Vista and ASIO soundcards?

[capslock]

Upgrading to an AMD X2 3800+ CPU and RS690G mainboard to save power, have fanless operation and a tad more speed (currently single core 3000+). As my current mainboard has a Via chipset, I may have to reinstall XP from scratch anyway.

Is there any point in going to Vista?

Main problem: there is no Vista driver for either my M-Audio Delta 410 (needed for Soundeasy) or my ESI Quatafire 610 (my highest quality D/A and A/D with <115 dB THD and - 135 dB noise floor, used for measurements and Thuneau playback).

I have read snippets that most (all?) XP drivers will install on Vista 32 and that one can disable the signature feature on Vista 64 (but am not sure whether that applies to 32 bit drivers or uncertified 64 bit beta drivers).

One guy at the ESI support forum said he got the Quatafire 1.19 XP drivers running with "minor modifications" but failed to say what those were or what version of Vista he was running.

[Hdale85]

You should have posted this in the Tower Of Power area probably.

[ThomasW]

If you have the option of installing XP that's what I'd use. I have 5 PC's, one's a notedbook that came with Vista and I hate it.

Pista at Vista....

If you have the old XP hard drive intact, I can tell you how to get it up and running with your new hardware without having to do a clean install.

[fjhuerta]

I find no real reason to update to Vista... Microsoft gave us trial copies for our office laptops. I couldn't wait until I could go back to XP. Slow, buggy, slow, memory hog, compatibility issues...

XP works as it should...

[Scottg]

Is there any point in going to Vista?

I have read snippets that most (all?) XP drivers will install on Vista 32..

I have Vista and like it quite a bit more than XP. (..once I turned off the user account control).

However, drivers are still *VERY* problematic.. and it can be a memory AND cpu hog. (I have slightly unstable video drivers and working (though beta) audio drivers - but the driver problem doesn't look like its going to be resolved anytime soon.)

Answer.. I'd give Vista at least a year before considering it - in that I don't see the driver problem being resolved anytime soon, and by then better hardware should be available at lower costs.

[sprint_9]

Vista sucks, until there is any real reason I wont be going to it and with Microsoft continuing support for XP through like 2012 or something like that there is no reason and as far as Ive experienced Vista is slow, resource hungry, and not compatable with a bunch of good software.

[wildfire99]

I'm wondering myself if I'm going to buy a bunch of XP copies and hoard them after MS hits the XP retail kill-switch on Jan 31, 2008.

[capslock]

If you have the old XP hard drive intact, I can tell you how to get it up and running with your new hardware without having to do a clean install.

If you have a good way of doing it, I'd be glad to know.

From what I was told, I could uninstall the Via drivers, hopefully start XP in protected mode on the new board and hope for the best. I was told chances were that it would not start at all or it would be awfully slow because the chipset drivers patch into the Kernel, and removing them would sometimes have that kind of result.

[ThomasW]

Do a variation of the process described in the link below

http://www.htguide.com/forum/showpost.php4?p=81615&postcount=1

Start off by extracting the two program files from an existing XP install disc and burn them to a CD. Do this with a different PC than the one where you've installed the new mother board

Next boot your old HD into safe mode and copy the files from the CD to a folder. While in safe mode run the Sysprep.exe program by clicking on the file name. Let the Sysprep program turn off the PC, sometimes this takes a few minutes, so be patient..

Doing this cuts ALL the ties to the existing hardware driver files including the VIA drivers.

Now reboot the old hard drive and XP will do a quick reinstall. Activation of the install with the software key will be necessary as XP reinstalls itself...

I've used this process for years with numerous motherboards in multiple PC's.

[cjd]

Vista is not an upgrade from XP in any way, it's a lateral move with more eye candy and poorly implemented (but good at a basic level) security improvements (so poorly done most people turn it off). You lose OpenGL performance and increase memory requirements (double what you're used to needing).

The process Thomas is talking about works like a charm.

C

[sprtfan]

This would save me a lot of time and trouble upgrading my HTPC. The question I have is would you need to install all of the drivers again for add on cards like a sound card? The reason I ask is that the sound card I have is a real pain to set up with ASIO drivers and get it to work right and would like to avoid having to remember how to do it again. I'm guessing I'd have to install the drivers for the sound card again but thought it wouldn't hurt to ask.

[ThomasW]

Don't have a clue whether or not XP will find the old ASIO drivers when you upgrade your HTPC.

Sysprep cuts the associations with ALL hardware drivers. That why it works when one is doing wholesale changes like new motherboard, memory, CPU, etc. (it's intended use is of course IT situations when they need a 'generic' version of XP to install on multiple and different hardware configurations.)

Our ability to use it when upgrading our individual PCs is a happy accident....

[sprtfan]

I'll give it a shot and see. Thanks for the info.

[capslock]

Failed spectacularly for me. Reason might be that I was upgrading from a single core Athlon 64 to a dual core, so a different HAL was needed.

[ThomasW]

Failed spectacularly for me. Reason might be that I was upgrading from a single core Athlon 64 to a dual core, so a different HAL was needed.

Worked fine for me when I did the single core to Athlon 64 dual core a couple months ago.

[Dennis H]

I see Dell has backed off their Vista-only policy and is offering XP on their small business computers and few of the home computers.