My January landlord has a custom embroidery business. Her old XP 'puter died. The embroidery design software doesn't see the dongle on her new vista box. An upgrade to vista for this software is $750.
Anyway, has anyone run XP and vista on the same box? I found this tutorial and find it a bit daunting:
formatting link
Will this work well? Other suggestions? Should i tell her to pop for a second hard disk? NOTE: she didn't get CDs of the OS and software with the new 'puter so we're hosed if i screw up.
's free and has worked for me many times to cure incompatibilities with OSs and hardware and software. There are other similar softs, Google "virtual machine", but I like MS the best. I believe there is a way to get Vista to work directly if you can just find the right switch or compatibility mode. Sorry, I don't know Vista better. Let me know how it all works out. :
I've used that version I think, it's missing a few things to make room for other things. Way cool! See my post on moding XP. The problem with some new boxes is that they don't HAVE xp drivers available, so modified OS don't help any.
Vista ain't so bad if you have a new box with LOTS of horsepower and tons of memory. It's all there, just figure out where to find it. I'll wait for SP2 before I commit critical people or applications...it's pretty, though bloaty.
Well daunting is in the eye of the beholder. There are some hooks in there for the novice but if followed properly it will work.
There probably is a restore partition on the new computer HD. Call them and tell them you trashed the OS trying to set up XP dual boot and what should you do. They should give you a CD. At least you will find out if they will restore the new box if you goof.
She probably already has a HD from the trashed computer. If it is the HD that went belly up then a new HD in the old computer would fix the problem. If you dual boot you will need a second HD or a separate partition. Don't try to run two OS on one partition.
Yes that procedure will work. The downside is that XP will destroy all of your Vista restore points. Yes I run vista and XP on the same box. If you run XP be sure to create a new restore point when you go back to Vista.
The first thing I would do is try to run Vista in compatibility mode.
Right Click the program you want to run (the exe file)
Click on properties
Select ?Compatibility? in top bar
Check the box ?Run this program in compatibility mode for:?
Select the Operating system which your software supports (XP in this case)
Click on ?Apply?
Now run the program
This probably won't work if it is a dongle problem but is worth a try.
If that doesn't work I would pick up a box that will run XP. You already have the OS and I assume the key. I pick up these boxes at school and give them away. I used to pick up free functioning boxes at the recycling center that would run XP. I don't bother any longer because I have more than my wife will tolerate already. You should be able to find a box for less than $100 and presumably you have some parts from the trashed computer.
In the past before I found so many free ones I used to buy from Retrobox. They have been purchased but the same low price deals are there. No connection and the stuff I bought was as advertised.
Try
formatting link
Pick "PC computers" and then reverse the price so you can get to the cheapies first. I just looked at the first one and for $79 you could get a Pentium III that would do the job.
Virtual PC is free and will run on XP on your new box. There are some hooks in that too. My choice if compatibility mode didn't work would be a second box (cheap).
many sellers of new systems offer the system with XP if you insist - I believe Gateway and Dell are two that offer this - but you might save $$ to buy two or three used XP machines and put them aside - probably $50 to $100 each, as one dies, fire up the next
It loaded up everything I..er..a friend..yah..thats it..a friend had on board and then proceeded to download all the drivers and updates from MS. And there is a working crack for the WGA validation crapola as well.
If the manufacturer of the embroidery equipment and software can't provide a solution, it's probably futile in terms of convenience or cost effectiveness.
If the new machine is a Compaq/HP product, you can probably order the system discs from the manufacturers website (about $16 delivered), at least I could/did last summer when I got a new Compaq 3.4GHz PC with Vistasucks Home Basicsucks on it.
HP saved maybe, $2 by not including the discs in the box, to get ~$14 for them from buyers that would take the time to order them.
As it turns out, the machine itself isn't that good either.. no boot from USB devices, way too little RAM included, incapable of getting along well with the other children (brand new, current model HP printer), insufficient video capabilities, and on and on.
If the machine mentioned has Home Basicsucks on it, that version is very limited in features, compared to the other versions which cost insane money amounts, considering that they're just more shitMSsucks products. Looking at the list of features, one can see that the HBsucks version has about 15% of the features of the crazy-expensive versions, such as crippled/severely-limited backup limitations. To copy an external HD's contents to DVD should be a very simple task, but not really. BTW, I think the "call home", report to HQ, etc, features can be shut off if the user doesn't want updates (I don't).
Hardware issues, really? Not with Vistasucks. Just another shitMSsucks product to fuel the market, by requiring purchases of more third-party products. The off-the-store-shelf machines never come with enough RAM, the buyer had better at least double it (Crucial or other memory websites), and buy all new peripherals (scanner, printer, camera etc) or tolerate problems in getting non-vistasucks-hardware to perform as well as it did with older shitMSsucks products.
I've told people I know that I'll gouge my eyes out (with a rusty old piece of HSS), before I use another MSsucks product.
I did get about 10 varieties of linux from an eBay seller (for about $2/disc delivered), but haven't spent the time to get familiar with it/them, (and the no boot from USB issue mentioned above, to make it much easier).
The bottom line here, is that most of the new technology crap doesn't have any reality-based appreciable value. Metalworking tools and machines are capable of performing real tasks and doing/performing real work, which is why I can appreciate that equipment so much more than any craptech gizmo that makes a pretty screen display or prints in colors. Crayons do the same thing when rubbed on paper (or freshly painted walls).
Thanks for the linux tip, Ig. Ubuntu is one or two of the new discs I have on hand, and I've had the older version for a couple of years, but didn't try using it on my old, slow Win98 machine.
I have two personal boxes running Vista U, one for playing "Bioshock" and one at work to explore in spare time. Directx 10 in Bioshock is WAY cool! I'm wiping the drive at work because I don't do anything useful on it.
============ I had the same thing. However when I installed 7.10 with its apparently much better use of computer resources, and lower demand, the performance improved greatly, and became entirely adequate for several uses. I also note that several perepherials that stopped working when I upgraded another box to w2k, specificaly a printer and scanner [seperate], work perfectly with
7.10
One thing to remember is that if you have an older computer limited to 256meg or so of memory the "Live CD" may not load/function and you will have to download (and burn a cd) of the version which is install only. click on
formatting link
to the bottom and check the box "Check here if you need the alternate desktop CD. This CD does not include the Live CD, instead it uses a text-based installer."
The server edition [text based / command line] can be used on systems with more limited resources than the console [GUI] version.
After doing a few of these, I suggest reformating the hard drive, checking for read/write sector errors, and starting from scratch with a clean disk for a linux only box. If you are going for a dual boot system, be sure and get Windows installed and running
*FIRST*.
The one item you may have problems with, if you have a POTS internet connection, is the [win]modem. If you have a high-speed connection with a router you should have no problems.
Good luck, and let the group know how you make out.
As you know, I am accustomed to using unix systems by preference.
However, I occasionally need to run programs which come with devices to perform updates -- and often these are made only for Windows and Macs.
I will *not* allow my old unpatched Windows 2000 pro onto the outside net, because I don't know enough about Windows to properly secure it -- and I suspect that Microsoft doesn't either.
So -- I just recently got a Mac Mini (tiny little box with a dual-core Intel processor, 80 GB of internal disk, and 1GB of RAM), and am using it for such purposes. It is built around unix, and while it took a while to find my way around some of the weird things which they did, I am now able to log into it over the LAN just like any of my unix boxen. It is still behind the firewall, so it is protected from external attack, and I'm not seriously worried about a virus for it -- though they are possible, I'm not likely to run things which would infect it, even if there were any serious viruses in the wild. I don't use it for e-mail at all.
And -- unlike recent versions of Windows, it does not insist on reporting home whenever I want to change any hardware.
Oh -- speaking of hardware -- it comes without a keyboard or a mouse (both USB interface), so I am happily using some recent ones from Sun -- with the Control key to the left of the 'A' key, as God intended. :-)
And I've just gotten through trying my first NFS mount of a filesystem from the unix server onto the Mac Mini. It works nicely.
Why not? I'll bet that it runs a lot faster than Win98 on the same hardware. :-) (Of course, while running from CD-ROM, it will be slow, but not so once you have it on a real hard disk. Just about any flavor of unix which will run on the hardware will be faster than Windows on the same hardware.
Of course -- the more "eye candy" you want to use, the slower it will get. For the fastest behavior, run it command-line only. Otherwise, try some of the less cpu-intensive window managers with X11. Gnome seems to be one of the most cpu-intensive ones, though there are people who really love the appearance, so it is your choice.
Also -- if you still have an external modem which connects to a serial port on the computer, instead of being a card which hides inside the computer, that will work fine. The winmodems replace some of the modem hardware with software hidden in the Windows system, and (like most things Windows) it is a proprietary format, so it is difficult for the developers of linux, BSD or other unix variants to get enough information to make them work.
But an external modem has another advantage -- in virus or "call home" detection. If you know your dialup net connection is supposed to be down, and the modem lights start flickering, you know that it is time to quickly reach for the phone cable connector in the back and unplug it until you discover what is trying to call out. For this reason, the modem should be located just an eye-flick away from the monitor, so you are more likely to notice it.
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