Making Vista Ultimate more like Home Premium

[pc nerd]

I have XP Pro on my desktop PC & I know that I can stop & disable services. I
also know that some services depend on other services to run.

So, I have some questions about Home Premium versus Ultimate.

First question is: Will Home Premium allow one to stop & disable any
services - any services at all?

I want to build a PC & I think that I'd be perfectly happy with Home
Premium. But, I might want to try Virtual PC & I know that I need Ultimate
for that. I assume that Ultimate is like XP Pro & will allow me to stop &
disable services. Am I correct?

For example, I will be the only person using the PC so I don't need Group
Policy. Can that service be stopped & disabled? My PC will never be joined to
a domain. Can that service be stopped & disabled?

I might use the file encryption service.

So, in other words, I'd like to make Ultimate more like Home Premium. Can I
do that by turning off certain Ultimate features?

What are Ultimate Extras?

Thank you.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Most of the services you mention won't really interfere with anything if
you are not using them anyway, but you are correct that disabling the
"Wrong" things can cause trouble, perhaps not immediately but later.

When looking at things like that it is safer not to "Disable" but simply
choose not to have the service "Auto Start", that way it can run if it
needed.

I think for anyone who wants to experiment (As it seems you may want to
do later) Ultimate is the best option because at least you won't hit
problems if you decide to change your usage habits.

Get a copy of Acronis or Norton Ghost and back up everything regularly,
especially before any system changes. It is much quicker than having to
re install.

Are you using your present PC for parts or getting all new? Vista likes
faster hardware and more than 1GB of memory. I would strongly recommend
buying all memory from the same batch, not 1GB now and 1GB later etc.
4GB is better if you can afford it, although with 32 bit Vista it will
not all be usable.

 

[pc nerd]

Are you using your present PC for parts or getting all new? Vista likes

faster hardware and more than 1GB of memory. I would strongly recommend
buying all memory from the same batch, not 1GB now and 1GB later etc.
4GB is better if you can afford it, although with 32 bit Vista it will
not all be usable.

I want to build one from scratch.
So, then I can change Group Policy & joining a domain to Manual, correct?
Before I disable any services, I will do my research.
After I sent the e-mail, I browsed around the 'net & found out that I can
have Ultimate features in Home Premium by installing 3rd-party software.

Does Home Premium allow one to disable any services - any services at all?
If it doesn't, then perhaps I am better off buying the Ultimate version.

Get a copy of Acronis or Norton Ghost and back up everything regularly,
especially before any system changes. It is much quicker than having to
re install.

That's what I want to do. I originally considered getting Ultimate, but
after reading about it, I thought that maybe I'm better off getting Home
Premium. I know that the Complete Backup creates an image of the hard drive.
I read that if the program is used a second time it overwrites the image! I
don't want that! I want the ability to save multiple image files & use the
imaging software in conjunction with System Restore. Say, for example, that I
want to install some software. So, I create an image before I install the
software & then create a Restore point. If I have problems with the software,
I use System Restore to restore the system files & then I restore the hard
drive image. That way, it's as if I never installed the software!

 

[Charlie Tame]

I suggest you try these...

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3142354&CatId=285

which means you do not have to rip the case apart to keep multiple backups.

The older IDE versions are NOT good, this is for SATA only.

Acronis can save any file name you like so nothing gets overwritten.

I don't know about Ghost but I expect it is the same.

By the way I still turn off the machine before changing drives, I know
they say "Hot Swap" but I don't.

For what a drive costs these days you can have one for each operating
system, and any data you have can be read by all. And you can have a
drive for backups that cannot get corrupted because it is not plugged in

I now this sounds like more cost but actually think it works out cheaper
in the end.

 

[pc nerd]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I've been browsing around the 'net & apparently ALL versions of Vista allow
one to disable services or set services to "Manual".

I've been browsing thru books on Vista & I believe that I read that Home
Premium has a Group Policy, but that it is not editable or that it has preset
settings.

The PC that I build will have more than 1 hard drive. I haven't decided on
RAID.

I don't have to have the Documents folder on the C drive, do I? I can have
the Documents folder on another partition or another drive, can't I? How do I
do that? Do I change the location in the Properties dialog box?

So, I have to decide on which version - Home Premium or Ultimate.

 

[Carl]

To change the location of your documents folder in Vista, open the start
menu, right click on documents, and you will have the option to change the
location of the folder. You can do the same for music and pictures folders
as well.

 

[Charlie Tame]

Thanks for the quick reply.

I've been browsing around the 'net & apparently ALL versions of Vista allow
one to disable services or set services to "Manual".

I've been browsing thru books on Vista & I believe that I read that Home
Premium has a Group Policy, but that it is not editable or that it has preset
settings.

The PC that I build will have more than 1 hard drive. I haven't decided on
RAID.

I don't have to have the Documents folder on the C drive, do I? I can have
the Documents folder on another partition or another drive, can't I? How do I
do that? Do I change the location in the Properties dialog box?

So, I have to decide on which version - Home Premium or Ultimate.

Well, my point was that (Just for example) you could choose to install
Vista on one drive, XP on another, Linux on a third. If you have two of
those trays you can always insert any of those drives without booting
from it, and read the information from it, except of course if it is
encrypted, so I see the removable drives as a big advantage.

What you cannot do is take your XP / Vista drive and use it in a
different machine, you will end up with Activation / Validation problems
and also unless it's identical hardware driver problems.

But you CAN clone one drive and keep it so if bad things happen you can
just install that and be instantly up and running again.

 

[pc nerd]

I've been browsing around the 'net reading about Complete PC Backup. From
what I've read, the image files are bigger than the Acronis True Image files,
but if it will do the job, then I don't need to buy True Image. I'll have to
browse thru Vista books. Apparently, I was wrong. It is possible to save more
than 1 image. In addition to the complete backup image, I can save
incremental (or is it differential) images using Complete PC Backup. Very
interesting!

 

[Charlie Tame]

Well I should clarify that I suggest Acronis because I use it and
therefore can speak from experience - and I find their tech support team
really helpful - we did iron out a Vista specific problem in no time.
(Actually a driver issue).

 

[pc nerd]

I've been browsing around the 'net reading about Complete PC Backup. I read
something interesting. Complete PC Backup saves the files with a .VHD
extension. So does Virtual PC. So, according to what I read, backup files can
be mounted as virtual hard drives in Virtual PC & the contents read & files
copied.

Very interesting!

So, apparently, Complete PC Backup will do a complete backup as well as
incremental(or is it differential, I get the 2 confused!)

The more that I think about it, the more that I would prefer Ultimate over
Home Premium even though Ultimate has features that I would probably never
use.

Would you know if Complete PC Backup uses incremental or differential
backup? I hope that it is differential.

You stated that you use Acronis. Doesn't the PC have to be restarted before
Acronis will back up the files? From what I've read on the 'net, Complete PC
Backup will run from within Windows.