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I am such a fool.
DirtyDirtyVagrant
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I got this laptop a while back and, actually, I've posted about issues related to it twice already... but those were small fries (near insignificant) compared to the problems I have now.
I have attempted to downgrade the computer to XP and have failed. Pretty miserably. My mistakes are manyfold, but they include:
- Installing XP on the 11GB system restore partition. I only meant to put the files there so that I could run the XP setup off that drive later, installing the system on the main disk after I formatted. In this, I failed spectacularly.
- Assuming that the computer's hardware components all had driver support for XP. A quick search of the internet reveals that many of them probably dont.
And now for some reason I can't boot it in vista anymore. When I try to change the boot device in the bios, my choices are basically "USB Device", "Notebook Hard Drive" and "CD/DVD drive." The term 'notebook hard drive' does not seem to include the actual C drive - it seems to only want to boot from the D partition, choosing XP over windows. Is there some way to change which drive is 'the' drive?
While we're at it, I noticed something funny in my bios. My memory reads as 1024 MB. A GB, correct? In the Windows System information panel it reads 896. Vista reads something like 959. What the hell's probably going on? Is a memory test in order?
One (or two or three) final thing(s) - the question(s) I should have just asked that would have spared me the pain reverberating through my ass right now.
Why does vista run so goddamn slow? It seems like simple operations take fucking forever. It hangs up on routine tasks and just seems to generally be in shitty working order. Is it actually kind of crappy, or is it me? If the latter, are they ever going to fix it?
I have attempted to downgrade the computer to XP and have failed. Pretty miserably. My mistakes are manyfold, but they include:
- Installing XP on the 11GB system restore partition. I only meant to put the files there so that I could run the XP setup off that drive later, installing the system on the main disk after I formatted. In this, I failed spectacularly.
- Assuming that the computer's hardware components all had driver support for XP. A quick search of the internet reveals that many of them probably dont.
And now for some reason I can't boot it in vista anymore. When I try to change the boot device in the bios, my choices are basically "USB Device", "Notebook Hard Drive" and "CD/DVD drive." The term 'notebook hard drive' does not seem to include the actual C drive - it seems to only want to boot from the D partition, choosing XP over windows. Is there some way to change which drive is 'the' drive?
While we're at it, I noticed something funny in my bios. My memory reads as 1024 MB. A GB, correct? In the Windows System information panel it reads 896. Vista reads something like 959. What the hell's probably going on? Is a memory test in order?
One (or two or three) final thing(s) - the question(s) I should have just asked that would have spared me the pain reverberating through my ass right now.
Why does vista run so goddamn slow? It seems like simple operations take fucking forever. It hangs up on routine tasks and just seems to generally be in shitty working order. Is it actually kind of crappy, or is it me? If the latter, are they ever going to fix it?
DirtyDirtyVagrant on
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I am sure the rest of the crowd will give you a hand with your boot/installation problems.
If a game says that the recommended specs are 1GB of ram, and you have less than 1GB, the game will likely run, but it'll run like complete ass because you're putting game data into the page file.
I'd look at upgrading the ram in the laptop. Vista really needs 2GB+ of ram to get performance comparable to XP. Vista on 1GB is like running XP on 512MB, sure it's doable, but don't expect the greatest performance out of it.
You have some shitty graphics chipset that reserves system memory instead of using dedicated VRAM.
That's um...pretty goddamn bad.
But anyway, the main question I wanted to ask was the 'how to I get back into vista' question.
And I'm just about 150% sure that this laptop uses dedicated video.
Yes, Windows Vista uses more resources than XP, Windows Vista requires AT LEAST 2 Gigabytes Ram to work smoother.
And yes, if you are just doing Microsoft Word or Excel in your laptop, Vista is not that bad, the problem comes when you want to do task intense operations like Divx encoding or playing Unreal Tournament 2004.
Regarding how Vista is running: it's probably you. Well, your laptop really. Recommended minimum memory for Vista is 1GB (unless you're running Home Basic, then it's 512MB). You've got less than that available for the OS because your on-board graphics chip stole some for itself.
I'm guessing your boot-up issues relate to trying to install XP after Vista, while this is possible, it requires some special considerations and procedures that extend beyond just plopping the XP install disc in and running setup. I've found there is indeed some poor XP driver support for Vista machines (particularly the less expensive machines that shipped with Vista), you can probably work around most of these by going directly to the manufacturer website and trying to track down 2K or Win 2K3 drivers if you cannot find the XP driver, but sometimes you just have to live with some devices not being supported in you want to run XP.
IMO, your best bet would be to contact the laptop manufacturer and tell you had to reformat your hard drive and you need a set of system restore discs. This worked for me and if you're lucky you'll get a set of discs with a Vista SP1 image. In order to get my recovery partition (on my Lenovo it wasn't technically a partition, but some hidden space) I had to delete all the partitions and then boot the recovery media.
Edit: You might be able to edit the boot.ini file in your XP install to give an option to boot off the Vista partition.
That said, what you're basically telling me is that I probably should just go ahead and put the effort into converting this computer over. I really really really have a driver situation though, and it doesn't help that many of this computers components are reading as 'pci device', 'unknown device', and things like that. None of them show the manufacturer or anything in the properties. So I think what I need to do is get on vista (So my wireless will work, make a big list of shit, and then sort of download all the drivers I need - for XP, slap them on a flash drive, and then go from there)
Unless there's an easier way that I'm not seeing. Honestly I'm still a little new at all of this. I know enough to get by because I learn from my mistakes, and I've fucked over my old computer more times that I can remember, or that I would care to mention.
What are the odds that the manufacturer has put together a driver 'package' for people who want to downgrade their operating system?
Edit: For the purposes of knowledge, this post was being typed at the same time as the one directly before it. So it's a reply to previous posts.
Windows XP uses considerably more resources than Windows 98. 98 used a lot more than 3.1. Guess what, as OS's advance, they have higher system requirements, just like any other piece of software. I'm not trying to be a vista apologist here, because there are some things about it that I absolutely cannot stand(like completely fucking up networking in vista), but to criticise it because something that comes out 7 years after it's predecessor uses more resources is just stupid. Do you want games made in 2008 to have the same requirements as games in 2001? Not a chance in hell, you want it to take advantage of current hardware.
</endrant>
It sounds like you screwed up your boot manager when you installed XP, so your boot manager can only see XP and not the vista partition. What you need to do is add a line into your boot manager that points back to the vista partition. Now, the easiest way to do this I believe is with a vista disk, but since you formatted overtop of that restore partition, I'm not sure how to fix that myself, I'm sure someone else will come along and be much more helpful than I am, or you can take what I have said and use that to get you started with google.
That said, I understand that technology progresses, and that operating systems use more and more resources as they grow in sophistication and functionality. I would like to remind you that I am not retarded. I fully recognize that Vista is a step up from XP. That is, it's a step up when you're dealing with bleeding-edge graphics cards and mountains of RAM.
Which I'm not. I'm running a shitty little Nvidia 7000m on a machine with 2GB of memory capacity. So for me, it makes the most sense to use an operating system that is as lightweight as possible. That means that, for me, Vista is a terrible choice. And I'm not even mentioning the fact that Vista seems to have compatability problems with damn near everything. Oh wait, yeah. I guess I am.
As I said in the OP, I have spectacularly failed at doing what I had in mind. Which is why I came here to ask you guys what I should do next. I didn't mean to shoot you down, I'm just frustrated because this needs to work.
Yea sorry, didn't mean so much to take it out on you, but I just see waaaaay to often people trying to upgrade 5 year old machines to vista, then wonder why it doesn't run well, or also buy a $500 laptop with 1GB of ram and wonder why vista runs like ass.
Do you have things on the notebook that need backed up or saved? If not, I'd say that you should just nuke the whole thing with a fresh copy of XP. Use a real XP disc (not a "restore" disc) if you've got one, delete all the partitions on the damn drive, and let XP take all the space available. I know you've had some problem with XP drivers though, maybe if you tell us the make and model we could help you find some drivers that would work? Vista sounds like it may not be for you, so I'm not sure what to suggest other than that.
I'd 2nd what iTunesIsEvil suggested... nuke it from orbit
Repartition the HD (to get rid of the now-useless recovery partition), and install the OS of your choice on a clean slate
I can guarantee that XP will load on your laptop, but you may have to use generic drivers for some of the hardware... you may, however, have an issue during installation if you have SATA drives in the laptop... XP does not come with SATA drivers bundled, so you either need to slipstream them into the install CD, or load them from an external drive (lol, floppy) when prompted during the installation
And upgrade your ram! there's no excuse for bitching at a laptop when a gig of DDR2 is $20
Second of all as someone mentioned but I will go into further depth. The reason you don't have the full one GB of memory, is the integrated part doesn't have memory of it's own so it takes some of your RAM, you can change this amount in the BIOS usually.
For it running slow you may want to look at what sort of pre-installed crap you got with the system. Lots of laptops come with heavy anti-virus programs such as Norton or McAfee. I would remove stuff like that, also turn off Aero, your not supposed to use it on systems that don't have dedicated video cards.
Also it is very unlikely that your system came with a dedicated video card, usually laptops that do run about $1000 and a system that is higher end like that would also have more memory.
Everybody seems to complain about Vista needing a gig when the same people always tell you to put 2GB on a XP system "because you might as well and it'll run awesome".
XP is also almost 9 years old in a couple of months. I can tell you right now, nobody that doesn't have the option is running that old a version of MacOS or Linux.
This would be like complaining that Win98 can't run on your computer because all OSes should be like 3.1.
Also, the OP is going to need to either get a system restore disk from the manufacturer, or send it in. It might still be under warranty. You also have to remember that you have to give Vista about a week to get up to speed, as it needs to index the drive. It's the exact opposite of XP where it's faster as the installation gets newer, Vista gets slower the closer you are to the install date.
Well it's kind of like a hill, vista does get faster for about 3 weeks, then keeps pretty stable, then, like any windows system slows down over time.
Pardon my jumping in here with ignorance. I know that to be true, but why is that?
It's not. Hard drive fragmentation is a big one, and bad sectors. One needs to do these things regularly with either the windows software (it's okay, but there's better) or some other version of scandisk and defrag.
No one does it anymore really, and that's where the problem is. Unless you install and uninstall programs and games a lot, that is, you won't notice any problems from the registry like some places/people try to tell you, even then, meh, what's another 2 kb of registry hive data on a 20 meg file.
Defrag your drive at least once a month, or find an app that'll do it for you when your system is idle.
I defragment every sunday, run Windows defender every night, Spybot twice a week, and an antivirus scan every night while I sleep, and after a year my vista install is not *nearly* as fast. It's called windows rot, it happens. The registry gets fucked up, even the best defragmenting tools just don't do the job. Nothing is as good as a full format and re-install.
Vista gets significantly faster for about the first month after the install, then for about 6 months for me it's fine, but it starts to slow down. I'm actually doing a format this weekend because it's gotten to the point where it takes 3 minutes to login(got it down from 5 after some intense antispyware work).
Yea, this install has made it through a couple of large lan parties(including the biggest one in Canada), so I'm not surprised.
The longest install I've ever had has been 14 months, that was my last XP install before I switched to Vista.
The worst thing I've seen is people at bestbuy or futureshop selling that god damn Norton 360 to people who don't friggen need it! Anti-virus beats your system into the ground...I hate using the stuff and have never had a problem. The only cleaner I use is spydocotr that I run from a USB so it doesn't install itself onto my PC.
The OS rot was a lot worse on XP, I used to reformat yearly but have only had to do it once since I have had Vista
I've got the drivers mostly nailed down, too. I think.
Edit: No, I really don't. The drivers are giving me a lot of trouble, actually, for two reasons:
1. The driver files that I actually have on my computer, installed are not affecting the hardware in any way.
2. When I try a manual install through the device manager, the error message says that the file contains no information on my hardware.
Double edit: Here's my hardware list.
Video Card: Nvidia Geforce 7000m
Ethernet: Nvidia MCP67 Ethernet
Wireless: Atheros AR5006 (802.11abg)
After I can get the ethernet/wireless done I'll be able to do the rest on my own. But these are giving me loads of trouble.
When I try to run the driver setup file it says that the device can't be found.
When I go into the device manager I am met with six or eight devices that could potentially be my sound device, including "Base system device" (3), "PCI Device" (1), and "Unknown device" (1). I've managed to get my video and ethernet working, and that's about it. PC Wizard tells me what all of my hardware is...but that doesn't seem to help windows identify it. Suggestions?
I haven't said it yet, but I probably should. Thanks a lot for the help. I really appreciate this, even if my frustration is getting the best of me. It's been a long time since I've done anything like this.
Wow...my keyboard is screwing up too, in ways that I can't quite describe. Like occasionally it just pulls some shit.
Windows rot is a symptom of installation (and uninstallation) of many applications. Or of use of applications that keep configuration information in the registry. I've had my windows machine going for 6 years with no issues logging in, out, shutting down, or opening firefox or visual studio/notepad.
If you install and uninstall games you're playing and not playing, you'll see this happen in about 2 months of use. If you use the CD from your PC vendor if you didn't build the PC yourself, you'll see this in about 2 weeks.
Open the registry, and drill down to \\HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Enum\ and you'll see a bunch of categories. I'm thinking the devices you're looking for are going to be under "PCI" or "USB." If you expand either of those folder, you'll find entries that look like this (I'm looking on a Vista machine, but XP should look similar, the important thing is the "VEN_XXXX&DEV_NNNN"): VEN_10DE&DEV_040C&SUBSYS_20D917AA&REV_A1. You should be able to find a list of parameters for each device, and I'm pretty sure the "Class" for uninstalled/improperly installed devices would equal "PCI Device" or "Unknown Device." Regardless, if you had to you could copy all the VEN_XXXX&DEV_NNNN for look up. Then look them up in a database to find out which one is the device you're trying to install.
If you have multiple "PCI Device" entries, I'm not sure how you're going to tell the difference via the device manager. I don't have any uninstalled devices so I'm not sure if the details of a "PCI Device" or "Unknown Device" contains the "Device Instance ID", "Hardware ID", or "Compatible ID" paramters which you could read on a normally installed device.