I am officially over Vista

[spelbynder]

Last week I acquired a new computer, specs thus:

 

Intel Pentium 4 631 [3.0ghz 2M L2 800FSB

512mb DDR2 RAM

160 7200rpm SATA HDD (X1)

128mb Integrated Sis Mirage 3 Graphics Accelerator

17" LCD monitor

 

running Vista Basic, although I have since discovered it can run Premium, I just need more RAM, which I am in the process of acquiring.

 

It comes with Vista pre-installed, plus there's a separate 9gb-odd recovery partition, plus Norton 2007, McAfee 2007 and others.

 

In place of a floppy disk drive, are several Pixma slots... which I'll never use

 

Now, I'm not sure if it's the computer itself, or the programs I'm running, or whatever, but it's a bit of a slow runner at start-up and shutdown, and the couple of tweaking programs I've used haven't done much to help those response times. And I would like to know, what's up with the 50+ running processes??????????

 

Unfortunately for me, after a month of various computer troubles (mostly relating to the absence of my old XP computer which has been waiting for a part to arrive for this amount of time), I settled on this new machine which was the only desktop available at the retailer I visited, and I've purchased it on a three-year rental... yes, I've sold my soul for a computer which is worth AUD$1499 @89.05 per month, costing me by the end of the 3 years over $3200 The company which approves rentals, does so to practically anyone and everyone, and you don't have to pay application fees or a deposit, plus the first month is rent-free, and it was delivered for free too. Also unfortunately for me, two other major computer retailers in town have brought out their latest catalogues, and the machines they have on offer, are far better than this one and offer more of what I want, ie Core 2 Duo processor, 2gb RAM, larger harddrive, etc. From what I understand, there is an escape clause from my current contract, in which one pays 80% of the total cost of the monthly rentals in the first year.

 

I was soooooooooo over Win XP and I was realllllllly wanting to get on board with Vista, and I really hope Premium is far superior to Basic... and if none of this turns out right, I may just go back to bloomin' WinME!

 

The things we do......................

[eagle00789]

Well, Vista is best left alone until the release of SP1 for it.

WinME is called Meer Ellende (More Troubles) here in the netherlands, because it caused more troubles then 98SE, so if you go back to a good old win version, go back to Win98SE (second Edition)

[Pfipps]

I initially bought a laptop with Vista Ultimate 64-bit. It was fine, but there are some more compatibility problems because it is 64 bit and I really didn't need the extras, so

I went with Home Premium. I have had very little problems with it - I actually like it. However, I would recommend getting Vista with a new pc only, or a least a clean install.

Remember though, I am not an avid gamer.

 

I would have never rented a pc like that. I usually go to electronic stores (Best Buy, Circuit City, and CompUSA in my area) and see what's there. I then go to reputable online

sites and find at least similar models that are usually cheaper and have no taxes. The only downside to this are returns - (however you break even with Amazon since shipping is free).

[craigathus]

Hi Spelbynder , do your self a big favor and stay away from Windoz ME I've got it on my old machine, and it's the biggest POS!

Windows 95 on my 1st PC was better than ME!

Now happily running XP-SP2

[fredvries]

@spelbynder:

 

Lots of PC's come pre-installed with all sort of programs you don't really need.

 

You could use PC-decrapifier to remove these programs.

 

Download here.

[Glenn]

... running Vista Basic, although I have since discovered it can run Premium, I just need more RAM, which I am in the process of acquiring.

Don't skimp, get 2GB.

 

It comes with Vista pre-installed, plus there's a separate 9gb-odd recovery partition, plus Norton 2007, McAfee 2007 and others.

You're not running both Norton and McAfee are you? My newest (Vista Ultimate) machine came with McAfee 3-month. It seemed to bog things down quite a bit. Norton 2007 is actually not too bad compared to previous versions.

 

Now, I'm not sure if it's the computer itself, or the programs I'm running, or whatever, but it's a bit of a slow runner at start-up and shutdown, and the couple of tweaking programs I've used haven't done much to help those response times. And I would like to know, what's up with the 50+ running processes??????????

Unfortunately, that appears to be normal for Vista. My newest machine has hardware specs that are way superior to my XP machines but takes way longer to start up and shut down.

 

... and if none of this turns out right, I may just go back to bloomin' WinME!

Fast forward to throwing your machine into the nearest river ... same end result without all the pain and agony in between.

[lotse]

There is a tweak I have used for Vista that dramatically speeds up the start-up and shut down times. I think it speeds up Vista in general as well. The web page I got it from no longer exsists, but here is a copy.

 

This tweak disables performance counters...

 

It worked for me, but run it at your own risk.

 

1/ This does work on Vista even though the Microsoft page only mentions windows 2000.

 

2/ If you use Firefox to download the necessary program, you will have to download a plugin first, and then go back and download the actual program you need. - Microsoft doesn't really make this clear...

 

Like Windows 2000 and Windows XP, Windows Vista has a performance monitor utility (found in administrative tools) which can track several areas of your PC's performance. Everything from CPU use to hard drive access can be tracked and graphed. The information for this utility comes from several performance counter services which run behind the scenes, gathering data for the monitor. If you have no use for this information, it's a good idea to disable the counters, since they take up system resources. Unfortunately, this is rather hard to do without the use of additional software. Fortunately, Microsoft has made the necessary software freely available for everyone.

The Extensible Performance Counter List utility can be used to permanently disable these performance counters.

First download and install the utility here:

 

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...AB-793193604BA4

 

Then run the Exctrlst.exe utility, found in 'C:\Program Files\Resource kit\'

Select each line in the 'Extensible performance counters' window and clear the 'performance counters enabled' button below. You must do this separately for each counter.

 

When done, just exit the utility. Now if you load the performance monitor, you will see that it has no information available to it. Yes, all those under-hood services were running? Reboot your system; even more ram and processor is now being dedicated to what really matters to you.

[Humpty]

Thanks for the tip on disabling performance counters Lotse which seemed to work fine on this Vista drive.

 

Even though I've put XP onto my new machine I setup up an older 120 gig drive and ghosted an image of Vista Ultimate onto it as the Chess and Mahjong games that I like are very slow when played from within a virtual machine as hardware acceleration is unavailable, even with a gig of ram allocated.

 

Now I can just plug/unplug the XP - Vista drives as needed and am always on the lookout for tips on Vista.

 

Found the tip below which I have implemented and works ok here but it's up to you if you want to try it.

 

With all the new security in Vista, many get frustrated by their inability to open folders that were easily accessible under XP. In many cases, full access to these folders requires that the user take ownership of it.

 

This tweak adds the "Take Ownership" option to folder right click context menus, saving a lot of time and possible errors that can result from doing it manually.

 

Copy the text between the lines, paste in a Notepad window, save the file to your desktop as ownership.reg and then right-click the file and Merge it with your registry.

 

------------------------------------------------------------------

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas]

@="Take Ownership"

"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shell\runas\command]

@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"

"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F"

 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas]

@="Take Ownership"

"NoWorkingDirectory"=""

 

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Directory\shell\runas\command]

@="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"

"IsolatedCommand"="cmd.exe /c takeown /f \"%1\" /r /d y && icacls \"%1\" /grant administrators:F /t"

[Caldor]

Vista is the best commercial desktop operating system ever released. Get 2GB of ram minimum. I run a very similar system in one of my mahcines and its work great. IMHO, dump Norton and McAfee and go Kaspersky. More secure.

 

Next to Vista, Windows ME is a complete joke. Its dos with a graphical shell.

[spelbynder]

I ran that Exctrist.exe utility thingy and I don't think it made much of a difference... PC Decrapifier couldn't help me whatsoever... my computer is made by NEC, if that helps anyone.

 

I ran the Norton Removal Tool from Major Geeks and that solved my problems there.

 

At the moment I have close on 200mb of metadata files, do I really need those???

 

The most RAM my machine can handle, as I understand it, is 4gb, but that scales back to 3.5 for some reason.

 

Think I really need Core 2 Duo or Quad Core to make any difference...

 

Or hell, just another new decent system!

[spelbynder]

McAfee is good - it cleared up 12-14gb of space wasted by system restore points