Windows Vista sucks monkey nuts!

[Axewielder]

Well I'm not making any blanket statements about how everything is over there in Mordor, all I can do is share my experience with the small subset of driver types that I worked on (WiFi, IrDA, flash file systems, serial, video, stuff like that).

[Razor]

Razor, since those Singer sewing machines require a USB port they will require a driver as well. The Singer stuff only works on 32-bit Windows - was the laptop running 64-bit Vista? If so, that won't work.

I've probably installed Windows more than everyone on the JCF combined and it's been years since I couldn't boot with a CD, repartition and/or reformat and install the OS. It sounds like it's too late but I would have been curious to know the exact steps you took.

As for uninstalling Vista in general, I could see where someone would expect to uninstall Vista after doing an upgrade - IOW, reverting to the previous version of Windows on the machine (very few people realize how unbelievably difficult that is). But if the machine came with Vista, uninstalling the OS would put you in a no-boot state which is not particularly useful.

Tim,

The USB to serial cable and driver was installed first, and checked in the hardware manager to make sure it was "operating normally". The laptop came preinstalled with 32 bit Vista, and has an Athlon x64 1.8ghz dual core with 1gb ram. It never had XP on it until I got my grubby paws on it.

Reverting to XP was a royal pain in the ass. That's what had me so fired up, and is my beef with Vista in my original post.

You're right about uninstalling Vista putting me in a no boot state, I'm pretty sure that's what it was doing when I was trying to boot from the XP install CD. That's when I pulled the good old reliable floppy drive and the Windows 98 floppy boot disc out. :idea:

I'm just glad it's done and her machine is working like she needs it to now.

[LouSiffer]

I have had problems with a lot of USB to Serial drivers, however, I found one that works well for me so far...its called PL 2303.-Lou