XP or Vista?

[Guest richard_s]

I've just got the final bit for a new desktop PC at home and I'm now wondering whether to go with XP or Vista on it.

 

Its an Athlon 6000+ X2 processor with 3Gb of Ram and a 7600GS 512Mb graphics card and will have one 120Gb and a 250Gb hard drive in it. I plan on using it as a media jukebox and and some light gaming. I already have a laptop which runs Vista Home Premium as my main machine so I'm in a bit of a quandary as to what to put on this so any thoughts would be most welcome.

[mattx]

I would stick Vista - ultimate on it - [ even though I think it's just terrible ] and XP as a virtual PC......

I would also stick a virtual Ubuntu & Windows 7 [ beta ] if you have room......

[DrPerceptron]

I'd just stick the Windows 7 beta on there. Surely you'll upgrade when it comes out, in which case, why bother buying a license for something else?

 

Running Win 7 on all sorts of things and never once had a problem with it.

 

Haven't tried Theme Hospital on Win 7, but all my other games work so far as I can tell.

[Guest richard_s]

I have licences for both Vista Ultimate and XP Professional lying around so either is not a problem I also have a copy of Windows 7 as well but haven't installed it as I heard that there were issues with MP3's and as I have almost 50 Gb's of MP3's I didn't want to risk them.

[DrPerceptron]

hmmm, all of mine seem to be ok...

 

I do remember it widely being published that there is a hotfix that fixes it though...

[kmount]

If this is new build how is the 3GB being made up? - It would make far more sense to buy 2x2GB's at the moment to give you more scope later.

[Guest richard_s]

If this is new build how is the 3GB being made up? - It would make far more sense to buy 2x2GB's at the moment to give you more scope later.

 

Its made up of a 2 and 1 Gb sticks of DDR2 667 that I had lying around at home. The only new component is the processor the rest is stuff I had already.

[kmount]

Fair enough, in that case I'd say Vista because it's for media sharing etc.

[MrEprise]

The issue with MP3s in Windows 7 is only when you use Windows Media Player or Explorer to edit the metadata of an MP3 with a header larger than 16 kilobytes or allow WMP to do it for you which then corrupts the MP3 by cutting the first few seconds of the audio. This is then irreversible and requires a patch for both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

 

Source and more info here

[Guest richard_s]

Just put Vista Ultimate on it and all is well apart from one thing the Graphics card only gives me 640*480 resolution along with 4 bit colour I have even Downloaded the latest nVidia drivers for it as well

[kmount]

Unusual that ...

 

Does it show OK in Device Manager as installed etc?

[Guest richard_s]

Unusual that ...

 

Does it show OK in Device Manager as installed etc?

 

Its shows it just fine. Have put another drive into it and am installing XP on that just to check it out and see if it is a Vista thing or not.

[kmount]

Hmm...

 

I was reading about odd compatibility issues with the Nvidia GS' and Vista with particular motherboards but it seems to imply an error should be present in Device Manager.

 

Out of interest, which board are you using and have you checked your BIOS version against the latest avail?

[Guest richard_s]

Its an Asrock N61P-S and it has the latest bios on it as I only up dated it a couple of weeks ago before my friend decided to get rid of it and put a an SLI capable board into his machine.

[kmount]

I note it's got onboard graphics, I wonder whether it's giving a conflict of grief!