Windows Vista sucks monkey nuts!

[Razor]

Long story kind of short. Mother in law has a Compaq laptop with Vista on it. She does a lot of quilting, and recently bought a high dollar Singer XL-6000 that you supposedly can download patterns to the PC and transfer them to the sewing machine. The software of course won't install even when you use the "compatability" mode. Just to be on the safe side and make sure the hardware is ok, I take my laptop with XP Home on it, install the software, and it works flawlessly.

After a lot of e-mails and discussions with Singer support, I say fuck it. I have a spare copy of Windows XP Home lying around. I'll revert her laptop to XP Home. So, last night I bring her laptop home, and proceed to learn that Windows Vista does have an uninstall option, nor does it want to be uninstalled. I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to enable "special priveledges" to her user account in the administrator panel so I could reformat the hard drive for a clean install.

Finally, I dig in my old software and find my copy of Windows 98 and it's boot disk. That did the trick. Reformatted, installed 98, then did a clean install of XP, and hot damn, no more suck ass Vista. Fuck you Bill Gates. It will be a cold day in hell before I own a machine with Vista. So help me God, my next machine will be a fucking Mac you bastard!

Thanks for letting me vent! Figured I'd post this too in case someone needs a "shortcut" for removing Vista from their machine.

[Newc]

I redid my Toshiba laptop last weekend (Vista). The boot/setup CD allowed me the option to format the drive completely.

When I first got it, I put XP on it and the drive formatted with no problem.

You cannot "uninstall" any OS. You reboot the comp, select the Setup option when it pops up (usually F12 or Delete when the BIOS appears), then set your CD as the first boot device.

Put in the XP disc and reset. XP will say there's an OS alread on it, and ask if you want to format the drive.

"Yes" it on through and enjoy your computer again.

[MikeStrat]

Yeah. Vista does kinda suck balls. I don't know why companies can't leave well enough alone. You want to impress me? Make a product that works.

[Razor]

Newc, I could not get XP to install over Vista. The first thing I tried was to select boot sequence by hitting F10 at startup, but it would not let let XP format the hard drive so I could do a clean install with XP. Even if I rebooted with the XP install CD, I still could not get it to install over Vista. From most of the articles I read, it seems like it's easier to have a dual boot system. Seems like most people who are reverting back to XP are having to reformat the hard drive manually, and then doing a clean install.

One thing I know for sure, Vista does not play well with others.

[Carbuff]

Yes vista sucks and windows 7 seems to be more of the same. Id like them if they played ball with life but they dont. They fail.

[Axewielder]

Ah yes the follies of Microsuck. With every version of Windows, they needlessly rework fundamental ways in which the OS works. At the same time, they put a high priority on backwards compatibility. Those two things put together are a bad combination. 16 bit apps were still supported under XP, as Microsoft kept dragging along all that legacy bullshit. Well, I think they are starting to lose control of it. Their massive convoluted Windows codebase has been a sleeping dragon up until now, but it has finally woken up and scorched the earth over there.

[Strangletooth]

Newc, it's very rare that you're able to do what you described with Vista. It's definitely not like previous M$ OS's for sure. I've done a couple of them so far and they weren't easy to say the least! My Dad had one he took to Best Buy, (haha, huge mistake that I warned him of) and they said it couldn't be done, I just laughed and told him to bring it over, it was done in 3hrs, completely patched, etc.

The only way I've found is the way Razor described or even an NT boot. With NT, you don't actually have to install the complete OS to get to a point where you can install XP.

As for Mac's, hell yeh! I'm about 80% Mac now, all but the servers anyway. I've got a few copies of OS Server and am currently testing it now, this place may be run on a Mac in a couple of months, we'll see. It'd be a hell of a conversion to do 70+ servers tho, a daunting task to say the least. I don't even have Virtual PC or anything like it running any more, I completely M$ free with all the macs here, as far as i can tell!!!

[JetFixxxer]

Vista takes a little time to get use to it. It's more aim towards making everything simple. I've never have had an issue with any installing software on Vista. I'm not a casually user of computer either. IMHO they shouldn't have released Vista. Vista = WinMe but a lot more stable. Windows 7 will be a little better than Vista. At one point I had XP, Vista, and Windows 7 running on my machine.. I tripled booted.

As I'm typing this I'm watching Family Guy and they just made fun of Bill Gates

[Ben...]

I have Vista on my laptop. As long as it plays Rollercoaster Tycoon I'm happy.

[OnlineStageGear]

I have no problems with Vista, but then again I go through tons of web pages to get all the tricks and tweeks for windows.

Vista has it's share of problems, but it is lightyears ahead of XP home for networking and security. I certainly wouldn't bash on OS because one program won't run right on it. I doubt you are the only one running that software on Vista so go on the net and see if other people are having the same problem and if they found a fix.

Matt

[rjohnstone]

Benn running Vista since day 1.
No issues at all. Love it.
Windows 7 Beta kicks ass.

[Razor]

I have no problems with Vista, but then again I go through tons of web pages to get all the tricks and tweeks for windows.

Vista has it's share of problems, but it is lightyears ahead of XP home for networking and security. I certainly wouldn't bash on OS because one program won't run right on it. I doubt you are the only one running that software on Vista so go on the net and see if other people are having the same problem and if they found a fix.

Matt

Matt, it's not your typical $30 to $60 peice of software. This sewing machine is a $3,000 peice of equipement that will sew by itself any pattern you load into it. It's pretty damn wild to see a sewing machine sewing by itself. For the great majority of people to get the sewing machine and software to work, they have to revert to XP or an earlier OS. The cost of the machine makes it "worth" going to XP. Not much use in a $3,000 paperweight you can't load patterns on to.

Once in a blue moon you find someone on a sewing forums who finally got it to work with Vista. They are not only very few and far between, but they also don't know how to explain how they finally got it to take the install and start working.

Trust me, I spent a month digging everywhere trying to find a way to make the software work with Vista. Even installed it with the compatibility installer through the Vista control panel. Started with Win95 and worked all the way up to XP, but it never would transfer files to the sewing machine. Installed on my machine with XP to eliminate hardware, and it worked like a charm.

Look at what Vista has done to Lexmark printer owners.

I for one am glad everything I have is XP Home or XP Pro. I've never had any problems out of XP at all, and at least all my real old Win95 games I like to bring out of moth ball sometimes will play on my XP machines.

What really galled me is how hard they made it to uninstall Vista.

One thing I've learnt, Vista does not play well with others at all.

[rjohnstone]

See... you're blaming the incompatibility issues on Vista.
You're expectations are wrong.
Blame it on the vendors for not updating their software.
It is not up to Microsoft to make sure every piece of 3rd party software works with Vista, it's up to the application developers.
If the Singer software does not list Vista as a supported OS, why would you "assume" it would work?

Microsoft has earned its fair share of bashing, but this one belongs squarely on Singer.
Be glad you don't own a Mac. Apple is notorious for removing legacy software and hardware support with every other update.
Microsoft is always being bashed for being so bloated. Well it was bloated because they tried to maintain support for some fairly ancient software and hardware.
Not the case with Vista and even the upcoming Windows 7 release.
Legacy support is being greatly reduced and in most cases, eliminated all together.

Every XP install disk can easily remove Vista... just remove any existing partitions, create a new one and then choose the format option when selecting the disk.
Viola... Vista is gone... takes about 30 seconds.
Hint: You cannot install XP on top of Vista... Vista will always win.

[Razor]

Rick, I certainly blame Singer too. They label the software as Vista compatible, but sadly it is not.

No, it's not entirely Vista's fault. What pisses me off is how hard Microsoft made it to uninstall Vista. While I can't explain why it was so hard on me to uninstall Vista with an XP install disc, my searches on the subject yesterday make it clear to me that I'm certainly not the only one.

One thing for sure, mother in law had to do what she had to do to get her investment to work. The company she bought the unit from, and Singer offered no support other than a new set of installation instructions that did not work. Of course, she was offered to return the unit with a healthy restocking fee which wasn't economically viable for her.

She did ask about Vista compatability before she bought the machine, and bought it based on what the seller told her. Of course, this isn't the first time someone bought something only to find out the seller told them what they wanted to hear so they would buy it.

I'll just be glad to get the damn thing running like it's supposed to so I can get back to playing guitar in the evenings after work.

[LouSiffer]

I like Vista once the service packs and fixes came out for it. Got Windows 7. It should have been called Vista-Lite. Its nice, but, to me it seems to have the basic layout/visuals of Vista, but, without alot of the bullshit.

I run a multiboot system ( Vista Ultimate 64, XP Pro 64, XP Pro 32, Windows 7 and Ubuntu-Linux ). I do have to occasionally revert back to XP to run certain things, but, as stated above, its not the fault of MS, its the manufactures not having updates for it.

I have never had a problem installing XP in place of Vista personally. I did it the exact same way Newc has stated. I get the message something like this: " You are choosing to install this software on a partition that has software installed, if you want to format the partition and continue with the install, press "F". The files on that partition will be erased and can not be recovered. " I know the wording is not exact, but, its close enough.

I have done alot of laptops like this as people did not like to get used to the new Windows. The only problem I have had is that the manufacturer of some laptops do not offer XP drivers for that particular configuration leaving you no choice BUT to use Vista. -Lou