rolling back to xp tonight from windows7

[ford442]

1. turn off aero and poof - win xp
2. win 7 has been FAR more stable for me - NO random BSODs - and better performance overall than xp 32bit on the same pc.
3. compatibility actually tends to move forward in time - not backward. i can use Cubase 6.5 and REAPER 4 x64 here in Win 7 x64 Ultimate. can we say that of xp?
3. the only apps i have that won't work are crap anyway and there are clear reasons why their authors didn't make a small update for them.
4. i hate samplers that need proprietary things to work - 16bit is an unreasonable mode to work in - perhaps you need a more proper workaround such as a linux virtual machine if you need to keep that ancient sampler?

i would be very worried in this day and age using an OS that is 11 years old next friday.. if i had complaints who am i going to call? the ghostbusters?

[metamorphosis]

1. turn off aero and poof - win xp

Not even remotely... not even visually, in point-of-fact-
m@

[Kaboom75]

Win XP is limited to 3.5Gb of RAM in total.
2GB RAM per application.

So your DAW is limited to 2GB but Jbridge will help you out with that so you can use all 3.5GB of your 6GB RAM.

Turn off Win 7 Aero and the windows 7 graphics is run on the CPU instead of the GPU slowing down the CPU

[Harry_HH]

1. turn off aero and poof - win xp
2. win 7 has been FAR more stable for me - NO random BSODs - and better performance overall than xp 32bit on the same pc.
3. compatibility actually tends to move forward in time - not backward. i can use Cubase 6.5 and REAPER 4 x64 here in Win 7 x64 Ultimate. can we say that of xp?
3. the only apps i have that won't work are crap anyway and there are clear reasons why their authors didn't make a small update for them.
4. i hate samplers that need proprietary things to work - 16bit is an unreasonable mode to work in - perhaps you need a more proper workaround such as a linux virtual machine if you need to keep that ancient sampler?

i would be very worried in this day and age using an OS that is 11 years old next friday.. if i had complaints who am i going to call? the ghostbusters?

I got XP pro (SP2)in my main DAW and Win7 64bit in my laptop, I'm with the
Live 8 and using mostly same plugins in both platforms. I agree with above
that Win7 is very stable, especially after the Live 8.3 onwards much better than the XP. For some reason after Ableton changed their installer in in 8.3, the XP has been really instable with me.
Does anyone else have same kind of experience with the XP/Live? Harry

[Kaboom75]

Live 8 will crash soon as it reaches its 2GB limit in Windows XP.
Win 7 gives Live 8 3.2GB to play with before it crashes so Win 7 is more stable. all depends on the sizes of your mixes. With Live 8 64bit and Win 7 64bit I no longer get any crashes.

[Harry_HH]

Live 8 will crash soon as it reaches its 2GB limit in Windows XP.
Win 7 gives Live 8 3.2GB to play with before it crashes so Win 7 is more stable. all depends on the sizes of your mixes. With Live 8 64bit and Win 7 64bit I no longer get any crashes.

I was commenting (above) the difference what happened from Live 8.3 onwards.
I've used Live since the version 8.0.4, worked smoothly and new versions installed in 1 minute, but now since the Ableton has changed the installer in the version 8.3 onwards, the same sessions which run well in the Live 8.2.8 won't even open in the 8.3.3. What has changed is that the new Live installer forces you to instal the program to a certain location, Ableton motivates this by the idea that they want the program located in the "all rights"/public
location in the computer. This change messed at least my DAW. Harry

[metamorphosis]

Turn off Win 7 Aero and the windows 7 graphics is run on the CPU instead of the GPU slowing down the CPU

Not correct.
Aero just sends more calls to the GPU than without Aero, because there's more to do.
Benchmarks have show performance improvements without aero. I haven't seen any that show an improvement with it.

Live 8 will crash soon as it reaches its 2GB limit in Windows XP.
Win 7 gives Live 8 3.2GB to play with before it crashes so Win 7 is more stable. all depends on the sizes of your mixes. With Live 8 64bit and Win 7 64bit I no longer get any crashes.

Not correct either.
2GB limit if you don't have 3GB switch enabled in XP, otherwise 3, and I show 3.6GB available in XP (600MB being more than enough for the backend of a stripped xp).

Win7 32-bit has the same limits, except you get less memory to play with because 7 uses more.
Win7 64-bit doesn't have a 3.2GB per-app limit aFAIK.

[Harry_HH]

Turn off Win 7 Aero and the windows 7 graphics is run on the CPU instead of the GPU slowing down the CPU

Not correct either.
2GB limit if you don't have 3GB switch enabled in XP, otherwise 3, and I show 3.6GB available in XP (600MB being more than enough for the backend of a stripped xp).

Win7 32-bit has the same limits, except you get less memory to play with because 7 uses more.
Win7 64-bit doesn't have a 3.2GB per-app limit aFAIK.

How to check in the Win system if this 3 GB switch is enbaled or not? H.

[Kaboom75]

Win 7 64bit PRO is limited to 256GB of RAM use. Ok some messing with Win XP code gets you to 3.5GB that leaves around 2.5 GB for the DAW.

[hibidy]

Ah, memories. I remember going through all that. Then I went x64/win7 (just 8 GB ram) and never looked back.

[metamorphosis]

How to check in the Win system if this 3 GB switch is enbaled or not? H.

Have a look at the guide in my sig, -> Additional tips -> Hardware Stuff.

Win 7 64bit PRO is limited to 256GB of RAM use. Ok some messing with Win XP code gets you to 3.5GB that leaves around 2.5 GB for the DAW.

That's quite true, however it all depends on what your needs are.
If you have needs for massive samplebanks, then you may find it easier to go with Win7 or XP x64,
however if you don't, XP is faster in almost every respect (including multicore usage, as rifftrax has pointed out in another thread).

[ford442]

i personally got a huge speed increase moving from xp 32bit to win 7 64bit on the same quad core computer.. now i have 8gb ram and performance could not be snappier..

[metamorphosis]

There can be significant driver differences depending on the hardware you have - so graphics, for example, could be faster, depending on your model - however for pure cpu speed you can't beat xp at the mo, AFAIK, but win8 might fix that.

[metalifuxx]

I was thinking of doing this very same thing recently ( I have an old P4 duo core from about 2006). I don't like Win 7 either. I want my XP back but was forced to install Win 7 due to the SATA driver issue I did not know about. A virus did some weird things to the original OEM hard drive, so I was forced to get a new SATA hard drive (wanting to save data from the original hard drive and not reformat it yet, also buying an external SATA enclosure). But the main drive is only 80gb. The new one I got is 500gb.

I have a perfectly good working scanner and printer that are not compatible with Win 7 and are big paper weights now.

Performance issues with Win 7 and this machine and XP are not what it was with a streamlined Win XP. Especially when this is a stock bare bones machine with integrated graphics on the mobo. I don't play games or do heavy video editing so I had no need for separate video card. I get lagging graphics and run out of memory to play vids a lot of time. Never ever had that with XP even under heavy multi tasking. I have the max allotted 4 gigs of RAM for a 32 bit system as well.

I thought it was nice that Win 7 had all my drivers already preloaded for my Dell. I was going to install all the ones I needed but it said I already had more up to date drivers...nice...but... then I start using Mozilla and get my normal DAW and other progs I use running. Random BSODs start happening. I had lost track of how many I actually got, but it was often and almost predictable. The screens always said different things so I could not initially pinpoint what the conflict was. I maybe encountered 1 serious BSOD crash ever on this computer and Win XP in 6 years of having it. I would leave the computer on for months at a time without needing a restart with XP. This was happening for weeks multiple times a day. I finally got Google Chrome to be somewhat stable but it was still happening. Then after multiple swearing and WTF bouts, I just said F*ck it and decided to install the old ancient Dell Win XP drivers, what's the worse that could already happen. Poof, almost like magic, Win 7 and my computer became stable.

I still have performance issues with Win 7 being a RAM and CPU hog, video laggings, freezing up, more clicks/pops in audio apps effects/synths at a lower reported CPU usage in Live as opposed to Live with XP ( I could get double CPU usage before that would happen in XP)

I still want to switch back to XP though because of these recurring niggles.

My question though is, since I have Win 7 and the SATA drivers already there for the main drive, can I insall Win XP over Win 7 with the XP installation recognizing the new SATA drivers, or do I still have to do the NLite thing? I find it odd because the stock SATA hard drive that came with the computer had a few Windows XP reformats and installs back onto it without issue and always recognized the drive.

[metamorphosis]

You'll need to do a fresh-format install if you want to go back to XP.
Copy all your relevant documents onto an external drive (you should be backing up your data regularly to protect against data loss anyway),
boot off the XP install, format the drive and reinstall.
If you want a good nlite config I have one I made the other day which's only a 158MB ISO with SP3 and all subsequent updates slipstreamed in, runs damn fast, so just PM me (for config file, not ISO).

re: drivers, individual drives do not need drivers, only the drive controller chipset on the motherboard. It is possible that your drive is one of the newer 4k-sector ones, in which case, Win7 will already have created the partition on it to coincide with a 4k boundary - so you should be fine to just install XP to that partition.

More details on the 4k sector thingy:
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/storage/are-y ... drives/731