I purchased Windows Vista Ultimate 3 months ago. It all started out Great. Slowly problems started to happen. First, my Microsoft outlook would crash. The information was imported from XP as I am running a Dual Boot computer. Then I had trouble with Microsoft Internet explorer. Now I can boot Windows but it seems my desktop is gone. I don't want to do a clean install because I purchased a few expensive programs tied to Vista and my REG numbers are in Vista. I tried to go back to an eariler time but it seems I can't find any System restore in Vista. I need help with this as I am back to XP which is working fine but paying over 400 bux for Ultimate, I would like to use it. I especially like thescreen capture feature in Vista.

You should bite the bullet and do a clean install. If you still want XP around install in it Virtual PC which is free from Microsoft.

A bit of advice to make Vista more stable is to ensure you have Vista compatible drivers installed right after you boot your desktop for the first time. After that, immediately go to Windows Update and get all critical updates and review the "Optional" updates as well to see if you need them.

Another thing a lot of people miss are the Vista Reliability updates. Microsoft releases these at any time of month, not necessarily on patch Tuesday. Also, many of these reliability updates are NOT available through Windows update (not yet anyway) so you would want to go and find these manually on the Vista section of M$, download them, and install one by one. You don't have to reboot after each one, just wait until all of them are installed.

Go here http://www.dozleng.com/updates/index.php?act=calendar

and look on each calendar page to find any updates from MS$ (look for red) and go back several months to make sure you don't miss any.

Once I got all the updates I needed, I found Vista to be MUCH more stable.

Good luck.

I THINK YOU DID WHAT IM THINKING ABOUT TO DO ? I HAVE A XP COMPUTER AND I WHAT TO BUY A NEW VISTA COMPUTER AND TIE THEM TOGETHER XP AS A SLAVE . DID YOU DO THAT IF SO HOW DID YOU DO IT . I SEE ALOT OF PEOPLE HAVING TROUBLE WITH VISTA NOW SURE IF I WANT IT

I wiped the hard drive, and started out with a clean install of Vista by booting from the CD and installing. I prefer clean installs.....I heard of horror stories when trying to dual-boot.