For Those Frustrated with Vista (Free MEMORY trick!)

[Colin Parkinson]

Thanks, I will admit that my knowledge of Mac's is dated, never been a fan of a dedicated system, plus I can't stand those silly hand held things they call a controller.  ;D

 

[SIG MITCH]

I kind of like Suse myself...

 

[Pikache]

Just bought a new HP laptop and already thinking of downgrading back to XP pro.

Only apprehensive due to the fact that i dunno what problems I'll run into reinstalling XP pro

 

[George Wallace]

For those sending me PM's  -  Please STOP.  I have fallen victim of Microsoft VISTA upgrade/update to SERVICE PACK 1.  It has frozen my computer and I may be logged on, but I can't do anything.........This update has taken two hours so far and is now 33% through the first of three "stages" and one reboot........it will take longer than I have at this location to finish......    Another reason to switch to LINIX or APPLE.

 

[MedTechStudent]

I got Vista in March 07. It ran well for two months, then self destructed. Restarted randomly, froze up, started BSODing. Would last two weeks per reinstall.

Now, around this time, my laptop broke down and I got a Macbook. 6-7 months later, it's all that I use, and I'm thinking about getting an Imac now.

Exactly the same for me.  Mac and all.

 

[Fishbone Jones]

Microsoft has stopped fully testing their crap before marketing a long time ago. Now they launch and wait til you report the problem. If enough people complain, about a certain bug, they'll design a patch. Everything they sell now is a Beta, with you being the tester. They charge YOU $400.00 for the chance to test THEIR program. Along with their hidden search and destroy for pirated software, report to home about your system function and composition and puriant monitoring of all your computer functions.

If you have VISTA, Bill Gates has you.

 

[tabernac]

Along with their hidden search and destroy for pirated software, report to home about your system function and composition and puriant monitoring of all your computer functions.

Source? I find that kinda wonky, what with all the "Do you allow" boxes. I have yet to have a serious problem with Vista.

 

[tankie]

All i gotta say is ...http://badvista.fsf.org/  My Pops worked for a PC Shop, and one of the things he told me about vista was, if you delete Vista and install another OS, then decide to re-install Vista, you got to pay for it again, a once only serial/unlock number.  To this day i am convinced that BG is a runner for Satan.  The day that they stop updates for XP, then its off to the SJ camp and a lovely apple.

 

[Snafu-Bar]

Well vista was and may still be a flop to many who had misfortunes with it so far. I bought an Acer aspire with Amd athlon 64x2 4200+ with 2 gigs of ram, purchased an Ati x1650 pro 512 vid card and slapped my SB audigy card in it. My first time booting it up the screen immediately promted me to put in a blank a dvd in the tray, which then popped open on it's own. I put in a blank dvd in closed the tray and waited....The system then made a recovery disk that i use to reset the system back to factory settings. That allowed me to try a dual boot, which to my horror killed the vista intsall every time. I then wiped vista and just used Xp till it became corrupted and needed a refresh(about 4 1/2 months of daily misuse ) I then used my Vista again and got it updated and it ran alot better so i kept using it but some of my games still didn't have vista comp patches yet so once again i tried a dual boot with no success and wiped for another tour of xp that lasted till SP1 for vista came out. I spent the better part of a day researching the service pack and what kind of bugs or hiccups to expect and to my horror i found that more people we're getting stalled or having a system meltdown than anything, so i waited for a critical re-build. Once that sp1 re-release came out i hisitantly installed it and haven't looked back..been better part of 6 months and all my programs *minus DOS installed stuff * run fine and all my games are upto par and run like butter. I found open office and it's free and compatible with MS crap so i use it.

The rumour about having to rebuy a new key is only true if your system didn't make a restore disk or it didn't come with any when you bought it. And if you change the motherboard,cpu ram in the system it may require a new key.


The BEST news is that in 09 MS will be releasing windows 8 and thankfully bill gates has retired from his monopoly upon which he done good but mostly bad at the end of his reign.

 

[Teeps74]

Vista is garbage.

I recently bought my new toy... AMD Phenom box, with an ASUS Crossfire mobo, and twin ATI 3870 x2s.

After I put everything togeather, things appear to be working great. Then, BSoD. And again. And again. See, I was trying to run 2 monitors off of it. The errror message I got involved a file called ATIKMDAG.SYS.

This is an ongoing issue which has existed since 2006. I never heard about it until I got the error message above. ATI says it is a Vista problem, and MS says it is an ATI problem. (Note, running 2 monitors in XP is exceptionally stabile).

 

[aussiechangover]

Just bought a new HP laptop and already thinking of downgrading back to XP pro.

Only apprehensive due to the fact that i dunno what problems I'll run into reinstalling XP pro

you'll probably have some issues with soundcards as i did and perhaps the vid card as well but they can all be sorted out by surfing the net and downloading the non vista alternative. i personally have a HP laptop and found out that vista will make it hard to downgrade. and you have to disable SATA that took a while to work out otherwise XP won't load at all (that took a while to search for that)

 

[rytel]

I've been running vista for over a year now without a single problem - I've actually grown to like it alot.

 

[Teeps74]

On single display, it works great. I only have issues with dual display. There is the refusal on the part of AMD/ATI and MS to work togeather to solve the known for two years issue with dual monitor systems.

Here's an exampl of just one of many threads I have found.

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-hardware-devices/3707-atikmdag-sys.html

Compared to XP, Vista is garbage.

 

[Snafu-Bar]

I know it isn't perfect, nor will anything microshaft puts out in the future. Remember they want to push the hardware to make you buy more components. Been that way since win95 and isn't likely to change in upcoming releases.

The only thing us PC lovers can hope is that MAC releases a nicely ported version of OSX and all can be happy...except for microshaft.

As for using Dual monitors that woudn't be the fault of the OS as much as the hardware(vid card) and the drivers attempting to run it. Ati has some of the most horrid drivers around(besides creative and logitech) but i'm sure someone out on the net has a tweaked set that functions. I used to have an gf4 4600 ti and strictly ran OMEGA drivers with it as they we're damn near bulletproof. They however haven't begun tweaking vista sets as far as i'm aware.

Hope you can get the dual screen running...it sounds like a decent rig.

 

[Burrows]

My last laptop BSOD'ed and made a sounds similar to dropping glass shards on concrete.  My motherboard was fried and it was not worth paying for a repair.  This in mind,  I decided to go out and replace my old, formerly running windows XP laptop with a new one.

I forgot about Vista.

So far I've had no issues after disabling a bunch of features that must be in there to help old people feel safer. 

One thing I didn't like was that I had to disable a setting so as to allow my admin account to actually function as an admin account and install a program I use.

On the plus side, for you nerdy folks who will understand this -  I found a program that allows you to mount disk image files as if they were in an actual disk drive.  Woo!

 

[rlee_1001]

Kyle has this one pretty much figured. I used to be a Vista hater as well but when I got a new rig I decided getting used to it was easier than trying to dig up a "legitimate" version of XP. If you are a gamer you will want Vista as it supports Direct X 10... All you have to do to make Vista bearable is to simply shut off ALL of the security options and user account controls, also be sure to get yourself a decent firewall. As for the dual monitors you will most likely have to go out and buy yourself a decent video card and an upgraded power source as well, I'm running an 8800 GTX and it is still pretty good. As for all of your compatibility just make sure you make the .exe files "Windows XP compatible" BEFORE you install the programs, and after. Anyway you might as well get used to Vista, or you could go check out Ubuntu if you want something free, haha. As for mounting/virtual drive software I find PowerISO and Daemon tools to be the best and easiest to use.

Hope that helps.

 

[hauger]

I've been running vista for over a year now without a single problem - I've actually grown to like it alot.

I love "I hate Vista" threads....let me tell you my story:

I'm a long time XP/Linux (Mandrake and Ubuntu) user.  I bought an HP laptop that came with Vista Home Premium on it.  I brought it home and turned it on.  What a mistake....Vista promptly drank all my liquor, made my wife cry, stole my wallet, left a floater in the toilet, and set my couch on fire.  It then made all kinds of long distance "1-900" calls and ordered a pizza without offering to pay for it.  Then, after spending an entire night yelling obscenities at the neighbours kids, Vista finally died in a spectacular display of BSOD's, taking with it every digital memento I've ever cared about.

Sound familiar.

Actually, I really am a long time XP/Linux user, and my new laptop did come with Vista.  It's worked flawlessly over the last 13 months, with decent performance.  I had some issues with compatibility, but that's to be expected running old programs on new Operating System architecture.  The security functions don't bother me that much, I'm used to typing my root password to do stuff in Linux (although the UAC is a bit overbearing).  I think Vista gets a bad rap, that people were expecting XP with more eye candy but instead got a somewhat more secure and different OS.

 

[Teeps74]

I have decent video cards. Times 2. ATI 3870 x2's with a total of 4 GPUs and 2GB dedicated video ram. I am also running a 1000w PSU. How much more decent do I have to be to get a dual monitor rig to work? All of my equipment is top of the line, and less then 3 months old. I have extensive expereince building my own rigs, have been for years.

The error I am getting has been a known issue for two years. Neither MS or AMD/ATI could be botherd to fix the error, and needless to say, I have bought my last AMD/ATI product and if I can find a way to get out of MS I will (likely going Mac next time).

For there to be a known issue for two years, and see both companies ignore the issue, that is disheartening. I feel like I have been deliberatly ripped off.

(Next issue, is getting my supposed DX 10.1 compliant card to actually work in DX 10.1 on Crysis... Yes, I do know how to install drivers. Catalyst is simply a craptastic driver system... Used to be the best on the market IMHO)

 

[Snafu-Bar]

I have decent video cards. Times 2. ATI 3870 x2's with a total of 4 GPUs and 2GB dedicated video ram. I am also running a 1000w PSU. How much more decent do I have to be to get a dual monitor rig to work? All of my equipment is top of the line, and less then 3 months old. I have extensive expereince building my own rigs, have been for years.

The error I am getting has been a known issue for two years. Neither MS or AMD/ATI could be botherd to fix the error, and needless to say, I have bought my last AMD/ATI product and if I can find a way to get out of MS I will (likely going Mac next time).

For there to be a known issue for two years, and see both companies ignore the issue, that is disheartening. I feel like I have been deliberatly ripped off.

(Next issue, is getting my supposed DX 10.1 compliant card to actually work in DX 10.1 on Crysis... Yes, I do know how to install drivers. Catalyst is simply a craptastic driver system... Used to be the best on the market IMHO)

Heya, yeah that's a nice system, but once again the OS is not the target of your grief as much as the Crapalyst drivers. Not all sets are the same from ATI and one set to the nextr could fix 1 thing and break 4 others. It tooke me 7 release candidates to get a stable set to run my x1650 pro 512 on one monitor with one card...

Anyways here's a link to some fresh stuff just in case you haven't been lucky enough to bounce into them yet. Unfortunately they are still in the making of the vista32 driver set and it's got a coming soon tag on it :/ and i cannot hunt down the 64 bit version...

http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php

Here's another usefull link that might be of use..

http://www.guru3d.com/

Good luck...

 

[Teeps74]

Heya, yeah that's a nice system, but once again the OS is not the target of your grief as much as the Crapalyst drivers. Not all sets are the same from ATI and one set to the nextr could fix 1 thing and break 4 others. It tooke me 7 release candidates to get a stable set to run my x1650 pro 512 on one monitor with one card...

Anyways here's a link to some fresh stuff just in case you haven't been lucky enough to bounce into them yet. Unfortunately they are still in the making of the vista32 driver set and it's got a coming soon tag on it :/ and i cannot hunt down the 64 bit version...

http://www.omegadrivers.net/ati.php

Here's another usefull link that might be of use..

http://www.guru3d.com/

Good luck...

Thanks... I really do appreciate the assistance. I've tried those, I guess I have to wait on the omegadrivers.net ver as the guru3d.com one I got was simply a Catalyst beta, which does not address the probelm (and infact reduced my frame rates significantly....).

I am going to stick to the one monitor for now, and hope they at least fix the issues with DX 10.1. (I actually use my home rig to make PPTs for work... So much easier to see all my pics at once, while working on a slide). The gaming is my geeky little extra side bonus.

Vista does have other issues I am not fond of...