I'm not gonna say it. someone else can, but I'm not gonna say it.

What are the specs of the laptop? how much RAM, what processor, etc?

the important statment there is: 'Created using that liscence'

What they were referring to there was doing a 'slipstream' build. This is where you take the system files from the computer you are...

CoolGamer: the vista experience score is yes, basically, a performance rating.

and it lies worse than a kid with red paint on his hands.

what specs?

yes! the thing with BartPE, is that it is a pre-installed total enviornment. you burn it to a disk, and you hit f8, f2, (or whatever the first screen tells you to to access boot options, boot...

Virtual is right on that. the OEM copy is tied to the computer you bought it. But lets go out of the box for a second and say you didn't care.

if that is the case, you'll need to do an over the...

Here's the wikipedia article on it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overclocking

I don't personally overclock, because I need solid reliability, not better performance.

Well, the score is based entirely around hardware. You 'can' overclock, but I do not recommend it. If you do choose overclocking, get some very good cooling.

Well, the numbers are part of a scale that helps you understand what your computer is capable of. A computer that has a 2.0 is more suited for general office duties, while a 6.0 is usually one built...

how much juice is your power supply putting out? I had a problem like this one except with XP. kept crashing when loading HL2. Then I found out my cheap-o power supply was only giving 330V. I...

There is no option to downgrade vista to XP. they are entirely different os's.

and yes, you can activate it over the phone. there are ways to circumvent registration as well, but try to get it...

If you re-evaluated your scores, vista runs the tests again. You might have had something running or taking up graphics power this time, or, it might be new drivers too. I updated my drivers one...

I'd first recommend you do some quick research. find out what version of vista you have on your computer. my guess is home basic, so I'll assume that bitlocker hasn't been enabled. If it has, you...

true for what jbennet said. microsoft revamped the UI, and most of the default registry options have changed.

While i don't recommend doing it, if you unlock the true admin account, you can log...

I don't want to sound like i'm pimping links, but one organization (other than here) that i work with is:
http://www.bsodtv.org
Also, a general 'curiosity' is usually all you need to start learning...

minus a graphics card and a sound card, that's basically what my buddy is running on his computer. his score is 5.0.

I would think about getting a dedicated graphics card kartik. 200 bucks would...

Everybody has been going crazy about how teh hax0rz have cracked vista registration, and throughout the whole process, Microsoft has been promising to shore up every last one.

The problem with...

the generic radeon drivers should work fine

what brand is your graphics card? i've noticed that with my ATI Radeon, the memory useage seems 100% all the time. I know this isn't the case, so I assume this problem is with my monitoring device.

also, possibly they released a newer drivers version from when you first scanned. that could explain things as well.

your first score probably happened when the processor was under a load or something.

the two values 'are' very similar. barring the reason your base score changed being like, one of your...

it is 'not' possible. the dell upgrades are proprietary. they won't work properly if you have any non-dell stuff installed. at least, in theory. I don't know anyone who owns a dell anymore.

hasn't mac had the equivalent of UAC for ages? where to do system administrator tasks, you needed the administrator password?

and besides, i hate off-white.

that's a pretty good score for ultimate edition even.

i had a 4.1 (before i 'upgraded' to the ati drivers for my graphics card and got busted to a 2.9

I'd go so far as saying do it on a clear day. There is nothing quite as horrid as a bad bios flash.

on second thought, take it to the shop anyway, unless you are quite certain that you won'd...

Googling said it could be anywhere from a trojan to the AIM viewpoint media player.

DON'T LET IT RUN! just in case.

if you are running AIM, uninstall it and restart. If the problem goes away,...

I actually haven't run into that. I installed XP on a slave drive with Gentoo on the other. I had to re-install the boot loader, but it worked alright.

microsoft hates competition. duh.

I really don't know the actual reason for it. I'm guessing some security thing. (First partition = Vista's security blanket?)

It needs to be on the first partition on any drive. I had this problem specifically with beta2, and i just installed my current version on its own drive. also, be wary when installing it with any...

I have almost exactly the same setup as jbennet. it takes me 1m 40s from bios to browser window.

well, recently, a method was developed to be able to register an illegal copy of vista business by running a VMware version of a KMS server. Officially, I wouldn't recommend using this method,...

yeah, i found like 8 different ones, all different colors and displays. and yeah, the default vista one just doesn't work. could it be that it doesn't like p4's? more likely, it's the...

you underestimate the user's uncanny ability to be stunningly retarded. I'm not saying I, your you, or most of the people here. I'm saying 'they' will. the wonderful people who jam envelopes into...

well, i lost a lot of faith in the experience score system. I updated my graphics card drivers to the actual ATI ones, because i was getting crap framerate, and after, was getting much better...

That's just the problem with being at the top. People attack your product any way they can.

but a system to tell if we wanted to install something or not automactically wouldn't be that hard.

If you have installed 'anything' in vista, you have encountered one of these 'This program is trying to run 'blah blah blah' and windows needs your authorization to do this.' And you need to click...

Ok, fair enough, rocky start for you. But, i've already solved all those problems with my installation. I mean, there's got to be a few differences between OEM and retail, but not much. I just did...

aww. and here I am, thinking I had you convinced jbennet...

I think it just died recently. I used it myself when i needed drivers in the beta versions of vista... Sorry for leading you off in the wrong direction.