Hands on: Boost your laptop's performance

Ensuring peak performance from a notebook PC may mean ‘downgrading’ to XP

With each new version of Windows, Microsoft introduces technologies it claims will improve performance, but the end result isn’t always a faster experience.

Greater overheads along with more sophisticated visuals and indexing can seriously impact overall performance, and one of the greatest offenders in these respects is Vista.

Every owner of Vista has experienced the constant disk chatter after startup, as the Superfetch (and optional Readyboost) caches are populated.

Both technologies can improve overall performance once they’re populated with data, but that process can render PCs unusable for the first few minutes after power-up.

We benchmarked a freshly unpacked Sony TZ-series laptop running Vista and were shocked at how slow the default shipping configuration was.

At first glance the blame could be levelled at Vista running on modest hardware but, upon closer examination, the bigger culprit was a system clogged with promotional software trials and unnecessary startup items.

After a spring clean, the laptop was performing quite respectably. Here we’re measuring the impact of a memory upgrade along with the ultimate salute to Vista: wiping the hard disk and ‘downgrading’ to Windows XP.

‘Downgrading’ to XP
Windows XP is seen by many enthusiasts as a swift, efficient and reliable alternative to Vista, without compromising on functionality and support for modern devices.

As such, it’s not surprising that the solution to countless threads of laptop forums complaining of poor Vista performance is to ‘downgrade’ to XP.

The big issue with laptops though is that there are a number of often proprietary system components that require drivers to operate properly ­ and many modern laptops designed for use with Vista may not have drivers for older versions of Windows.

One solution is to re-use XP drivers for older models from the same company, as these can sometimes work fine. Of course, the device functionality may be reduced, or the older driver may not work at all, but it’s a trial-and-error process that many dedicated enthusiasts have gone through.

Before taking the plunge, do a web search for XP drivers for your particular laptop to see what’s available and what others have achieved with older software. A great resource for laptop users is Notebookreview.com.

Ideally the manufacturer will realise there’s sufficient demand for XP drivers and provide them itself. These are often posted ‘as-is’ for enthusiasts to try, with disclaimers that you may not subsequently enjoy the complete functionality of your laptop.

Sony is one such manufacturer, with its Vista laptops being criticised in many forums for disappointing performance. So in September 2007, it posted a set of XP drivers for all the Vaio computers that it shipped with Vista.

Sony explains that these drivers are “intended to provide basic system functionality under Windows XP”.

It adds “because these computers are optimised for use with Windows Vista, some functionality will be lost under Windows XP”.

For example, some function keys and special buttons may not work properly, while the battery life may not be as good.

We decided to ‘downgrade’ our own Sony Vaio TZ series laptop to see how XP compares with Vista on this popular ultraportable model.

Installing XP on a laptop
Installing Windows XP on a laptop is essentially no different from installing it on a desktop.

You’ll boot from the XP CD, install it on the desired partition then, once complete, install the required drivers for the various devices.

Since your laptop may not have access to the internet straight away, it’s a good idea to download the drivers using another system first and copy them either on to a CD or a Flash memory key for easy access.

And since the ‘downgrade’ will involve wiping the hard disk, it goes without saying that you should back up important data before proceeding.

Our test laptop was a Sony Vaio TZ150N, bought in the US, and searching for it under the drivers and software section of Sony’s support website brought up a full list of downloadable options for Vista Business and XP. Filtering the list for XP listed 32 drivers and utilities ­ we downloaded and copied them to a USB memory key.

With the drivers downloaded, we inserted the Windows XP CD into the laptop, restarted and began the Windows setup process; if your CD doesn’t automatically start, enter your Bios settings and set the optical drive as the first boot device.

After Windows completed its setup process, we installed the downloads one by one, starting with a Bios update followed by the chipset and graphics drivers, before working through the others. Sony advises doing these in a certain order and provides a list to follow. The process went smoothly.

After installing the Intel graphics drivers for instance, Windows Device Manager still showed a couple of exclamation marks against VGA devices, but pointing these towards the downloaded Intel folder gave them the information they were looking for.

Likewise, a couple of unidentified base components were happy when fed the Sony drivers for the Memory Stick and SD card slots, while the Realtek audio was satisfied with a further download from Windows update.

Windows XP also thought it had correctly identified the built-in webcam during the initial setup process, but unfortunately it didn’t work with Microsoft’s drivers. Installing Sony’s own camera driver, though, did the trick.

Finally we installed the Sony utilities, including those for power management and anti-shock hard disk support. The entire process took just less than three hours.

Was it worth it?
Before performing any formal tests, the laptop felt much quicker and responsive under Windows XP than it had with Vista.

In terms of performance, the laptop previously took one minute and nine seconds from cold power-up to the Vista login screen, and a further five minutes after logging in before the disk activity slowed to point of usability. So from cold power-up to productivity with the default configuration, you were looking at about six minutes in total.

In a previous column, we managed to cut that period down following logon to about a minute and a half, but in total from cold power-up, you were still looking at about two and a half minutes.

In stark contrast, our new Windows XP installation took just 55 seconds from cold power-up to complete readiness, with all the Sony startup utilities loaded and ready for action.

That’s a serious improvement over the default Vista configuration as shipped, and over two and a half times quicker than our best tweaking effort.

Shutting down was quicker too: the default Vista configuration took almost a minute and a half, while the new XP installation was completely powered down in 32 seconds.

Despite Sony’s disclaimers, everything appeared to work fine too, with no exclamation marks in Device Manager and all of Sony’s front-mounted buttons, keyboard function keys and both the battery and hard disk protection utilities happily talking to the hardware.

The Wifi, audio and webcam were all operational, and the processor was also automatically adjusting its speed depending on load.

Not only was the laptop quicker, but there was also significantly more hard disk space free. The shipping configuration with Vista had only half of its 100GB drive free for use and, while 7GB had been reserved for a recovery partition, that’s still poor.

After creating one partition for XP using all the available space and fully installing the operating system and all the Sony drivers and utilities, the laptop now had 88.5GB of 93.1GB remaining. That’s better.

Startup benefits
Last month we demonstrated how spring cleaning the junk from even a brand-new Vista system can seriously improve its startup performance, but if you’re willing to dispense with Vista entirely, there can be greater benefits by switching to Windows XP.

It may seem like a step backwards at first, and indeed XP is missing many of Vista’s bells and whistles, but if quick startups and a responsive system are more important to you than Flash features, then it’s well worth considering. ‘Downgrading’ to XP transformed our test laptop and, while it’s still early days, we’d highly recommend considering it on any Vista model that’s struggling.

Of course, the key to a successful downgrade is having the right drivers available, so always check with your manufacturer first and if they don’t yet offer any XP drivers for a Vista model, put a request in. Enough people complained to Sony for it to offer decent XP support for its Vista models.

If you’ve downgraded a Vista laptop or desktop we’d love to hear about it. We’ll also report on any long-term issues in running XP on a laptop originally designed for Vista.