on a project and your PC suddenly dies.

This went on for two or three months. I ended up wiping Vista off the machine and (stupidly) I installed Vista as a clean install. I did for a moment consider going back to XP at this point, but against better judgment I installed Vista again. I am now officially the king of the idiots (or just delusional) because I reinstalled Vista. After the install completed I reinstalled the applications I needed and discovered I was no better off than before, in some ways worse I believe. At this point, I beginning to believe that Vista is the spawn of pure evil, or a room full of monkeys with typewriters wrote the code for Vista. I am leaning more towards the monkey theory now, because I don’t think that even evil spawn could screw up Vista as badly as Microsoft has.

The clean install of Vista did not get rid of any of the problems I had with Vista earlier. Half the time if several applications were running, I would get messages that there wasn’t enough memory to paste from the clipboard, applications would start loading and then quit suddenly (Photoshop especially). I still haven’t at this point found a decent video editor that works and Windows Movie Maker is a joke (but it did run on Vista). Sure Vista is “pretty” but in terms of getting any work completed, I was losing an uphill battle. By this time I was contemplating using my Macintosh as my daily work computer and just unplugging my Vista PC and putting it in storage.

After using Vista (again) for about two weeks, I became so frustrated that I again wiped Vista off the computer and installed XP back on the machine. It takes a bit of work (read this forum post if you want to go back to XP) but in the end I was able to clean off the Vista partition and install XP. Of course, I had to apply forty seven gazillion XP updates and service packs. The reward though was nearly instantaneous. All my hardware worked as it should, all of my software ran without any issues, and XP is much faster. The only problem I was having on XP was Internet Explorer 7, and once I dumped IE (read this post about me dumping IE for Firefox) and installed Firefox those issues were alleviated.

I am still contemplating moving to my Macintosh for daily work, or perhaps even installing Ubuntu Linux as my preferred operating system.

I would not recommend upgrading to Vista on any computer that is more than a year old. I wish that I had inquired more about third party drivers for my scanner, photo printer and other devices before taking the Vista plunge. I am partly to blame for the problems I had. As an aside I do have a Vista laptop that came pre-installed with Vista and I haven’t had any serious issues with it, but then again I only use it a couple of times a week.

I will be updating the Vista laptop to Vista Service Pack 1 this weekend, if I have any problems with that I promise you will be one of the first to hear about it.

All Vista has going for it in my opinion is the marketing hype, nothing else. You have been warned.

I would love to read your comments regarding Vista and downgrading back to XP!

NOTE: Beginning March 1, 2007 I will be giving away a $30.00 Amazon gift certificate every two weeks for the best comment posted to a blog post on fvrit.com (1st-15th best comment and 16th-31st best comment). If this goes well I may begin to give away one every week. Stay tuned for more details.

61 Comments

Comments

Posted by shortbaldman on 2/21/2008 7:37 AM: Like you I endured a while with Vista. But I had a top of the range new HP laptop which came with Vista installed. It had a 2GHz Core 2 Duo processor and 3 Gigs of Ram; surely that configuration would work! But NO! After several weeks in which I re-installed Vista several times ( which resulted in no improvement whatsoever: snail-like speed, problems with drivers, etc), I said "Enough!" and UP-graded to XP. It's amazing how little disk-space XP uses (one tenth that of Vista) and how much easier it is to use.
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 7:42 AM: Hi shortbaldman. Wow, you would have thought if Vista came pre-installed it would have caused less problems. I agree on the small drive space footprint. XP wins big time on that.
Posted by chris on 2/21/2008 11:18 AM: I recently upgraded to Vista 64bit and I've had no problems with it. I'm running a custom-built system with dual core 2Ghz and 4GB of RAM. Maybe your "high end" is third-party? I do have my complaints with Vista, but I wouldn't say it's better or worse than XP - but then again, I'm a Mac fan.
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 11:28 AM: Thanks for the comments Chris, My Dual system is a Dell precision system. I am split three ways. I use Xp, OSX and Unbuntu. I do prefer OS X to Windows. It took a while to get to that point, but in the last year I have become extremely disenchanted with all versions of Windows.
Posted by Steve on 2/21/2008 2:36 PM: I bought vista installed, but on a low spec laptop it was terrible... so I formatted and installed XP everything went fine till I tried to update the graphic card an ATI 6100 which ATI and Vista told me ONLY had drivers for VISTA not XP... SO I ran the Vista upgrade wizard only to be told my system COULDN´T run Vista !!! Some days you just wish you had stayed with windows 3.1. A clean install got it back to the way it was .. but its not any happier...
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 2:41 PM: Hi Steve, I would like to tell you to shun ATI video cards (long story), Unfortunately you probably don't have a choice being that your system is laptop. Nvidia cards work so much better and the drivers don't freak out. Can you use a restore disc with the laptop and restore it back to factory?
Posted by Jim on 2/21/2008 4:11 PM: I have a mixture of machines at the moment, 3 with XP and 2 with Vista that the rest of the family uses. The Vista machines are basically used for webmail and IM so they are not pushed to hard but even then they are slow. I was hoping SP1 for Vista was going to provide some real performance improvements but based on reading(check out Hardware 2.0 at ZDNet) SP1 is somewhat faster than RTM but still slower than XP SP2. So I'm starting to consider downgrading the Vista machines to XP while I can still get XP.

Then there is Office 2007 which I'm regretting upgrading to on my XP machines, that is an even bigger problem as far as speed as far as I'm concerned. Outlook 2007 is almost unbearable speed wise compared to Outlook 2003 . Also I'm no fan of the new UI in Office 2007 normally I can adjust to a new UI but not this one, especially in Excel where I have to continually try to figure out where things where moved too.
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 4:56 PM: Nice points Jim, I also use Office 2007, on XP and Vista I haven't seen a many issues other than when downloading a lot of messages it becomes sluggish. Outlook 2003 I do believe was faster.
Posted by PHS on 2/21/2008 7:42 PM: Boy, do I ever feel your pain. I was so excited about Vista I bought a new PC to run the POC (Piece of Crap); I even got a 5.5 in it's dumb performance rating. After a full year of crashes; blue screens (screw you netio.sys) I've had enough.It's the biggest mistake I've ever made; one I'll be fixing when SP3 is released for XP.
If I didn't play a PC game from time to time I'd be running Linux.
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 8:56 PM: Hi PHS, Microsoft sure screwed up by releasing Vista in the shaoe it was in. Good luck on going back to XP
Posted by SeismicMike on 2/21/2008 9:11 PM: You know you can't have a post like this on the internet without the obligatory self-righteous Linux user coming along and encouraging you to go open source. I am here to fill this apparent vacuum.

I know why many users disdain switching to linux, but for the interest of not being left with an OS that is many many years out of date in the future, may I suggest that you give Ubuntu a test run. It's really not as bad as many Windows users make it out to be. If you don't like it you can always go back.
Posted by Allen on 2/21/2008 9:23 PM: Hi SeismicMike snd thanks for the obligatory encouragement <vbg>. I actually use Ubuntu Linux (and my wife also), in addition to Mac OS X and Windows.
Posted by Steve Cooper on 2/23/2008 6:30 AM: I also upgraded to XP from vista. I got pretty sick of it pretty quickly.

I installed Ubuntu on it as a dual-boot thing, and realised that when I could get away with ubuntu, I preferred the experience. It has the equivalent of UAC, but it's just much more pleasantly integrated. If I weren't a professional windows developer, I'd be using ubuntu as my preferred operating system.

Really, though, ubuntu was a reaction to the awfulness of Vista, so I ended up just reinstalling XP. Feels like coming home.
Posted by Allen on 2/23/2008 6:36 AM: Hi Steve, I like Ubuntu as well and the access dialog is definitely much more subdued (as is the OS X dialog). I think Microsoft was a bit overzealous about UAC. I also agree with you on XP, it's much more comfortable and a faster to boot.
Posted by xdevil on 2/25/2008 6:11 PM: thanks god i had that pre-feeling that vista sucks and i was used to xp so didnt want to think about trying vista
Posted by Adonis on 2/25/2008 6:41 PM: don't use ubuntu. it's like vista in linux world: overhyped, slow. unstable and corporation driven.

use some nice linux like PCLINUXOS or Mandriva or something like that.
Posted by Allen on 2/25/2008 6:59 PM: Hi Adonis,
It (Ubuntu) seems to run fine on my wife's older PIII laptop. I hesitate to replace it as she is accustomed to it and it hasn't caused any problems.
Posted by Allen on 2/25/2008 7:01 PM: Hi xdevil, if you don't have a need to upgrade my advice is to not do it.
Posted by Bleh on 2/25/2008 7:16 PM: You know, I don't know what the heck you guys are doing, vista works perfectly fine, and is just as stable, if not more so than xp, so long as you have a decent computer, as I notice most of you do. Now, I'm not saying that vista is BETTER than xp persay, but a lot of this bashing I see is rather unfounded.
Posted by Allen on 2/25/2008 7:20 PM: Hi Bleh,
I guess everyone has different experiences with Vista. I ran it on two high-end PC's with loads of RAM and fast processors, I had similar issues on both machines and funky quirks on both as well. I am glad you haven't had any problems with Vista.
Posted by creepfreak360 on 2/25/2008 10:17 PM: I have been running Vista for about a year as well and I am considering going back to xp. I haven't had any major issues other than my dvd burner's driver just disappearing from time to time, but vista just urks me.
Posted by Allen on 2/25/2008 10:24 PM: Hi creepfreak360,
I agree with you on the irking.
Posted by DaU on 2/25/2008 11:10 PM: ive been using vista for over a year now and i dont think its crashed once. The orginal machine i put it on, i did a clean installation. For a amd 2700 its run fine after i turned down the visual effects. i bought a new hp laptop in december and ive had no problems with it. just built a new rig a few weeks ago and i didnt have any problems installing any drivers. The only complaint that i have is with creative labs for not releasing vista drivers for my 4 year old nomad, other than that i think its great.
Posted by ARTBOI on 2/26/2008 1:55 AM: vista is the most counterproductive system out there >_> its like a marketed virus from microsoft , death to vista!
Posted by On Vista now on 2/26/2008 4:00 AM: I'm about one week from dumping it too.

I bought a new system from Newegg about a year ago, and since it was dual core 64 bit, i grabbed the vista 64 bit.

i needed to drag a file to a usb thumb drive for a buddy, no driver could be found. it wouldn't even load some generic driver.

a stupid-ass usb drive.

uninstalled immediately and went back to xp.

i reinstalled it again about two months ago and i've been miserable since. i get great speed of applications due to the 64 bit, but it's just not worth it.

i am done with it for good.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 4:00 AM: Thanks DaU
Posted by Fatt Matt on 2/26/2008 5:50 AM: I'm sure you all remember how Windows 98 was 'da bomb', right? Everything worked beautifully, for the most part. Then comes along Windows ME, a total POS. This was followed shortly by Windows XP which we have all come to love. Following this trend, I believe Vista is the new ME. I've been hearing stories about the release date for Windows 7 has been pushed to 2009, and that Redmond has been given orders to go full-speed in refining and perfecting it.
I'll be patient, and time may prove me wrong, but I'm hoping that we'll see XP reincarnated in Windows 7 and that Microsoft will get it perfected BEFORE release for a change.

Off that topic, I have a desktop running XP and three laptops with Vista. Other than having to buy a new printer (it was time anyways,) I haven't had any problems with Vista. The UAC is only slightly annoying now (I click through habitually, I've done it so many times now) and the file transfer speeds are still lacking (Microsoft says it's the same, that XP closes the dialog before the cache is cleared and Vista waits 12 seconds to better estimate transfer times. Is this simply exchanging speed for reliability? Judge for yourself,) but other than that I've been mostly satisfied with Vista...for now.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 6:07 AM: Hi Fatt Matt,
I love the reference of Vista being the new "Me", that's classic and I believe you are right about Vista being a step to a better ore refined version of Vista.
Posted by The PFY on 2/26/2008 6:55 AM: Upgraded and downgraded to XP and Vista several times, and I can honestly say I had nothing but trouble with Vista, it never worked properly from day one.

I had problems with drivers I couldn't find because they either hadn't been produced or didn't work for one reason or another, I found loads of my software incompatible.

I ran the system monitor widget, my laptop is about 2 years old but it was a top of the range VAIO is the Blu-ray drive so it should still be a decent machine by todays standards, but the memory ran at 50%-60% constantly, even when it was just sat at the desktop.

I considered upgrading to 2gb but since I've install Ubuntu it's run like s**t of a shovel.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 7:18 AM: Hi PFY,
I had many similar problems to yours and you would think that with all the OS experience that Microsoft has that they could have done a better job and not break so many applications and hardware devices. Thanks for commenting!
Posted by Franka on 2/26/2008 7:24 AM: Got the same "problem" with this stupid VIsta. I simply don´t understand what the programmers of MS are doing all day long? I have a Vista mashine with Adobe Premiere and it´s sucking my time away - so within the next days i will downgrate back to XP!
But XP is running very stable - for me feels more stable than OSX.
Greetz
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 7:26 AM: Hi Franka,
I had to downgrade just so I could use software that I had licenses for, that and many didn't have Vista capable versions. It really sucks. It will be a very long time before I consider moving from XP on my daily use PC.
Posted by dan da man on 2/26/2008 8:18 AM: I agree with this article to 110%! The only computer i've ever had a smoothly installed VISTA on is my HTPC, why? you might ask... because i dont touch it, i dont upgrade or do sh!t on that box other than watching movies... for that VISTA is ok but no more, I just can't work with it on a regular computer that I am using for something productive. Too much conflicts, "snail-speed", incompatible software or just buggy and crashing services. XP and Linux will rule my computer-nest until this VISTA storm has blown over. For all i care they could have just released another Windows MCE again... hmmpf!
Posted by Matt on 2/26/2008 8:18 AM: I'm honestly sick of people with really old hardware whining about Vista.

I've been running it for 6 months off a 2.4ghz Core 2 Duo (not an old XEON) and 2GB of RAM (800mhz) with an 8800GT. After flashing my 8800GT with a newer bios (which would be eVGA's fault, not Vistas) I've had zero problems. Nothing. Not once have I crashed. Not once has windows stopped resonding (albeit, games have, but Vista closes them within a few seconds of me clicking end task. The games are the ones at fault, there)

Sure, Vista uses more disc space. What sort of gripe is that? You're all poking holes at disc space? Get a grip (and a bigger hard drive. They're not that expensive)

So yeah. Here's my rant about sad people finding a reason to poke holes in a good operating system. There is nothing wrong with Vista. Times change. Move with them or be left behind.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 8:46 AM: Hi Dan da man thanks for the comments.

Hi Matt Thanks for your comments.
Posted by Flo on 2/26/2008 8:50 AM: The whole current range of MS software - IE7, Vista, Office 2007 - has left me wondering where the heck this company is heading.

While Windows from day 1 had its issues and deficiencies, some of which have prevailed right up to Vista, the NT line including 2000 was one tough bastard of an operating system: stable, pretty sleek, no-nonsense.

XP made you feel that the enterprise and consumer lines were merged: stupid, confusing interface, annoying wizards aplenty, "Are you sure? Don't you want to…?"-dialogs everywhere, and at realease an utter lack of stability. (Yes, somewhat exaggerated, but you get the picture.) SP1 was magic, SP2, though initailly causing some issues, was a miracle. An up-to-date XP install in the hands of a knowledgeable admin is a solid, responsive platform.

But Vista? I played around with it at home, didn't find any reason to switch, but plenty of issues. My girlfriend, with minimal computer skills and just a few months of XP exposure, had me remove Vista from her new laptop after about two weeks because she found it annoying, illogical and inaccessible. The company I work for aside tried it and will skip it, any laptops we get shipped with Vista preinstalled are wiped and set up with XP. At my university there effectively is a ban on bringing Vista machines onto the internal network, not a single rig is set up with it and'its not even mentioned in the Windows-centric courses (although Windows Server 2003 and 2008 are, so it has nothing to do with the courses being outdated).

From the sheer range of people who have issues with Vista it should be obvious that there is something wrong with it. It's not just nerds with exotic hardware, or Mac switchers with no Windows experience. It's just about everyone I have talked to about it.

Something is fundamentally wrong at Microsoft. All their evilness and mess-ups aside, they are one of the smartest and nerdiest companies around since the old days of Apple. Something's just not right anymore.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 8:59 AM: Hi Flo,
I would have to agree with you overall. Many corporations are avoiding Vista and I know many government agencies and banks are still using Windows 2000. It hard enough for their IT departments to keep up with Microsoft releases. I wish MSFT would fix the broken applications before releasing newer versions, many of which are as broken as the previous releases.
Posted by Siddharth vhatkar on 2/26/2008 9:04 AM: I really find it annoying that most of the users are taking an easy way out and blaming Vista. Vista had it's kernel written from scratch as MS had promised to give us a more secure OS and imo they have done that well.

Then there is this big compatibility issue with most of the software. But why blame vista alone for that ? I could actually argue that it's a problem of the software developer. The problem is most of the software in current use was developed for XP so it was always going to have problems with a new kernel in vista. It's only after a year that we are seeing many applications becoming vista capable.

My only complaint with MS is that they gave too much importance to the user interface and graphics in vista. Thus making it a resource hog compared to XP , another common gripe of the average user. Firefox is a classic example of a product kept simple and clean but complemented by features. It's a shame that MS couldn't take a leaf from the success book of firefox. I firmly believe that had MS kept vista's GUI simple and resource friendly, the os would have been well received.

Btw i'm running vista ultimate on an AMD X2 4000+ and Jetway 690G with 2 GB of DDR2 RAM and so far it has been a smooth ride.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 9:06 AM: Hi Siddarth,
Thanks for the comments!
Posted by Flo on 2/26/2008 9:07 AM: Matt:
"I'm honestly sick of people with really old hardware whining about Vista."

I've tried it on a variety of platforms ranging from 300 € off-the-shelf office systems to 3500 € custom high-end CAD rigs and it gave me issues at every single one of them. Don't even get me started on laptops.

Besides: I managed to get Windows XP to run on an AMD K6-2 w/300 MHz, some 64 MB RAM and an old no-name 2d-only video card with no show-stopping issues. The hardest part was finding drivers for discontinued hardware somewhere in the depths of the internet. Couldn't I expect Vista to run reasonably stable and painless on a 2 year old high-quality rig? Well, it didn't.

"Sure, Vista uses more disc space. What sort of gripe is that? You're all poking holes at disc space? Get a grip (and a bigger hard drive. They're not that expensive)"

1) For many businesses this is a big issue as it can mean rebuying, upgrading or rerenting a whole outfit of systems.

2) I don't take issue with Vista using more system resources. If I did I'd still be at Windows 95. I take issue with Vista not delivering a compelling _reason_ for using _vastly_ more resources. Vista has some advancements but those are simply not worth the costs and hassle that come with it. The new explorer is a fine thing, but they could just have released it as an XP upgrade. The platform itself simply doesn't give me any reason to switch. Even as an enthusiast gamer DX10 won't be enough to lure me onto Vista.
Posted by Flo on 2/26/2008 9:17 AM: Siddharth: "Then there is this big compatibility issue with most of the software. But why blame vista alone for that ?"

For one reason only: MS claims - or rather claimed - that their platform is compatible. Our MS rep told us wonderful fairy tales about how smooth transition of our systems from XP to Vista would go. We tried it on 6 machines ranging from basic office rigs with little other software besides MS Office up to our CAD workstations. Vista failed miserably. The point is not that the software and hardware didn't work on it but that MS _claimed_ it would. They couldn't deliver what they had promised. _That_ is their failure.
Posted by Siddharth vhatkar on 2/26/2008 9:27 AM: Flo , i was purely referring to the software on the compatibility thing. As for the hardware issues , i do agree that vista can be a pain on older systems but on powerful systems, it's silly to blame vista for the compatibility problems when it's actually the hardware vendors who have not come up with vista compatible drivers.
Posted by JimmyStewart on 2/26/2008 10:14 AM: I guess it depends on your setup... I've been using Vista since beta and I've only had it lockup once around a month ago. I've had FAR more trouble with XP.
Posted by Allen on 2/26/2008 10:20 AM: Hi Jimmy,
Thanks for commenting. I used Vista from beta and it worked okay on my non daily use machine, it was when I began using Vista daily that the problem and shortcomings became apparent.
Posted by DrE on 2/26/2008 12:24 PM: you exaggerate too much.
Posted by DJJoker on 2/26/2008 1:43 PM: I had tested vista through all the beta and RC stages, and truthfully the OS never really had much promise, development was very slow and the efforts to fix bugs submitted almost non existent !

I tried the final release version and it worked on occasions although like others it seemed very slow. Now at this stage I only had a Athlon64 3700+ single core and thought that I would get a boost in performance by jumping up to dual core. Actually the result I got was being forced to remove Vista from the computer.

My new dual-core CPU apparently means that AGP graphics cards (like the one I have installed) fail to work in Vista, mostly down to my actual chipset on the motherboard. None the less the upgrade to the CPU made my computer unusable.

3 hours later in WinXP the dual-core CPU was running fine with my graphics card and things were speeding along again !!!

Vista has to be the worst OS ever released if you want my opinion :)
Posted by allen on 2/26/2008 2:14 PM: Hi DJJoker,
Thanks for the insight and comments.
Posted by Chaloopa on 2/26/2008 2:43 PM: Vista is pure poop. If I had to choose between installing Vista and receiving a Tabasco sauce enema, I would take 2 enemas just to make sure there is no mistake.

Seriously.

F*** Vista right in the ear.
Posted by Gavin on 2/27/2008 7:42 AM: I have had more fucken issues with vista than any other OS ive worked with (other than ME of course).

Its a joke, a complete joke. I threw vista out the window about two months ago... I even tried vista barebones (which was a TAD better I might add)... but still cant complete with windows black edition...

Vista is a bloatware OS, a useless OS, and the fact that microsoft is past further developments make me feel jacked because of the the "Vista Ready" notebooks they sold... that "could not install XP"... ahh but you slipstream the SATA drivers into the xp install.. and your golden... but yet another cash grab, vista will get dropped, microsoft will start fresh and fuck many "laman" computer users... its like a broad with a nice rack and a tight bum...

the outside of it is pretty nice... the inside... EMPTY PROMISES!!!

xp black edition, baby baby baby!

xoxo
gavin from canada ;)
Posted by allen on 2/27/2008 7:50 AM: Thanks for your comments Gavin.
Posted by Rone on 2/27/2008 9:11 AM: I love this blog post, and i fully hate vista in an unhealthy passion.
if you think that xp is small compaired to vista have a look into xp black or xp 911 edition, 911 is my favorite, its only 300mb.
obviously thats because it has everything ripped out, but who uses paint or mike?
add the software you need as you need it, thanks for the thought microsoft but i dont own EVERY printer sold before 1999, therefore i DONT need every driver for said printers.[/rant]
Posted by allen on 2/27/2008 9:33 AM: Hi Rone,To be honest I never heard of XP 'black' or '911' edition. I myself uninstall a lot of accessories and junk I rarely use, I like to keep thing simple. I guess it is time to do some research on the black and 911 versions you speak of.

Thanks for the comment!
Posted by Nikhil Sadalkar on 2/27/2008 1:51 PM: Well i have had a similar experience as you here. In my friends circle i was the lab rat(or the first) to install vista on my system. It has 3gb ram with 7600gt and 4000+.
First problem, i wanted a dual boot xp/vista so that i can switch back. after fresh installation my xp was gone, there went all my software! I was like a kid in a candy store, impressed by the new look and features. Then the nightmare started.
UAC(User annoyance control) was simply pissing me off. My friends argued that it makes your system safer. Safer HOW? Firstly UAC does not provide sufficient information on what the program you are trying to run is about to do. I may be running a trojan, it will present me with the same dialog as when i am running a standard setup. I know they kept the general user in mind and not only geeks, but come on cant they do it like Kaspersky AV, when it detects a program is performing some thing suspicious it asks for authorization with sufficient information. Changing the registry what key? Writing to a file WHAT FILE? WHERE? And the best thing is you can deny certain actions and allow the rest.
I upgraded because of dx10, i am a gamer. I was really disappointed in the performance drop that i noticed in almost all my games. I thought games were supposed to run faster with dx10 running 30% faster that dx9.
Next came the hardware compatibility, my tv tuner card didnt work, my modem stop working(no drivers found). And the main reason why i downgraded was because of the pen drive problem. This just annoyed me to death. My pen drive works one day next few days it wont, then after a few days it works again and then it stops again. I looked this up on the net and found that many people have a similar problem. Now i am back in XP all my hardware are working fine, life is much simpler here. After witnessing the problems i faced with vista all my friends are too scared to touch vista with a yard stick. if you feel its only me, all the friends i know in university, college who upgraded to vista have downgraded to xp again.
Posted by Allen on 2/27/2008 1:54 PM: Hi Nikhil,
Welcome to the "Vista is badly broken club" as I like to call it. Thanks for taking the time to share your own issues with Vista.
Posted by microsuk on 2/27/2008 6:19 PM: just downgraded to xp myself....purchased a comp that came with vista pre-installed, and i really dont have many complaints about it other than it DOESN'T PLAY MY GAMES nearly as well as XP.

check out: www.removevista.com for info!!!!

microsoft suxs!!!! though i have to use it for gaming.....meh!, try installing linux as another OS. it'll give you time to get used to the way it works and u can still have the XP that you know and love ;) lol
Posted by Allen on 2/27/2008 6:28 PM: Hi microsuk, Thanks for sharing your insight. I am considering dual booting XP and Ubuntu Linux.
Posted by `z[m]. on 2/28/2008 1:27 PM: rofl. my windows vista boot up with 29 processes and the performance runs totally like XP. no hassles, no complains here.

just a little bit of knowledge and a little tweaking makes me happy.
Posted by allen on 2/28/2008 1:46 PM: Thanks ofr your comments 'z[m]. !
Posted by mohammed abdul Razzaq on 2/28/2008 5:57 PM: windows vista is the worst upgrade of the year
Posted by akkadian on 2/29/2008 8:45 PM: I remember reading a review of the Vista development cycle. A lot of the problems with Vista originate with the record and movie industries insisting that Microsoft try to code an operating system that will automatically disable or degrade the functionality of any so-called 'pirated' material, i.e. copied or cloned or downloaded CDs or DVDs. Hence the lack of drivers and reduced or non-existent functionality for applications such as Nero for example. There is a lot more to it, which I am sure you can find on the web if you wish to do some more research, but the bottom line is that Vista was designed to please the RIAA and the Hollywood movie producers first, and the users last, hence the problems so many users have experienced.
Posted by allen on 2/29/2008 8:49 PM: Thanks for the input akkadian. I am sure that what you say is part of the Vista problems.