Optimizing Vista for Djing

[steveboyett]

Do a LOT of research on "downgrading" (an upgrade, far as I'm concerned) from Vista to XP, especially for laptops, as XP will not install onto SATA hard drives without looking for a floppy drive with the drivers, and who the hell uses those any more? Nothing's more fun than wiping out Vista, putting in your XP install disk, seeing it tell you to press F6 to install third-party drivers, and then having it stop the install because it can't find a floppy drive with the drivers. At that point your education and career in installing an older OS on a newer machine truly begins.

You will probably have to make a slipdisk using Nlink or something similar that contains your XP installation CD and your drivers, which means you better either have the manufacturer's driver disk, or download the drivers from the manufacturer (it's not the disks that matter, it's the SATA controller on the mobo).

I just got a huge Acer Aspire 9800 20.1" laptop, and I am in the middle of trying to do this. So far it ain't working so hot.

[midifidler]

I had that experience recently. My mates laptop was running like arse so I offered to do a fresh install and get rid of the myriad of craplets that he had accumulated before mixing took over as the only thing he uses it. I started Sunday after-noon, spent hours trying to manually include the sata drivers to no avail other than successfully formatting the drive... yay a brick.. long story short had to come home from work early the next day and got windows installed and hour before our radio show started had ableton installed 30 minutes before and for some reason everything worked straight of the bat, was extremely stressful as we had no back up way of playing that week

[nem0nic]

$35 will get you a USB floppy drive (much cheaper if you order online). I end up doing quite alot of downgrades, and I find it a great thing to have on hand. Just make sure it's a model that has native support (spend a minute researching online before you buy). If you have the inclination, using nLite to "slipstream" the drivers into the install is a much better option (using nLite to get rid of the crap you don't need is a good idea anyway).

[djalexlaine]

if you set up vista properly and have the right hardware (high ram) its fine.
you can also diable that allow deny stuff. you just need to do it, instead of bashing software, learn to use it properly.

[steveboyett]

We really don't want this to turn into yet another one of those XP vs. Vista threads, do we? Cuz that doesn't go anywhere good or useful.

[Constant]

I am in the same boat.

I really like Vista. With my company, we have been running Vista since BETA began and I haven't had many problems. We just rolled out Vista onto all our computers and all our recent benchmarking has proven Vista being much more robust and stable than even I previously thought.

I really do not like Vista when it comes to Networking, I believe they have much to work on but as far as an operating system, I have come to believe that the O.S. is stable.

Vista is extremely secure as well. Vista has proven itself at almost all of the recent hacking competitions, falling right between Ubuntu and OS X Leopard, The MAC operating system being the worst among the three from a security stand point. Anyone that understands how computers and how operating systems operate understands that most hacking/holes come from third party software, not from an operating system. It just so happens that everyone and their brother has released a program for the Windows operating system. Lesson to be learned...don't install garbage software onto your system and it will work flawlessly!

We recently benchmarked my Toshiba running Vista Ultimate VS a MacBook Pro, both having similar specs. We benchmarked while running Adobe Photoshop CS3 and a few other pieces of software. My Toshiba ate it up and spit it out hungry for more.

[Constant]

I guess what I am getting at is that most operating systems can function perfectly with running Traktor or SSL or "insert name here" if you have the right specs and compatibility is there!

[BentoSan]

I agree most of the time its not what you are using, its how you are using it

[Constant]

I agree most of the time its not what you are using, its how you are using it

That's what all the ladies tell me.

Wait, ughhhh, I mean...what?

[Krilikz]

my 2 cents

Is any one really using a pc with Vista that cant really support running it or have enough ram. If you got a base line pc 1.8 ghz. 2 gigs of ram, you shouldn't have ANY problems(Hardware wise) for running any DAW type program. This is of coarse if you dont have 10 million start up programs.