XP-Vista Installation Please Help!!

Before going to all that trouble, I use Vista myself. Try doing this.

Go to control panel, and under user account settings, disable the user account controls(where it asks for the password with everything you do.)

Also, set your control panel and start menus to classic view. I bet that will help. I know it took me a while to figure vista out when I first got it, mind you I'm a certified computer tech. But now it's great. Keep messing with it and you get the hang of it. And for me it's actually stable. Ask around if you need help.

But a lot of manufacturers sold XP as a downgrade to Vista and you ended up paying an extra fee. So you may have to shell out another hundred bucks for a copy of xp. No sense in taking a step back in my opinion though.

Great thanks for the advice, anyother ways in which i could speed up my system?

actually yes. Once you've changed everything over to the classic view, go to start menu, click run, then type in msconfig. Click ok. Select the option for selective startup, then click the startup tab and deselect things you don't want booting with your computer, like any programs you don't use etc. If you are computer savvy, you can kind of tell what something is if you expand the little "Command" bar, because it will give you an idea where on your drive things are located.

Also, if you norton for example, get rid of that. In my opinion, norton and mcafee antiviruses make a system so slow. I recommend a free antivirus from here.

http://free.avg.com/

Although there is another one called Avast! which a lot of guys here use as well, either one is decent, and they are free, as well as fairly light on system resources. I run my avg antivirus and game on my system, and I've got an AMD dual core chip and 2 gb of ram. Granted I have a better video card, but regardless this system runs pretty well for the most part.

Also, if you need an office application, check out openoffice.org. It's open source and completely free, will allow you to open files in the newest microsoft formats, even lets you save in older microsoft formats, and you can download free templates for whatever you want to do with it, just do a little searching on their site and on google. Honestly, I have Microsoft Office XP sitting around my house somewhere, but don't even have it installed because I use this program instead. A little learning curve, but it's close enough to Microsoft Office that if you have used older versions of office, you should pick it up quickly.

Other than that, just keep the hard drive defragmented. I don't use the Windows program, there is another free program called Auslogics disk defrag, it's pretty good and once you defrag your drive once, if you do it regularly, it will usually finish on mine in 5-10 minutes.

Also, I don't know how much memory is installed on your laptop, but if it's less than 2 gb, I recommend checking what the specs are on it, and heading over to newegg.com, pick up 2 gb or more there, and install that. That should help as well.

please dont use that xp disc, you WILL have to buy xp

First of all, that xp disc won't work. Those reinstall discs are designed for that computer. It is basically an image to revert back to.

AVG free is a decent free program. However, it will hinder performance more than anything. It periodically scans the computer and will bring it to a virtual halt. If you already have norton or mcafee, you should use them. I would recommend norton360.

MSCONFIG is a round a bout way to block programs from starting. The best way to stop them from slowing down you boot, is to find each program that you don't want to start upon boot up; go into the preferences/options and disable them from starting upon windows boot. You can also get in the windows startup folder and remove the programs from there.

Open office is a good program. It allows people to access office format from any computer. However, if you have office, installing it will not slow down you computer at all (unless you are near maxed out on HD).

You can't make your components work any faster than they are capable of. Keep the computer defraged and perform disk optimization routinely. If it isn't what you want, you need to upgrade.

Definitely cant install from a dell disc .

nothing to stop you buying an oem xp disc and installing it

Install the max amount of RAM you can first because that is the best way to speed up an everyday system, well, except for clearing out all the software which you don't use.

That's assuming there isn't a bottleneck somewhere else.

To answer your question, no you cannot use a dell oem re-install on a toshiba laptop.

1. Dell disk wont work.
2. Norton or McCaffe, will drag a system down bad. AVG FREE is great.
3. 2G ram is absolutle a must on a Vista system, if you can use 3G then do so.
4. Uninstall all the preloaded crapware via "Programs and Features" in control panel.
5. Defrag the HDD

I got a Asues eee PC, upgraded to 2G am and put a Solid state drive in it, and this little netboook smokes any off the shelf sub $900 laptop.
6. Another must to speed up a Laptop, if you have a 5400 RPM drive toss it and get a fast 7200 RPM or I prefer a Solid State Drive.


Its all about the ram and the hardrive when you need more speed.

+1 to all but #2.
Sounds like a comment from someone who hasn't used norton or mcafee in a while. AVG free is a good free program. Norton360 for example, once installed and system scanned, only kicks in when on the internet. It auto checks pages for phising. It doesn't CONSTANTLY scan for viruses as AVG does. You can chose what and when you want norton to run. There are other nice features built in, but it works great w/ no slowdown. There is a reason these programs cost $$, b/c they are a bit better.

Wrong, I see systems everyday with different Virus aps and AVG uses the least amount of resources.

Most of the slow computer repairs I do are because Norton or Mccafe let something through and slowed down the system.

You may like norton because you have a really fast PC with lots of resource power, but the average user on a average laptop can not handle Norton or MCcafe well without slowdowns.

I work on all types of rigs, mostly low OEM junk, so I have plenty of experience.

My persnal PC can run any of those apps fine as well, but lets consider the general public that dont have pimped out custom builds.

Norton does use a lot of resources when it scans the system, as it should. It touches every file on system. I'm referring to the more constant auto scans by avg.

I'm debugging a dell dimension3000 (nothing fancy) right now. She has AVG free on it. 8 total viruses! In safe mode AVG isn't even picking them up. Norton found the last one and got it. They both auto update. Why would avg not find the last one?