Warning about "downgrading" to XP on newer machine

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Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 1:06 pm

Ex. wrote:

The BIOS can detect the SATA II drives fine

The BIOS on my first SATA m/b didn't, but the other two did. I installed XP SP2 two on the second one, and googling suggests SP2 has some SATA drivers. So it wasn't just the motherboard apparently

Posted: Mon Nov 17, 2008 4:36 pm

Rodus wrote:

mikehawk

Quote:

I know Mac owners have a hard time accepting that particular reality.

not at all mate, thats shoddy MS programming for you, they don't know what multi threading means. Laughing

If you're saying that MS Office runs more slowly on Macs because of the shoddy MS prorammers, I'd agree. Lots of scientific, graphic, and video programs run very fast on the Mac. Alas, the program that pays the bills at our house was programmed by MS, so I'm stuck with Windoz. Life's a bitch.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 08 Nov 2008 Posts: 7

A friend of mine ran into massive trouble when he had his Dell laptop downgraded to Windows XP. Not only did half of the hardware lacked drivers, but when he accidentally hit some sort of shortcut button to some instant-on media center (which had been wiped from the drive during the reinstall) the computer got stuck in an infinite loop where it tried to boot to the non-existing partition and failing over and over.

I tried to help him; we found many others with the same trouble and none seemed to be able to fix it. Ultimately he resigned and sent it to a repair shop instead which reinstalled Vista or him.

Yeah, you gotta love the choice and freedom you get with MS and their favorite OEM builders. Luckily for me I only ever use Thinkpads which I mostly run Linux on.

419Eater is my life Joined: 20 Oct 2008 Posts: 280

I bought my mac slightly before they became super-hip and the marketing campaigns took hold, because I was tired of Windows and how many problems the OS has.

With my mac, while it is getting older/outdated, it is just as fast as it was the day I bought it. I don't get any spyware, or viruses and I don't need to constantly tweak and tinker with things to get it running like it should.

It's not about "looking pretty" or eye candy for me, but the OSX just works without problems. The only program that has ever periodically crashed on me is *Surprise* MS Office for mac. Rolling Eyes

I'm not good with all the programming and other computer tweaking with Linux and all that, so for reliable "point and shoot" my mac has done well. Hopefully next summer I'll be upgrading to a MacBookPro.

The whole PC vs. Mac commercials have lost their uniqueness and aren't really funny anymore.

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 12:43 am

Please don't turn this into a MS bash/PC vs Mac vs Linux debate, because neither side will win. People have their preferences and they should follow them. In the end, no one really cares if your PC is better because it plays more games and allows overclocking, or that your Mac is better because it gets no viruses due to the fact no one is there to receive them, or that Linux runs fast on ancient hardware if you use it with very low settings. In the end, it matters whether or not the machine you paid for does what you need it do.

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:30 am

Well geez, if we can't put down each other's hardware, what are we going to do? Scambait? Very Happy

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:31 am

^^^ Thats what I have been doing for the past couple weeks. and in a couple days it'll pay off big time if my lad didn't screw me on this one (they usually do).

Posted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:32 pm

As an aside, if you are still using Widows XP with 512MB of RAM, it's worth increasing it to 1GB. I've just done this with my laptop, and it does seem better. Firefox has stopped "not responding" if I have a lot of tabs open.
512MB used to be enough, but my feeling is that all the service packs and patches, means that it is no longer the case

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:25 am

Ex. wrote:

If you wish to make Vista run really really fast, do what I did:

1.) Disable Aero
2.) Disable UAC
3.) Clear programs out of your startup

Sorry to disagree with you Ex but;

1.) Disabling Aero will make no odds, if you don't have enough ram, it disables itself.
2.) Terrible advice, if you disable UAC, you are very prone to catching a virus or botnet. It may be a pain but micro$hite did get this right
3.) Fantastic advice, most people don't realise that their pc is running so slow because of all the applications running in the background.

Provided you've got a minimum of 1GB ram and have installed SP1, Vista is a better and safer OS than XP.

I'm no fan and prefer Linux but there has been a lot of bollocks written about Vista.

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 5:44 am

Sorry, but reading UAC always makes me think of Doom...

Posted: Fri Nov 21, 2008 6:02 am

Quote:

1.) Disabling Aero will make no odds, if you don't have enough ram, it disables itself.

Believe it or not, Windows Aero is a graphics application that is constantly running via DX9 and at certain resolutions does slow performance, especially when doing tasks such as video encoding or gaming. Most native resolutions are at least 1280 x800/1080 or higher, so you can imagine.

Quote:

2.) Terrible advice, if you disable UAC, you are very prone to catching a virus or botnet. It may be a pain but micro$hite did get this right

I agree that this feature should be implemented for the non tech savvy user who doesn't know how to watch what he or she downloads, but I think that the bunch at Eater can handle losing this layer of security for extra performance. Most people usually have virus protection anyway such as AVG, rendering UAC useless. This does increase performance as well.

Quote:

I'm no fan and prefer Linux but there has been a lot of bollocks written about Vista.

I agree. I support the operating system fully and you are only preaching to the choir. However, I have spent a lot of time and effort tweaking Vista to run the fastest. After all, I am a gamer. The three steps I mentioned seem to be the biggest three things slowing down machines running Vista. If I have time, I'll PM you a link to a thread that shows you just how much I cared to know about Vista.

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