HELP ! ! ! . . . Computer Devices

[Techman]

there will be very few drivers for older equipment.
Vista wants "signed " drivers. M$ is charging hefty fees to sign drivers. Who wants to pay big money to sign a driver for older equipment?
Can you see where this is going?

Vista will not be ready for prime time until at least SP1 is released this fall.

Likely your Toshiba came with VISTA tied to the BIOS. And, your machine had its restore function on the hard drive. Since you formated the HD all your stuff (drivers) are gone. Likewise your hardware drivers use newer drivers and likely are not compatible with XP.

Now you can see why so many guru's are not promoting VISTA. There are no drivers. Tweaking the machine is a real pain. Deleting Vista is a problem. Its simply designed to make you move up whether you want to or not.
VISTA just plain sux, is not needed by the average user such as us and is why you do not see the rush to get it.

 

[Replicator]

Thanks Everyone for all the information . . .

I just picked up my replacement laptop without a hitch.

I'll just have to muttle my way through all the issues . . .

Thank goodness we've got 10 other computers with XP on them !

 

[SignTech]

Techman, thanks for the post you spelled it out better than I did.

 

[thomchar]

HP has several laptops left with XP professional in it. You have to call the HP store to get them. I bought one about a month ago. I had to instal one more gig of memory in it.

 

[round man]

toshiba's come with a recovery dvd,...use it as there aren't any xp drivers for the hardware in your new machine,other than the generic mickeysoft drivers that will make your machine unstable,...been there and done what you are trying and waisted more time tryin' to make xp work than it took to read the help files and turn off all the stuff in vista that one really doesn't need like defender and access control among other annoyances.The hardware in your laptop was designed to utilize all the newer features of vista,...not xp, so toshiba didn't write any xp drivers for it. Vista once tweeked runs like a raped ape compared to xp and is twice as stable. manufacturers will drag their feet on drivers for inexpensive periphials because it isn't cost effective to write new drivers for old equipment when they can use it as an excuse to sell you their latest stuff for which they have to have drivers for,.....

As for software flexi,..corel ,adobe and most of the software you list that you use will work great once you tell vista to run them compatible with xp. Only exception is goober with which I refuse to use since it took them two years back in '97 to come out with a program that would work in win95.

Vista is really easy to set up to look like xp which makes things alot easier to find. the only complaint I have with vista is the fact they changed the way pc's look at scanner drivers and I will have to replace mine as the old winxp drivers are not wia compliant and vista will not recognize the older twain drivers.
You may have to download new sentinel drivers for your security dongles ,....
Other than drivers for older equipment, I have had no problems in the last six months with my new toshiba
laptop and use it daily to produce work with little or no problems once I set each program to run in the compatible mode it was written for,...win 95,...win xp etc.

 

[Cadmn]

guys once he formatted all drivers are wiped so recover dvd not very useful without dvd driver darn name brands use custom driver. If you research long enough you can find generics that will run , but only if I'm in the shop on the clock will I look& dig for drivers
Major time consumption

 

[iSign]

As for software flexi,..corel ,adobe and most of the software you list that you use will work great once you tell vista to run them compatible with xp. Only exception is goober with which I refuse to use since it took them two years back in '97 to come out with a program that would work in win95.

you didn't read the thread I guess, since the original poster exchanged his laptop weeks ago. You also missed the fact that Gerber is ahead of the curve on Vista compatibility, & I was able to download the free patch & have omega running fine on Vista without even worrying about any "compatibility mode" settings.

 

[Bogie]

Return it, or ebay it.

Tiger sells computers with XP.

Kid looked at me crazy at Best Buy when I told him I needed an XP box... Then I told him about the concept of "business" software, and not games...