Drivers for XP working in Vista?

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello :)

After i had some hardware trouble and now subsequently Windows trouble, i have decided to give Windows Vista a try. I have just been searching for some drivers and was not able to find ANY.

So here's the thing: I got a brand new mainboard ASUS K8N-4E SE, CPU AMD Sempron 2800, VGA Asus with ATI X300/128 MB, 3x 512 MB DDR-1/400 KINGSTON, 1x HDD 120 GB MAxtor, 1x 40 GB Seagate (both regular IDE hard drives), 1x DVD drive (reader only) (forgot what brand!), 1x DVD writer Lite-On, internal (PCI) modem, internal 16-in-1 memory card reader APACER (sits in the floppy bay and connects to a USB header on the mainboard) and a PCI-USB 2.0 expansion card. Externally i have a scanner MUSTEK CP600 (or something like that, "600" for sure, it's an old one from 1999 that connects to LPT), a printer Epson Stylos 830 USB, an external hard drive (IDE 120 GB MAxtor identical to the internal one inside a box that connects via USB), a USB-WiFi dongle "Micronet", a USB-Bluetooth dongle "Billionton" and a no-name USB-IrDA dongle. Further there are USB cables for mobile phones - Nokia PoP-port (all Symbian Nokia's), Samsung CDMA phone, Sanyo SCP 550 CDMA phone, all of which came with some sort of software to transfer files between phone and PC, such as Nokia's PC Suite, Sanyo's "Image Master" and the Samsung PC Suite.

When i install Vista, can i use the XP-drivers that came with each of those gadgets? Or do i need to have them all connected during install and Vista will attempt to use it's own drivers for each one?

How about software, will all (or at least most) software that works in XP also work in Vista? I understand that my Norton Anti-Virus and Firewall probably won't (i have the 2003 version) but how about things like Photoshop, MM Jukebox, Power DVD, Nero Burning Rom (old 5.x version)? How about Spybot S&D, Ad-Aware and similar products? How about all those video codecs (K-Lite codec pack) which i ABSOLUTELY need?

And, last one - will Vista (i'm planning to get the highest version, "Ultimate") allow tweaking like XP did via TweakUI? Such as removing the arrows from shortcut icons (i have over 100 icons on my desktop!) and setting a user account with admin rights to log on without need for passwords? Also re-locating of things like "my documents" to another partition?

My machine wasn't specifically "built for Vista" but since it's all new hardware (apart from the drives) it should not be too slow in any way.

I would apreciate any advise on this one.... thanks in advance.

Your Thanh

[-pops-]

Windows Upgrade Advisor will give you an idea of what will and will not work on your current machine.

[Thanh-BKK]

Windows Upgrade Advisor will give you an idea of what will and will not work on your current machine.

Thanks a lot!!

I downloaded that yesterday after you sent the link, just for fun i ran it here on my rather crappy office workstation - i guess this one would not even stand Windows 95 :) But it does run Windows XP, slow but sure............

At home it took me till roughly 2 am again to get all the external USB things installed...... i ran into an error with the setupapi.dll which had occupied some space in the RAM which was reserved for something else, after googling that i just replaced it with the (much smaller!) setupapi.dll from the old Windows install (recovery console is a wonderful tool actually!) and it worked, but getting the WiFi and Bluetooth configured took bloody ages again........ however once working, i ran the upgrade advisor, and voila - my machine is pretty compatible.

Here are the issues it found:

Not enough disk space - currently 6.8 GB free on c:, it asks for 15 GB

The sound driver AC97 is not compatible, but it provided me with a link to the manufacturer's website where a Vista driver is waiting for me :)

NOD32 AntiVirus - needs to be uninstalled before installing Vista - no problem.

It found "no information" about the modem, the WiFi (!!!), the LAN and the memory card reader (!!!), now those are devices i very much depend on. "No information", will they more likely work or more likely NOT work?

And - even if i delete the old Windows install, it frees up only additional 3.1 GB, so i'll end up short of 10 GB available. Will Vista install (it's an upgrade for christ's sake) or will it refuse? I can't get more free space, the partition is 30 GB and i have 300+ programs installed which i can't simply delete only to get space for Vista. I need to know that before i dish out the equivalent of two month's salary for Vista. (In Thailand you don't earn too much and i don't want a pirated one).

Once again i apreciate any help i can get..... thanks in advance :)

kind regards......

your Thanh

[-pops-]

Why are you so keen to get Vista?

I won't be installing it until at least the first service pack - and perhaps not even then.

XP does all I could want from a computer and as there is already another version of Windows (Vienna) planned for 2 years ahead, I might even give Vista a miss altogether.

[Thanh-BKK]

Why are you so keen to get Vista?

I won't be installing it until at least the first service pack - and perhaps not even then.

XP does all I could want from a computer and as there is already another version of Windows (Vienna) planned for 2 years ahead, I might even give Vista a miss altogether.

Hi :)

Well for one i like the looks of Vista - i use the Vista icon pack and theme already in XP, but i want that "Aero" stuff too :) Then, it's a complete new machine, so why not get a new OS as well........ since my Windows just died on me last week, along with the old computer, i will have to reinstall most of my softwares anyway, so why not do it in Vista..... instead of re-installing all those millions of XP hotfixes and updates, which will take hours to download and install and some of which have bugs that cause me to be unable to use my computer, i can put Vista on and will be fairly up-to-date, i don't think that there is SOO much stuff to download for it already........

I would stick to XP if i could get back into my old install, but there seem to be nobody knowing how to perform a repair install when setup doesn't detect the old install, so i am screwed one way or another.... so i rather get the new OS and start from scratch with that, than starting from scratch with the old one.

(If you need to buy a new car because someone totalled yours, would you keep the engine from the old one and put it in the new one just because it, too, runs?)

Kind regards.....

your Thanh

[Thanh-BKK]

Alright.

So i managed to free up 11 GB on the c: partition, and end of story - can't get more as long as i have XP still working there. Tomorrow is the "big day" - Vista will cost me close to 25.000 Baht, almost 2 full months salary, and i'm willing to go for it.

WILL IT INSTALL ON 11 GB???

I will do the upgrade (but buy a full version "Ultimate"). All other hardware (cable drivers for the phones) are compatible, so no problems.

Thanks a lot for advise......

your Thanh

[-pops-]

Let us know how you get on with it. :)

[Thanh-BKK]

Let us know how you get on with it. :)

Yes, will do :) As nobody can (once again) answer my question, i'll just install Nero today in the evening and burn everything that i have on c: now onto DVD's so, should i have to format to get enough space, i can at least do a clean install and have my data and stuff backed up.

I have read reports that it would do a clean install on a 10 GB partition, others say it needs roughly 8 GB, but the compatibility program said i need 15 GB and 40 would be recommended.

I could put the page file on the other drive (i've got 2 HDD's in that machine) and get an additional 768 MB by doing so, but it's still not 15 GB. So i'll just try and see what happens.

How's that with page files anywy, i have 1.5 GB of RAM and it never seems to use the page file at all as i always have roughly 1 GB of RAM free (only when i do heavy graphic editing or video conversion it will drop to as low as 450 MB free), how big should i set a page file? I usually have it at 768 MB, but when i installed XP new, it made a 2 GB one, which i resized back to the old size. I never get any page file related werrors, so i guess that's fine?

Kind regards.....

your Thanh

[Thanh-BKK]

Let us know how you get on with it. :)

So here we are.

Last night at 4 am i came to the conclusion that Vista sucks big time - it was a hard and heavy fight to get 15 GB (no it would NOT install below that!) but i got it done alright - at 15.02 GB free, the setup started fine. Compatibility check - and it listed several MORE incompatibilities which the upgrade advisor had passed as "Compatible" or "No Information". Anyway it started doing it's thing, copying files, eeeeeeextracting files (which took for ever!), installing etc.

At roughly midnight it did it's second reboot, it was in the middle of "completing installation", at 53%. BANG. Blue Screen. No boot.

I tried that again - same result. BSOD with "IRQL_NO_LESS_OR_EQUAL", i suspected some driver.

Tried safe mode - setup refused to continue.

Tried "fix startup problem" (nice feature in Vista, unfortunately soooo useless), waited for it over a full hour (!) to try and detect what went wrong - after an hour i cancelled that process, it didn't lead anywhere. I was ready to give up on it, wanted to get back to XP, already seen the option "Setup Rollback".

Activating THAT brought me back to the "searching for startup problems", just this time round it found it - "external media", no more information. Which one? Webcam? Card reader? I had all my USB gizmos connected......... ok, i then disconnected them all and restarted again, but this time i didn't even get the BSOD, instead it went into a rebooting cycle. Shoot!!

But then i played around a little in the many (MANY!!) startup and repair options, and i found this: "Load unsigned drivers" (or something like that). I selected that - and it booted - into Vista! But wait.... not very long.

I got to see the following message: "Your upgrade failed. Restoring previous Windows. Do not restart your computer" !!!

Thank you Microsoft. Two months of the average thai salary spent on a single DVD in a beautiful box, to be placed in some vitrine. Of course - no refund, the box is open, the seal broken. It doesn't work? Upgrade your computer na.... computer is already new? Well, tough luck bro........

But Thanh doesn't give up THAT easy. So today i did a repair install of XP. Altough Vista did restore it indeed, not completely so - bluetooth wasn't working and it's software refused to install, each time starting the MSI installer toggled a try to dialup to the internet, which failed, and that in turn stopped the installer, which generated an error "Installer was interrupted. Click OK to cancel installation". Also XP would only start in "Classic Style", each time i had to set it back to my Vista theme. Therefor the repair install.

It failed. BSOD too. No idea why - just a cryptic error with many zeros.

I then threw in the Vista disc again, this time radical in my mind - i wanted, yes WANTED to wipe the damn c: drive. I got no such option, however as i booted from that DVD i was given the opportunity to do a clean install - on c:, which still had 15.02 GB free. I was informed that all my fgiles would be locked in a folder named Windows.old and that i would be able to use the data later. OK, i said, go for it.

Took less than an hour. I think just little over 45 minutes in fact. And there i was, in my shiny, polished Windows Vista. No errors at all, with all USB gizmos plugged in. A "clean" install indeed.

Now it's after midnight again, and i spent the last several hours finding my way around the new OS. Wow, it certainly has the learning curve of Linux, and some of it's looks too. Still didn't find the "floating folders", but Aero is fine, i loved such transparency effects from my SuSE 10.0.0 that i was tinkering with prior to my hardware crash. Took me ages to find out how to get those HUGE desktop icons smaller. Oh, and i found that Nvidia's LAN driver sucks big time - i could connect with it, but sloo-oo-o-o-ow, i changed it just for fun to the one Vista installed originally, and that blazes along fine - speedy internet as i had before. I have Firefox 2.0 as default browser, no problems with that either. ATI's Vista driver is fine too, altough some options like "Video Overlay" would be nice, but at least i GET picture on the connected TV, which none of Microsoft's drivers can offer. Oh, and automatically logging on to my user account without the friggin password also works just like in XP, "control userpasswords2" and there ya go........

So i'll spend tomorrow with installing my softwares again... so far i got all those phone cablkes and their data suites running (all compatible), i got the printer running, and Firefox. Even found a driver for my old (that thing must be 10 years old./...) PCI dialup-modem of type Conexant WinaCHSf or whatever, i found an XP driver and Vista took it and works alright with it...... The Widcomm BT software is NOT compatible, and an update is there but it won't install unless it found my BT device, which it fails to do.... however the Microsoft BT stack will do for now since i connect the phones viacable anyway, and Nokia's DKU-2 driver IS compatible.

What hurts more at the moment is the fact that my USB-WiFi won't work either - it's a MICRONET SP907GK V3 and the latest driver for that one on the website is the one i have - from november 2005, and it is NOT compatible with Vista. So right now i can't share the internet with my boyfriend's laptop, i guess i'll need a new USB-WiFi thingy.

Oh, and my almost-most important software application runs just fine - uTorrent 1.6!

Now a few questions: Which USB-WiFi thingy is compatible with Vista? Please, just name me one and i go and get it. And - which Anti-Virus software can i use, must be compatible with Vista obviously? I think (haven't actually tried yet) that my trusted old 2003er Norton Internet Security won't do anymore......... i dislike any newer versions since they all root too deeply in the system, they're almost impossible to uninstall....... while the 2003 uses almost no resources and does an excellent job at keeping hackers and viruses out. I am open for some free ones - not that i generally dislike free software for such important tasks, but i simply never used anything but Norton, and McAfee which i'll never touch again.... sucks big time. How is NOD32 or AVG? Are they any good? For a firewall i stick with the Vista one for now, i used to run ZoneAlarm long time ago but didn't quite like it.

Oh, and will the K-Lite codec pack be compatible with Vista? Because i do lots and lots of video conversions, i need such software.

And now i think i am going to sleep. Enough of computers today.......... gosh there's more CD's flying around in this room than in Mangpong shop...........

Kind regards......

your Thanh

[Alan2273]

If you do not like Zone Alarm try Comodo.

http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/lic...gistration.html

And for a good AV, either AVG or Avast as they both worked when I tried RC1.

http://www.grisoft.com/doc/40/lng/ww

http://www.avast.com/eng/download-avast-home.html

[Thanh-BKK]

Hello :)

Thank yopu for the links. I have downloaded them both and will give them a try - as for the firewall, i'll stick to Vista's for now as it seems to work pretty well, heck it even tried to block MSN Messenger :)

As for the bluetooth, i found that Microsoft's bluetooth stack in Vista does actually a good job - considered that with XP's, i could not send any files to or from any of my phones, while in Vista this actually works flawlessly.... so i can stick to that too.

As for the USB-WiFi, screw that - i'll get a wireless modem-router, which enables my boyfriend';s laptop to catch the internet even when my machine is turned off, and mine will be online the moment i boot it up, no need to "dial up" first. My ISP offers these things at decent prices so i'll just get one, done. Doesn't need drivers too, i guess, as the LAN is working fine.

Some things i dislike in Vista: No Outlook Express!! The new "Windows Mail" does NOT support Hotmail, which is a bloody shame. However i can still use Outllok (from the Office package) for Hotmail, so i have to go along using TWO mail programs (i HATE Outlook but only for Hotmail it's fine).

Then there's no more "Windows Picture And Fax Viewer". All images open in "Microsoft Photo Editor", which has no "forward" and "backward" buttons - i can't quickly run thru galleries with it. The Media Center offers such function, but IT in turn can't zoom in on pictures....... i guess it's time for a different software for such tasks.

And why do i need to make myself owner of some folders first if i want to delete something? Heck, it's MY friggin computer! So ALL folders in it are MINE by nature! Security all nice and fine, but too much of it can be a bother.

At least i got almost all of my software working fine, even those video converters. Now i just need to get a new version of Nero since both 5.5 and 7.0 won't install under Vista......

And on a sideline, a tiny program which i used under Win95 back in the stone age already still works in Vista: RamPage, which puts a little icon into the taskbar that permanently informs about how much RAM is free. This works just perfect.

Oh, and my scanner Mustek 600 CP, which the upgrade advisor said it would be supported, is not - there's no drivers for it. So i guess it's time for a new scanner, finally.... it anyway is outdated, from 1999, taking an hour for an A4 high-resolution image........ maybe i'll finally get one of "them there USB scanners".

Well so far i love Vista (and that mini-media-player which sits in the taskbar once i minimalize it... so cute, even with video display!). It sure takes a hell of a lot more RAM during boot, but this drops - for the first 30 seconds after start i have 750 MB free, but once the HDD activity stops (machine fully booted) it "releases" 300 MB and i am at little over 1 GB free. Cool thing :)

With kind regards.....

your Thanh

[-pops-]

I'm really pleased it has worked out OK for you.

Stick around the forum - you may be able to help others with your vista experiences :)

[Thanh-BKK]

I'm really pleased it has worked out OK for you.

Stick around the forum - you may be able to help others with your vista experiences :)

I sure will, thanks for the invitation :)

Meanwhile running Avast AntiVirus free home edition, i googled them both and most people say that Avast is better than AVG, i downloaded them both anyway but installed only the Avast, installation was a real breeze and it doesn't slow down the startup at all, unlike Norton. Seems to consume quite some RAM tough but i've got enough of that stuff :)

Now i am going to install some more software that i still haven't gotten back working yet - my various media players (VLC btw works, didn't even need to be reinstalled, just clicking the .exe makes it run fine so i just created a shortcut to that).

Wish everyone here good success in tackling the various Windows problems... i'll be around :)

Kind regards....

your Thanh