Vista sucks!

[Palatkik]

I ditched Norton AV and all was fine...

 

You've found the cure to all your problems. How on earth these bastrds at Symentec haven't been incarcerated yet for forcing their crap on new PC's amazes me. As soon as I took their Internet suite off my new HP Pavilion purchase everything worked fine... before that 20 minutes to copy a file wtf??... Symentec sucks! more than Vista IMHO.

[Old Hippie]

ok, so what is some good anti virus protection to use?

 

MY OLD MACHINE HAD THE ANTI VIRUS SUPPLIED fuck, sorry for the cap lock, too lazy to re type it, anyway, the anti virus was part of my internet package from SBC Yahoo, worked great, was always on, and always updating, I never had any virus problems or system conflicts with it. Sadly, there is currently no anti virus offered for vista from my ISP. They are supposedly working on it.

 

Anyway, so far, so good, I think I will dump Norton ASAP, and go with something else. Macaffee was also shit as I recall.

[Old Hippie]

 

... which he said could be a hardware OR software problem.

 

 

Now that's some excellent advice' date=' absolutely spot on.[/quote']

 

 

I didn't tell the story properly. What happened was, the guy from HP explained a few things, and then went on to say the Recovery disk would basically restore the computer to "new." he explained I should re add my programs 1 at a time, and see if I noticed any new problems, or repeats of the old problems.

 

He said if this didn't correct the problem, then they would replace the machine. He explained that taking 25 minutes to shut down, and 15 minutes to start up at times was not normal, and explained a few possible causes which are software related, and a few which are hard ware related.

[Palatkik]

, I think I will dump Norton ASAP, and go with something else. Macaffee was also shit as I recall.

 

I dumped Norton immediately and used an old copy of 8.51 McAfee Corporate..along with WinDefender.. maybe not best choice but Vista ran smooth after that. I have heard less inspiring reports on McAfee Home Editions. Some of the free downloads on Filehippo will probably take care of you ok as well. No need to pay Norton anything.

[kamui]

ok, so what is some good anti virus protection to use?

 

 

If you want to pay, try Kaspersky Antivirus, or even more secure Kaspersky Internets Security which includes a firewall. But since Vista is more secure than WindowsXP a firewall is not that important.

My recommendations:

AVG Antivirus (free)

Spybot (free)

Note: Spybot is no substitute for a virus scanner, but a complement security software.

 

[manaomaiminam]

Norton does have much more CPU overhead than the other security packages. Boot will be elongated some, but nowhere near what has been described here, and this holds for both Vista and XP. Personally, I prefer either AVG or ESET, much less overhead and both excellent antiviruses. Also, most of the AV's now package into suites which include firewalls and active malware scanners (example, Adaware is a passive scanner, you look for the the malware after the fact). This will add to the overhead tremendously, but you can always turn off those components. Occasionally, when you install updates (MS and others) or new programs, there is an elongated shutdown and boot, but that should be a one-time occurance and not a pervasive problem.

 

For those of you with new laptops which came with Vista and are thinking of going back to XP, be aware that many new laptops come with SATA drives, XP does not have native installation support for laptop SATA drive, even at SP3. This means that when you begin your install, XP does not recognized your hard disk, which, of course, is a problem of some magnitude. So, you will need to slipstream the support onto an XP disc or onto solid state drive. Just reading some of the comments, I am guessing that many of you are neither interested or capable of doing this, so you have to find a build that already has this built in. If you are dropping back to your old legal XP build, it's not there. So now you have to find an XP build with that support -- or build it. I am guessing that you can find some disks with this level of support in Panthip or Fortune or some ISO images on the web at various bit torrent sites. If you look there, look for full student editions as they need no activation and MS sees them all as genuine for windows/MS update. If not, read up on the web on how to do it.

 

Vista does have additional overhead which MS seem has built in to "protect people from themselves", you can disable most of them, as well as overhead for desktop management (you cannot disable), indexing for quicker searches (you can disable, never had it in XP, and, if you really want it, Google desktop search is better and quicker after it builds its indexes).

 

MS updates do fix problems and close security holes, personally, if a product rep, like HP rep says not to install them, they are a fool. Keep in mind, most factory reps are usually salesmen, not techies, and are always trying to defer any blame away from their brand to another, and, true or not, MS is always a good target.

[TheCorinthian]

Vista actually runs faster on a Mac....

[Hamokhamok]

Suggestion:

 

When you get the bastard started don't switch it off again..

 

When you want to leave it go into hibernate or sleep mode.

 

When you want to start if up again it will start immediately - no waiting.

 

I've been doing this with my ACER laptop for some months now.

 

Only ever switch it off totally if asked to do it after loading on something or updating.

 

Just a suggestion.

[Old Hippie]

As of right now, it seems sorted...no ideas why or what the issue is/was. HP is sending me some recovery disks, and has advised me to "recover the system." I may skip it until it acts up again...they said if the problem continues, they will just replace the computer, which frankly I'd prefer, especially since I don't want to keep loading my software into it...

[manaomaiminam]

Recovery disks generally means of "factory image" of your build. Some Brands supply them with your PC (ASUS), some provide the SW to create them (ACER) and some will provide them from the "factory" (HP). What you will be doing is rebuilding/reloading Vista and whatever other software and tools which were on your PC when you picked it up at the dealer from scratch. You will get a choice on whether to reformat your disk, but if you are having problems, that is a good idea because it will get rid of any malware/viruses, etc. If you reformat you will have to reinstall all your personal programs and reload your data (like photos, already created word/excel/powerpoint docs, etc). This is how things are done today (and with XP) when you buy a system and they give you and OEM copy of the OS (XP or Vista). Given that your system is not acting up now, I would start backing up your personal data.

 

Another option you do have whenever you find that the system is running poorly is do a system restore to a date when you know the system was running well, if indeed you can remember when that was and you have not turned off system restore (it's on by default).

 

Just to clarify, using recovery disks is not the same as recovery mode, which is the feature which basically boots in Command Mode (looks like DOS) so that you can enter manual commands to fix things (like do manual command mode system restores, try to fix registry hives, etc). This is different than Safe Mode.

 

In XP, they had a repair mode, which when it worked presented you with additional problems/issues after the repair and should only be used with caution. I don't know if Vista gives you that possibility.