Windows XP

I currently use Vista SP1. My question is can I retrograde to Wndows XP.

Thanks

 

"retorgrade"??

Vista Business has downgrade rights to XP - don't think ultimate has.

Otherwise you'd have to buy a retail/OEM version of XP.

Make sure drivers exist for your compuer, though.

PS: Vista is better than XP, are you experiencing any problems? We - the forum - may help you to solve them.

 

If you purchase XP from somewhere you can certainly install it. Make sure you have drivers for all of your hardware.

 

Why would you want to downgrade to an obsulote OS with no support. Vista will serve you better if you do some tweaking.

 

This is comming from the right person...


Edit: One important thing - tweaking Vista is generally nonsense.
There is a bit of tweaking that maks sense - getting rid of junk like quicktime at startup, java updates etc. but that's it.

 

Uh oh, the NBR Vista Brigade is in full force tonight.

 

C'mon man!

Why do you have to go there every time?

The OP was asking how to "retrograde" to XP. Not if he should.

 

True bro, I was a fully XP person, until I installed Vista Business 64 bit which was able to make use of my high end laptop, (especially the 4 GB RAM which was never utilized in XP).

When I say tweaking, I mean cleaning up your system, disabling system restore service / system restore (I only rely on imaging software such as Acronis True Image to make backups of my system) / disabling error reporting, disabling startup items that are not needed like sun java update for example / disabling Vista Sidebar / and finally, the many previous tweaks MZ Vista Force brings.

 

Ah, you have seen he light
The 64Bit is debateable whether its required - but it definitely seems to run well for people - that's all that matters.

I personally use 4GB on 32Bit.

Sidebar - it actually takes less resources than you think, but I have it disabled too
System Restors - I do keep them, but if I ever needed one I would have to reinstal everyhing from scratch, they break too much for me.
Error reporting can be useful - Microsoft does have a solution to a problem every now an then Not every obscure one, but definitely the more common ones

What's that link by the way? Its an exe - any chance you can link to whatever page it comes from? Personally I have turned against tweaking Vista - it may looklike a good idea - but it actually isn't, and oddly enough you notice after some time. "Untweak" and your laptop speeds up.

But everyone too his (for the women: her) own.

And now I'm off to sleep...

 

Plus, doesn't 64-bit Vista require WHQL drivers, so one reason it's typically more stable than 32-bit versions (and more secure)?

Regarding XP, sure you can "retrograde" (I like that term better than "downgrade"). If you plan on a dual-boot, however, you will need to understand BCDEdit or get VistaBootPro ($10), because if you install XP after Vista, you will lose your Vista option to boot. Or if you do a clean install of both, do XP, then Vista.

I dual boot, and still stick with XP for 99% of my stuff. I'll try hard as hell to use Windows 7 only when it comes out, but will probably still have XP dual boot for those handful of games or apps that don't like 7.

 

Ultimate also has XP downgrade rights.

EasyBCD can do this for free: http://neosmart.net/dl.php?id=1

 

No support? From whom? Microsoft will be supporting all flavors of XP for two years longer than they'll be supporting _Vista ultimate.

That being said, I don't see why anyone would want to go to the extra time and expense of throwing out a perfectly good _Vista install and trying to get an XP install up and running - as far as I'm concerned, that's a ludicrous waste of time unless you either have (a) really marginal hardware that's so bad it's the hardware causing _Vista to crawl, or (b) you have a specific, identifiable reason for needing (not wanting, needing) to drop back to XP, such as a mission-critical app that will only run under XP, and which cannot be run on a virtual machine running under _Vista.

 

There you go, that's the description, try it, and if u need any help with any of the options let me know, perhaps ill creat a guide soon.

 

Thanks for the changelog.

I can manage services and startup manually in Vista.

I'll tell you why I won't try it - my laptop has been running well on Vista since October 08, I don't want to have to reinstal everything if something breaks
I had to do it so often on my old laptop on XP - I now absolutely hate installing an operating system...

But if its works for you - the question is though was there really an improvement? - you'd need two identica systems to compare...

 

big difference bro...gimme some time im posting a step by step guide of the most useful options itll help u apply teh tweaks safely, plus, it always prompts u to back up ur registry at start up

 

Hmm, some people seem to have a security issue with it - I donwloaded one from "Major Geeks" - Kaspersky did not fnd anything during the download - then ran a virus scan on the file - it seems "clean".

Many people notice no difference - the quetion is, could this programme just invoke Vista's built in optimization?

Edit: I had a look at it - I'm not sure about this programme - autoruns from Sysinternals can do much more about startup applications - I think we'd need some programmers to experiment with this piece of software.

I have removed it again - and didn't change any settings.

 

it's much more bro, you can tell the OS how much L2 cache your CPU has to optimize it, you can ....*refere to attachments*

 

I'm pretty sure my OS knows how to handle itself And I don't want to risk messing anything up.

 

Well can't force you to try if you don't trust meh

enjoy ur *un-tweaked* system

 

It was playing wiht such apps that forced me to reinstal XP countless times on my old laptop - Vista - I think I may have messed it up once or twice playing with things - that's why I am very cautious about using such utilities.

 

beep beep!

Thanks for that EasyBCD link +1! I am surprised I did not know of this. Looks even more full featured than VistaBootPro!

I'll give it a shot!

 

Hi guys!

The most important thing first: this is a pretty long post, but I hope that you will be reading it completely. This is where it began:

I hope that the following information will be useful for you.
Anyways, here's what my reply ended up being:

I totally agree. IF you are doing "tweaking", you should only play around with and change things that you really understand. If you do the wrong things, you will just end up messing up everything.

Don't touch complex things that you don't understand, this is common sense!

While I agree that it's useful to disable autostart entries for applications that you don't use frequently if your computer's resources are limited for you, please do not disable "Java auto update" or similar entries. Disabling automatic updates for any software will likely make your computer prone to attacks. This is especially true for applications like Java, OpenOffice, Safari ("Apple Update") and any application that gets data that originates from other people.

Also, do not disable Windows' automatic updates. It will NOT install Spyware, Malware, Viruses, Trojans or make your computer slower. It will make your computer more secure and likely faster.

Configuring autostart entries for the current user can be done via "msconfig.exe", just type "msconfig" into your start menu.

Windows Vista Business and Windows Vista Ultimate both have " Windows Complete PC Backup". For those of you who do not want to spend money on any imaging software: this is a feature that makes an image of your computer, which you can revert to at any time.

My personal opinion is that for most people it's better to leave it enabled. However, there don't seem to be THAT many solutions for problems, so if you know what you're doing, you can safely disable it.

It doesn't need that much resources, so I guess it's a matter of preference.

I'd be interested in what exactly this setting does, in case you can tell me. If it's what I believe it might be, this setting won't do anything if your CPU is newer than a Pentium one (which I guess it is).

But like I said, that's what it MIGHT be. Could as well be anything I don't know of, but I think it's likely that that's what it is. If so, it'd be one example of why "tweaking" isn't really needed: you have to know what you're doing. And as soon as you know what you're doing, you will notice that there aren't many things you can do that will cause a noticeable performance boost, and that it's better to use the time to earn some money to spend on more RAM or a faster harddisk.

Right.

Well, it IS reqiured (or will at least be). As you likely know, it's required for more than 4GB of RAM. Even worse, on Windows 32bit, only 3.5GB of that are actually usable (which is a design decision nowadays). And many people already exceed that limit while working (causing Windows to put data on the HDD that should better be in RAM, and thereby slowing the computer down).

Unfortunately, it does NOT run well for all people. It's a lot better than it was when XP 64 bit was launched, when many, many applications and drivers just weren't available in 64 bit for a long time, but it's still not perfect.

That's so true.

Yes.

Any driver for Vista 64 bit has to be WHQL certified by Microsoft. As drivers that are not WHQL signed are a very common source for system failures, this increases the stability and likely also the security of Vista 64 bit over Vista 32 bit.

You don't even need VistaBootPro or even EasyBCD, you can even do this using only the Vista DVD and your XP installation: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/919529/EN-US/

From what I heard, EasyBCD is a fine software.

Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate will allow you to download XP from Microsoft and run it in a virtual machine for free: http://www.winsupersite.com/win7/xp_mode_preview.asp

What most tweaking software does (and from the screenshots provided by maximus, I can say that this one likely does the same) is it changes some values of settings that Windows already has (partly deep under the hood). Most likely, you could do the tweaks that it does on your own, using things like Windows' Registry Editor. But ask yourself one question: as you now know that all these settings are already there, and Microsoft has spent time on implementing them, what do you think why they are set the way they are? I'll tell you: because in most cases, other values may cause the system to behave oddly or even unpredictable. So there's a reason why all these settings are set the way they are.

As a result, "tweaking-software" often has many options simply because they're easy to build in for the developer of the software. But I have yet to see such a software with dozens of settings that really explains what these settings actually do, which is a problem. If you read my whole post up to this point, I hope you now understand why it is so important to know what you are doing, because most tweaking software doesn't bother whether you know or not and offers an insane amount of partly insane options.

Please don't take this as a judgment of this particular software, I have not used or even analysed it, so I can't really judge about it.

If you read the whole post you already know that you can simply use "msconfig" (enter "msconfig" into Vista's startmenu, it's in every standard Windows installation) to configure the autostart items of the current user. To configure the services (warning: only change service settings that you are absolutely 100% certain about! They are a really critical part of Windows!) you can enter "services.msc" into the start menu.

See...
Again: it's an absolute necessity that you know what the switches that you're operating are there for.




-----------------------------------------------------
Phew, I guess that will be a very long post... well, I just couldn't resist. I don't want anyone who seems to not be lazy and instead be interested to get problems unnecessarily. I hope this was useful for anyone. If you have any questions, notes or any corrections regarding this post, please tell me.

Also, I have to apologize for potential bad English.

Unfortunately, there are so many quotes in this post that I might have messed up who said what inadvertently. I double-checked this for nearly every quote, but just in case I put your name where it doesn't belong: please tell me.

Oh, and: UAC is the best feature of Vista compared to XP! Read about it.


So long,
Christoph



PS: I'm trying to help prevent problems here, so if you read this post completely please drop me some comments. Thank you!

 

Wow, someone who writes posts with lengths that rival mine!, and that make a lot of sense, too (unlike most of mine! ). Nice job of wrapping up all the loose ends.

 

Great post

Remind me to drop you some Rep - I can't at the moment but bookmarked the page.

Edit:
Update, repped

 

Thank you both for your feedback.

 

Holy crap Christoph.krn!

Nice job.

 

btw, error reporting is not only per se for yourself. it's for microsoft, and everyone of us. if you report an error, f.e. a driver that crashes, then microsoft puts it in their list of errors. if everyone reports that error, then it's on higher priority to get fixed (this includes microsoft contacting the driver vendor to fix it). so if you have some error and don't report it, it won't get fixed as fast for everyone of us.

now, you say, you're just one "vote", so you don't matter. yes, but imagine all gamers google up for windows tweaks and find "disabling error reporting". suddenly, a major group of people that have gpu driver problems don't report them. suddenly, it DOES matter. and we all know, gamers are tweakers

do your error reports. you gain from them (i got some driver update notifications that fix problems on my system a month after i reported the problem), and most important, the rest of the users here and everywhere gain from it, too.


one thing you got a bit wrong, chrisoph.krn: autoruns finds much more than you find in msconfig. i needed it to disable some virii on other machines from starting up. or crappy network service-messes that didn't work anymore.

but yes, the most common things can be done in msconfig (but i prefer ccleaner for it as i have it installed anyways.. )