• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Want your XP system to "LOOK" like Vista without the Vista problems?

Page 3 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.
Originally posted by: freshspace
Would System Restore be a safety net before installing this? With one too many complaints, I am now afraid to try it.
Click to expand...

Cloning your drive with Ghost or True Image would be an appropriate safety net. There's never been a virus or other malicious software that can attack a drive that isn't connected to your system. The object is never to allow something to fsck up your machine more than you can un-fsck it. 😎
 
Originally posted by: Harvey
The object is never to allow something to fsck up your machine more than you can un-fsck it. 😎
Click to expand...
I should use that when I go to a customer's site.
Or something like:
"What happened to my computer?"
"You fscked it up. I'm here to unfsck it."
😀
 
How do you people live without Drive Imaging your operating system partition before installing anything 🙂?
 
I use to play WoW in windowed mode so I could still view websites with ease. However, installing this make drops my framerate down to 5fps in windowed mode. I can only play it full screen now.
 
SimMike2, how do you turn off thoise annoying boxes? Hell everytime I want to run defrag in Vista I get that annoying pop up twice...
 
The only real problem vista has is it's not free.

Theres tons of "phantom problems" created by people who dont know wtf they are doing, or people that dont want to pay for it using the people who dont know wtf they are doing as examples of reasons not to get vista.
 
Originally posted by: Acanthus
The only real problem vista has is it's not free.

Theres tons of "phantom problems" created by people who dont know wtf they are doing, or people that dont want to pay for it using the people who dont know wtf they are doing as examples of reasons not to get vista.
Click to expand...

My real problems I have with vista right now are the facts I would have to replace some of my hardware due to it being old and no driver support. Then there are the driver support out there for hardware that people keep complaining of that is not working right. I also have a huge collection of games and at this point Vista doesnt support all games, and Im not about to shell out for computer hardware upgrades, and vista, only not being able to play the games I like because they no longer work, or have to wait for a patch to come out to make them work. I just dont have the money to spend right now on a "maybe" it will work and play my games, and force me to upgrade hardware I am completely happy with, and been for many years, seeing no reason I should need to buy something to upgrade to that may start to give me problems and instability with other software, games, hardware.

When vista matures more down the road, and is more user friendly, with more game support, less hardware problems, more hardware driver support, then maybe, maybe, I will take the leap forward into it. Till then, I like what this program did for me till that time to give me a much needed face lift to everything changing it all from the ho hum bordum of the last 5+ years of the same old thing to hear and look at.
 
Originally posted by: funboy42
Originally posted by: Acanthus
The only real problem vista has is it's not free.

Theres tons of "phantom problems" created by people who dont know wtf they are doing, or people that dont want to pay for it using the people who dont know wtf they are doing as examples of reasons not to get vista.
Click to expand...

My real problems I have with vista right now are the facts I would have to replace some of my hardware due to it being old and no driver support. Then there are the driver support out there for hardware that people keep complaining of that is not working right. I also have a huge collection of games and at this point Vista doesnt support all games, and Im not about to shell out for computer hardware upgrades, and vista, only not being able to play the games I like because they no longer work, or have to wait for a patch to come out to make them work. I just dont have the money to spend right now on a "maybe" it will work and play my games, and force me to upgrade hardware I am completely happy with, and been for many years, seeing no reason I should need to buy something to upgrade to that may start to give me problems and instability with other software, games, hardware.

When vista matures more down the road, and is more user friendly, with more game support, less hardware problems, more hardware driver support, then maybe, maybe, I will take the leap forward into it. Till then, I like what this program did for me till that time to give me a much needed face lift to everything changing it all from the ho hum bordum of the last 5+ years of the same old thing to hear and look at.
Click to expand...

I guess i can see your point, if hardware wasnt so cheap right now 😉

You can also legally download vista and use it for 30 days with no key. If you want to try it out and see if all of your applications and hardware work.

I believe it has hardware support all the way back to pentium 3 days so your computer would have to be pretty ancient to not be supported (other than graphics).
 
Originally posted by: Acanthus
Originally posted by: funboy42
Originally posted by: Acanthus
The only real problem vista has is it's not free.

Theres tons of "phantom problems" created by people who dont know wtf they are doing, or people that dont want to pay for it using the people who dont know wtf they are doing as examples of reasons not to get vista.
Click to expand...

My real problems I have with vista right now are the facts I would have to replace some of my hardware due to it being old and no driver support. Then there are the driver support out there for hardware that people keep complaining of that is not working right. I also have a huge collection of games and at this point Vista doesnt support all games, and Im not about to shell out for computer hardware upgrades, and vista, only not being able to play the games I like because they no longer work, or have to wait for a patch to come out to make them work. I just dont have the money to spend right now on a "maybe" it will work and play my games, and force me to upgrade hardware I am completely happy with, and been for many years, seeing no reason I should need to buy something to upgrade to that may start to give me problems and instability with other software, games, hardware.

When vista matures more down the road, and is more user friendly, with more game support, less hardware problems, more hardware driver support, then maybe, maybe, I will take the leap forward into it. Till then, I like what this program did for me till that time to give me a much needed face lift to everything changing it all from the ho hum bordum of the last 5+ years of the same old thing to hear and look at.
Click to expand...

I guess i can see your point, if hardware wasnt so cheap right now 😉

You can also legally download vista and use it for 30 days with no key. If you want to try it out and see if all of your applications and hardware work.

I believe it has hardware support all the way back to pentium 3 days so your computer would have to be pretty ancient to not be supported (other than graphics).
Click to expand...

We tried Vista on two of our industrial PCs at work (single board computers), and it refused to run on either of them. One system was a Core Duo system (socket 479) with Intel chipset and the other was a dual socket pentium 3 with Via KT133 chipset. I was very suprised it didn't work on the Core Duo, while XP and Win 2000 work fine on it.
 
Originally posted by: kmmatney
Originally posted by: Acanthus
Originally posted by: funboy42
Originally posted by: Acanthus
The only real problem vista has is it's not free.

Theres tons of "phantom problems" created by people who dont know wtf they are doing, or people that dont want to pay for it using the people who dont know wtf they are doing as examples of reasons not to get vista.
Click to expand...

My real problems I have with vista right now are the facts I would have to replace some of my hardware due to it being old and no driver support. Then there are the driver support out there for hardware that people keep complaining of that is not working right. I also have a huge collection of games and at this point Vista doesnt support all games, and Im not about to shell out for computer hardware upgrades, and vista, only not being able to play the games I like because they no longer work, or have to wait for a patch to come out to make them work. I just dont have the money to spend right now on a "maybe" it will work and play my games, and force me to upgrade hardware I am completely happy with, and been for many years, seeing no reason I should need to buy something to upgrade to that may start to give me problems and instability with other software, games, hardware.

When vista matures more down the road, and is more user friendly, with more game support, less hardware problems, more hardware driver support, then maybe, maybe, I will take the leap forward into it. Till then, I like what this program did for me till that time to give me a much needed face lift to everything changing it all from the ho hum bordum of the last 5+ years of the same old thing to hear and look at.
Click to expand...

I guess i can see your point, if hardware wasnt so cheap right now 😉

You can also legally download vista and use it for 30 days with no key. If you want to try it out and see if all of your applications and hardware work.

I believe it has hardware support all the way back to pentium 3 days so your computer would have to be pretty ancient to not be supported (other than graphics).
Click to expand...

We tried Vista on two of our industrial PCs at work (single board computers), and it refused to run on either of them. One system was a Core Duo system (socket 479) with Intel chipset and the other was a dual socket pentium 3 with Via KT133 chipset. I was very suprised it didn't work on the Core Duo, while XP and Win 2000 work fine on it.
Click to expand...

I tested it on some HP dc7600's at work and it ran with no problem. I even had it running with VMWare on those same machines and everything but the Aero stuff worked. I can honestly say that the only problem I have had with Vista to date is installing it on a ASUS P4C800E-DLX and that was only lack of drivers for the on board sound. I managed to get it working using the XP drivers and still have it running on that box.
 
Originally posted by: Zap
Originally posted by: Schadenfroh
Funny thing is.... the first thing I do with my Vista installs is make them look like Windows 2000.
Click to expand...

Hahahaha! :laugh:

For myself, I really couldn't care less what the UI looked like as long as I can find stuff that I need. This usually means I switch to a classic view. Seriously, who spends time staring at the purty UI? If I'm at my computer, I'm doing something, such as watching a video, playing a game, doing some work. Who has time to go "OMG, that UI made me wet!" Then again, people buy fugly "gamer" cases and even the Pontiac Aztek sells, so I guess there's no accounting for taste. :evil:

BITD with Win95, I used to occasionally run PROGMAN, since it was still included.
Click to expand...

If everyone used logic like yours, there would be mass drop in i-pod or anything apple sales (dont worry, I always wear my flamesuit 😉). I have spent a considerable amount of time on general windows beatification/toys (styles, foobar2k, miranda, SCP, etc) but I doubt I go anywhere near the level of seriousness some people get with samurize and other widget engines.. Count me in as one of those who would buy Aztek, what a car looks like is a trivial matter to me 😉

Think of it this way, it is just another medium to express yourself, like people would do it with college football team clothing and whatnot. Now that you mentioned gaming, even CS ended up getting boring and I spent more time making decals and staring at/playing around with what other people spray than shooting and killing stuff.

So yeah, to each his own 🙂
 
I've noticed a quirk with this. Curious if it is isolated to me or an issue with it all.

When dragging a file from a folder to another location, with XP's gui it would turn the default mouse pointer to include a + sign to indicate it was going to copy. If it would move it there would be no plus sign.

With this Vista skin there is no plus sign no matter what the intension is.
 
Originally posted by: crosshairs
does it work???
Click to expand...

how is this a hot deal 😕? I just made some mention of nice customizations in OT that were free and was told there is already a desktop thread.

I like Luna Elements Black
 
Originally posted by: nyker96
thanks for this, might try it out. Sticking with XP for now, Vista seems pointless now since i got no DX10 card and I think Ubuntu is my next upgrade, linux just so sweet and stable.
Click to expand...


Yeppers - just tested the waters while setting up a "new" (well, old components, but just put together) for my wife's office computer. Couldn't afford XP/Office, so went the Ubuntu/OpenOffice route...and I am VERY impressed.... 🙂

Methinks my 2nd XP install on this laptop-o-mine is a-goin' to be replaced with an Ubuntu install..... 🙂
 
I like some of Vista but the Aero Glass and 3D stacked windows is just crap to me. I don't needlessly open windows just to have them up...at times transparency would be good...but for the most part just a PITA.

I am running all the new pointers and sounds. I do like those.
 
Originally posted by: Harvey
I've tried Vista on several friend's machines, and I think it sucks. You have to hunt through layers of stuff to find functions that are much closer to the surface in XP, and then, the nanny state overlords keep asking if you're really, really, really sure you want to do it.

I wouldn't embarrass myself by making my machine look like Vista.
Click to expand...


litestep > vista anyways.

 
I just had to uninstall it - went to watch a DVD and the screen was black minus a small 'frame' around the outside. Uninstalled & now DVD playback is fine. 😕
 
Originally posted by: alkemyst
That's a sign of not following the instructions fully. The UXTheme.dll more than likely did not update.
Click to expand...

I followed whatever instructions I could find. Ahwell.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top