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I don't like Vista also but when you get used to it and find all the versions of you favourite programs that work with it and new drivers. It is not all that bad but very slow on 32bit computers with only 512MB of memory. Especially those cheap Acer laptop's that came with Vista Home Basic.
I managed to find a back up program "Acronis" that made a HDD image as my "Drive Image" doesn't work with Vista. I then got a larger HDD, partitioned it suitably with F32 partions but remembering that Vista requires an NTFS partition. Installed Windows 98-2e on Drive C:, XP SP3 on drive D: then put the Vista image back on drive E:. With drive F: and G: as general storage and holders for drive images to make a multi boot computer. Works perfectly now although When running Vista it is always appears as drive C:
By the way to be able to get Vista back onto the computer I had to apply a little trick of using a Vista disk with XP to start an advanced installation, nominating the partition to be used for installation. This gives the necessary boot.ini now in the boot sector. Once this was done I was able to restore the image from XP with Acronis without bother.
Windows 98 gives me a DOS capability for program manipulation. XP runs as well as on my main computer and Vista allows me to test programs for Vista compatability. I also increased the RAM to 1.5GB and edited the UAC . This more than doubled the access speed to vista. It now starts in 1 1/2 minutes instead of 4 1/2 minutes. XP is up and running in less than a minute.
However I won't change from XP for normal operation. It took me three years to go to XP but when it first came out I definitely prefered Windows 98-2e. Then some of the newer programs and features required a mandatory XP SP2 so I gradually acclimatised to XP.
Barry
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