see, thats strange, because even after completely fresh installs of vista and xp i still see that little blue bar go across the screen at least 6 or 7 times before i boot.. i hear people claiming they get booted in like 2 and a half bars...

but, performance wise, i dont really see any major problems with my machine not performing well regardless of boot times.. im pretty crazy about not having useless software and defragging and all that stuff.

but, i do get what you mean that if it takes 10 minutes to boot, then chances are theres something going on that should raise a red flag

Quote: Originally Posted by krimson see, thats strange, because even after completely fresh installs of vista and xp i still see that little blue bar go across the screen at least 6 or 7 times before i boot.. i hear people claiming they get booted in like 2 and a half bars...

Claims are worthless. I'll accept a video showing the boot process, as I've done a few posts earlier.

I just tested a fresh install of my "typical" laptop configuration of the laptops where I work as the sysadmin. They boot in about a minute + 12 seconds with Win XP Pro. Here's the configuration details of one of the older ones:

-Dell Inspiron 1150
-2.6 GHz Celeron
-1 GB RAM

It boots with 31 processes running, and that minute + 12 seconds includes logging in with CTRL + ALT + DEL and entering the password; loading a VNC client, wireless adapter applet, and corporate antivirus client.

Needless to say, I make my work-life easy for myself running them with such a tight configuration (at least until the salespeople and service techs muck them up). When I first started working here about 8 months ago, I'd get a dozen calls per day to fix stupid things that were all caused by mucked-up software, but now I don't think I get half a dozen per week. It gives me time to work on more important tasks....and that's just the way I like it.

So about 10 seconds quicker than my Vista install

Quote: Originally Posted by Dex So about 10 seconds quicker than my Vista install

On a nearly 3-year-old Celeron. Compared to your upper-end C2D. 'nuff said?

Point taken, im sure that 10 second head start will come in usefull

I bet using a C2D you'd make up the difference in a matter of minutes. Just to clarify my overall point. Who cares if it takes 5 minutes to load up, as long as it rapes when you can actually use it, i.e. when its into Windows.

How many USB devices do you have plugged in to that box? I have a steering wheel, a mouse, a keyboard, an external hard drive, a USB microphone, a camera, a webcam and a memory card reader.

Quote: Originally Posted by Dex How many USB devices do you have plugged in to that box? I have a steering wheel, a mouse, a keyboard, an external hard drive, a USB microphone, a camera, a webcam and a memory card reader.

The USB 2.0 standard was developed around the time of Win 98 Second Ed. (nearly 10 years ago)...I wasn't aware that WinVista could do anything more with USB 2.0 than Win XP...or Win 98 2nd Ed. for that matter. How many USB devices you have plugged into your PC is not improved in any way by having Vista; it's more dependent on your physical installed memory, I'd expect. You can plug all those same USB devices into a Win XP box and everything would work the same way, if the hardware was the same. It'd probably work the same way on a Mac, and if Win 98 2nd Ed./ME could've taken advantage of more than 512M of physical memory, it would've probably worked the same there, too.

EDIT: Looking at the poll results to date, I find it interesting that, on a decidedly cutting-edge, "PC enthusiast" website such as this, only ~22% of voters are wanting Vista. I'm not going to draw any conclusions, just take it for what it is.

That wasn't my point at all. The point was that USB devices slow down boot time, which I illustrated to further pimp my boot time of 1 min 26 seconds as being rather good

This is pure speculation as I have no stats, but the 22% of people using Vista is probably similar to what happend when XP was released. I know I was certainly skeptical about moving to a new OS at the time. Its just the cycle that happens eeeevery time a new OS is released.

EDIT: I've added you to messenger if you want to chat any time

I think people got on board with XP a lot faster than Vista, because you NEEDED it if you wanted to play all those games or run Windows apps that required more than 512 MB of memory. I was probably an exception to that rule, but my reluctance to switch to XP was because Win 98 easily outperformed Win XP in practically every game that used 512 MB of memory or less...and back in the early days of XP, 90% of the games out there weren't taking advantage of a gig or more of RAM (90% isn't an actual number; but very few games back then needed more than 512M of RAM, being my point).

But games were coming out that I really wanted, and even though I had Win 98 boxes with 1 gig of RAM in them, the O/S wasn't able to address this extra memory, and thus the newest games would still run as if you only had 512M of RAM.

The transition to Vista, by comparison, doesn't come with a comparable hardware advantage. XP and Vista probably won't show much difference in game performance, if you can manage the additional Vista services that will each consume their unnecessary piece of your resource "pie". Until people feel they absolutely need the DirectX 10 eye-candy of the latest games, and thus be forced to purchase Vista, you'll probably see a majority of "enthusiasts" sticking with XP. If you forget about DX10 and games, what can Vista do that XP can't?

I'll be glad to add you to MSN, we can probably talk music instead. (When I'm not at work, anyway...)

ahhh but Vista is faster in some respects...And making a necessary comeback...
The days of XP are numbered.

Quote: Originally Posted by Coelacanth ...what can Vista do that XP can't? ...

Run MCE for my XBox360

I had it running with WindowsXP and there were so many bloody licensing issues with my LE-FRICKIN-GIT MP3's that it was unusable...(funny how the 'demo' MP3's I downloaded from torrent sites worked fine )

ANYWAY...when I upgraded to Vista Ultimate, all my Media Streaming problems went away.

One thing I find appealing about Vista is that the installer has actually improved in some key ways since Win2000/XP. You can finally put drivers on things other than 3.5 floppies, from what I gather; it's much faster than the 2000 install with it's "full-format every time".

I also like how they built in an imaging tool in some versions (Ultimate at least)-- the re-constitution tool is built right on the boot disc, so you don't have to locate a standalone one. Although I wish I could get what I really wanted: a simple way to save my activation, so I can do my preferred "wipe, install, and load the freshest version of all the apps and drivers" without having to reactivate; I fear activation even with legit software, because it requires a telephone call if it doesn't go well. I hate phone calls SO much, especially to communicate with machines.

I have to admit im back on XP. Upgraded to a P35 board the other day and just couldn't bring myself to put away the XP disc...

Its not that Vista annoyed me in any way or was rubbish, its just like when you sleep in a strange bed. Could be a very nice bed, a water bed if you like... but its not your bed. It doesn't have your ass groove.

Its nice to be home. Maybe ill move back to Vista when the need arises

Gonna keep it XP until i am forced by gaming requirements to upgrade to vista

Quote: Originally Posted by Arc Angel Gonna keep it XP until i am forced by gaming requirements to upgrade to vista

Unless Microsoft comes out with a Direct 10 X patch for XP, that may be very soon.....

Quote: Originally Posted by Highperf15 Unless Microsoft comes out with a Direct 10 X patch for XP, that may be very soon.....

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that will be the most closely-guarded code by Microsoft. If DirectX 10 could be hacked so that it could be installed on XP, it would seriously impact the sales of their flagship, Vista. If XP could run DX10 games, there would REALLY be very little reason to "upgrade" to Vista.

Agreed Coel, maybe some little geek will spend all summer working on cracking it, then trade the secret for a Nissan.

Linux....................

Right now I'm running Gentoo 2007.0 as the main OS on my (surprise!) gaming rig, and that's the way it will stay. About 95% of my PC usage is with Gentoo. With the gaming industry becoming *nix aware now, more and more games are starting to be ported. Heck, Gears WOULD have been ported had it not been for Epic being in bed with M****soft on that one.

I gotta admit, Doom 3 and Quake 4 fly by as well as UT2k4. Theres alot of native ports for emulators as well. I got ZSNES up and running flawlessly and WINE has really come along way over the last few years. I can play FlatOut 2 for hours on end using my Logitech Cordless Rumblepad 2 for hours without any problems.

I dual boot XP Pro for the titles that have no support under Linux whatsoever, like FEAR based games, and the upcoming Crysis as well as Bioshock will take some time to adapt to WINE and Cedega. But for now, the OS is sleek, smooth, secure and low on resources, and It's the smartest computing choice I ever made.

I just found out it's a royal pain-in-the-a$$ getting System Shock 2 to run on a Win 2K/XP kernel. I wanted to install it on my bro's PC as it's such a great game. I finally got it to run on my XP box (I finished the game years ago on my Win 98 box, which is my Project Pisces computer), but it was such a hassle that I won't bother trying to send it to my brother (the PC I built him has XP on it).

If you read up on this, you'll see it's not just as simple as making a shortcut to the game EXE and having it run in Win 98 mode. It's a HUGE PITA. At least one reason to hang onto 98, I guess.