Considering Reverting my Comp from Vista to XP

JeremyHill

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Sep 9, 2009
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See back around 2000 my parents brought home a brand new Dell with the newest OS at the time, Windows XP. my first experience gaming on a comp was with my friend playing Age of Empires, and it was astounding to me, it blew my mind (being that i only had SNES prior to this experience). So naturaly when i got on the computer, popped in the game, i had the time of my life. i went on to enjoy such games and eventualy came across 2 classics, Diablo2 and Dungeon Siege. They ran like a charm on that old rig, no hitches, never had a problem on that old Sub-standard, Business PC.

a year ago i bought myself this oversized calculator, barely worthy of being called a computer, and im quite fed up with the nonsense. this comp has to be litteraly 4x more powerful than my old dell and im getting FPS as low as 30 on Dungeon siege, stuttering FPS in diablo2. horrible load times in both, and everywhere i turn all i see is "No Fix, Vista destroys Games"

I jsut want to be able to play these classics at max FPS like i SHOULD be able to, and as far as i can tell, Vista is to blame. So i beseech you, anyone who can help, tell me if its right of me to revert back to the ever-trustworthy XP. and if so, please tell me if i even Can with my rig, im not too computer privy just yet, and i dont know if i would have compatibility issues or what...

Thank you all in advance

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My "Computer" if you will.

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/ca/en/ho/WF06b/12132708-12133156-12133158-12133158-12133158-81959348-81979614.html

Also i apologize if this is in the wrong section but it seemed most fitting of all the choices.
 
Being an OEM computer (especially an HP), it likely came with a LOT of crapware preinstalled... this is the biggest reason for a fast computer appearing to be slow. The first thing you should do upon pulling that rig out of the box is create your restore discs. Then, either uninstall all the crapware or wipe it clean and install a clean version of Vista (borrow an OEM copy from someone you know and use the key on the side of your computer). Next, make sure all updates are done... BIOS, drivers, etc... especially the service packs. Download all the latest patches for the games in question.

If you find this doesn't work for you, installing Windows 7 would be an option... but make sure you do a clean install and not an upgrade; the crap that's preinstalled will still be there after an upgrade and it will make your computer slower than it should be. Again, make sure all software is up to date.

Avoid drivers from HP... they may be months behind on new driver releases. If you know exactly what hardware you have (for instance the nVidia chipset and video card), go to that manufacturer's site and download their drivers. The only updates you should be getting from HP are BIOS updates and proprietary HP software updates. Be aware that if you do downgrade to XP, some of the preinstalled software may not work... but if you're looking to clean install anyway... it may be better to go up rather than down.