Hey guys,

I need some advice, I want to switch by V..Viss.. I'm sorry it's hard for me to say the "V" word, but you know what notorious operating system I'm talking about. So I want to switch that to a good version of XP and no I didn't just think of this yesterday I have been doing some research but would like to to get some final advice

Firstly I have a Toshiba Satellite A210-FS1(check the specs on google then add 2gb of ram), it was shipped with Windows Vista Home Premium(I got is as a present, so I didn't have a choice), but every since I've had it, I have wanted to get rid of OP system. I've called Toshiba and they say that this particular laptop was available with XP so all the drivers for the Hardware are available and I will back-up my files.

Now I need two pieces of information, the Technician at Toshiba told me to back up my recover files, how do I do this and has any one attemped this and succeded or failed. Your thoughts are greatly appreciated!

I will preface this post by saying: I'm not familiar with Vista compatibility so any of the software I recommend may not work.

The best thing for you to do is to make an image of the whole system. XML Drive image is a piece of software I've used and which works quite well. It is also free so double bonus. The process is pretty straight forward and there is a lot of documentation (and nice wizards) to guide you through it.
http://www.runtime.org/dixml.htm


After you've done that you should be ready to install Windows XP. If you ever want to go back to Vista, well you just have to restore the image you made.

Of course a simpler way is to figure out what software you need and make a list of it. What personal (not system) files you need and back them up.

<VERY IMPORTANT>Then download the XP drivers for your laptop model and back it up to a usb drive. </VERY IMPORTANT>

Then blow away the whole drive and install XP ( of course this implies you have a copy of XP available).

lol stupid vista.... stupid stupid vista.

don't be dising vista. If you know want your doing vista is better then xp. For your laptop however I do recommend xp because I have a similar laptop and I find vista bogs it down.

The ebst way is to format but imaging works well too.

"Upgrading Vista to XP"

lolol... its funny how he called it an "upgrade"

but its true.. "Win Vista" is the new "Win ME"

Or you can do a real upgrade and go to Linux - Ubuntu Linux to be specific. It's going to overshadow Windows someday...

Originally Posted by snaps

"Upgrading Vista to XP"

lolol... its funny how he called it an "upgrade"

but its true.. "Win Vista" is the new "Win ME"

How dare you mention the ME, sir? There were no versions of Windows between Win98 and Win2000. NONE to be worthy of mention!

Nothing wrong with Vista. In fact if you use a laptop, Vista has better energy saving algorithms than XP (provided you turn off aero).

UAC is easily turned off. Drivers have matured enough now that performance is on par with XP. Memory isn't a problem now that most laptops come with 3-4 gigs of memory (unless it's gay ass Apple, who charge you 400 bucks to upgrade to 4 gigs of ram).

If you want to go uBuntu... good luck! I had lots of problems with it (back in the day) but latest releases are pretty stable.

That said, OS X obliterates everything. 3:30-4 hour battery life? Yeah baby. Just don't try to play games on it.

Originally Posted by wankey

Nothing wrong with Vista. In fact if you use a laptop, Vista has better energy saving algorithms than XP (provided you turn off aero).

UAC is easily turned off. Drivers have matured enough now that performance is on par with XP. Memory isn't a problem now that most laptops come with 3-4 gigs of memory (unless it's gay ass Apple, who charge you 400 bucks to upgrade to 4 gigs of ram).

If you want to go uBuntu... good luck! I had lots of problems with it (back in the day) but latest releases are pretty stable.

That said, OS X obliterates everything. 3:30-4 hour battery life? Yeah baby. Just don't try to play games on it.

Ya, don't do Ubuntu unless you know anything about computers. And it's true about vista - if you're computer can handle it, it actually does work better than XP internally in most regards. Memory caching makes it run pretty smoothly. Don't get me wrong though, it is still a big piece of shit in terms of how well put together it is. It likes to blue screen while playing games...

Ah no, Vista doesn't blue screen anymore. It just quits the program unexpectedly and flashes the screen black for a few seconds for kicks.

Then it asks you if you want to send an error report to nVidia or some shit company.

vista has the blue screen of death just like XP..


and for the users of Ubuntu:
Ubuntu was made to be similar to the windows environment to make an easy transition to the linux environment.. maybe now you would like to upgrade to the REAL linux and go Red Hat... lol


and..

lolol DannyV...

Originally Posted by snaps

vista has the blue screen of death just like XP..


and for the users of Ubuntu:
Ubuntu was made to be similar to the windows environment to make an easy transition to the linux environment.. maybe now you would like to upgrade to the REAL linux and go Red Hat... lol


and..

lolol DannyV...

Red Hat is for servers, and on top of that, it doesn't exist anymore. If you mean Fedora.... fedora is fail...

Debian based linux ftw!

Well, from my experiences, i have an Acer 5110 (dual core amd 1.6, 2gb ram, ati x1300 dedicated graphics) it came with vista home premium. It only took half a week before i "Upgraded" to XP. Vista is slower, less user-friendly (requires tons of excess clicking), and plain annoying to tech savy users.

Anyone that says battery life is better, i highly doubt, by default you simply have tons more background processes running at startup.. I have 28 on my laptop (thats including Anti virus, gtalk, graphics card utility, and a few others...). I see many vista laptops with 70+, thats disgusting. Sure you can disable the default visual effects, sidebar, system restore, UAC, etc...but there goes most of the new features of vista!

Also, if you want some fancy effects for XP, look for the Vista XP theme that microsoft removed ... (but it still around on the net if you look for it...), google widgets, Expose alternative for windows or Microsoft powertoy Alt-Tab replacement as well.

Even though Toshiba may have drivers posted for Windows XP, be prepared they may not work (they are often much older versions). Acer only had a generic wireless card driver for xp and it didn't include a proper utility for managing wireless connections.

The IMPORTANT part is, while in Windows Vista, write down (or save a report in Everest Ultimate) of all the hardware (in device manager), including model numbers. (Video, Network, Sound, Flash Reader, Wireless, etc).

I forgot to grab the model number of my atheros wireless card (because i assumed the acer driver would just work), which they didnt. And it was hard to find a utility that would be compatible without the model number (trial and error!).... If you need an atheros utility that works good under XP let me know...

Ubuntu 8.04 is nice (and 8.10 is out)... very user friendly debian based linux and dual booting is very easy to do using the Ubuntu Live CD. Again, wireless was the only thing that was tricky, but theirs tons of friendly people on Ubuntu forums to help you out.

-Kevin

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

Red Hat is for servers, and on top of that, it doesn't exist anymore. If you mean Fedora.... fedora is fail...

Debian based linux ftw!

lolol red hat doesnt exist anymore eh

Originally Posted by snaps

lolol red hat doesnt exist anymore eh

Yup, as of March 31st 2003 it got omnomnomnomed by Fedora.