The Pit BLOG

Do a Google search using the model number and Vista for both your printer and scanner. I have seen on quite a few sites that a lot of people with HP printers are getting them working using a different model printer's drivers that are included in Vista.

I would have to say yes dawg. Ive spent most of my time taking off what I dont want.
Ive also emailed support many many times. Heres one that I got from them about the D drive issue:

To delete D: partition:

1. Click Windows Start button and in Search type "Recovery Manager"
2. Click on Recovery Manager Program listed
3. Now the Recovery Manager Program will be opened
4. Click on Advaced Options button
5. Select "Remover Recovery Partition" and click Next
6. Now Select "Yes"and click Next
7. Select "Recovery discs already Created"
8. Click Finish.

Now the Recovery Partition will be removed and added to the C:
partition.

What Im trying to do is to clean house and wind up with a fresh empty computer. I so wish that Id gone with the xp tho. Im finding the more of my software I try the more I dont have any I can use any more. Im actually as I type running my old xp upstairs to do a job for a customer. I need to print off graduation invitations. Do you think that my one year old HP desktop printer works on this new vista..nope. I dont even dare try to hook up my scanner!
Back to the deletion of D partion. They did send me the recovery discs. so If I ever need that info I do have it, this way it would be off my puter. Am I thinking this correctly?
As with my photos. I copy to disc then clean out my entire computer so they arent taking up so much space anymore. and thats my theory of the D partion. Since I do have it on disc I dont need it on my puter taking up room.

Don't you mean HP's stuff ya don't want or need and spend time removing as soon as you get it out of the box it came in?

That's all fine, except then you'll lose the software that HP added with the OS on their recovery disk.

I haven't fully followed the thread but if you are looking to do a plain windows install, you may be able to get a copy burned off at one of your local computer stores. The company that I work for is a Microsoft partner and we are allowed by MS to give customer's copies of windows if the provide their COA sticker and we visually verify that they posses a licensed machine. Sounds weird but MS says that if someone has a license, we can provide a copy of the software that matches the license. i.e. retail for retail, sticker on machine for plain OEM, etc.

Let's hope that HP has changed their ways recently. :-)

Home Premium doesn't contain many of the networking tools/capability that Business and Ultimate have. That alone reduces memory usage considerably. You can also disable search and see a significant performance gain.

Well, its too late for that now. I have the HP and all I can do is learn from this. All full up of woulda, shoulda and couldas!...lol...
But to the CD's They should be here in a day or two. What my brillient plan is to house clean.
uninstall all the programs that I wont need. Vistaman(lol) noted about the media center. Ive not yet looked at it, and at this point dont see a need for it, but want to see it first. As I have muliple photos and more to come in the future, so for me it might be a better plan than with my last computer with hundreds of photo files. I did burn off to CD's, but I always had more to come!...lol..neverending process...
But again not knowing what Im doing is that Id like to just clean out everything that I deem unnecessary and then have the cd's to rely on if in the future I do need a full system restore.
I do however have no idea of what Im doing either, so Im running this all by the seat of my pants!

Vista Home Premium isn't that much different from the Ultimate version.

It comes with the rescource eating Areo interface, and the bloatware called Media Center.

I think these sources recommend 2 gigs minimum for Vista Ultimate and Business. I'd agree with those recommendations. Vista Home Basic and Home Premium should work fine with 1 gig of RAM. But RAM is like cheese for me, you can't have too much.

real or fake its all just a score of #'s designed for enthusiasts, either one has little bearing for anything...for example, what good is speed when a user clicks through views to change view sizes when they could hit CNTRL then scroll wheel to do the same thing quicker, i'm just saying many users dont have efficient pc habits to begin with. i think their best used for things like overclocking for example or to periodically check to make sure your PC is operating at the same performance level it once used to.



there is a program called Vlite (vlite.net)to cut bloat, you can remove pretty much anything you want such as default programs and drivers for hardware you dont have and customizations, driver integrations,force vista to do what it normally wouldnt..etc, however it has a bit of a learning curve for novices and so far is still in beta but should be finalized soon.

pcmagazine as well as several other respected sites recommend 2 gigabytes for vista, 1gig is just kind of an annoying minimum. however the readyboost feature helps alot (size should match system memory for best performance) and theres a method to force vista to use any usb memory stick simply by formatting the usb stick to higher clusters if i recall correctly

I'd be interested in knowing how you come out with the recovery CDs. My last experience with HP recovery CDs was that they restored the computer to exactly the state it was in as it came from HP, complete with the partitioned HD and recovery back on D:\. In this case, you'll be right back to where you started from.

Another thing to keep in mind, is that the reason HP and other companies create a separate partition for the recovery rather than install to C:, is that if the C: partition becomes corrupt you would no longer be able to access the recovery either.

This is why I recommend buying from a custom shop that can provide you with separate CDs for the OS and software. Had you been provided a separate Vista DVD, you could delete all partitions and format as a single partition again. Recovery/repairing/reinstalling would then be done via the Vista DVD, instead of from your computer. All software would have to be reinstalled separately. This is the only advantage to a recovery CD, as all software is installed with the OS.

Best of luck.

I see by your avatar you KNOW vista!
I found this interesting - part of an email I recieved from HP reguarding my low memory on a brand new computer that Ive not added anything to only been deleting since Ive gotten it.

I have verified the database and this issue is occuring with the latest
PCs preinstalled with Windows Vista Operating system. This issue is due
to errors in the latest Windows Vista Operating system. I would like to
inform you that Windows vista operating system is newly launched
operating system, there are many issues working with the operating
system. Microsoft and HP are working on the issues, and will release
software updates to resolve these particular issues.

Ive also found that to have a recovery elsewhere besides my D drive, I would be asked to spend from 20 - 40 dollars for the series of recovery discs. So after all the issues with HP I have had since my purchase, they have decided Ive had enough and they are sending me the series 'no charge'.
Then what I plan to do is to delete the recovery off my computer and continue with the other un wanted programs until I finally get rid of most of the bloat so as I can at least use this more comfortably.

Maybe arguments about things that have nothing to do with Vista would have been a better title for this thread.......

I'm referring to the lag/studdering/freezing for short periods of time when multi-tasking on an AMD that we've never experienced with the same programs on an Intel CPU, be it single core with hyperthreading or dual core with/without hyperthreading.



Ironic maybe, but the end result was better multi-tasking any way you slice it. Just because the other company has their product to market first, doesn't mean that the other wasn't working on the same technology at the same time or before. But even if either company was copying the other, I couldn't care less. In fact, I'd be disappointed if either company intentionally neglected to incorporate the best design into their components. That's what keeps prices down. Competition is great.



Partly why Penryn is supposedly going the same route.



So you're stuck with comparing what AMD will have to what Intel does have. Why not compare apples to apples, Barcelona to Penryn? Intel just released their expected results, which brag up to 50% more performance than the current quad cores. But don't take my word for it, use your sources to find out.

And while you need to rely upon others to do the testing for you, I do my own. I'd be willing to bet I've build and tested more AMD and Intel systems in the past 2 years than you've owned in your life.

I'll have a E6300 to test again later this week. But for now, we just got another price drop on C2Ds. The E6300 is now $15 more than the X2 4800. The E6400 is now $45 more than the X2 4800. I happen to have the E6400 in my own system. Read the results of a stock E6400 vs a stock X2 4800 and weep. If my memory serves me correctly, the E6300 will come out pretty similar, but I'll post when I have the results to prove it again.

http://oc.ultramaxcc.com.au/E6400_vs_X2_4800.htm




My bias toward AMD would go away in a heartbeat if they had a comparable product at a comparable price to Intel right now, and if the motherboard support was as dependable. As a system builder, I'm not interested in what either company offered a month ago. I want the best bang for the buck for my customers now. The C2D is the best bang for the buck right now IMO. There is no faster Pentium D, and there is no faster AMD in the same price range. Never was.



You're apparently picking and choosing which of my statements to disregard. I said AMD has nothing comparable in that price range now. I paid $130AUD for our 805Ds about 6 months ago. At that time (and when that article by TG was written), the X2 4800 was well over $300AUD. Even now the X2 4800 is $185AUD for me, and that's wholesale. Funny, the AMD prices have just gone up again while the Intel prices have come down.

Not as fast as I'd like? LOL! The 805D lost by 1 frame on the average frames/second and beat the X2 4800 by 9 frames on the max frames/second. I'd say it is every bit what I'd like. Just as fast or faster than the X2 4800 and much cheaper than the X2 4800. It was TG's article that inspired this:

http://oc.ultramaxcc.com.au/

I'm more convinced now than ever that we've made the right decisions all along.

"Toms Hardware"................"Of course, we ignore synthetic benchmarks when making this assertion, because they have no bearing on real-world PC use or behaviour."

I have been saying for years

I have run a decent Intel system, in fact, I am running one right now. An e6300 OCed to 3Ghz, 2GB of DDR2-1000 RAM, and an X1900XT. My first computer was a Pentium 3 when they first came out. My system after that was a 1.2Ghz Celeron based off the excellent Tualatin Pentium 3. Every system after that was AMD because it performed the best, and was cheaper than Intel. However, I recently upgraded to Core 2 when the X2 I intended to buy was only $10 cheaper than an e6300.

How can you have inferior multi-tasking? Isn't multi-tasking doing more than one thing at once? If so, how can there be inferior multi-tasking?

AMD's offerings never had hyperthreading, and don't need it. Do you even know why Intel used Hyperthreading on their Pentium 4 CPUs, when no other processor before it had it? I can tell you this: It's not because it was for better multitasking. That was a side effect of it. Core 2 doesn't have it, the Pentium series up to the Pentium 3 never had it. They all emphasized designs similar to AMD's offerings. Ironic is it not?

AMD doesn't need huge caches due to the memory controller being on the processor itself, so huge caches aren't needed to mask memory latency, since it will be low to begin with.

As for Barcelona, it will be as good as Core 2, if not better. I have sources to back that up. That's a lot more than I can say for you.

They may be being phased out, but that's no reason to leave the Pentium D out. The Athlon64s will soon be phased out, Core 2 will soon be phased out, everything will be phased out at one point, however obsolesence is not a good reason to leave out something, especially when it's inconvienent towards your bias against AMD.

BTW: http://www.tomshardware.com/2006/05/10/dua...res/page29.html

It seems that an 805D at 4.1Ghz isn't quite as fast as you would like.

805D overclocking project:

http://oc.ultramaxcc.com.au/

You don't have concrete evidence because its not true. Sysosft Sandra '07 and 3dmark '05/'06 all show the E6300 to be faster.



I didn't mention everything was on low priority because my XP is set to let windows decide. The only exception being AVG, which is set to always run in the backround. Its not BS, its ignorance on your part. Seems to me that you've never run a decent Intel system to know what they're capable of.



I can't speak for the USA, but in Australia AMD is no cheaper for the same speed CPU as Intel, unless you go with a single core and in that case you'll give up hyperthreading. While some DIY'ers might be intrested in single cores, no one is buying a new system expecting those CPUs in them. The old AMD single cores are a bit faster for running single applications. For multi-tasking AMD has always been and still is inferior.



We'll just have to take AMD's word for that since the Barcelona isn't even available for performance reviews yet. I hear its expected in 3rd quarter '07, and the price will make it only realistic for server applications. The Barcelona is a 2mb cache, where the high end C2Ds and C2Q are 4mb cache. The C2Q exteme is 8mb cache. Of course Intel claims they'll have their Penryn 45 nanometer chip ready before that. My guess is that AMD will still be playing catch up, but time will tell.



I conveniently left out the Pentium D because they are being phased out. There's only 4 models still available here, and all cost more than a faster C2D. But if you want to split hairs, my wife has an 805D (no longer available, and unfortunately suffers a little from no hyperthreading) in her system running @ 4.0GHz on air. It cost $130AUD and AMD has absolutely nothing in that price range here to touch it. I should have bought 50 of those CPUs when I had the chance.

The e6300 stock is not faster than a 4800+, I can tell you that right now. You sound so full of it, but to avoid being bit in the butt by the rules, I can't say I have concrete evidence.


Never mind, I think this seals the deal: "The 3800+ was overclocked to 2.75GHz with 2x512mb Corsair XMS4000 Pro, and still had lag when multi-tasking in both MBs."

Hmm, I guess my old stock X2 3800+ couldn't encode a DVD, surf the web, and run an AV scan all at once... Oh wait, yes it could. Granted, this was with 1GB of RAM, on a cheap Gigabyte motherboard.

"I can run my AV scan, a spyware scan, have Excel open, several browsers, and play V8 Supercars." You forgot to mention that you had everything on the lowest priority, because that would be a stretch even on a quad core. I call BS on this one.

The only catching up AMD has to do is financially. They've been trashing everything up to Core 2 that Intel has released, and where they couldn't beat them, they undercut their price by half or more.

http://techreport.com/reviews/2005q2/athlo...x2/index.x?pg=5

The Pentium D must not exist or something, because you conviently left out the fact that the only thing that beats the A64 is Core 2.

Judging by what I read from Extreme Systems, Barcelona (AMD's Quad core) will beat anything Intel has released to this date at the same clock speed. It's said to be 10% faster clock for clock than Core 2, which is quite an achievement if you ask me.

I posted on a couple topics here to try and help people and give an educated opinion. I don't really need any help running my business as we're doing very well thank you. Frankly, people who think a 3800+ playing a game by itself is good enough, are exactly the kind of people that we don't want as customers. Burn a DVD while playing that game, or turn on your AV scan and watch that game studder. Our customers know they can get a cheap computer to surf the internet from Kmart, Dell, HP, or Gateway. They'll get a 12 month warranty, just enough RAM to run the OS, and the video card of their choice. If they want a computer that'll burn DVDs while running an AV scan and playing a game without problems, they come to us to build it. There's 2 cheap system builders on every block and all of them are struggling.

The 3800+ is a great CPU for doing one thing. Its not very good for the way I use my computer and expect my customers to be able use theirs.

Our platforms aren't meant to be low end. We sell medium/high end systems at a bargain price. We'll build whatever someone asks for, but 99% of our customers don't know what to ask for. They just don't want the same problems that they had with their last (cheap) systems.

For the record, a 4800+ now costs me $170AUD. An E6300 costs me $207AUD. The E6300 is quite a bit faster than the 4800+, doesn't suffer from lag when AV is running during a game, and overclocks to 2.8GHz without even a voltage adjustment (that's faster than a stock E6700@2.67GHz for those who are paying attention, let alone an E6600), which rivals the FX6200 CPU.

Our AMD experience:
Both my wife and I had AMD systems about 7 years ago. I had a Thunderbird, and she had a Duron. My CPU was replaced twice under warranty, and then died just short of 18 months old. The wife's died earlier. So we got away from AMD completely for about 4 years as far as what we sell. We'll fix whatever a customer asks us to fix.

Unfortunately, more than just the CPU has to be considered when changing between AMD and Intel. The motherboard is also a huge consideration. We've gotten enough SIS and VIA boards back in the past 3 years to know that we didn't want to use them. We did substantial testing on AMD CPUs and motherboards about a year ago as we were considering offering AMD systems. We tested both single and dual core CPUs. We built 5 A64 systems, and changed components often to test motherboards and RAM. The systems were tested, stress tested, and benchmarked extensively, and then sold as used for much less than we paid for them with 2 year warranties. None of them were overclocked. So far, 2 of those CPUs (1 3500+ Winchester and 1 3800+ San Diego) have failed and 3 of the Nvidia Nforce 4 motherboards have failed. All of that in the past 2 months, and short of 1 year for the customers.

I built a system for myself at that time as well. Mine was a X2 3800+ San Diego which I used until 9 months ago. I went through a DFI Lan Party DR-SLI and a Gigabyte GA-K8nXP-SLI motherboard, both within about 2 months each and under warranty. The DFI was replaced with a reworked MB that had scratches on the back and wouldn't go into BIOS. When I RMA'ed it for the 2nd time because it wouldn't go into BIOS, the warranty was voided for the scratches by DFI. Go figure. The DFI board also took out a BFG 6800U OC when it went, which was covered under warranty. The 1st Gigabyte board was replaced with a new one, and that board is still sitting on the shelf in front of me. I'll keep it in case I ever decided to play with SLI again. The 3800+ was overclocked to 2.75GHz with 2x512mb Corsair XMS4000 Pro, and still had lag when multi-tasking in both MBs. I was pretty proud of the benchmarks of that system with 2 x 6800 Ultras in SLI, but the performance was always choppy at best. Anyone who knows anything about computer components knows that the components I've mentioned here are high end and quite expensive.

The motherboards that I've mentioned on my system as well as a couple other Nforce 4 boards and a couple Nforce 3 boards all had problems running a RAID 0 array. The systems would BSOD and upon rebooting the array would be corrupt. I suspect it was due to stray voltage spikes, as grounding the SATA cables to the other SATA controller, powering up, powering down, and moving them back to the Nforce controller would solve the problem most of the time, until the motherboards fried. The array would read fine and work fine again, maybe for a day and maybe for a week or 2. These systems had Antec 550 True Power, Antec 550 True Control, and I use a OCZ Powerstream 600w PSU. So that was the end of our AMD testing. However, I stay current with benchmarks and know computer components pretty well.

Now if you don't need RAID, if you don't multi-task, and if you have buckets of $ to spend replacing failed components, AMD may be a great option for you. I really don't mind so much when its my own system, other than the fact that I can't stand the lag. But we'd go broke offering a 2 year warranty on components that only come with a 1 year warranty (motherboards) and have proven unreliable to us. Both my wife and I are heavy multi-taskers. She wouldn't even use an AMD system after seeing the lag that they all exhibit under the right circumstances.

Then there's the Intel side of things for us:
My wife used the 805D on water cooling@4.1GHz until recently. I did a writeup on overclocking the 805D with air and water cooling in June '06 for another forum, with users that actually knew what I was talking about. Awesome CPU for $130, unfortunately no longer available here.

http://www.ultramaxcc.com.au/intro.htm

My AMD/SLI system was replaced with the E6400@3.2GHz. That's quite a bit faster than a stock E6700 and half the cost, although its only 2mb cache. In fact I've only seen reports the E6700 being overclocked to 3.6GHz.

AU is not the USA. AU phases out computer components as fast as the new ones become available. There are currently 4 Pentium D CPUs available to me, and all but the 925 ($157) are more expensive than the E6300. In fact, the 915 is now $308. Its all about supply and demand, and Pentium Ds are not in demand. Its only a matter of time before Pentium Ds are not available here at all.
(I can only buy OEM versions of XP now in lots of 5 as that's being phased out too.)

In the 5 years that our business has been legal, we have not had 1 of our motherboards with an Intel chipset come back for repairs. We have not had 1 Intel CPU fail, neither of our own systems nor anyone elses. I've run RAID 0 on every one of these systems without a problem, ever. We've used and sold every Intel Chipset over the past 5 years. We did have an MSI board that had LAN problems from the start. Otherwise our experience with Intel has been outstanding. I have customers bringing in P3s every other week for upgrades, but the systems are still running fine.

My current system is an E6400@3.2GHz and a single Geforce 7900GTX. The new system buries my old AMD SLI for performance and benchmark scores. I can run my AV scan, a spyware scan, have Excel open, several browsers, and play V8 Supercars, all at the same time with no lag at all. Intel components have come a long way in the past year. AMD hasn't improved anything for the past year, other than drop their prices some. From what I've been reading, it doesn't look like AMD has anything competitive in the works right now. But Intel is bragging another 40% performance increase with their Penryn (45 nonometer) CPU.

Face it AMD lovers, AMD has a lot of catching up to do at the moment. I'm not going to knock anyone's single core AMD/Intel system when they do what you need them to do. But those aren't the customers that I'm targeting either.