Hands on: Lighten your laptop's load

With every new version of Windows, Microsoft adds features and visual enhancements which take their toll on your hardware.

New or upgraded desktops can normally cope, but laptops frequently suffer with operating systems such as Vista.

I’ve heard from numerous people disappointed by the performance of a Vista laptop.

I count myself in this group, having bought a Sony Vaio TZ with Vista Business, only to find it unacceptably slow in operation.

I improved matters by uninstalling non-critical services and startup items, but in the end switched to Windows XP. This resulted in a highly responsive and usable laptop which I remain happy with.

We subsequently received many messages in the Hands On mailbag from those who have gone through a similar process.

Gordon Moore wrote to say he’s glad he ‘degraded’ his Compaq Presario V6254EA to XP.

“It wasn’t easy at first, as the machine used a Sata drive and I didn’t have a floppy available to load the driver, but I discovered a Bios option that switched the Sata (serial ATA) mode. I’m not sure what impact this had but my machine now works like a dream.”

We suspect the original Bios setting on Gordon’s laptop had the disk controller working in AHCI mode. This enables all the features of a Sata drive, but XP will require a driver for the controller as its setup process begins. Switching to IDE or compatibility mode may not exploit all the features of your Sata drive, but will allow XP to install without a controller driver.

John R Dougall wrote with a similar experience when downgrading his Fujitsu Amilio Pi2512 to XP.

“I started the XP installation only for it to quit early on, unable to continue. I realised it was a Sata hard drive in the Pi2512 and my XP CD supported IDE only. After streamlining Sata drivers into a new XP CD I managed to get it all installed and, following some internet trawling, I downloaded the remaining drivers and all was well.”

Creating a custom installation disc is a great idea and allows you to include drivers for Sata controllers – in fact in the absence of floppy drives on laptops, it’s the only practical way of doing it. Nlite OS is an ideal tool for this kind of thing.

John Atherton’s Vista laptop was also running slowly, but he stuck with the original OS, albeit with some modifications.

“It would take about four and a half minutes to start up and connect wirelessly to broadband. Sometimes it took as long as eight minutes to fire up Windows Photo gallery and the hard disk never went quiet, even after 20 minutes.