Windows Vista 64-bit

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My new pc has windows Vista 64-bit...My old pc seemed to run very well and fast on Windows XP, but this new one, with the 64-bit Vista is really, really slow at everything.

It takes longer to boot up, internet browsing reacts much slower than XP ever did, and Vista seems to hinder my attempts to access my own files randomly.

I own a copy of XP Professional from my old pc, can/should I load it onto my new pc? Or is that O/S incompatible with my machine? Here's what I have now:

XPS 730X Intel® Core™ i7-920 (2.66GHz, 8MB L3 Cache)

Memory: 6GB Tri-Channel DDR3 at 1066MHZ (3x2GB DIMM)

Video Card: SLi, Dual nVidia GeForce GTX 285 1024MB

Hard Drives: 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor - SATA-II, 3GB/S, 10000RPM, 16MB Cache

Floppy Drive and Media Reader: Dell 19-in-1 Media Card Reader

Operating System: Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (English) Service Pack 1 64-bit (I'm nervous about moving over to Vista...I've heard no good reviews!)

Optical Drives: Single Drive: 16X CD/DVD burner (DVD+/-RW) w/double layer write capability

Sound Cards: Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium


Any suggestions? Will going back to XP make things worse?

 

There are a few issues you need to keep in mind if you plan on installing XP on this system:

1. XP will refuse to install on a SATA drive if AHCI is enabled. To install the OS, you'll need to go into your BIOS and turn off AHCI (IIRC this will make the BIOS "emulate" PATA interface for this drive, so it'll run slower but Windows can run off it). If you want to turn AHCI on again you'll need to install some SATA drivers on XP, which also involves some registry editing.

2. XP is stupid and will only see 3.25Gb of RAM if you have more. Not that much of an issue if you have 4Gb, but if you have 6 it may feel like a big waste.

3. Pre-SP2, XP did not support PCI-e. It's so bad that XP will simply crash on install and give you a completely useless error, which has in fact nothing to do with PCI-e. There are 2 ways around this: if you have integrated graphics in your motherboard chipset, turn this on (which should switch off the PCI-e card) and install XP, then install SP2, then switch the display back to the PCI-e card. If you don't have integrated graphics, then you'll need to either get a copy of XP that already includes SP2 or SP3, or you'll need to slipstream them yourself.

Aside from that, nothing else should give you any trouble. Driver support for XP is every bit as good as for Vista (better in certain cases; I've gone through hell trying to get some of HP's printers to work under Vista, as they have no driver support for the OS).

 

Did you get a voucher for windows 7? If not, a upgrade version will be sold, to upgrade vista with.

XP cannot be upgraded to 7, so a new clean install is needed.

A second option is downloading the release candidate of 7 and install it on a partition. The release candidate is not final, but as good as. The only problems I have found are that some versions cannot run nwn2: A dx11 issue. And a driver hickup with my Lycosa keyboard.

 

Bel,
your hardware (and your comp is pretty powerful) really lends itself to a 64bit OS. XP will only allow you to use 3,x GB of your RAM. Except for that, your computer is more powerful than mine, and while I was never happy with Vista 64bit, I didn't experience an actual 'lag'. XP was noticably more agile though.

On Vista 64bit I had serious trouble running older games (including some of my favourites). In hindsight, it was also probably due to my inexperience and me being unfamiliar with the new user rights management that came with Vista (under Windows 7 I got used to it to an extent; yet I still feel that XP for playing older games is more stable and easier to use). My solution for gaming problems was a dual boot system. I installed XP 32 bit for running older games, and I used Vista 64bit for everything else.

I have now upgraded to Windows 7 RC 64bit, and I am more than happy - it is far better than Vista 64bit was. When you go for a dual boot system, make sure you install XP first, and then Windows 7 64bit, or Vista 64bit. I then used an MBR editor to correct the boot settings. Still, with dual boot systems and Windows versions the newer one always writes itself as first in the MBR (Win7 before Vista before XP etc). So when you install Vista first, and then XP, and then correct the boot settings, you will still only be able to access Vista, or XP, depending on what you set as primary in the boot settings. When you install XP first (say on D: ), and then Vista (on C: ), Vista iirc will recognise the existing OS and create a working dual boot option by itself.

In defense of Vista 64bit, and even more so for Windows 7, installation is very convenient and user friendly.

 

Actually the available RAM will be less than 2 GB. That video card setup eats 2 GB from the available 4 GB for a 32-bit OS. Have you updated Vista to SP2? If not, do so. It should help with slow internet browsing. Also if you could be a bit more specific about the problems, it is hard to recommend anything based on the current description.

 

That's a good idea, I keep forgetting that Windows 7 is out. Probably sounds like the best way to at once take advantage of your hardware and keep an OS that's compatible with older games, in case Windows 7 faisl to run them.

I don't know about Windows 7, but I beg to differ on Vista. Installation was far more painful than for XP and takes ages (after almost 15 minutes of "Vista is starting for the first time" I was convinced my PC had crashed, until I looked at the hard drive LED. Then I was convinced it was killing my HD). Many of the default settings for Vista are also so stupid you have to spend a while changing them back to something that makes sense.

Eord, he's using a desktop and no shared memory for the graphics like on a laptop. The video cards will not touch the system RAM. Vista SP2 makes absolutely no difference as far as I can tell to speed. Let's face it Vista is more bloated and slower than XP, and there's nothing we can do about it. There are some services you can disable (indexing especially) to at least make things tolerable.
EDIT: Did a bit more reading on some links Erod sends me and I was wrong about the RAM thing. It's not an issue with the RAM itself but with memory addresses. If you've got 2Gb of VRAM and a 32-bit OS you're going to run out of memory addresses very quickly, so what will most probably happen (if I got this right) is that Windows will allocate 3.25Gb to itself and this will leave only 750Mb of VRAM that can be addressed.

 

Well, I do only have premium components (that require drivers) from reputable manfacturers (Asus, Sapphire, Samsung). My Win7 installation took less than 30 minutes and my computer was ready to go online. Vista 64bit only took a little longer. XP at least takes 45 min, and then you have to install drivers and stuff manually and earliest you go online after an hour. You still have to install some drivers manually on Windows 7, but the computer works even if you don't. That's an improvement over XP's very limited functionalities directly after installation, and great considering that you nowadays directly get most of your software and tools in the most actual version directly from the internet (that's for me anyway).

Yes, setting defaults perhaps takes some time, but the installation itself is very convenient. Setting up the system properly is for me a different work step.

PS: If you install Vista 64 bit, take care that you have enough space for it. It didn't take me long to make Vista 64bit's C: partition grow to a whopping 25 GB size. XP at its worst ever only needed half that. That is, sensible partition size for Vista 64bit should probably be about 50 to 60GB.