Upgrading to Vista from XP

[Andy_S3]

Hi everyone, just a quick amateur question, If i were to upgrade to Vista from XP, would I lose all my data ie music, pictures etc in the process or would it automatically copy it over? Any help would be much appreciated!

Thanks:thumbsup:

 

[marriedblonde]

Don;t do it!!!! I hate Vista with a passion. XP has given me less trouble the whole time I have used it compared to the 6 months I have been using Vista.

J.

 

[MattGreaves]

Personally i wouldnt upgrade to vista, but if you do decide to do it then no you won't lose anything

 

[S3 Big Andy]

All vista does is give you headaches!!

 

[S-Line_Wales]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo !!!!


Don't do it..my last laptop died about 2 months ago, which had XP SP3 on it and never faltered..my replacement (this) has Vista SP1 and has so many annoying features its just not true..think of Vista as Windows Me..just a tarted up version of Win 98 to make more money for Micro$oft, but with all the bugs..its really slow, and its like being in a nanny state..everything you want to do..it asks "Are you Sure ?" ....YES !!,... "Are you REALLY sure ?"..then it lets you do it..maybe !!

 

[Andy_S3]

Ok so its a no to Vista then? lol. Thanks for the advice chaps, looks like ill be sticking with good old XP until I cant run my games off it then!

 

[WolvesPhil]

Wise choice, I installed Vista and after a month went back to XP.

Also upgrading to Vista is unadvisable as once installed it is a lot slower than a clean Vista install because a lot of the old XP files are still sitting around and being loaded up.

 

[marriedblonde]

Ok so its a no to Vista then? lol. Thanks for the advice chaps, looks like ill be sticking with good old XP until I cant run my games off it then!

Good choice By that time hopefully they will have ironed out all the issues (the amount of updates that come through each week is unreal!)

J.

 

[Gti Jazz Blue]

There are a fair few bugs in it even with SP1.

My internal users are starting to get to grips with it Ok now though.

It is definately memory hungry and I wouldn't entertain anything less than 2GB of Ram, I run 4 in our business systems.

Paul

 

[marriedblonde]

My home laptop is pretty stable but it's all the little niggles. Like the fact everytime you do something it asks if your sure, are you really sure, sure your really sure...

 

[dsmclark40v]

. Like the fact everytime you do something it asks if your sure, are you really sure, sure your really sure...

I am pretty sure you can turn that function off. I upgraded my laptop to it early on as i only had xp home and i could get vista ultimate for less than xp pro so i went for it. I have been pretty happy with it so far. haven't had any problems running any programs that it was ment to have problems with.
did anyone else see that experiment that microsoft did where they got a group of people to come in that hated vista from things they had heard, and then after that they showed them a preview of the next operating system mojave that they were bringing out and everyone loved it. Then they said well actually it is vista. heres a link don't know if it was set up or not http://www.mojaveexperiment.com/

 

[Gti Jazz Blue]

My home laptop is pretty stable but it's all the little niggles. Like the fact everytime you do something it asks if your sure, are you really sure, sure your really sure...

You know that turning off User Account Control gets rid of most of that annoyance.

Paul

 

[Blue_Thunder]

Interesting. I decided to clear down my 3 year old PC and start from scratch recently as it was performing like a dog.

As my sis works for Microsoft and gave me a free copy of Vista Ultimate Edition, I thought i'd give it a go. Aside from not being able to get my old Xbox running XBMC working properly, i've had no problems. Well, that's not 100% true. I had to buy a new video card so I could run Aero. Got one off eBay for £20+P&P and it's been fine.

The only annoyance I have is Windows Defender not allowing me to run certain programs without asking me first, but i'm sure I can get around that as suggested above.

 

[marriedblonde]

You know that turning off User Account Control gets rid of most of that annoyance.

Paul

Cheers matey, no I didn't know that See the old RTFM might have actually worked...

J.

 

[Caesium]

My opinion of vista is not to bother, its no better to me than XP Pro that I am currently running, it consumes more system resources than XP does. Half the programs I use wont work with Vista, I think XP is going to be around for a long time yet.

 

[MintyS3]

Its the digital certificate needs that annoy me. Makes it impossible to run old applications if they dont have one.

Vista uses 1gb of ram on my pc on idle...

 

[EnzoS4]

follow the advice, Vista is OK if your just a home user and doing the word processing, it is geared to more the home family users. As MintyS3 found on his PC Vista dose requires a more high system spec and defently more graphics resources than XP Pro

but as this is the game section and anyone interested in Games shouldn't touch Vista, Games on XP Pro will out run Vista on the same machine, OK Vista says a big pro for gamers is it provides DirectX 10 but you can get it on XP Pro with some tweaks, besides there isn't many turn DirectX 10 games out yet.

 

[Caesium]

I have now upgraded from x64 to Vista Ultimate x86, no problems at all. No driver issues and a system score of 5.2. Sweet.

 

[Road Razor]

Microsoft are already planning to release Windows 7 (Vista's successor) as of the end of next year. It might be worth holding off for another year.

 

[NHN]

Actually could be mid next year with an RC1 possibly at end of this year, but thats talk of course, this reminds me of the ME release tbh, seems 7 is coming along a little to quickly to be honest, hope it does include new file system removed by MS, also the Ultimate Extras could be better or actually exist, lol.

Ref the upgrade, well should always do a disk image before upgrading with something like Acronis True Image so you can restore back with ease to working system within an hour easily, depending on how much disk space you've backed up of course, works very well used alot.

But there is a big misconception that issues with Vista are all due to vista, actually the truth of the matter is its mostly down to bad drivers by hardware manufacturers, badly written vista compat software & updates by these same companies that cause the BSOD, not saying Vista is 100% solid by no means but I know for sure alot is down to these issues, otherwise systems tend to be fairly stable in office enviroments with Vista, these software & manufacturer companies had plenty of warning & build kits for drivers for vista but still took way past release date to get upto scratch, eg. Nvidia was the biggest culprit & still isnt IMHO very good, ATI seem to be better at the moment even if AMD are now 2 parts & swimming in debt, so dont rush to blame vista cause most of the time its not at fault.

No I dont work for MS, but its always the same story for people to bash successful companies, at end of day if it wasnt for companies like MS this forum wouldnt exist, they as others push the boundaries of what we are able to do with computers, so I personally have hats of to them as no software is perfect & never will be, Apple have grown alot larger since the ipod release & they are getting bashed as much as MS now so goes to prove the theory, become successful & people wanna bring you down as easy target, even seen a few bashings of Ubuntu recently as its become quite popular.

Personally & honestly Vista isnt a major improvement on XP interms of functionality but if you like better asthetics then yes upgrade but overall you dont get to much more that I can see from day to day usage that should tell you to upgrade, but then I've been in tech for ages so maybe I look to closely, but as a new buyer for a pc I'd still go for vista anyway cause its a step forward & there is a clause to go backward to XP on some systems if you like, lol, so asse covered if you prefer xp over vista

Its funny cause I remember when XP was released, De Ja Vous, lol, bashed xp aswell, its unreal.

 

[MikeSel^]

Hello

Dont want to go against the grain here.. But I have been using vista since day one (being a systems support specialist I sorta need to keep on top of modern software offerings) I am happy in the knowledge that SP1 and various other service packs\hot fixes have finally ironed out many of the bugs, and improve performance no end.

So much so that we are starting a project to roll it out to some of out 1400+ users.

IMHO it's fine to go with it now, you will need to move over eventually as XP will be EOL shortly.

As long as you read the on screen prompts fully, you should find it will do most\all of the work for you and upgrade without loosing anything.

However it's always best to have a backup or move your data onto a seperate partition\pc if available.

I would be happy to guide you through the install if required!

Cheers
Mike

 

[NHN]

However it's always best to have a backup or move your data onto a seperate partition\pc if available.

Always copy dont move when doing an OS upgrade so you dont lose data in the transfer should it go wrong/stop transferring which isnt unheard of lol, for average joe it needs to be easy but also protective, so I'd always suggest use an external usb drive like freecom mobile to copy data onto, copying to another pc if image file would take to damn long even on gbps network which 99% joe bloggs dont have, user data they dont know where to look for as things like pst files for outlook, nk2 file for keeping contacts used etc etc you get the just, so they are better to image it 1st onto an external drive with simple software like acronis & then upgrade, safer & alot easier, I would never advise onto another partition on same machine as alot of people would delete that partition by mistake when installing & not realise until to late

always back up your data, I use 2 caddy style NAS devices on/off site for everything including CCTV images aswell as Cloud storage on my own web servers so basically backed up 3 times over but then again I have more data than most to lose

 

[MintyS3]

I have now upgraded from x64 to Vista Ultimate x86, no problems at all. No driver issues and a system score of 5.2. Sweet.

5.9 yo.....Actually goes off the scale my pc's so fast lol

I still recommend XP though. I dont see the point in going from XP to Vista when a superior MS OS is due to be released in the near future.

 

[klauster]

I dont know what you are all talking about, Vista is excellent, Ive been running Vista64 since release, provided you have up to date drivers you wont have any issues. Vista is actually more stable then XP, SP1 is out now as well.

Only issue with Vista is you need a good spec machine to enjoy it, as it wont run on crappy spec, poorly built pcs.

 

[MikeSel^]

Depends what you're after I suppose.. Im happily running Vista on a Intel Centrino 1.5 Mhz CPU with just 1 GB RAM on a laptop....

It's how you tweak it that counts

 

[ChriS3]

Never had an issue with Vista since it came on my Dell PC back in Feb. And I consider myself to be somewhat of a power user. As NHN says, the exact same comments were floating around when XP first came out. Most were saying that '98 was much better and XP was doomed.

 

[aragorn]

I'm running vista since its release on my home PC which i built in 2001, Its an Old Althlon MP 1800 system (with 2CPUS) and 2GB of ram. It runs vista perfectly fine, and it has never crashed at all in that time.

People above were comparing it to ME but thats not really the right comparison. Windows XP (windows v5.1) was build ontop of the Windows 2000 (windows v5.0) kernel and is basically a tarted up version of windows 2000, with a lot of improvements. When Windows 2000 was released though, a lot of stuff didnt work on it due to driver issues and suchlike becuase it was a major change over the previous generation (windows 4.x) and because of this microsoft only aimed it at business users, giving home users ME instead, which was 98, with some of win2k's userspace features badly bolted on.
Windows Vista is now in the same position as Win2000 was, the core OS has some substantial changes over XP (its now Windows v6.0), just as win2k did over 98, and as such issues will occur with some hardware. I Suspect that Windows 7 (which is infact, confusingly, actually Windows v6.1) will end up in the same position as XP did, in that by the time its released it will be sat ontop of a stable Vista base and everything will just work as it should.

Its important to note that a lot of the issues with Vista are related to Hardware manufacturers either not supporting or badly supporting older hardware. Microsoft is not in a position to write drivers for all hardware ever invented, and because of the substantial changes to the vista kernel, it means that the hardware manufacturers need to put in some work to make their hardware compatible, some havent and as such their hardware either doesnt work, or works badly.

Vista also needs a lot more system resources than XP, but then XP needed more than windows 2000 and windows 2000 needed more than 98. Its called progress. Think of it like a car, over the last 10 years each successive version of most models of car have got larger, more features, and as a result heavier. If you left the 10 year old engines in their it would hardly pull itself along the driveway, so they install larger engines, or make their existing designs more efficient and more powerful.

 

[worthingmale]

running vista on 5 machines and no problems what so ever

have heard microsoft are already working on a replacement

 

[klauster]

Windows 7 is already available if you know where to look, not sure when its released but lots of people saying its very nice

 

[worthingmale]

you have pm dude

 

[benw123]

My new Dell XPS laptop has Vista, but I use Virtual PC to run XP Pro and all my development software (I work in IT as a software developer), because not all of it runs on Vista. Looked at retrofitting XP over Vista but it looks madly complicated and risky, but Virtual PC - a free download at Microsoft - won the day. You need all the original XP discs to create it though.

 

[JohnboyC]

If you have a real DVD or CD of Windows XP Pro (especially if its SP2 or SP3) to sell cos you now have Vista let me know - will pay good price as long as I can register it in my name...

 

[benw123]

Sorry John - as I said, I still need my XP Pro DVD because it's now running on Virtual PC. When you create a Virtual PC, there's no operating system on it - you have to use normal installation CDs/DVDs as you would if building a new computer. And yes, it's a genuine copy!

 

[Caesium]

Must say that VMWare is much much better than virtual PC, it least it has USB support!

 

[Neilybabs]

follow the advice, Vista is OK if your just a home user and doing the word processing, it is geared to more the home family users. As MintyS3 found on his PC Vista dose requires a more high system spec and defently more graphics resources than XP Pro

but as this is the game section and anyone interested in Games shouldn't touch Vista, Games on XP Pro will out run Vista on the same machine, OK Vista says a big pro for gamers is it provides DirectX 10 but you can get it on XP Pro with some tweaks, besides there isn't many turn DirectX 10 games out yet.

Being a bit of a gamer nerd, I couldn't run MOHA after I upgraded as it's an older game. Have sorted it now but with a lot of hassle and head scratching. People always advise to have the latest graphics driver etc. but had to roll back the driver to get it to work. And with a lower fps as well. Easy Solution, create a partion in the hard drive and make it duel boot.

 

[AndyMac]

"Its important to note that a lot of the issues with Vista are related to Hardware manufacturers either not supporting or badly supporting older hardware."
That aside you have to admit it's the most bloated OS on the planet.
Why does a new version of Windows require such an enormous amount of RAM just to run the OS? Wouldn't it be nice for a change to have a new version of Windows that will be faster, leaner and make your existing PC fly? Now that's something I'd pay good money for. If I want my perfectly good laptop to run like a fatchild then Vista is the business!

 

[benw123]

Agree Andy - all my software development is using Microsoft tools, and over the years, as well as the OS, the packages (or IDEs) have got more resource-hungry with each release. Much of this seems to be down to Microsoft trying to cater their software for a miriad of different specifications, platforms (i.e. mobile) and other setups, but regardless it should be a real concern for those at Redmond; there's so much quality freeware available running at decent speeds that, if not addressed, will cause their business to shrink.

 

[NHN]

If you have a real DVD or CD of Windows XP Pro (especially if its SP2 or SP3) to sell cos you now have Vista let me know - will pay good price as long as I can register it in my name...

I have so PM me & will email number for info.

NHN