Vista v Windows XP

[whinwhistle]

Totally fed up with Vista. There seems to be a different problem each week. Now I can no longer send eamils from MS Office Applications. Receiving: This message could not be sent. An error occured. Then directed to this forum. Has anyone tried removing Vista and installing XP?

 

[johngalt]

Well, if it makes you feel any better - my sister is having the same exact problem you are on 3 machines - all XP.

Before you decide to remove Vista and go with XP, you should take a really close look at some of your hardware - because there is some hardware out there that has no XP drivers made for it (kinda sick, isn't it)?

 

[whinwhistle]

Morning John,

Many thanks for that. It does help a little. Everything works fine on Windows XP machines; it is just Vista that I have problems with. Also, some favourite applicaitons will no longer work with Vista and old printers do not have all the 'monitoring' funcitons they had with Windows XP. Thnaks once again for taking the trouble to reply.

 

[johngalt]

If your hardware supports it (and my apologies for assuming it was a brand new machine that you had bought with Vista pre-installed) then you should have no problems going back to XP.

Just back your data up, format and install XP and you'll be golden.

 

[whinwhistle]

John, thanks once agian for this. It is a new Sony TZ with Vista Business installed. The laptop is perfect but completely let down by Vista. Apart from the applications and printers that are not supported, it has just been one niggle after another. At one stage, the USB drivers went missing and I spent ages trying to sort that out. Another patch from MS did work but it was time consuming finding it. Email without a UK English spell check is annoying too! Like most people these days, I just don't have the time to work on what should be a 'tool of the trade'. We have three other Sony laptops with XP and they have never given us any trouble.

Kind regards.

 

[glatzfront]

I installed XP on my HP laptop to dual boot with Vista and it hasn't been so easy finding the correct drivers. Google ("your model number" downgrade XP) and see if you can find some posts where others have installed XP on your model. Also the manufacturer's site may offer XP drivers for your model under "Support".

 

[johngalt]

Yes, as glatzfront mentions, this is what I was talking about - newer hardware sometimes don't have drivers written explicitly for XP and therein lies the problem. Even though you have other Sony laptops with XP, unless they are the exact same in build (using the exact same hardware, not close to same or similar) then you should have no issues with XP. OTOH, if there are differences in the hardware between the Sony laptops with XP and the one with Vista, then you'll need to do a lot more research to make sure that everything that you have on the Vista laptop has an available driver in XP.

You'll probably want a tool like Gabriel Topala's SIW or CPUID's PC Wizard 2008 to detail your hardware easily. Then, you should be able to visit either the Sony hardware / driver download site and / or the original hardware manufacturer's driver download site(s) and see if appropriate drivers are available for XP.

 

[dmex]

I find using XP slower than Vista....I dont know why but it is slower on half the machines I use.

Steven

 

[whinwhistle]

Thanks everyone who replied to this XP v Vista thread. Although it has been prety negative, that in itself has helped. There is no way I'm going back to XP; I just vehemently wish I'd gone for XP at the time as notebooks still using XP were so much cheaper.

Thanks once again.