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December 8, 2007

Switching from Vista to XP: the truth

Warts and all guide to ditching Vista

Jon L Jacobi

We show you how to move back from Windows Vista to Windows XP - without glossing over the tricky bits. We show you how to transfer your Vista email, contacts and user data back to the old standby operating system.

After exploring Windows Vista for about six months on my test-bed PC, I decided two months ago that, along with upgrading the motherboard and CPU in my main work machine, I'd "upgrade" to Microsoft's latest operating system.

Vista's new navigation features had slowly grown on me, although I hadn't tried to work daily with the OS. Vista's appearance has it all over standard XP, and there are tons of usability features that beckon - after you turn off the incredibly annoying User Account Control that constantly bugs you when you want to install programs or tweak things.

For example, I love being able to shut down with one click; I like the junk filtering in Windows Mail (Vista's upgraded version of Outlook Express); and I appreciate the way I can easily drag User folders (formerly My Documents) to a new location so I can consolidate them with other data that I regularly back up.

Annoyances drive me backwards

Unfortunately, small time-wasting annoyances in Vista cropped up almost immediately. Auto-complete of email addresses in Windows Mail works only with the 29 most recently used contacts (I have well over a thousand), and overall the program is slow.

The Search Indexer had an irritating tendency to start when I watched an HD-DVD, and despite of the absence of multimedia files in a folder, most folders showed useless columns for Artists, Tags, and Ratings.

I must have wasted an hour changing them to Size and Date Modified headings - and then the folder would sometimes magically change from detail view to icon view. To be fair, that last part is a holdover bug from XP, but all I've described was just the tip of the iceberg.

As irksome as these things were, I considered them livable. It was only when I discovered that my sound card's drivers for ASIO (a high-performance audio standard for recording musical instruments and vocals) didn't work well under Vista that the balance tipped irretrievably towards "downgrading" to XP.

The beta ASIO drivers may have been spotty, it may have been a system configuration problem, it may have been me - Vista is actually reputed to be much better for Pro audio - but I decided that it was time to revert to good old stable XP with its mature driver support.

  1. Switching from Vista to XP: Warts and all guide
  2. Switching from Vista to XP: How about dual booting?
  3. Switching from Vista to XP: The mail mess
  4. Switching from Vista to XP: Windows Mail migration, step by step
  5. Switching from Vista to XP: Time for Your XP Install

Continued...
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | NEXT >

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Comments received


Guy Loop said on Saturday, 08 December 2007

I checked out quite a few sites about switching from Vista to XP and you guys were heads and shoulders more informative than the rest. I have never switched OS before, but Vista has finally pushed me over the edge. If this was a new PC I would spend the extra money and go MAC. My cousin runs has his own business and he switched everything to MAC. Now that is the way to go, but I can live with XP for now. Thank you for all your help.

Why would anybody want to do that? said on Saturday, 08 December 2007

People going back to XP is just a myth, it's not really happening!
fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

Jake said on Monday, 10 December 2007

Like you I find that the good bits of Vista are grossly outnumbered by the bad bits and I am thinking of going back to XP. My computer (Evesham) is less than 6 months old and came preinstalled with Vista.

Questions
1. I have a Medion laptop I no longer use which was preloaded with XP (for which I have a recovery disc) – would I be able to use this or will I have to purchase a new copy?

2. I notice that you did not reformat your hard drive before installing XP – is this not required?

3. When Vista improves will I be able to reinstall it from my supplied recovery disk

stuart said on Monday, 10 December 2007

(People going back to XP is just a myth, it's not really happening!)
A myth Hmm i dont think so iv already gone back to XP along with many people, if your doing day to day general stuff its fine for the average person but i do alot of audio work and there just isnt the support for it.....yet.. + its way to hungry on my system, will w8 n c wot the service pack offers but i wont hold my breath!!!!!

martin said on Monday, 10 December 2007

You failed to mention about the possible lack of drivers for sound, graphics and wireless adapters being just some of the issues ive come across when jo public has tried to reinstall their new p.c/laptop back to xp from vista.

tricky said on Monday, 10 December 2007

We got a new PC with Vista pre installed but after a lot of frustration decided to put the old PC back together and re-installed XP just to get my old (excellent) film and flatbed scanners back working sensibly.
Mail seems to refuse email deletion as well which is stupidly annoying specially as OE used to work well enough.
Vista was supposedly beta tested extensively which makes the number of problems even more surprising.

Incony said on Monday, 10 December 2007

some of us never went Vista at all, for all kinds of reasons.. my own reason was why? XP took a long time to get as good as it is.. it still works..along with its Office companions, Vista wasnt stable enough for me to consider sidelining XP... i still dont think its worth the asking price yet. while XP is still the prime system that everyday works companions have, that i deal with, then XP is still my favoured route.. Vista doesnt shine yet. i have no bias.. if Vista really was the bees knees. i would be looking for honey..:)

Peter said on Tuesday, 11 December 2007

I bought a new computer with Vista installed and after 1 month (to give it a chance) I'm about to switch back. I find it unreliable (eg the display driver keeps crashing) and several of my trustworthy and well used pieces of software are not compatible. To upgrade them all to the latest versions will cost me more than the new computer!
So it's bye bye Vista!

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