What have I done?

[suthers]

Yes, you guest it, I made the stupid mistake of installing vista, I installed it on another hard disk from the one on which I have XP in stalled, but XP no longer boots....
Vista is disgusting and I can't find my XP cd, I don't no how much longer I can take this
It won't even allow me to edit batch files so I can't continue developing my OS (thankfully I still have my laptop, but this is crazy)
Jules

[01000101]

?!? it wont let you edit batch files? I've never had that problem when I used vista. Why not just force your bios to boot of the other disk with xp?

[JackScott]

Right click and edit?

Vista isn't at all bad. It just takes getting used to.

[suthers]

Do you really think I'd be on this forum if I didn't know how to edit batch files or use my BIOS?
I tried editing, but when it comes to saving it keeps telling me it cannot create the file and that I should make sure the path/file name are correct...
When I change the boot device priority in my BIOS to my old hard disk (with XP installed), I get a message saying BOOTMGR is compressed...
Jules

[dag]

Yep... Vista is just sad and disgusting. When I realized that
new hardware doesn't have drivers for XP, eventually forcing
people to use Vista, I decided to buy a Mac (I use FreeBSD for
most things, but I want to be able to play certain games).

[DerekDouglas]

I have been using Vista Ultimate (legit OEM copy) for a while now and haven't had any problems with it.

Check to make sure you have write access to the directory you are trying to save to.

[suthers]

Yah looks like I've just stabbed my self in the back, and all that to play crysis with DX10...
Jules

edit: I'm admin, so I shouldn't have a problem...

[01000101]

Vista isn't at all bad. It just takes getting used to.

I agree. Maybe giving it a day or two would help broaden your view of interfaces a bit... or it wont and you just go back to XP. also, a batch file has no (that I can think of) special parsing, therefor you can just change the extension to '.txt' or something and edit it and change it back to '.bat', but JackScott's method is easiest.

As far as BOOTMGR is compressed: did you enable compression recently? grab a live linux cd and install grub, maybe that could help you out.

Also, as far as Vista goes: what is 'disgusting' about it? would it be the DX10 support? the large amount of built-in drivers? the price? the graphics?

The only issue ive ever had with vista.. was the fact that it didn't come with HyperTerminal.

[suthers]

I've tried his method, it's the same as I've always used....
But it won't let me save anything...
I've figured out why though, Vista has set all the files on all three out of four of my hard disks to read only (all but the one on which it is installed...) but when I try to change it back to read allowed, it doesn't do anything...
Jules

edit: and no I haven't enable compression recently, but I'll try and do what you suggested...

[dag]

Vista isn't at all bad. It just takes getting used to.

I agree. Maybe giving it a day or two would help broaden your view of interfaces a bit... or it wont and you just go back to XP. also, a batch file has no (that I can think of) special parsing, therefor you can just change the extension to '.txt' or something and edit it and change it back to '.bat', but JackScott's method is easiest.

As far as BOOTMGR is compressed: did you enable compression recently? grab a live linux cd and install grub, maybe that could help you out.

Also, as far as Vista goes: what is 'disgusting' about it? would it be the DX10 support? the large amount of built-in drivers? the price? the graphics?

The only issue ive ever had with vista.. was the fact that it didn't come with HyperTerminal.

I think you can get used to pretty much anything... but what I don't
like about Windows Vista is the following:

It gives me the same functionality/performance that I had in Windows 95.
However, while Windows 95 could run with 4MB RAM on a 386, Vista
needs insane amounts of memory and CPU... In fact, I have a 2.4GHz dual-core
with 2GB memory and it performs poorer than my 133MHz box does with
Windows 95... Makes me think about the quality of the code. What about Vista
makes it worth the performance cost?

[suthers]

Let's not make this into a flame war between XP and Vista....
I also just realised it isn't recognizing my CD drive, so I couldn't make a ubuntu live CD if I wanted to...
Jules

[ucosty]

Sounds like a permissions problem. You just need to give your user the appropriate permissions for the folder containing your OS

[bewing]

Avoiding this kind of pain is precisely why I'm intending to jump all my systems straight from Win98SE to my own OS, and avoid givng M$ another dime or another minute of my time, for the rest of my life.

and it performs poorer than my 133MHz box does with Windows 95... Makes me think about the quality of the code ...

Ain't that the truth!!?!

I grieve for all you poor suckers with Vista.

[Zenith]

IMHO, Vista's pretty awesome. I use Vista Premium x86 on a system that's a little older than talin's setup, and it runs perfectly (it actually runs faster than my XP installation...weird...). But of course, I can't speak for everyone's experiences.

Anyway, as hardware greatly improves over time, it's just that system/OS developers will obviously try to take advantage of it. So is the case with Windows, *BSD, Mac OS *, Linux/Unix, etc.

But you have to admit, Microsoft could have done with another kernel revamp, like from DOS -> NT -> (something else?), instead of continuing to pile on top of NT. I think they overestimated the speed of hardware development/adoption, because as better performing hardware is churned out, it's still too expensive or too inaccessible to many people and developers.

They supposedly delayed the new Windows kernel and most of the expected features (stuff like WinFS) to Windows 7, and released Vista as an intermediate release. It's okay for me, but other people are welcomed to have qualms about it.

suthers, I'm assuming you did a clean install on the separate hard drive, or did you do something else? And you can never be sure, but is this a legit copy of Vista you have?

[AJ]

I have only used Vista for a few seconds on my Dad's PC, but I like what I see. I keep threatening to build a new PC myself which will run Vista Ultimate but what with one thing and another have not got round to it.

From what I have read (not personal experience) Vista's minimum hardware requirements are ridiculous (RAM, HDD, CPU and GPU). IMHO, this is because MS know that if you use their kernel, you are also tied in to their Window Manager, drivers and so on. This means that they just assume you want the whole lot installed. If Vista could benefit from anything, I think it could benefit from a setup utility which allows you to customise the installation to a much greater extent.

On the flip side, compare this with Linux. On something like Gentoo, the installation process seems almost infinitely customisable. If you have an amazing Core 2 Quad, Geforce 9800, 8GiB RAM machine, you can install all the bells and whistles. If you have a 486 with 128MiB RAM, you can just install the kernel, Bash and other bare essentials which is great. The problem with this of course, is that a complete Linux newbie like me gets daunted by it all and will go back to what they are comfortable with.

I would be interested to know with Windows, how much of the default-installed bulk you could remove before the system simply won't work. I wonder how far below the "minimum spec" you could go by painstaking manual customisation?

Hopefully no-one will see any of the above as flamebait - I am happy with Windows and happy that others use their OS of choice

Cheers,
Adam