Which OS is better

I am using VIsta 64 business right now and it seems like nothing will run, no Autocad or other programs I need to run.
Is it better to go back to XP till Vista is more supported or just go down to Vista 32 bit
I am looking to do some gaming maybe some Wow or EQ II and also need to be able to run most engineering softwares.
Right now I have T61p with 2gb of ram and Vista is taking over 50%

 

You could go back to XP or dual-boot XP + Vista32

 

That is one possibilty I looked at, I am just not sure how much room I would need for each OS. Is there any walkthroughs to getting that set up I saw the clean install post in the ibm forum, I am wondering if there is anything I need to be aware of for xp. Also can the same product key be used for both

 

How big are your hard drives?

I have a dual boot on my desktop, but I have 250GB of space.

Basically, I made 3 paritions: 1 for XP, 1 for Vista, and 1 for Data and Programs shared between the two of them.

My XP and Vista partitions were 50GB each. However, if you have less space, you definitely want to give more room to Vista over XP.

As far as guides go, just google it, there are plenty around.

 

I have a 160 gb drive and want to keep as much as possible for data. My desktop uses a 10gb partition for XP, but I am not sure about Vista, I was thinking about 20gb for it

Also I have the Think Advantage security software installed on this pc, I am wondering if that might hinder me also

 

It sounds like you are just have incompatibility problems on a 64 bit platform. Give Vista 32 bit a try first and if that doesn't solve it then go the way of dual booting with XP.

And try removing the security suite, you can always add it in if you find that wasn't the cause of the slowdown.

 

I dual boot with only 120GB and still have room for data. I only used XP until recently. I downloaded a virus. How? I wanted to see some data video so badly that when this pop-up message told me I have to install some special codec in order to view it, I downloaded and installed the thing. It was special alright. The next time I booted up the desktop was taken over by this crimson thing telling me my laptop has been infected with a virus and constantly tried to sell me anti-virus software. Then I remembered I have Vista installed. So I rebooted into Vista. Problem solved! Dual-booting saved my stupid ass for sure.

 

I just looked up Vista and Autocad support (I use it too).

It said Autodesk released a service pack that added Vista support.

As for 64-bit, if you have the proper video drivers, the program should run fine. Vista 64 can run 32 programs fine.

 

Yes, and make sure you have your compatibility settings right in the .exe file properties. For example, I can name some games that won't even install properly unless you run the setup.exe file as Administrator, and the set compatibility to run as Administrator. I've been able to get everything to run in my case once I learned this. Of course, some very old programs won't even install on Vista.

 

I hope I have the right drivers the trouble I was running into was it would say it could not run a 32 bit application in 64 bit mode or something and also got some side by side error message when trying to play bioshock