Official Z-Series XP Downgrading Thread

So, I used XP for about 2,5 weeks now, and I like it but I am not overwhelmed. So what are all the other Z users are thinking about Vista on their notebook? Is it better to stay with it because of drivers, compatibility and speed/stamina switch, or is it useful to downgrade to XP?

What would be the pros and cons? Please describe your experiences with XP on your Z or vice versa why should we keep Vista?

Thanks!

 

i have downgraded my Z to XP for half a day and then i switched back to vista because of all the reasons that u have mentioned. Also i noticed that the performance of the Z with Vista is very good compaired to other notebooks i have worked on, may be because of the new intel processor or the 4 GB Ram.

 

other experiences? again my Z was shutting down without any warning, not even went sleeping it shut completly down.

 

How did you get XP to install? I tried doing a clean install of Windows XP Pro but after the "Press any key to boot from CD drive" prompt, I get the blue screen of death STOP: 0x00000072 which refers to a failed to assign drive letter error. Do I need to install Vista first and then somehow downgrade that partition to XP?

The US Sony support website now has XP drivers. Maybe you can try those, not sure if they are any different than the ones you installed.

 

out of curiosity, what makes this the official thread?

 

because this should be the thread where all Z users, using XP on their machines post their experiences or problems with downgrading to XP.

 

soo any updates? HDMI work in xp? any disadvantage in xp rather then vista?

also vmware works perfectly in vista if u need xp for software or so.

 

I'm using XP. I downgraded using the disc provided with my Z11 by Sony, then installing drivers/utilities from Sony's website. Following the process on the Sony site, it took a couple of hours including some pretty big downloads for the drivers and utilities packages. Prepare to do a lot of reboots if you follow Sony's instructions to the letter (thankfully, rebooting a Z with a new XP install is a very quick affair!).

I find XP to be much quicker to start up, shutdown or hibernate than Vista. Working with other XP machines in my home network also seems to be easier than trying to get Vista to share nicely with them. Oh, and FairUse4WM works flawlessly with XP...

The provided XP build doesn't include McAfee Trial, locked T-Mobile WWAN software, MS Office Trial or any of the other crapware provided with the UK Vista build. (GlobeTrotter Connect software provided for XP by Sony is not locked to T-Mobile like the Vista version seems to be. I've got a T-Mobile contract but I still dislike being told by Sony how to use my hardware.)

So far the only things I miss from Vista are the prettier look to the interface and the snazzy Wireless Switch Utility (there's an XP version provided on the Sony site but it's not as pretty or easy to use as the Vista version IMHO).

I haven't tried HDMI yet as I don't have a suitable TV to test it with, but I'd be surprised if any problems with HDMI under XP were anything more than a driver issue which some clever person will find a fix for eventually.

Maybe I didn't give Vista a fair chance though as I downgraded within the first week.

 

dang no1 has tried hdmi yet.. well i did a clean install on my z540. it works perfectly , boot up still quite slow , but im extremely picky , so maybe it just me. Everything is fast in vista with the z , and when im in need of xp i just launch my vmware.. mabye people should give vista a chance!! haha sp1 ftw