Microsoft Vista for FREE

[stu8080]

Mine was really smooth, i was surprised because an IT tech here said the same thing, that his Vista was painfully slow, running on a P4 with 1GB ram and no gfx card.

I run an Opteron 165 o/c'ed to 2.6Ghz with 2Gb ram and a 6800GT 256mb, with lots of ram for gaming.

2GB should still be overkill though, Microsoft cant expect everyone to add £200 worth of upgrades just to run Windows?

[Torque]

Was able to get the 64bit version downloaded today. Installed it on a Sempron64 with 1GB RAM and a 64MB Geforce2MX. It was still pretty slow for about 20 minutes and the hdd thrashed away constantly. Taskmanager showed it was running dfrgntfs or something like that would would explain the disk thrashing. But after i got the device drivers installed it was pretty good. Need a DX9 video card for Aero Glass (AG) theme, so I pulled the 6800 out of my other work machine and man what a difference a better video card makes with the speed of the machine... even when you're not using the AG theme. Enabled the AG theme and everything looks alot more refined and polished. But the other theme looks good too. The system will just hang and become very unresponsive for 10 minutes when I'd go into disk management or device manager. So I'll stay out of there for now. The system is definately usable with a 2500+ sempron and 1GB of RAM. Worlds better than a P4 3ghz and 512MB RAM. Just OS idling, it uses about 480MB.

[McBainUK]

Thinking of trying this on my gaming PC (A64 3000, 1gb ATIX8000GT ), should run ok. Can you dual boot it tho? Don't want to mess with my current setup

[stu8080]

yeah dual boot is fine so long as you set up another partition first.

[McBainUK]

yeah dual boot is fine so long as you set up another partition first.

Hmm, how do I do this. Standard is to make partions on first format but I allready have WinXP on C:\ and only a couple gb left on d:\ (data partiton).

[stu8080]

Do you have enough space to resize C: and fit 5-10GB for the Vista install?

Alternatively, you could shift some files to C:\ and free up the space on D:\.

I had a couple of folders on my D:\ partition that i thought id lost when i installed Vista to it. The install didnt format though and simply installed Program Files, Documents and Windows folders to D: leaving my original folders.

I think im going to use Vista instead of XP as everything ive tried works fine (apart from the internet being a bit flaky but i think thats my routers fault) and even Battlefield 2 works!

[McBainUK]

Thanks. Reckon will go with the install on D option. Prob got a lot of stuff on there I dont need, or can move to C:\.

Beast of a download tho - do you know if it can be resumed or not?

ps. Battlefied 2 rocks. I see your UK, have to have a go on the same sever sometime

[McBainUK]

What is not mentioned at all is how the DRM system will lockdown victims --- sorry "customers" --- and their digital content, and what it will and wont allow.:mad:

Hmm got me interested, care to expand?

[stu8080]

ps. Battlefied 2 rocks. I see your UK, have to have a go on the same sever sometime

Im on as 'Stu8080', there was a program i had once that used to show all the servers for all online games i had, plus it downloaded patches for me. It would allow me to search for players. can you remember what it was called? What name do you use?

With Vista you only get 14 days before you have to activate - if you type the following in the RUN box: 'rundll32 slc.dll,SLReArmWindows' it will give you another 14 days. - forget this, i hadnt realised how easy it is to register for free!!

Also i read: dont download the 64 bit version as most drivers wont work with it, it requires 64 bit microsoft approved drivers for all your hardware, and few are available.

[bdgbill]

Hmmm - Think I will wait at least until Vista service pack 2. My girlfriend is shopping for a new machine and I'm pressing her to do it quickly while XP is still available.

Being a "late adopter" for OS's has worked well for me. I only recently upgraded my last machine running Windows 98 to XP. I had to experience none of the XP service pack 1 hell many people had to go through.