For home/gaming XP still better than Vista?

We have to use Vista at work so I am not new to it.

My Gateway FX laptop (for home) came with Vista Home Premium so I am using Vista at home. Once fully set up and in game Vista is fine, only a few problems with Vista interrupting WoW sessions with its notifications.

But Vista does seem to be burning up a ton of time with permissions.

I started timing and counting the little time wasters Vista has and measured time wasted against my Windows XP gaming install. Active gamers have a lot of installs and uninstalls as we test out new games and patch old ones.

I will be going back to XP if at all possible. Vista with its permissions and checks takes far more time than XP, even considering time to reinstall XP when it slows. I have had one virus with XP in three years, I reinstall about every 6 months to get XP back up to speed. By my figures Vista is directly wasting 36 times as much of my time with its permissions and checks as XP does, assuming I never have to reinstall Vista. I loose no data in a reinstall as I backup regularly.

Any one have documentation on how much time all the Vista permission dialogues take? Mine is a rough estimate, good enough to convince me, but I was hoping for something more official.

 

Copy these into Notepad and save them with a .reg extension (give them a descriptive name). Right click on the .reg files and merge. This will cut down on the prompts without losing all the protection UAC offers.

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System]
"ConsentPromptBehaviorAdmin"=dword:00000000

This will bump up your administrative privileges automatically without actually shutting off UAC.

Code:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Security Center]
"UacDisableNotify"=dword:00000001

This will disable the Security Center warning about UAC.

Try these before you toss out the baby with the bathwater.

 

Copied and pasted one at a time, first saved as Saveme.reg, second Savemeagain.reg. Right click and tell Vista I want to do this, then I really want to do this and finally success with "Cannot import C:\Users\Owner\Desktop\Saveme.reg: The specified file is not a registry script. You can only import binary registry filed from within the registry editor.

Going to try it by hand.

 

Hand change with regedit went well, thanks much, will see if this helps.
My previous success was in getting an error, no errors this time.

 

It's strange those didn't merge. Well, you should be able to get in more game play without the UAC bugging you.

 

Gaming has gotten much better with those registry edits.
Unfortunately my HD is getting full. I am adding a SSD and larger storage drive. Why unfortunately? Vista in all its permutations is a highly guarded OS. Backing up and restoring to a new hard drive is difficult if not impossible. Acronis failed, Ghost failed, Gateway "restore to original" from the old hard drive partition failed. Maybe the root cause is not all the 3rd parties but Vista itself failing.

For me at least, the topic heading is true, XP is a better OS for gaming systems:
1) no toon killing interruptions
2) drivers available for everything
3) more RAM left over for the games
4) reinstalling the OS is easier as I change out hardware / software

 

I game on vista and love it, never an issue. Also both my parents can use vista on there personal machine at there house, with out calling me once a week. That right there alone means for my money, vista is king As far as hard drive space, gonna argue not related to vista, thus not worth mentioning, Small drives and newer os's always cause issues later on, just a nature of computing.

 

I have Vista X32bit / vista X64bit and windows 7RC and by far the best is the 64bit machine, as for windows 7 it is faster than vista but i have not yet got round to gaming with it.

XP is now being phased out and you will find less support as time goes on so you would be better getting your vista tweaked for games also debug the hard drive and get rid of things you are no longer using.

CCleaner is a safe way to clean your machine to improve performance.

http://majorgeeks.com/CCleaner_Slim_d4191.html

 

Colemanguy, I am glad you have no issues. From my own problems and subsequent investigations on the many Vista forums there are many who do. Especially with high end systems and Vista 32 due to the memory addressing problems.

I put Mom and Dad on iMacs 3 years ago, their needs are simple and their iMacs have been trouble free, no viruses, no crashes, no updates, no support needed. Email, watching home movies and writing letters is all they do so they don't need the Windows problems.

You have convinced me to keep plugging with the Vista 64 system. It will be an uphill battle as I really think an OS should be lean, fast and stable. Any "features" an OS offers I loathe. Programs should handle those chores. Integration into the OS forces services / updates / vulnerabilities I don't want.

 

Many complain about the bad times, half as many that post about the good times, vistas far from perfect, but isn't that the truth with everything. I just see far to much unfair vista bashing. Just wanted to post my good experience.

 

I am trying not to bash here, but are there ways to fix:
1. Open all folders in details. I set it up exactly right, use tools to set folders / all like XP, accidentally mouse over some magic space or think I am scrolling through the folder and it is changed. I told the OS what I want, and said "stay that way" but it will not.
2) Drag and drop in XP worked well enough, to drop into a folder you dropped on the icon. In Vista with the details view, anywhere on the line will add to the folder. Bad OS, don't put new folders into folders of your own volition. I can drop on a file and Vista will do the right thing. When I want to add new folders to a long list of folders I have been scrolling to the bottom and pasting or dropping there. My music is all folders so I added a text file, otherwise new music folders automatically went into the existing ones, I had no room at the bottom to drop the new ones.
3) Is there a "change window opening" key and a "close all windows" key ? I really like OSX tunnel, hold the key and as you double click each folder opens in the same window. Or you can set single window as default and key to open a new window for the folder. When you have really made a mess, open apple and click a window closed - closes all windows. I have liked this since the Apple ][gs days and expected it with XP, let alone later OS's.