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Member Question of the Week
I recently purchased a new desktop preloaded with Windows Vista Home. But after some frustrating moments of attempting to install and run a few of my favorite programs, I've realized that Vista just isn't playing nice and simply just won't run them! On top of that I even have a couple of peripherals left out in the cold because of a driver incompatibility issue with Vista. This is so irritating! I've decided that the best thing to do is go back to Windows XP because everything worked flawlessly on my old system but how do I go about it? What are all the necessary steps I need to take to get me going on my new machine with XP loaded on it? Can I use the system recovery disk from my old XP computer to replace Vista with XP on my new computer? Or will I have to buy another copy of Windows XP? Thank you for any help you can provide.
Submitted by: Franklin S.
REPLY FROM Lee Koo Manager, CNET community
Happy Friday everyone! This week's question from Franklin is probably what a lot folks are experiencing. You went out and bought a new PC with Windows Vista preloaded on it and came to quickly realize that some of your favorite programs and peripherals aren't compatible with the new operating system. And Franklin, I don't blame you one bit for being frustrated and wanting to revert to XP. But before you take on the task of going back to XP, there are a lot of members who suggest giving Vista a chance, to see if any of the software or hardware that you use have updates to them that will make them compatible with Vista. If that fails, talk to the PC manufacturer. Maybe the company will work something out with you by giving you an XP disc in place of Vista. Because ultimately, if you are going back to XP using your recovery disc from your old computereither it won't work or it will cause you more of an headache attempting to do so. The bottom line is you will most likely have to fork out some dough to buy Windows XP outright again. On a side note, Dell recently announced it will be bringing back XP on some home systems because of the number of complaints by consumersso talk to your PC manufacturer, and maybe the company will be able to work with you.
For all of the folks finding themselves in Franklin's shoes, we received a lot of great advice and recommendations from our membersso give them a thorough read. I have picked out a few outstanding submissions for you to vote on. If you have any additional advice to offer our members or have experienced this yourself and have successfully reverted to XP from Vistaswing on by and discuss this topic with us. Thanks for your participation. You rock! Have a great weekend!

A great article.. I fully agree with it in that people should give Vista a chance, and where there really is no hope of carrying out mission critical stuff, then revert back to XP until such time as the individual user can see a way to update, upgrade or whatever is necessary.. thanks, Spocks Buddy for giving this group some encouragement..
"Spocks Buddy"

Mike Hall MS MVP Windows Shell/User msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

Yup, I agree with that... but sometimes, it is very frustrating waiting for update for drivers. So far for myself everything works out ok except for the following
1) Dumped my SB Live! and motherboard (not compatible with ATI Radeon X1300 in Vista. XP? No problem). 2) My laptop which is using a so call special Smart Battery still has no support at all for Vista. 3) The Mobility Center offers nothing special for my precious laptop (ATI Mobility 9700). Can't even connect to external using it. Need to use ATI Control Center or Personalize->Display Setting. 4) On my PC, sleep does not make the system sleep. Hard disks do not even shut down. Only the monitors are shut down. 5) On my laptop, sleep cause the sytem to sleep (err... after nearly a minute... sometimes after a minute). Upon waking up, system restart... but luckily for me, the hybrid sleep is on. So, Vista get started where it slept (but take a longer time than it need to hibernates and resume).. so? Got to use the hibernate option. By the way, if I disable hybrid sleep, then sleep only cause the LCD display to go blank. 6) Bluetooth! Of my, no Widcomm driver for my dongle and built in bluetooth device.... Windows bluetooth driver? Gee... can only use to connect to COM and sending files. Actually, I can throw away the dongle but how about the one built in into my laptop? 7) After several times of hibernation and resuming Vista... copying/moving files causes the process to stay there infinitely. Can't even cancel. If I try to shut down the system, it will successfully log me off and stays in the shutting down screen forever.
So, give Vista a chance. As customers, we need to be patient. No need to push around or make ourselves frustrated. Just wait for a couple of months. Maybe if we are lucky, new drivers will be released. Worst come to worse, throw away the old hardwares that are causing so much problem and buy new replacement for them.
By the way, when my brother in law asked me for advice on whether to take Vista or XP for his new laptop, I recommended him to choose Vista (Home Basic). Now, he is complaining that it hung a lot. Guess what? I told him to be patient and always check Windows Update for updates because it's still new. Luckily he understands and doesn't blame me for asking him to take Vista.
Gee... are we beta testers or customers?
"Mike Hall MVP"

By the way the Fn+F4 is not working at all... sigh (ATI Radeon Mobility 9700).
"Nicholas Poh"

Nicholas
Waiting for drivers is proving to be a nightmare for some, and affecting all of the rest of us to some degree.. as with XP's early days, patience is proving to be a indispensible virtue. :-)
"Nicholas Poh"

Mike Hall MS MVP Windows Shell/User msmvps.com/blogs/mikehall/

"Nicholas Poh"

You've been using Windows for all these years and you still do not know the answer to that one ?! Of course you're beta testers. In the case of Vista, alpha testers.
(Sorry. Could not resist .......)
Jeff

LOL!

Same here.
"Jeff"

On 30 Apr, 14:43, "Spocks Buddy" wrote:

Win XP and maybe even Win98 has a way of simulating older versions of the OS.
Go to an icon, one that isn't a shortcut. e.g. an exe file, not a lnk file. It wouldn't make sense to do this for a data file.
right click it, click properties, compatibility, then choose an earlier windows version.
<snip>

Win XP has many many annoyances, I hung onto win98 for ages.
Win XP sp2 had many many annoyances. But eventually people moved to it.
When things were less busy I put XP on there and learnt how to deal with the annoyances. Any idea how much of a nuisance the NTFS not accessible from DOS was for people who had moved from DOS to Win 9X to Win XP?
Can you imagine how many annoyances Windows 95 had , for people that were used to DOS/Win3.1 . The constant press ads that DOS was dead.. and wit heach windows iteration. And with Win XP.. peopel saying it was totally dead
It's a bit different for me. i'm a techie and all the idiot end users use the latest version of windows. And they keep asking me questions. So to help them , !!!and to not fall behind them!!! . I always upgrade windows eventually. When I get the motivation. I haven't yet got the motivation to do VISTA yet. Maybe when I build some more computers, have loads of RAM.
Many end users end up having a problem when they want (don't need) to run the latest version of office to view their friends files e.g. MS Word documents. And eventually they'll find that they need the latest OS to run it. 'cos their idiot friends save their word files in the latest version. Their are free Word Viewers by MS, but that's too technical for end users, and too ghetto style for them.
Staying with an early version of windows and committing to that, is playing a game that you won't win.
With more technical aptitude and effort, you can get a system working with windows vista. I haven't tried ti but I guarantee it's the case. I saw the same thing with win 98 to xp. And so on.

No disrespect, but the vast majority left DOS and/or started to use PC and eventually made the industry as it is today is the GUI. If PC or computers in general is still command-based, it won't be like what we are seeing today and still only the handful people will use it.
From Win98 to XP, there are some other compelling reasons both perceived by technical AND non-technical persons, but I will not get into it since it might cause another lengthy debate.
I also want to be very careful on making comments on Vista, rather to say, both hardware and software have gradually reached to a point of diminishing return and the domestic market is totally saturated. And the company is not the same as it was, so there are many reasons for what we are seeing now - just some thoughts.

On 1 May, 06:43, "xfile" wrote:

of course

I don't want to get into definitions of "PC" or "Industry". In some areas, people use linux. End users mostly use windows. And many techies use windows too. But linux in its command line form is more used than you make it out to be.

*nix is used by many serious people in the tech industry. Not a "handful". The basic *nix commands haven't changed.

Peoples' computers are breaking or will break, and they'll get new ones and install Vista.
It's inevitable.
Same way end users left Win 98. They didn't choose Win XP for the firewall. We are talking end users here. And techies had reservations about Win XP too, and generally, changing from a system they were comfortable with, to a system they won't be comfortable with for a while. But they moved to it and adapted.
Here's the sign. Dell sell their computesr with VISTA. The 2 people whose comps i most recently fixed, both have Dells with VISTA.

True and that's why analysts use PC sales to cross-examine possible OS sales especially for Vista.
I also agree others, and there are always niche segments for every product in every industry. We are simply taking about different segments.

No need to be sorry. I'm actually pretending to be new with Windows.
"Jeff"