Vista newbie can use some help.

Thought I'd start off with some problems. Mabe someone can help.

Set up second hard drive and installed Vista Premium as dual boot with XP. Each OS on its own hard drive. Installed Vista, installed Nvidia drivers 100.64, installed Creative Beta sound card drivers for S.B. Audigy 2 ZS.At this point, I noticed that Vista had not detected my modem. Broadxent/Creative dial up modem. Tried installing XP drivers from installation CD. Everything installed, but computer froze. Re-booted, then found out, lost video drivers, lost sound drivers, modem still not working. Tried re-installing video and sound drivers. Vista kept telling me drivers already installed but nothing worked. Finally ended up trying system restore just after Vista installation and re-installed at that point. Finally worked. Is Vista this fragile?

So I'm wondering why Vista never detected my modem. Wouldn't it have installed generic drivers? I've done some looking around and found a U.S.Robotics XP modem that people are claiming works in Vista. Have it on order.

As a last resort, is there a way to undo the dual boot process? I figure the easiest way to get rid of Vista (If I get fed up enough with it) would be to boot to XP and format the drive Vista is on. But what will happen to the dual boot process? How would I get back to just XP booting up?

Another thing I'm curious about. I have a 5 rating in Vista. My CPU is slowing me down. According to the help file, the ratings for the CPU only go from 1 to 5. How are other people getting higher ratings?

Final question. My son installed Company of Heroes. First game in Vista. He says it ran fine at the beginning, but now he's getting about 5 frames per second. Strange.

Guess this will do it for now. Haven't really dug into Vista that much. I really don't care for it but my son is waiting for Halo2.

 

Vista isn't that sensitive, just doesn't like bad drivers.

Best way to get rid of it is to format the partition its on using your xp disk then repairing the XP installation.

Vista doesn't rate anything on a definate scale. The score is just calculated. You will get a 5 now, but upgrade u may score 5.5. Next year when new processors are out u may score 6 or 7. There is no limit to what number you will score. In 10 years you will still score a 5.0, but new processors would socre way higher.

Any game issues are probably due to bad drivers. Nvidia is known to have bad vista drivers atm. Keep checking for new drivers on nvidia website.

Ps. x2 4600 with a 8800gts? What a waste. CPU will be foreverlimiting your frame rates.

 

Actually, I found a web site a few months ago that reviewed the GTX and GTS cards and the 8800GTS matched up with my x2 4600+. It was faster than the GTX.

 

Let me get this right -- you noticed that Vista didn't install modem drivers so you reinstalled all the XP drivers on the CD? You effectively overwrote your working Vista drivers with old, probably nonworking, XP drivers. It's no wonder you had problems after that.



Unless you can rollback all of the Vista drivers to what Vista installed, your simplest solution would be to start over. Suggest you download and install Vista Boot Pro first. Use that to restore your XP bootloader. When you reboot, the dual boot will be gone and you'll automatically boot into XP.



Reformat the Vista partition.



If you're replacing the modem card, remove it.



Reinstall Vista from scratch.

 

What Vista drivers. Vista did not detect my modem and did not install any drivers.

And since Vista is so new, I'm not claiming to be an expert. I am willing to try anything to get it to work. Even if I trash my setup by accident. I don't think Bill Gates knows that much about Vista. He didn't create it. Just enjoying the profits from it.