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Vista no more.. on to smooth sailing

post #1 of 33
4/2/07 at 2:46pm
Thread Starter 
Finally after sluggish performance and my hardrive light not getting a rest for a month or so I chunked my Vista OS.. back to xp pro and now things seem snappier then ever. Don't get me wrong .. I do miss some of the Vista apps.. but won't be revisiting it till I get 2gb of Ram.. still running on 1gb. Just a quick question.. anyone upgrade to 2gb after installing Vista and did it clear up the system slowdown? Vista seemed to make my e1705 feel like it was running a 10k while holding 20lb dumbells in each arm... now with Xp it's sprinting the whole way 40lbs lighter!
Oh by the way my e1705 is the duo 2ghz.. 1gb.. 80gb 7200 hd.. 7900gs..
woulda upgraded to the 2gb but don't have $160+ at the moment..
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post #2 of 33
4/2/07 at 3:32pm
If you are runing vista on 1 GB & not using the readyboost feature, yep you are going to see a lot of HDD activity.
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post #3 of 33
4/2/07 at 7:05pm
Vista runs great on my laptop specs below but I have 2GB of ram and a 2GB Sandisk Extreme III (ReadyBoost).

If you arent taking full advantage of Vistas little features like ReadyBoost then there is no Point in having it. But in your position you can take advantage of it tremendously.

You can invest 40 bucks in a SD Card 2GB and see a large performance increase by enabling the readyboost feature. That will cure that "Sluggish" part till you have the money to invest in some RAM which will yield even better results with the ram and the readyboost enabled SD Card.

But 40 bucks is a small price to pay to enjoy Vista's splendor without spending over the 40 dollar range right away. Plus if you decide to not delve into vista the 40 bucks is not completely wassted cause you have a great media for storage or put it in your digi cam.

Good Luck on your Vista Conquest. Dont give up on it.
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post #4 of 33
4/2/07 at 10:02pm
i have a 1705 with the t7200 and 1 gig, it runs great on here.
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post #5 of 33
4/2/07 at 10:25pm
you running a clean install or the bloated Dell Vista
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post #6 of 33
4/2/07 at 11:11pm
http://www.speedyvista.com/services.html

Have you tried disbaling/Stopping some of the services on this site. I found a alot of performance increase using this tweak guide.

Hope this helps you a bit. And ready Boost is a must for vista..
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post #7 of 33
4/3/07 at 9:28am
Readyboost was discussed on another thread a couple of weeks ago and I think that the consensus was that Readyboost provided minimal performance gains when the laptop has >1 GB of RAM installed. Can someone confirm this for me?
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post #8 of 33
4/3/07 at 10:43am
My wife has an HP dv6000 series with 1g of ram and when using a 2g sd card for readyboost the systems has noticable increase in performnce.

Also shut down Indexing (windows Search) if you find your Hardrive never rests.
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post #9 of 33
4/3/07 at 10:52am
Did you disable the Windows Search feature? And disable Indexing?

Those are the FIRST things I do when installing Vista.

I ran Vista Ultimate on ym 9400 for a LONG time with 1GB, and had no problems at all, and running no readyboost item either.

I have now upgraded to 2GB and a 7200 drive, and that has made quite a difference.
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post #10 of 33
4/3/07 at 11:49am
Hmm thats odd. I don't disable any of Vista's new Superfetch or Indexing features as they make my overall system faster... guess its down to the individual though. I will admit that life before Readyboost wasn't as peppy as it is now with a fast 2GB SD card, but I will also say that it wasn't all that bad without it. Readyboost was kind of the icing on the cake for me, because it made my system that more fast than XP. Even with my last notebook which had the T2250 and 1GB of RAM, I found Vista to be a much needed improvement over XP. Of course each person will be likely to have their own issues you know. With the latest TweaksRUs NVidia driver (modded by moi ) I can play games like Oblivion at max settings (minus a little bit for the grass textures, because they just hurt everything in general) with no stuttering or lag, and even Half-Life2 : Episode 1 with everything on max. I haven't found any apps that don't currently work well with Vista, though I am sure that some do exist yet... I guess for me, whats not to love?

I won't try to get anybody to stay with Vista though, as I know it takes a greater troubleshooting skill to make everything play nicely together. Usually my suggestion for people having these kind of problems is to just reinstall Vista, and use all the latest drivers from square one. There is always a possibility that (especially if you have been running Vista for a while) there are some remnants of an old Beta driver screwing with your performance, or even an old app that just won't go away. You surely won't be hurting anything by ditching back to XP though, as I am sure support for it will continue for years to come. Just remember, if you want to try again later - we will be here for support if you need it.

Also, on one final note.... doesn't anybody know where the OS and Software forum is at? I made the suggestion to create that forum a while back, because the individual device forums were getting cluttered with posts about Vista. We had all decided that it would be best to create a central location where everybody - regardless of brand - could go to voice their concerns/questions/opinions on any software or OS that is available. I guess it just really hasn't caught on yet though
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post #11 of 33
4/3/07 at 11:59am
Quote:
Originally Posted by 411sponge
Readyboost was discussed on another thread a couple of weeks ago and I think that the consensus was that Readyboost provided minimal performance gains when the laptop has >1 GB of RAM installed. Can someone confirm this for me?
That is correct.
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post #12 of 33
4/3/07 at 12:42pm
I think minimal is a little harsh for ppl with over 1 GB of ram. I can use 1GB on Vista in no time. It would be better to apply that statement tor machines with 2 GB or more.

While you will not see a serious performance gain with >1GB the superfetch feature will definitely use readyboost to increase performance by predicting what apps you are going to open when you start your PC & loading them into memory/SD card to increase their perfomance.

You can find plenty of articles on both sides of the fence. I don't use readyboost on my machine & it runs perfectly. Of course at this point it's not as loaded up as my XP install is.
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post #13 of 33
4/3/07 at 1:23pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by SolApathy
I think minimal is a little harsh for ppl with over 1 GB of ram. I can use 1GB on Vista in no time. It would be better to apply that statement tor machines with 2 GB or more.
Yes, that is how I understood the statement: For me, ">1GB" essentially is synonymous with "2GB", because very few people have anything in between.
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post #14 of 33
4/3/07 at 1:33pm
I wouldn't say very few. Perhaps very few on this forum (though I have seen some ppl with 1.25/1.5) 1.5 being more common with ppl replacing 1 of their 512 sticks with a 1GB stick.

Besides clarification is needed. you cannot assume that everyone will jump to the conclusion that >1GB means 2GB.
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post #15 of 33
4/3/07 at 1:36pm
We'll mynie it runs fine with a c2d t7200 1gb 667 ram and 160 GB 5400 with pmr (runs like a 7200)
no readyboost and stuff but it was non bloated fresh install vista
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post #16 of 33
4/3/07 at 1:38pm
Call me crazy, but I have been getting significantly improved performance on Vista over XP. I feel like it utilizes my RAM a lot more efficiently. I haven't really tried ReadyBoost neither, but I will soon.
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post #17 of 33
4/3/07 at 1:52pm
The only reason it is not my primary OS are the software incompatibilities.
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post #18 of 33
4/3/07 at 2:27pm
All my software is supported by Vista right now. And I have a lot of them. My only gripe was my printer not being supported, but the drivers finally came out. Vista, is 100% flawless for me now.
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post #19 of 33
4/3/07 at 3:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by .PoNeH
I haven't really tried ReadyBoost neither, but I will soon.
Well, on a machine with 4GB memory, you won't see any effect.
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post #20 of 33
4/3/07 at 4:29pm
Good to know. Even though it only utilizes 3.25 of my RAM?
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