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Vista - still a hassle?
midgetspy
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hey guys,
I just ordered a new computer and am having trouble deciding what OS I want to put on it. The (important) PC specs are:
AMD X2 6000+
8800GT 512MB
2GB DDR2-800 RAM
4 SATA drives in RAID 0+1
Now my dilemma is that I have a full legal copy of both XP Pro and Vista Ultimate. I'm currently (on my old PC) running XP Pro. I'm a "power user", I use my PC for everything and I use it a lot. I'm on it 5+ hours a day, much of which is spent gaming. I have all kinds of apps and games installed including random/obscure utilities/games that I've found on the net. The only reason I'm even considering Vista is because I'm starting from scratch now anyway, so I could save myself a wipe/re-install later by going Vista now instead of XP now and Vista later.
So my question to Vista users is, are there still many issues/annoyances associated with running Vista? How often do you come across programs that won't work (properly) on Vista? Are there any performance issues when gaming?
Also, is DX10 support actually advantageous over running the same game in DX9? Because that's really the ONLY reason I can think of to switch to Vista, I couldn't care less about see through windows and a fancy start menu.
I just ordered a new computer and am having trouble deciding what OS I want to put on it. The (important) PC specs are:
AMD X2 6000+
8800GT 512MB
2GB DDR2-800 RAM
4 SATA drives in RAID 0+1
Now my dilemma is that I have a full legal copy of both XP Pro and Vista Ultimate. I'm currently (on my old PC) running XP Pro. I'm a "power user", I use my PC for everything and I use it a lot. I'm on it 5+ hours a day, much of which is spent gaming. I have all kinds of apps and games installed including random/obscure utilities/games that I've found on the net. The only reason I'm even considering Vista is because I'm starting from scratch now anyway, so I could save myself a wipe/re-install later by going Vista now instead of XP now and Vista later.
So my question to Vista users is, are there still many issues/annoyances associated with running Vista? How often do you come across programs that won't work (properly) on Vista? Are there any performance issues when gaming?
Also, is DX10 support actually advantageous over running the same game in DX9? Because that's really the ONLY reason I can think of to switch to Vista, I couldn't care less about see through windows and a fancy start menu.
midgetspy on
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Posts
XP Pro
Personally, I haven't seen any major incompatibilities, outside of a web tool at work that *still* doesn't funciton at all. No issues with games, chat clients, or anything else, though.
In my mind, most of Vista's benefits have nothing to do with gaming. DX10 is still tomorrow's technology and not well utilized, and things like integrated search, breadcrumb address bars, window thumbnails, and all that are only useful while working in the OS. The new driver model is certainly beneficial; I've seen crap games (read; Mark of Chaos) that would lock up XP crash drivers, and Vista just restart it in the background. Not really a big deal if you're not running shit programs that don't blow up drivers.
edit: A note, as far as I know, all the good stuff for SP1 has already been released as updates. Faster boots, eliminiation of the copy bug, etc... There could be more tweaks, but that's really not an objective benchmark at this point.
I use vista for gaming/work/etc all 5+ hours a day
The most common one seems to the the DHCP client, but that's probably because it's the most noticeable as it breaks internet connectivity. Microsoft support never managed to provide a solution, though they have tried, and searching the internet has only given me more failed fixes and strings of posts from people with the same problem. Even setting up permissions so inclusive that they effectively disable any security whatsoever (effectively everything having full control of everything else), the logs still show access denied when the service tries to start, which at that point shouldn't even be possible. At that point if DHCP decided it wanted to eat your hard drive Vista wouldn't even ask if you wanted it to.
All the other things I've seen and heard about Vista aside, I'd probalby upgrade myself if I weren't afraid I'd somehow run into this problem. Until there's a viable fix at least, I won't.
I've been using Vista since Beta 2 and I game, internet, word process, watch por- err....video, do the iPod + iTunes thing.
Sure, it's given me some fits, but that was all within he first 3 months of release. The only issues I've had with it in the last 6 months are all things that I could say aobut XP, so it's all good.
I say go Vista. There's also a thread in the subforum about XP vs. Vista in which the consensus seems to be Vista.
Oh, and Vista is better with dual-core CPUs than XP.
Yes: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/943996/en-us
I've run into five systems with the issue. Four of them were already configured as the resolution describes, and the fifth wasn't resolved by following these directions. Microsoft support also suggested various things involving mucking with registry permissions and giving NETWORK SERVICE or LOCAL SERVICE higher permissions in keys for the effected services, none of which worked either.
I haven't seen any error messages at all while using Vista. That's rather strange.
What impressed me with Vista was that previously when an application crashed it would often end up taking out my entire system, but Vista almost always manages to retain control and allow me to quit the offending application and keep running fine.
Really I've only had maybe 2-3 really hard (as in need to reboot) crashes where the OS hasn't been able to recover. Mainly down to running some very buggy apps / demo's.
Go with Vista, you'll be pleasantly surprised.
Vista has never crashed on me, and I use my system a lot. I also game on it as well.
Believe me, coming off of XP (and before that, ME. Crashes are no stranger to anyone who's used ME), I was really pleasantly surprised with how well Vista kept control when a program crashed on me.
Conversely, I haven't seen a single bit of marketing for it that isn't pretty much full of shit. Flip 3d is not "Wow". Nothing about Vista is really "Wow". But "After you've used if for six months, you can't imagine how you got by without some features" apparently doesn't make a good ad campaign.
Windows' strength has always been it's flexibility and abilitiy to act as a functional and unobtrusive tool. I'd say this peaked in 2000, while the biggest flaws of XP and Vista are obfuscating technical advances with shiny fluff and marketing, as well as the ever-present and undeniable spectre of backwards compatibility.
Vaguely related ramble aside, most of what you hear about from media and MS regarding Vista is BS.
Other than that (and hiccup where on first bootup Vista install wouldn't recognize my SATA drives, which was remedied by simply trying again) I've had no issues. I also turned UAC completely off because man it's annoying.
An amusing thing is, those who actually use Vista and give it an objective go tend to seem to like it.
To be completely fair, I wouldn't say there was *nothing* that was MS' fault. The shitty marketing, overhyped expectations, and lack of granularity to UAC to facilitate power users willing to take security into their own hands were all MS.
Well, thing is, if you've got this service issue, there is no associated error messages, everything fails silently during startup. Something just won't work - it might be the search features or the run box in the start menu won't work right or, as four of the five systems I mentioned, the internet won't work. The error only comes up if you go into the services list and try to manually launch the services that failed at startup.
Also, this isn't a common issue, so you probably don't have it anyway. I don't know what could cause it, but I doubt the systems were taken care of. Probably 200 vista systems have come through my workplace this year, and most were installation related issues. Only five with broken services out of all that, not really that bad. I saw a lot more XP systems rendered unbootable when SP2 first came out than I've seen Vista ones crippled by this.
That just reminded me, Vista is the first MS os in a long time that has had me slogging through KB articles and getting beta updates just to do simple things like get some of their own Vista ready hardware to run. There were some for >2GB ram issues, some for USB issues, some for network specific related issues. Many of them are mature and come through windows update right now, but there are others that you have to go searching for, and some others still you have to register a complaint and prove you have a problem before you can get the patch.
Games that haven't worked properly for me:
DiRT - doesn't even load. I've tried every work around available on the net to get it to run. (I spent a half day going back to xp only to find out the game is utter garbage.)
Test Drive Unlimited - worked fine before the 1.66a patch. Now, you can play it offline, but if you play online, it crashes when you get near another player. I disabled the local firewall, I disabled my router firewall (yay telnet), I tried the dmz, I tried forwarding every port they recommended. You can see the players on the gps map, but if you get within range on the map, you crash.
Those are the only two that really stand out. I've had problems with a few other games, but have gotten them to work with various workarounds, including this one Other games weren't large address aware and I've had to use cracks on them just so that I can patch them so that they would run without crashing.
Overall there are a bunch of things I like about Vista, but there are just as many I don't like. If you have new hardware, new software, and don't mind the occasional challenge, go for it. If you want to avoid a good chunk of those challenges, wait for SP! when many of those KB patches will go out of beta and be included automatically.
Oh, reading comprehension. Gotcha
The world-dooming stuff really gets me though. It's cool if people don't like the OS, but the amount of misinformation out there has become a huge pet peeve for me.
I saw this issue at work after joining a Vista box to the corp domain.
And yeah, that's exactly the same thing that I think is awfully lame and pathetic too. I really don't care if you don't like Vista, but if you say you don't like it because of some retarded reason which isn't true or is vaguely based on some truth in Bizarro world, do us all a favour and stop talking till you garner a clue.
Damn M$ and they're winblowz, causing world hunger, making me pay more fur fuellolz !!!!1!1oeneone we need to vote jobs 4 president haha yup why didnt you make me ur topfr1end on myspace morskittar?:(:(:(:(
That and another few niggling issues keep me from upgrading to it fully. I like Vista, but it annoys me greatly.
Just because it works great for you, does not mean that it works as well for others. Everything on my Vista is updated with the very latest drivers and patches, and my system is more than capable, with a Conroe Core 2 Duo, 2GB of PC6400 DDR2, and a GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB.
Edit - Oh, and "Up" is no longer present among the window navigation keys. Irritates me a great deal, it does.
Nothing's forgotten, nothing is ever forgotten
Windows Key + Tab is the shortcut for it, rather than alt+tab
Dreamscene doesn't crash for me, but it's still pointless. So far, all of the Ultimate Extras are pointless :x .
That's weird, too--works fine for me.
I don't understand the problem, the point of a clean install is to get rid of old applications/files/everything and start fresh. Unless you somehow upgraded XP to Vista except partitioned it (I don't think this is possible), you would have setup Vista on a new partition and therefore no already-installed programs would work. You'd have to install them again.
That's what the breadcrumb bar is for. You just click another folder name (or the arrow to quickly access other subfolders). It's much faster and better than the "up" button from XP.
Some games only install shortcuts to the Games Explorer, which where they belong now. Using the search box is faster than drilling down through All Programs anyways.
Pressing Backspace will take you up one level, although you should practice using the improved address bar because it kicks ass.