So I did it! I DOWNGRADED from Vista to XP Pro SP3........
 

Downgraded to XP SP3 and fuck dam what a fucking relief!... K before u guys flame me by saying what a Vista NOOB I must be let me tell ya.... after using the OS for several months it worked just fine but then all of the sudden it started to mismanage CPU...I know whut u thinking... u prolly caught a virus a spyware or had an app/service running in the background or via the svhost.exe process but nope... I use the task manager religiously and almost never close it .. because I like to know WTF is going on in the background while I work...

To make the story short... everytime I scroll down on ANY browser CPU goes through the roof, when I save a fucking TEXT File CPU goes through the roof, I farted and the CPU went through the roof.... so much so that I started to think one of my cards/devices or the CPU itself was going bad... so I decided to install XP pro SP3 on a separate HD to test things out and BAM!... everything works like a fucking charm...

So after the Vista started mismanaging CPU ... I tricked the shit out of that OS ... I didn't want to give up... by "trick out" I mean:

- Unplugged all devices and left the pc running with the bare minimum (basic troubleshooting step)
- Did thorough virus/spyware/adware scan
- I disabled several services that were not needed via msconfig (I know whut I am doing... no, seriously)
- Disabled the fucking dwm.exe which is the aero crappié which eats more CPU than needed especially under these conditions
- Changed the theme back to windows classic (win 2000 look)
- Disabled Superfertch which fucking pre-loads everything in RAM even when not needed
- Turned off auto defrag (scheduled defrag instead)
- Checked the Registry for errors
- Scaled back on indexed searches but ended up disabling indexing as it was also using CPU....

Well... u see where I am going... in the end I couldn't have disabled anything else without endangering the core files... but after all that .. doing anything on the pc triggered massive CPU usage (80-100%).... and as a note: normally when people have high CPU usage problems is because a service is doing stuff and they see svhost.exe eating cpu or a specific proggie is using CPU but this wasn't the case...

COMPUTER SPECS:

- RADEON all in one tv card (can't remember the model)
- P5KPL-CM Socket 775 1600FSB Intel G31 Chipset DDR2-1066 PCI.ex16 PCI.ex1 2PCI UDMA/4SATA 8-Cha. Audio Intel GMA 3100 VIDEO Gigabit LAN 8USB2.0 Micro-ATX CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8500 3.16GHz 6MB 1333MHz
- 1.5 TB HDDs 7200 rpm standard
- 4 Gig of Ram
.... yada yada yada.....

CONCLUSION/CLIFF NOTES....

Vista is a fucking ticking time bomb... and that is a fact that makes my balls get engorged and sticky!..... and XP SP3 is as stable and light as one needs it to be... CPU management went back to 1-30% with a shitload of tabs on FF and several other proggies open (even while playing back videos on stand alone and flash players).....

Hopefully MSFT won't fuck up Win7 as badly as Vista by including shit like that Superfetch crap or having a heavy dwm.exe .. but more importantly... not having fucked up code that makes CPU management go wild.....

With that said.. .I am downgrading my work machines to XP (because I have a bunch of custom apps that wont' work on OSX or linux OS) and installing Ubuntu + VMWare on my lappy....

Now ... as u were.... :winkwink:

XP SP3 is rocking!

I had XP about 6 months before it was released, from a guy at Berkeley, so I've been using it for a long ass time now. Only yesterday did I finally make the switch to Vista Ultimate 64-bit.

Why? My 8GB (4x2GB) ddr2-800 ram upgrade will arrive in the mail tomorrow, (along with my 9800gtx+ 1GB video card), and I need an OS that can address >3.2GB. I've heard nothing but bad things about XP-64, so I ruled it out.

I tried working with several *nix flavors, and even though I am a very proficient linux user, and avid mightgosoft skeptic, the reality is that if you develop a desktop OS, and it doesn't JUST WORK, it fails (imho). I ran into so many issues with either video drivers (ATI + Linux = pain), or getting Wine working with Adobe, or, or, or. It just wasn't worth it.

For a technicians desktop, I love using Debian/Ubuntu and running the Ion3 window manager. But for a full featured, graphic design/gaming/hd-movie desktop, I was unable to get any flavor to not give me more trouble than it was worth.

I've trimmed the fat out of this Vista install, tested HL2 and Oblivion on higher graphic settings than in XP, with marked improvement, and observe generally faster operation, despite the fact that it's using 1GB memory at idle.

Once I have the 8GB in, I will have the whole OS load directly to memory, and report back in 6 months as to how it's worked out for me. Oh and BTW, I cracked it using the Vista SP1 Loader tool, and anyone who has a problem with that can kindly go play hide-and-go-fuck-yourself.

That is all!

you're all newbies

hurray for you!

I'm taking my new Acer laptop in to have Vista wiped and XP installed very shortly.

There are several older photo editing apps I still use that won't run on Vista cuz' it can't get the signed drivers.

I've had the Acer nearly a year now and probably used it a total of 4-5 hours, max. It'll become my primary system once I get XP put on it. My older Toshiba satelite can finally breathe a sigh of relief. :1orglaugh

you can't do that yourself?

Congrats on the smooth upgrade to WinXP. Its really easy when you have a clean HD to work with. Go dual boot with Ubuntu....

yes, you definitely upgraded.. i upgraded the same a while back and i couldnt be happier with my new OS, windows xp pro

I might fuckin' do this too. My laptop with Vista on it wouldn't even start up last night!

I had the same problem. I left the Vista install DVD in the drive because I would need it almost every time I closed the laptop.

I just tried to reinstall Vista Ultimate and about 2 hours into it I went to XP 64 and like SilentKnight I ran into some problems with apps to I went back to XP Pro SP3 32. Never been happier.

Good decision. I would really like to "upgrade" to XP as well.

I've never heard anyone refer to XP as "stable and light as it gets" until Vista came out :1orglaugh

Still running on XP SP3 and doing good

I could - but don't have the time to trial-and-error my way through it.

Easier just to take it in to the shop and have it done with.

using win7, cpu is much better.. for example.. I opened up every program that I use and took screenshot.

http://www.dannyrichards.com/cpu.jpg

of coarse it spiked when I opened everything up on my taskbar at once.

and system idol ...

http://www.dannyrichards.com/cpu2.jpg

windows 7 is way better than vista already and it's just in beta lol

I had vista on my desktop a while back and went on vacaction and forgot to turn off the machine.....just from SITTING there idle for a week the vista machine wasn't usable...task manager showed nothing but windows files running....I wanted to see how long a Start>shut down would take from the state it was in....it took 12 minutes

4gb ram, quad core athlon too....I upgraded to XP the next day

Thats an upgrade, regardless of when they were released

The big thing that makes Vista run slow on machines that aren't above average in power is the superfetching service, which you can read about here.

http://www.brainbath.org/toybox/free...windows-vista/

It can be beneficial if your system is robust (8GB memory, for example), but a hindrance if not.

Current Vista users experiencing poor speed, try turning this off in your services control manager, and observe the difference in memory usage and general speed.

Again, not a MS lover here, but I think many will find this to be a big help.

yeap.. my original post mentions superfetch and dwm.exe which controls vista's cute interface as being resource hogs... However I downgraded not because the OS was running slow (I have 4gb of ram which is barely OK) .. but because all of the sudden .. Vista started to mismanage CPU ... meaning that if I saved a text file the cpu jumped to 80%.... and in this biz.. multitasking is everything.. EVERYTHING... and when you can't multitask because the OS engages both cores at 100% by simply saving a text file... u know you have shit in ur hands....

Next time I upgrade XP SP3 will be when SP4 comes out.

If that were true there would be hundreds of millions pissed. Vista would've been pulled from the shelves long ago. Vista has a bad rep because people only speak out when there's a problem, not when they are happy about something. And that's what most people use forums for these days, bitching about something.


People have problems running XP too. Most of the time it has nothing to do with the OS. A simple motherboard driver might have fixed your problem with Vista. The best thing to do is ask for help on tech forums. It doesn't matter what OS you are running, there's always going to be problems. There's forums for every OS out there, check their forums and you'll find someone with problems.

Win7 is Vista, just as XP is Vista. I love how some people say "VISTA SUCKS!!! But XP is the shit!!!" umm it's pretty much the same OS... Just because MS adds some new stuff and upgrades the core a little bit doesn't make it a whole new OS, it's still based on the NT system.

I wonder why if i can use Vista without any problems whatsoever, certainly compared to XP and no memory problems, no cpu problems, nothing whatsoever why can't other people? The fact that i can run it like this is 100% evidence that it's great OS and that most people are doing something wrong.

It's just a matter of preference. I just dig XP. Inertia is a very strong barrier. If Windows 7 has a compelling reason for me to switch, I'll switch.

you're jumping to conclusions also, not once did I say it wasn't vista, I said it's already better than vista

What you just did, I did long ago and the same thing happened to me I couldn't be happier and I couldn't believe how bad an OS Vista is!

Now I can open as many tabs in as many browsers as i want, tons of programs, cd's playing and videos opening and there's no fucking way i run out of memory with my 4gb.

Trying that on Vista would probably make my CPU explode. :2 cents:

Funny, i can open many programs and don't run out of memory with Vista. So once again if it works for me it means you did something wrong.

I have absolutely no intention of changing the existing OS (XP) on my desktop. I have a fairly new laptop that runs Vista and I`d prefer XP on it also. As mentioned already, it`s a preference thing.

My wife bought me one of those cheap tiny Asus Eee-PC`s that is powered by Xandros Linux and that is so simple to work with (also similar to the XP Interface).

I was cautious about upgrading to Vista after hearing so much bad shit about it, but took the plunge few weeks ago (Vista Ultimate 32Bit) I haven't had any major probs, a few small programs don't work and Nifty stats doesn't want to work but I can live without them...

Other then that it runs smooth and fine even on the old machine I have it on.

Three words: Mac OS X.

X isn't a word. :winkwink:

lol

I'm still enjoying my XP pro sp3.

I am still rocking Win XP SP2 on most on my machines and am very happy with it.

A true upgrade would be to OS X.

With Vista Microsoft once again decided they knew what we wanted instead of listening to us. I don't want a Pinto engine placed inside a Lamborghini. I want a Lamborghini engine and what ever you want to place over it is just fine with me.

... last time I checked there was a shitload of people pissed off with vista.. thats why they came up with Win7 rather quickly and made all those videos where they showed that "El camino" or whatever the fuck the mock OS was called and then they told them it was vista....Now, if you remember WinMe.. that was a total failure and MSFT didn't pull it off the shelves... they left it there and came up with a upgrade to that OS...

Also, I was rather happy with vista till it started to use 80-100 cpu every time I farted...:disgust


Yes, the very first version of XP without the SP packages was very fucked up, it didn't even recognize large 1TB hard drives .. that's why I am referring to SP3.

Now as far as the driver thing... not everyone in this board is a total noob u know... I did try upping the drivers and even flashing the BIOS... I checked the CMOS sequence and POST to make sure there was nothing wrong with hardware or power on tests... and yeap.. I did go to a vista/sys builders forum and used hack-this to drop a full profile of all the shit running in the system and there was no indication of what was causing the problem .... I left everyone's balls puzzled over there....

So ... nop, I am not one of those people who jumps to the forums whenever there is a small glitch in the system which may just be "user generated" ....

Yes, win 7 is like vista but they are not using a dumb superfetch system like they did on vista.. they improved the thing to use less memory and work smarter..... they are turning off most of the crap they included in vista to make win 7 more like XP SP3 with visual improvements..... so yeah that "new" stuff that was added from xp to vista was what caused all that bad PR....

Totally agree...:thumbsup

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Really cause that is what I do day in and day out with Vista every day. Usually have 20 + tabs open, dreamweaver, adobe premiere cs3, photoshop, stats programs, all at the same time. With no issues. Runs 24/7 I only reboot if I have to for a newly installed program. Guess those of us using it and not having issues are just lucky, of course I have it running on 2 laptops and 3 desktops with no issues, but ya just lucky on all 5 lol.

Vista drove me to taking the Linux plunge, i installed Ubuntu last week and I'm loving it...

Thought this might be a good place to ask this:

Is it physically possible to take the copy of Windows Vista Ultimate that I already have installed on another PC, and install it on a different PC at the same time?

I know it is not LEGAL, but is it physically possible? i.e. will it cripple itself once it does it's little authentication thing?

I know in the past I have been able to install XP on numerous machines and use the same serial number with no problem. From what I've read, it sounds like Vista has put an end to this practice.

It's a roman numeral which stands for a word/number. Close enough. :upsidedow

It won't be able to activate with microsoft if it already has, and will nag you unless you do something about it :2 cents:

Maybe you are, what can I say? :)

The machine won't crash but it lasted more to load anything than on XP.
You dont buy a Lambo to drive it in 2nd gear.