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Giving windows Vista a second chance

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First post, by Oldskoolmaniac

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I know, I know yuck windows vista. I want to try windows vista now that there are a lot more updates and patches, my curiosity is how bad is it still?

Well so far here is the pc i build, keep in mind im trying to keep the hardware in the time of 2006.
Here are the specs:
CPU: Intel Pentium D 3GHz
RAM: 2GB
Video: HD 3850 8x AGP
Motherboard: Biostar p4m800-m7a 1.0
H.D.D: 320GB Seagate SATA
O.D.D: Maddog DVD combo drive
OS: Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 64 Bit

So far after installation computer sitting in idle, not connected to internet yet im using 1.58GB of RAM (Thats just gross). Could you imagine back when people had xp the most ram you had with a stock pc was usually 512MB of ram, how could people upgrade there pc's take a look at the pentium 1 you had and upgrade path from windows 95 all the way up to windows 2000 on a p1, but in 2006 that was a huge jump xp-vista 512MB-to pretty much 4GB of ram to run smooth.

So now im on day 4 and its still trying to search for windows updates, geez 4 days straight of searching.

I will post pictures of the build later, this is just something i wanted to do while i was bored. If there are any good tweaks that will really improve then please let me know.

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Reply 1 of 72, by Jade Falcon

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Vista was never that bad. Just a big ban wagon effect from cheap oem systems and bad drivers.

If you put together a system with vista in mind it will run rather well.

As for ram useage, it's data cashed in ram. It supposed to speed up you system, and for the most part does. If you need more ram it will lower the cashed amount. It can be disabled too.

And Windows update will lickly not work on a out of the box install of vista or 7 anymore. M$ pushed a big update to Windows update last July that you may need in order for it to work.

Reply 2 of 72, by Unknown_K

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So how is Vista compared to Win 7 (with all the updates for both)? I never used Vista, jumped from XP to Windows 7 which is what I still use.

Collector of old computers, hardware, and software

Reply 3 of 72, by Darkman

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Unknown_K wrote:

So how is Vista compared to Win 7 (with all the updates for both)? I never used Vista, jumped from XP to Windows 7 which is what I still use.

from my own experience , its very much just a somewhat more bloated, and slightly buggier version of Windows7 , minus DX11 support. Win7 even kept the overall look of Vista.

and yes, some of the horror stories regarding Vista's performance were from people running it on relatively old Pentium4 systems and such.

Reply 6 of 72, by DosFreak

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You'll be better off integrating the updates into the ISO or using WSUS offline.

A Vista/7 straight off the disc connecting to Windows update will take forever just scanning.

Damnit beaten 🙁

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Reply 8 of 72, by Jo22

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Darkman wrote:
Jade Falcon wrote:

Vista has dx11 suport

really? never knew that, always thought it was strictly limited to DX10

Yup, it's true, it was part of the platform update. Vista still uses an older graphics engine/driver model, though.
Which means that graphics stuff has to go through the compositing engine. GDI isn't accellerated as in Win7, and there's a copy of VRAM in memory.
Here's a so called "picture story" from tomshardware.com. It's nolonger up-to-date, though. 😅
http://www.tomshardware.com/picturestory/518- … x-11-vista.html

In a similar way, Windows Seven also got a little DX 11.1 update..
http://techreport.com/news/23907/windows-7-up … dx11-1-features

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Reply 9 of 72, by Oldskoolmaniac

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Unknown_K wrote:

So how is Vista compared to Win 7 (with all the updates for both)? I never used Vista, jumped from XP to Windows 7 which is what I still use.

I never got vista fully updated to today's updates but ive notice that after using windows 7 after a clean install its using a little over a gig of ram and after it fully updated with office 2016 installed and ccleaner ran and defragged win7 sits in idle at 800 to 900MB of ram depending on what drivers are installed. So i think after certain updates it patch's stuff like that.

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Reply 10 of 72, by skitters

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Oldskoolmaniac wrote:

I know, I know yuck windows vista. I want to try windows vista now that there are a lot more updates and patches, my curiosity is how bad is it still?

I still have it on a laptop that came with it. Other than taking a long time to boot, it was not bad.
Once I get to the desktop, it works OK, but a long boot is not what you want on a laptop.

So now im on day 4 and its still trying to search for windows updates, geez 4 days straight of searching.

There's a fix here -- at least it worked back in April this year. 2nd post in the thread.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/611 … ng-for-updates/

Windows 7 has a similar problem. Microsoft made some change to Windows update that caused it.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/621 … taking-forever/

Reply 11 of 72, by keenmaster486

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Yes, I spent all summer waiting for computers to finish those stupid updates when I worked at a local computer repair shop. Very annoying, but I didn't know there was a fix!

World's foremost 486 enjoyer.

Reply 12 of 72, by FFXIhealer

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The only Windows Vista computer I built at the home was built entirely around the problems I had heard about Vista and I NEVER ONCE had an issue with it running. The ONLY reason I replaced and dismantled that PC was because Vista only supports an outdated version of Google Chrome and only goes up to IE 9, which is getting phased out.

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 2.67 GHz Dual-Core
MEM: 4GB DDR2-800 (2 x 2GB)
VIDEO: nVidia GeForce 8400GS PCI-Express
HDD: 640GB WD Caviar

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Reply 14 of 72, by candle_86

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Vista is decent on the right hardware, aka

Dual core and 4gb of ram.

the issue back in 2006 was Celeron D with 512mb of ram being sold with Vista (which is also slow on Windows XP 🤣)

Reply 15 of 72, by FFXIhealer

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keenmaster486 wrote:

OK FFXIhealer, but that sounds much like a good machine for 7 😀

I built that PC before Windows 7 had been released. I see lots of people here on Vogons using similar hardware (4GB RAM, Core 2 Duo, etc.) to run XP machines, but for me XP was always a single-core OS (my laptop has a Pentium M 2.1GHz and my old-ass Athlon XP 1800+ system).

In fact, that Vista PC was dismantled so I could reuse the parts. I took the 2x2GB DDR2-800 sticks out and used it to rebuild a similarly old Dell Optiplex for someone who was paying me to do it. They had Core 2 Duos as well, got a bump from their old 2GB to 4GB total and I stuck Window 10 Pro on both of them.

The Core 2 E7300 I had went into an E-machines small form-factor PC who's existing Pentium dual-core processor went belly-up and no longer booted. That processor dropped right into that LGA775 socket and with a new pair of 2GB sticks, the system runs Windows 10 as well. I'm half tempted to move my mother's games and profile over to it and let her use THAT as her PC so I can get my gaming rig back.

But to be specific, I didn't run Windows 7 until I had built my first REAL gaming rig: centered around the Intel Core i7-860 2.8GHz quad-core. That system was a beast and still is. My mother is using it right now and it's severely overpowered for what she does (2006 puzzle game, e-mails and Facebook with the occasional radio stream playing in the background). That PC has also been upgraded to Windows 10 after I included the 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO as a boot (C:) drive.

And oh yeah, I'll never go back to old-ass boot drives again (excepting retro PCs, like my Windows 98 system I'm actually making this post from!). Using Firefox 2.0.0.20.

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Reply 16 of 72, by Scali

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Jade Falcon wrote:

Vista was never that bad. Just a big ban wagon effect from cheap oem systems and bad drivers.

That is my view on it as well.
I had no choice but to have a Vista system at an early stage, for DirectX 10 development.
So I ran Vista (the x64 Ultimate version) pretty much from day 1.
I also used a GeForce 8800GTS320, which was a card that was considered 'troublesome' in Vista.

I have to say, there were some teething problems, especially with the Explorer, where copying files sometimes took ages, and that sort of thing.
But overall I didn't have that many problems, even at first. It certainly was usable.

By the time the first Service Pack came around, all problems were pretty much solved, and it actually was quite a nice OS to use, and I never really looked back to XP anymore (aside from having to test my code on it).

http://scalibq.wordpress.com/just-keeping-it- … ro-programming/

Reply 17 of 72, by Procyon

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Used Vista for years and I was quite a happy user.
Actually I went back from Windows 7 to Vista for a while because AMD wouldn't let me have overscan for certain resolutions in Windows 7, which it did allow in Vista.

Reply 18 of 72, by dondiego

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Vista is not compatible with my asus via p4m890 motherboards, apparently support was broken since SP1. Aero crashes and the computer hangs in 3d games no matter which graphics card. Graphics cards appear as removable devices, tried a geforce 7300 and a radeon x550. Both XP and 7 run without major problems.

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Reply 19 of 72, by ZellSF

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Marketing is everything. Vista's not terrible, but marketing failed so people thought it was. That's why 7 exists, basically a service pack to Vista relaunched with a better marketing campaign.