Time for a format?

[Gerbil333]

I haven't formatted my main computer in almost 2 years. It's starting to get quirky:

-It takes a lot longer to boot up than it used to (~45 seconds) even though I have no startup apps
-If it's been in standby, it usually won't let me disable my network adapter, not that I usually need to
-Sometimes if I try to adjust the audio properties, even volume, I get "There are no active mixer devices available" which requires me to restart the Windows Audio service
-Two days ago it said something about being unable to "start the call service" when I tried to log into one of my VPN connections. I tried again and it behaved.


I have four O/S's to choose from thanks to my department's MSDNAA:

XP Pro 32-bit
XP Pro 64-bit
Vista Business 32-bit
Vista Business 64-bit

I'm inclined to stick with XP Pro 32-bit after trying Vista 32 on an Athlon XP 2500+ and 512MB of RAM...it seemed VERY slow, but I suspect that was due to the amount of RAM. Is Vista 64-bit worth trying? I may upgrade to 4GBs of RAM within the next year; XP won't handle that.

I ran Microsoft's Vista compatiblity app and it said Nero wouldn't work. That's fine, I can upgrade. Everything I run should be okay, except I've heard iTunes won't work well, or has that been fixed by now?

I disable animations in XP...I like apps to pop up instantly. Aside from application compatibility, how smooth and stable is Vista? Everytime I've tried it on one of my low-end machines (XP 1900+ w/1GB, and an XP 2500+ w/512MB), I've been too frustrated by its slowness to bother with it for longer than a day. Should Vista run programs as instantly as XP on the system below?


Machine in consideration:

Asus A8N-E 2.0
Athlon 64 X2 3800+ Toledo
Corsair 2x1GB TWINX2048-3200C2PT
Radeon X800 XL 256MB
Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS
Western Digital 74GB Raptor 8mb cache
Samsung 500GB HD501LJ SATA II
NEC 3520A 16x DVD+/-RW
Lite-On 52x32x52x16 Combo Drive

Other Devices:
APC 750VA "BE750BB" UPS
HP Laserjet 1018
HP Laserjet 1012
Logitech Quickcam 4000 Pro
iPod 80GB
Motorola RAZR V3 (Motorola Phone Tools...hmmm...)
Canon A60/A70/A80 digital cameras (native support in XP, so I assume Vista works, too?)


Dual booting is out of the question. I tried that years ago and found that it was a waste of hd space because I kept booting to the same OS every day.

 

[cmdrdredd]

most things work fine in Vista, but there are some slight quirks that make me say stick with xp for now. It's proven and it works. Vista is good and I like it alot, but there's a few things that just don't perform like I'd want.

 

[mechBgon]

My rig is quite similar to yours. Same exact motherboard, same CPU, 2GB RAM. Vista is on some 320GB SATA II drive with 16MB cache and NCQ blah blah. XP is on an Atlas 15K II SCSI drive in the same system. I use the onboard audio and a vanilla 6600 video card.

With animations disabled on both OSes, WinXP feels a bit snappier on my system, as far as the GUI goes. The SCSI drive probably has something to do with that. I would've installed Vista on the SCSI drive, but it doesn't have enough capacity for the long run. The vanilla 6600 might be a little skimpy on the video-memory bandwidth too; it's a slow 6600 with passive cooling and low clocks.

Vista is more secure by design, more ready for the future IMO, and offers stuff WinXP cannot give you such as Shadow Copy, the new search, image-based backup & restore (on Biz, Enterprise and Ultimate), the improved Spam filtering of Windows Mail, and of course the Chess Titans game. You might glance down this page for other stuff that catches your eye.

If your Vista experiments were on nForce2 chipsets, that might not have helped. As you probably know, nVidia doesn't make Vista drivers for nF2.

 

[rxblitzrx]

I'm considering a switch too. I loaded Vista Ultimate when it first came out, but I wasn't very impressed with the software support at the time. Since it's been out for about 5 months now, I'm considering switching back to Vista. However, without the following software support, I doubt I'll be switching anytime soon.

- Kaspersky Internet Security
- Raxco Perfect Disc (confirmed working)
- VLC Media Player
- AIM 5.9 (I hope this works)
- Spyware Blaster, Crap Cleaner

 

[Gerbil333]

No VLC?! I guess I missed that when I ran the compatibility check.

mechBgon: Actually, I've used Vista on 3 systems. The 1900+/1GB system was SiS based (a K7S5A...heh). The 2500+/512MB was nForce 2 based. The third was a VIA s754 board with a Sempron 3100+ and 512MB of RAM--I forgot about that, as my friend installed it. They all felt the same speed, but the K7S5A install was with a Beta copy. Perhaps that's why the 1GB of RAM didn't seem any better.

 

[JohnG86]

VLC Media Player tested working in Vista Home Premium (32bit) and Vista Ultimate (64 bit).

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: rxblitzrx
- Kaspersky Internet Security
- Raxco Perfect Disc (confirmed working)
- VLC Media Player
- AIM 5.9 (I hope this works)
- Spyware Blaster, Crap Cleaner

Kaspersky Internet Security is Vista-ready for both 32- and 64-bit versions.

AIM 6.1 is released and compatible with Vista, or do you need 5.9 specifically? If you need 5.9, you could try running it in WinXP compatibility mode.

The VLC player guy seems to be a bit of a Vista refusenik, based on his oh-the-drama thread about how to make it work on Vista, but evidently it does work for some folks.

If you use Vista, you probably won't have much spyware to blast but whatever... the customer is always right... SpywareBlaster does work on Vista, says Javacool himself. CCleaner does as well.

 

[mechBgon]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
1900+/1GB system was SiS based (a K7S5A...heh).

Holy capacitors, Batman! Somenone still has a functioning K7S5A?! :Q

 

[Gerbil333]

Hehe, yeah, I listed it on eBay for $0.99 and the stooges there have already bid it up to $15 + shipping.

I did a system restore to last week on my current install. If the quirkiness goes away, I'll stick with XP and wait until Vista 64-bit becomes mainstream (SP1?).

 

[rxblitzrx]

What's the benefit of running 64 bit Vista over 32bit?

 

[Gerbil333]

RAM, mainly. 32-bit is limited to 4GBs.

 

[rxblitzrx]

OK. Well I just plunged head first into my install. I got Vista Ultimate 32-bit up and running. Hopefully Kaspersky will install along with the other programs I want to use. I forgot how pretty Vista is. The user experience has a learning curve though. I'll probably be reading the Vista Tweaking thread for the next few days.

 

[Gerbil333]

What learning curve? It seemed the same as any other edition of Windows, just slower and flashier.

 

[gus6464]

I have tried Vista Business 64bit and its pretty good. Recognized all of the hardware in my sig with no problem.

 

[jae]

Originally posted by: Gerbil333
What learning curve? It seemed the same as any other edition of Windows, just slower and flashier.

What kind of machine do you have? On my [POS] machine, Vista seemed the same speed as XP, maybe even a bit snappier in some instances. He probably mean the small changes in menus and such.

 

[Gerbil333]

Originally posted by: jaeWhat kind of machine do you have? On my [POS] machine, Vista seemed the same speed as XP, maybe even a bit snappier in some instances. He probably mean the small changes in menus and such.

Check out the rest of the thread; I've tried three machines, one of which was quite similar to the system in your signature (Sempron 3100+, 512MB). I bet you don't run XP tweaked for speed as I do.

I just popped a 30GB hd in an old Thinkpad T22 (PIII 900MHz, 256MB) that had Vista Home Premium loaded on it (pulled from a friend's T40). To my surprise, it booted up. And wow, it was slow. XP runs fine. Quite simply, Vista requires more computations. A fast machine may make it appear to run smoothly, but I doubt it's running any faster than XP. I haven't found it to run anything quicker than XP yet.

I have a 120GB drive sitting around. I may try Vista on my A64 X2 to see.

 

[n7]

Vista needs 1 GB RAM minimum. It's that simple.

Anything less is not ideal.

It does really become faster when you have lots of RAM though, due to Superfetch in action, one of the reasons i prefer it to XP.

VLC does works in Vista too.
Not as well as i'd like, but it's fine.

I either run OpenGL for it (which is fine for lower rez stuff & works in Aero mode, but chugs bigtime in HD stuff) or DirectX mode, (which will disable Aero, but can run just fine for HD content then).