Another user dropping Vista and going back to XP

I have a M1330 and had Vista Ultimate installed, but am going to uninstall it and install XP.

Vista continually blue screened, locked up or restarted. The culprit was always the NVidia drivers. No matter what I did - rolled back to older drivers, installed new drivers, ran DriverCleaner.NET and then installed new drivers, installed drivers from laptopvideo2go.com - the damn OS would still blue screen. Been on the phone with Dell with two different tech supt. guys (who were very good) for almost 4 hours. Hardware is fine (supposedly), so reinstalled Vista. Same problem after a couple of hours. I'll be searching on here for how to do a clean install of XP.

I don't want to get into the pros and cons of Vista. If it works for you, then great. If it doesn't... then at least there is an option (and hours and hours of frustration) before deciding to go to XP.

I'm just posting here so that if you also have the same problem, you'll see you're not alone...

 

Vista worked/works fine for me.

 

running Dell or ltv2g drivers, never an issue on my 1520. Sorry to hear your having problems

 

i've no complains about the stability of vista but it is turning sour for everyone and its surprising Microsoft arent doing anything about it

 

If that is the case then I doubt it was the nVidia drivers. How did you come to this conclusion?

At the end of the day going back to XP is fine by me (a backward step but that's ok) just do it for the right reasons and don't say the drivers don't work with Vista because there are too many of us Vista users who have never had a blue screen, restart etc.

Good luck with XP by the way!

p.s. You'll find as time goes by there will be less and less support for XP.

 

If you are so sure you are having driver problems, why are u running 3rd party modified drivers???? Chances are you have no friggin idea what you are doing and have something jacked up. NEWS FLASH: YOU ARE ALONE! Now quit bashing Vista for your obvious incompetence. People like you are why Geek squad is in business. Why not take your problems to a big box store and pay them $300 to fix your problem instead of spouting your senseless post on a forum where others could potentially be incorrectly influenced by your foolishness.

 

Ouch. Very unecessary.

If all of the software was refixed, reintstalled...It sounds like a hardware issue?

 

I've been using Vista for one day, and I must say:

Excellent. Stable, smooth, and looks great. I used the beta on computers that weren't meant to have it (2.9GHz Celeron, 256MB DDR-333, and 2.2GHz Sempron, 384MB DDR-400). Vista was slow, but more stable in the beta on both of those than XP. Both had integrated graphics.

 

That sucks, personally Vista runs like a champ for me. Solid like a rock. XP crumbled like a house made of cards for me all the time .

I like mux1.. LOL.. His speech touched my heart...

It is a possibility it could be a user flaw. But he said he's tried like a dog so do what you gotta do and go back where you were comfortable. Vista SP1 should iron out all the wrinkles people are experiencing hopefully. So don't give up on it entirely.

 

Fair enough. The blue screen details were always in reference to nvlddmkm.sys. I ran the .dmp files generated by the bsod's through the Windows debugger and the problem was always with the nvlddmkm.sys driver. The driver would timeout when attempting to recover. I modified a registry setting to increase the timout value, but this just meant the driver took longer to crash...

I realise that a lot of people are running Vista with the nVidia drivers and aren't experiencing problems. Like I said, if it works for you - then great...

I also realize that going to XP could be considered a backwards step as I really liked the features of Vista, but I use the laptop for work and I need stability. I've run all of the hardware diagnostic tools supplied by Dell and everything seemed ok.

When I install XP tomorrow and if I still get BSOD's, then don't worry - I'll post on here and let everyone know I'm asking Dell for a new laptop as it then must be a hardware issue not detected by the diagnostic tools. If XP works fine, then I'll reconsider Vista when SP2 is out

Merry xmas to you as well mux1.

 

I wouldn't trust those 3rd party driver cleaners, if something is actually wrong with nVidia drivers then the best way to fix it is by doing a clean installation of Vista. Why havent you done that already ? Contacting DELL tech support for driver advice ?

I got my M1330 a couple of weeks back, so far I have upgraded nVidia drivers like 3 or 4 times (installed Vista twice while testing out several different things), so far not a single blue screen. And I've been using my previous M1210 with Vista Ultimate and many different versions of ForceWare drivers for almost a year; never seen a blue screen. Besides, I don't see any people complaining about Vista and regular* (non modded) ForceWare drivers either, therefore I'm pretty sure its not Vista. Using modded drivers can cause problems like these, so be careful.

My advice : Reinstall Vista and then install nvidia drivers available through Windows update or DELL. If that also doesn't work, then most probably a hardware problem.

 

I considered rolling back to XP, but the issues with SATA deterred me. I should have a second HDD to swap back and forth between here soon, so I'll be able to play around non-destructively.

 

People come here looking for help, but people like you turn others away from this great site. Everyone started at the beginning at one time or another, and worked their way up in knowlege. You were a noob too at one time, we all were.
-1 rep
Oh wait, we can't do that. Damn.

 

dunno, I had Vista business come with my Vostro and after a couple of weeks it took almost 2mins to boot up, so I rolled back to XP and the pc is doing great, fast and stable.. when the time comes for a format I'll try putting vista back on to see if it works faster this time.. During the short time I used it I liked it alot, I only rolled back to XP because I couldn't figure out (had a technician come over too) why it got to be so friggin slow!

 

Done that. See my first post. I would roll my eyes, but they are getting a little tired.

 

That is the exactly the route I took. I got a 120GB SATA drive for $55AR on black friday for that. After installing XP on the new drive, I did swap back the original drive a few times for some files and try one software. Even I have Vista Ultimate on the old drive, I don't really miss anything after the swap and I am using XP Pro 95% of the time.

 

Yeah very unnecessary. The guy knows enough to ask people for advice. The fact he found this forums shows he knows something.

If you want to install xp by all means, but i think you problem is not related to Vista. Personally I will install xp pro when I get my M1330 but thats just because I don't want such a resource hogging operating system.

 

OK OK...I apologize for coming off as harsh. However, the OP was NOT looking for help (I didn't see any requests for assistance, did you?), and the subject of thread does nothing for your implication of his supposed intent: "Another user dropping Vista and going back to XP ". OP made this pretty clear what this post was about:

Posts like these implant false info into the minds of the less knowledgeable who happen to be browsing these forums -- or stumble upon them through Google -- ("stay away from Vista!! It's bad!! I've got all these problems, and oh ya I'm using modded drivers - probably incorrectly - and who knows what else! but Vista's bad Bad BAD!! XP Forever!!").

Sorry if it hurts your feelings to be called on it.

I expected to be flamed for my flaming response, and again I apologize for sounding harsh, but I will not retract my statements because the OP made it a point to make his poignant statement and never asked for any help.