Mark:
This is what I have done in order to end up with the need of pressing F8
during every boot and tell Vista not to care about unsigned drivers.

When in Vista, run this command at an elevated command prompt

Bcdedit.exe /set TESTSIGNING ON

Reboot and you are done.

You will see "Test Mode" in the four corners of your screen wallpaper.
I have already got used to it.

Carlos
"Mark" wrote:

> I need to get a new laptop, but have never liked some of Windows XP's
> "features" - mainly
>
> that it often thinks it knows what I want better than I do! I'd like to find
> out about some
>
> things in Vista before going with that though, in case it's even worse than
> XP (which it may
>
> be if some of what I've heard is true). I currently use Windows 2000, as
> that was available
>
> at the time and I much prefer it to XP.
>
> One problem I have found with XP is that it doesn't like installing unsigned
> device drivers,
>
> preferring to install a signed driver even if an unsigned one is
> specifically chosen. I have
>
> heard that Vista is even worse, usually not loading unsigned drivers at all.
> I have seen on
>
> these forums that Vista can be made to load unsigned drivers by booting into
> a different
>
> mode, but is there a way of setting it up to always boot into this mode
> without having to
>
> select is each time? Would there be any disadvantage of always booting into
> this mode? (I
>
> don't consider being able to use unsigned drivers to be a disadvantage!)
>
> Also, I have several USB devices which I want to continue to use. Should
> Vista be able to
>
> use the Windows 2000 / XP drivers for these until such time as Vista drivers
> are released? I
>
> think I recall correctly that 2000/XP could use 98 drivers to enable old
> hardware to be
>
> used? The devices I think are most likely to cause a problem are USB-enabled
> MiniDisc
>
> recorders (Sony MZ-N510 and MDS-JE780), Printer (Canon i70) and Camera
> (Canon Digital Ixus
>
> IIs). The rest should be able to use standard drivers from the OS (keyboard,
> mouse, various
>
> storage devices). Is there any easy way of finding out if devices will work
> under Vista? I
>
> might find time to look into dual booting a demo of Vista on my current
> machine to try
>
> things out.
>
> Thanks,
> Mark.