One of the operating systems I had installed (Windows Server 2008) reached it's "Best by" date without me activating it. It's basically a trimmed down Windows Vista with the server management consoles tagged on...ok I'm simplifying things but you get what I mean right?

So I downloaded the latest Server 2008 Release Candidate and was about to install that when I paused to thunk things through...always a dangerous thing to do

I realise that as much as I like Server 2008 setup as a desktop OS, there's still a lot of stuff I just can't do on Windows Vista...software that won't install, like my motherboard monitoring utility and games that won't play. Oh yes and I don't want to have to change the format that my email is stored in from .dbx just yet. Crickey! I almost forgot my audio software that won't run in Vista because all the little components are not each digitally signed

Anyway, so here I am with this dilemma...another installation of Windows XP Professional 32-Bit or a fresh installation of Windows Server 2008 setup to run as a Desktop OS? I already formatted the old Server 2008 partition and can't keep ignoring the shiny clean space available for ever you know!

So here I am at another crossroad in life! Do I take the left fork in the road ahead towards Windows XP or the right fork to Windows Vista? Oh yeah that reminds me. I recently found quite an interesting little backpacking/camping utility called a spork. It has a spoon on one end and a fork on the other

Decisions...Decisions.

Man, I really like server 08 as well compared to any other OS out there as well. Vista has started to give me problems, minor, but problems that I have never had with XP. They aren't enough to cause me to switch and all of my software runs just fine.

I would say that if you really want all of that stuff to run then XP is prolly the way to go. Or, just use a VPC for XP and leave Vista installed. Or do it vice versa. Install XP and VPC Vista.

That's a tough one.

You know mine lately. I have been running Vista and liked it up until I decided to run a few games. Now I run a dual boot with Vista32 and XP64. All games are on XP64. Basically my XP64 is nothing more than a gaming system along with NOd32 running. I do not surf or anything with it so no printer installed or anything else; just NOD32. If Vista was not released I would be running XP64 only. I'm very disappointed in Vista at the moment.

I decided on installing a copy of XP Pro OEM that I haven't used in a while and then updated to SP3. Now I can move all my files, cookies, favorites and stuff to the new installation and then reformat and reinstall to the main XP installation I'm using at the moment. End result will be - two shiny new reliable XP Pro installations on which I can run everything I want

Probably a good move

I had several glitches last night in my Vista especially when booting up and it wanting to update, it froze for about an hour. Never did come out of it. I had to reset.

You know the funny thing is the more and more patches and updates that I get, my system just gets more unrealiable. I am not sure what is going on but they need to roll back and find out what causes these problems.

My theory is pretty simple. They provide the minimum OS, Vista, and then say how wonderful it is and how much better it is. Then, right before release they find a million things wrong. Go ahead and release the product and say, oh we'll fix that later. Once they fix the problem that causes another problem and another and...well, you get the point.

I am really starting to get irritated with my system. It is stupid things too. Here is a list that has happened on two different installs only after updates. I need to find out which ones though.

1. Flash player will not install on IE7
2. Desktop needs to be refreshed in order to show recently added items (restart explorer basically)
3. High CPU usage and memory usage
- I did find the problem here. If you enable "Show processes from all users" you will see that there are wmplayerupdate.exe causes a 100% CPU spike and eats memory usage for about 1-5 minutes.
4. When in images/movie folder the com process fails and keeps restarting (highly irritating)

Those are just a few of the major problems. I have started contemplating about going back to XP.

Ya Jason, that is weird as I have had no issues yet with Vista, except for peripheral drivers, which HP issued a new suite for in January. Like you say, maybe it starts with the updates/drivers mix? I have a fairly generic rig and thankfully everything that I need works on Vista, except for a firewall but I'm not too worried about that at this point.

Strangely, I keep going back to XP, I guess it's the 'comfort' factor plus the fact that I still need to buy Vista and I just can't justify the expense for VHP, I'd rather spend the $200 on new hardware. I will eventually get a new OS when I have to but XP is just too good for me right now to jump to Vista whole hog.

jbullard wrote:

My theory is pretty simple. They provide the minimum OS, Vista, and then say how wonderful it is and how much better it is. Then, right before release they find a million things wrong. Go ahead and release the product and say, oh we'll fix that later. Once they fix the problem that causes another problem and another and...well, you get the point.

It's like it never quite made it out of Beta! It was a rush job and it is still a year later, being fixed and patched

Other than the driver and software issues I've mentioned it generally runs good on all my systems...BUT when it starts to go wonky like that, it's time for a reformat and reinstall. No alternative!