5270 build is running my laptop crazy! Well Vista works on my Toshiba M50, but the installation took about 6 hrs and my HD is CONSTANTLY running, unless I don't open any programs for awhile. Everytime I open a program or something HD doesn't stop working for awhile and is extremely slow to open.

I'm thinking it's my RAM (I only have 256mb eek!). 2.0Ghz Centrino, and 100gb 5400rpm. I ran the task manager and looked at my process usuage and it seems my CPU usage is fine (spikes up to 70% max with usually running in the 10% -40% range), but my paging files are almost maxed out at ~650mb. So therefore my thinking as to why I RAM is the culprit and probably the only one.

Any thoughts? Do you guys think the memory is the only bottleneck here? Thanks for your help!

In order to run Vista 5xxx builds "efficiently" you need a 15000 RPM SCSI drive to boot from. Even then it's like moving files between two 5400RPM drives on a machine powered by some 500MHz Celeron. I suggest you just stop using Vista until the builds reach 6xxx.

daemonforce exaggerates on the 15k rpm needed, but he is right, vista runs slow on any HD right now because of the beta state, wait for the febuary CTP and hopefully they will have gotten the bugs out for that. This should be the first code complete version. But i could be wrong also

MS has said in the past and present the last two things they do in developement is documentation and code optimization. You shouldn't expect to see decent speeds until they hit the RC phase.

That's the main reason I don't play with it. But I expect to run Vista as my primary home OS when they hit RC1 or RC2

Thanks guys. I didn't realize this amount of slowness is normal behavior for vista. I saw an XP beta run awhile back and it wasn't this bad...and it wasn't on a monster machine either. Well I'll try running again when my memory shows up,hopefully it helps

Oh an another thing...so I tried running win xp the other day to take care of some day to day stuff but it wouldn't boot! Finally figured out that I don't have 2 partitions and vista was installed on the same partition as xp!! I swear I thought I had 2 but I don't know what happened. Is there any way to get XP to boot or is a total HD swipe and fresh install of XP the only option?

I had similar problems, but figured it out.

After I installed antivirus, CPU usage went sky high. After half a day, I noticed that some of the services were in "starting" state. Removed the antivirus and everything was ok. Re-installed antivirus and same thing happened, so I took the antivirus away again.

The problem was I installed it with my user account, instead of built-in administrator account. With admin account, installation went thru ok, and all services are starting ok and do not hang the machine.

So, check your services to make sure they get started.

There's an indexing service that attempts to index all the files on the Vista partition and perhaps the entire drive. The activity should die down after a few days...

I kill the index service along with several others following a fresh installation. Yeah you better ♥ Longhorn. It's one of the best flavors of NT6 there is. Vista killed this feeling forever. O_o

*pokes the entire thread*

*stabs Vista*

**** the repository. It's a complete waste for all end users. I don't see what the devs need with it either since I'm a dev. O_o Maybe it's for hardware.

I have gone so far as booting PE and deleting the entire repository and THAT helped. For any annoyances besides these, you're out of luck.

You also stated that you'd need a 15K SCSI drive to run a 5xxx build efficiently so your reputation = 0.



You obviously don't understand the development/build process either. In reality, we probably won't see a 6xxx build, ever.

The Feb CTP will contain the same debug code as previous betas/CTPs so expect RAM usage to be the same. MS won't get to performance and optimization until winmain is feature complete.

I thought they were aim for a feature complete version for the Febuary CTP? does that mean they missed the dates for that?

Actually that was wrong. You need a drive that has something like NCQ available to take care of this mess. The speed helps but the drives themselves can't push for efficiency with speed alone.
You don't see me using a SCSI controller/drive right now do you?
I have seen how the PDC05 build acts on my 5400RPM EIDE drive and a 7200RPM SATA drive. At presentation it ran close to flawless on a SATA raptor. It runs somewhat like my workstation when I turn off DirectX, but I never experience a "hiccup" from this box. Vista does that at startup! O_o
No files moved over the network, no load, it's just getting to the desktop and flooding every directory with custom configuration settings like all NT6 builds do after installation.

Coming from a guy that didn't expect to see 4xxx builds at PDC/HEC03, I would say it's just as likely we see a 7xxx build by the end of all this. I'm sick of the garbage it's going through right now. The end user doesn't need 2GB+ of crap that slows down the system and we don't need all of these problems that come with it. Like the rest of us, I want this fixed and wrapped up...Now! o_O

It appears my half gig of PC4000 isn't going to make the cut. =/
*gets a manifest ready for building a 64-Bit machine*

i noticed that by killing hibernation things started to speed up too. you may also wanna try turning off all the rest of the ms security crap. vista cant really be used as a main os atm so there's no need for them. get something like avg free and leave win firewall on, that should be all the protection you need really, especially if you are using a router as a hardware firewall. in fact if your router has a decent firewall you may as well turn of win firewall altogether.

i have a 1.8Ghz 64-bit turion w/1GB ram and Ati Xpress 200m (128MB shared). Vista 5308 runs quite nicely when u tweak it a bit. still a bit slow tho but hey, its only a beta

BTW, how cool is Win+Tab!!