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Flame on: Windows Vista

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Posts

  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    ecchi wrote: »
    If SP1 isn't showing up in Windows Update then it's very possible that your computer has some of those incompatible drivers. My laptop had some incompatible fingerprint reader drivers -- once I updated them, SP1 showed up.

    Edit: oops, Elucida already mentioned that. It's still probably your problem, Jasc.

    Yeah I found a list of drivers that Vista wouldn't like and I upgraded all of the ones I had with the ones provided at Dell support.

    I think I might have just fudged up this install by stressing it too hard and causing the initial crashes.

    I just tried to run the update again and at about 51% I got cascading failures in Windows Defender, Host Process, and I think Windows Desktop Manager triggering an automatic reboot.

    I think I'm just going to wipe it and try again but go easier on the poor disk access :(

    Jasconius on
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    man, i have installed and used vista on so many machines and never heard of these problems. they make me sad.

    LaCabra on
  • RookRook Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Jasconius wrote: »
    I think I'm just going to wipe it and try again but go easier on the poor disk access :(

    I kinda think your HDD might just be fucked or something or it's some sort of hardware issue, rather than Vista.

    Rook on
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    it does sound like the HDD's on the way out. if XP hasn't got a problem with it and Vista has it's probably because Vista wants to access that shit a lot more for the indexing.

    LaCabra on
  • PeewiPeewi Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Elucida wrote: »
    I know this really isn't a Vista question/comment, but I'm still asking!

    In Windows Media Player 11 there are 3 views: Icon; Tile; and Detail. When you go over a certain number of items in the library it starts to sort the items under alphabetical headers (i.e. Angra under A, Blackmore's Night under B). My problem with this is that it creates a lot of dead space compared to what it was doing before. Is there any way I can tell WMP 11 to go fuck its dead space and not sort everything under different headers? Or am I forever stuck with a ton of dead space because I don't conveniently have the perfect # of artists under every damn letter in the alphabet. Also this type of sorting befalls all 3 view types, so I can't just switch from Icon to Tile (or vice versa) to have a no dead space version.

    That's not exclusive to Vista, it does that on XP as well. I too would like to know if there's a way to remove those headers.

    Peewi on
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    LaCabra wrote: »
    That's just you browsing by artist, try clicking "albums" or "songs" at left. I use songs all the time.

    LaCabra on
  • PeewiPeewi Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    LaCabra wrote: »
    LaCabra wrote: »
    That's just you browsing by artist, try clicking "albums" or "songs" at left. I use songs all the time.

    That's not it. It also does it when viewing by albums and I don't really like having a long list every single song, so I never use the song view.

    Peewi on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Rook wrote: »
    Jasconius wrote: »
    I think I'm just going to wipe it and try again but go easier on the poor disk access :(

    I kinda think your HDD might just be fucked or something or it's some sort of hardware issue, rather than Vista.

    The laptop is 2 days out of the Dell Refurbished Outlet, and it hasn't experienced any trauma since it's been in my possession. I find it hard to believe that massive disk failure is the culprit. I checked the Event Viewer several times and I couldn't find anything regarding bad disk controllers or what have you.

    Anyway, an update, I wiped it last night and ran Vista Installation, which failed, twice. It hung at "Completing Installation" which is apparently an extremely common issue. The first time it hung all night and I woke the next morning to find a mouse cursor and a pitch black screen. Lovely.

    I ran it again when I got to work and it sat at completing installation for an hour before I gave up.

    I did the Dell System Recovery which worked. Everything was going peachy until I upgraded my audio drivers and upon restarting I ran into a BSOD which caused it to boot up and run System Repair TWICE, until it started working. When I was finally able to log back in to Vista all the files I had on my desktop and all my saved networks were deleted.

    Hurrr.

    Well, after that it seems to be alright. I am going to continue doing updates, and if I get one more crash this week it's headed back to Dell.

    *edit*

    I guess on a brighter note a blue screen and a defrag later it's running noticeably faster. I was able to update all the drivers including the one that caused the blue screen, the hangs and shit I was experiencing when multi tasking seem, for now, to be gone.

    And hey! SP1 is showing up now in windows update.

    I guess... it needed to fatally crash a few times to work out the kinks?

    Jasconius on
  • ZekZek Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    So I ordered Vista Business with a student discount, but does anyone know if it still only ships with the 32 bit version? Will I have to get them to send a 64 bit CD or does it come with both installs?

    Zek on
  • squirlysquirly Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    I think Ultimate is the only one that comes with both 32/64bit but you may be lucky and they'll ship you a 64bit version of Business.

    squirly on
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  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Your license will work on either, so if they send you the 32-bit version you can just go on torrent and get a 64-bit image

    Azio on
  • AbsoluteZeroAbsoluteZero The new film by Quentin Koopantino Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Zek wrote: »
    So I ordered Vista Business with a student discount, but does anyone know if it still only ships with the 32 bit version? Will I have to get them to send a 64 bit CD or does it come with both installs?

    You'll have to pay an extra 10 bucks to get a 64 bit version sent to ya.

    Alternatively, if you can find a 64 bit install disc, you can use the product key on your 32 bit version to activate a 64 bit install.

    AbsoluteZero on
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  • DHS OdiumDHS Odium Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Azio wrote: »
    Your license will work on either, so if they send you the 32-bit version you can just go on torrent and get a 64-bit image

    Funny thing is, I was instructed by Microsoft to do just this. Not advocating it here, but I was a Microsoft Student Partner, and they sent us keys for Ultimate, but no discs. They told us to do the above if we didn't already have access to MDSN:AA.

    DHS Odium on
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  • MorskittarMorskittar Lord Warlock Engineer SeattleRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    The disks and keys are just means to fulfill the license. It's the proof of license that's the important part.

    Morskittar on
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  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Microsoft could give a fuck how you get your disk, as long as your license is valid then you are 100% legal

    Azio on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    I've been stable on my Vista laptop for two whole days now.

    Now that it is actually working I like it alright but there are a few things about Explorer that are pissing me off.

    1) Why is the process of copying folders on to one another a 6-7 click process now? What the fuck happened to "Yes to All". Now to merge multiple folders I have to click yes, check the all box, press an option, and then repeat for individual files as opposed to just folders. Needless bullshit that sacrifices ease of use for explaining a basic computer function to numb humans in an over-elaborate fashion.

    2) Why is it a chore to put basic locations on to their ripoff of Places? I can't simply add a network drive to the favorites folder, I can only choose individual folders inside of that drive. Lame. There's also no quick jump button to the User folder or Computer unless you add them to the Favorites... why?

    3) Why can I append to start menu and send to quick launch as primary options in a right click menu but creating a desktop shortcut can only be done in the send-to menu?

    4) Why is the Quick Launch bar still a complete reject of a feature. Microsoft has ripped off almost everything about the OSX interface with the exception of the Dock. In its place we have a 10-15 year old piece of junk that has to be manually scaled to accommodate for new icons and even that is a task since what you see when you are in unlocked mode is literally what it will appear once you lock it and remove the annoying scale bars, so in order to actually get a nice and tight quick launch you have to hide an icon or two to get it just right and then lock it.


    So far the major highlights for me is the fact that this computer can load Flash in less than 2 seconds and you get window previews both from the taskbar and in alt-tab.

    Jasconius on
  • AzioAzio Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    2) Why is it a chore to put basic locations on to their ripoff of Places? I can't simply add a network drive to the favorites folder, I can only choose individual folders inside of that drive. Lame. There's also no quick jump button to the User folder or Computer unless you add them to the Favorites... why?
    What do you mean by "their ripoff of Places"? You mean Favorite Links, which predates Leopard and Places by a year? Just drag the shit onto it. Network drives, servers, control panels, folders, any location can be dragged onto that bar.
    3) Why can I append to start menu and send to quick launch as primary options in a right click menu but creating a desktop shortcut can only be done in the send-to menu?
    You can probably tweak the right-click menu somehow, but what is so hard about holding Alt and dragging the file to the desktop
    4) Why is the Quick Launch bar still a complete reject of a feature. Microsoft has ripped off almost everything about the OSX interface with the exception of the Dock. In its place we have a 10-15 year old piece of junk that has to be manually scaled to accommodate for new icons and even that is a task since what you see when you are in unlocked mode is literally what it will appear once you lock it and remove the annoying scale bars, so in order to actually get a nice and tight quick launch you have to hide an icon or two to get it just right and then lock it.
    I'm having trouble deciphering what exactly you are trying to do here, but if you want the QL bar to automatically extend to fit all your icons you have to unlock it and double-click on its left handle a few times. If there are neighbouring toolbars then it might not work right away but double-clicking the left handle seems to alternate between "minimum size" and "size to fit", so just play with them a bit and eventually it will sort itself out.

    e: turns out that this doesn't make it quite as tight as you want it to be, but we are talking differences of less than ten pixels here. I wouldn't worry about it, just drag it out yourself and lock 'er down and be glad it doesn't take up as much room on-screen as the Dock.

    Azio on
  • jonxpjonxp [E] PC Security Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Jasconius wrote: »

    ... There's also no quick jump button to the User folder or Computer unless you add them to the Favorites... why?

    No quick jump unless you count right there in the start menu.

    jonxp on
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  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    1) Why is the process of copying folders on to one another a 6-7 click process now? What the fuck happened to "Yes to All". Now to merge multiple folders I have to click yes, check the all box, press an option, and then repeat for individual files as opposed to just folders. Needless bullshit that sacrifices ease of use for explaining a basic computer function to numb humans in an over-elaborate fashion.

    No, you check the all box and that's it, unless it encounters another kind of problem. Checking the "Do this for all items" box is the same as yes to all.

    LaCabra on
  • squirlysquirly Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Jasconius wrote: »
    Microsoft has ripped off almost everything about the OSX interface with the exception of the Dock.
    Hahahahahah.

    squirly on
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  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2008
    Quick Launch has been there, since like Windows 98.

    I personally don't use it. Typing in program names works pretty damn well in Vista, more than I thought it would.

    FyreWulff on
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    Quick Launch has been there, since like Windows 98.

    I personally don't use it. Typing in program names works pretty damn well in Vista, more than I thought it would.

    Only program it stumbles over for me is Call of Duty 4 -- and that's easily explained by the decision made by the developers to title the two executables of the game as such:

    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Singleplayer
    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Multiplayer

    You can still get them with the start menu search, but I usually have to type out "call of duty 4 multi" or something similarly long to get the shortcut I want. At that point is where I just make an applauncher shortcut to each version. :)

    I <3 my start menu search bar, though.

    Dehumanized on
  • Nakatomi2010Nakatomi2010 Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    I'm running Vista on all 4 of my computers now... Three of them are running the RTM versions of SP1, and my HTPC is currently installing the official release version of SP1.... all computer have either 1.5GB or 2GB, though I am contemplating getting another 4GB of high speed RAM and putting the 2GB in the gaming rig into the HTPC....

    I'm having some stuttering issues when watching some BluRays which I can only attribute to a lack of RAM since it's a quad core HTPC....


    My Gaming rig has a 5.5 for it's speed index, the hard drive and RAM are causing that... Everything else is a 5.9... I know getting faster RAM would boost that up, but I have no idea how to get my hard drive to a 5.9

    Edit: SP1 Question: I've looked around a bit but found nothing, does SP1 do anything to improve HDDVD/BluRay playback, or no?

    Nakatomi2010 on
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  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2008
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    Quick Launch has been there, since like Windows 98.

    I personally don't use it. Typing in program names works pretty damn well in Vista, more than I thought it would.

    Only program it stumbles over for me is Call of Duty 4 -- and that's easily explained by the decision made by the developers to title the two executables of the game as such:

    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Singleplayer
    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Multiplayer

    You can still get them with the start menu search, but I usually have to type out "call of duty 4 multi" or something similarly long to get the shortcut I want. At that point is where I just make an applauncher shortcut to each version. :)

    I <3 my start menu search bar, though.

    Something clever I noticed about search as well - if you're using voice navigation/recognition, saying "Start menu" or similiar brings up the start menu, with the cursor already in the text field. Then you just say the program name.

    FyreWulff on
  • JasconiusJasconius sword criminal mad onlineRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    FyreWulff wrote: »
    Quick Launch has been there, since like Windows 98.

    I personally don't use it. Typing in program names works pretty damn well in Vista, more than I thought it would.

    Only program it stumbles over for me is Call of Duty 4 -- and that's easily explained by the decision made by the developers to title the two executables of the game as such:

    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Singleplayer
    Play Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare - Multiplayer

    You can still get them with the start menu search, but I usually have to type out "call of duty 4 multi" or something similarly long to get the shortcut I want. At that point is where I just make an applauncher shortcut to each version. :)

    I <3 my start menu search bar, though.

    Something clever I noticed about search as well - if you're using voice navigation/recognition, saying "Start menu" or similiar brings up the start menu, with the cursor already in the text field. Then you just say the program name.

    Is that voice thing built into vista?

    Jasconius on
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    I haven't used the voice recognition since the beta, but I was pretty impressed with it then.

    LaCabra on
  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    With the voice recognition you don't even need to use the start menu... just say something like "run call of duty" (pause) "one" (it'll bring up a menu of a couple possible executables which you can select by number) "okay".

    It's pretty nifty, but not really faster than more standard I/O.

    You can access the voice recognition from somewhere in the control panel. It has a bit of a set-up involved, so you can learn the commands it recognizes and so it can learn how to understand your voice. Control Panel -> Speech Recognition if you use the classic view.

    Dehumanized on
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    So guys, I am thinking of doing an upgrade to my PC. 8gigs of Corsair XMS DDR2 and Windows Vista Premium 64 bit. What do you think?

    My current system is an 8800GT, 2gig corsair XMS (which I am now trying to sell for the low uber price of $20), and an E6400 on 32bit XP.

    What do ya'll think?

    Lucky Cynic on
  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    That's approximately way more RAM than you could ever need, but hey, why not.

    LaCabra on
  • AbsoluteZeroAbsoluteZero The new film by Quentin Koopantino Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    LaCabra wrote: »
    That's approximately way more RAM than you could ever need, but hey, why not.

    Vista x64 can support 128GB of RAM, actually...

    AbsoluteZero on
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  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    And...?

    LaCabra on
  • AbsoluteZeroAbsoluteZero The new film by Quentin Koopantino Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    It could be worse (or better?)

    AbsoluteZero on
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  • DehumanizedDehumanized Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Unless you've got a pretty specialized setup you'll run into motherboard constraints before that, anyways.

    Dehumanized on
  • FyreWulffFyreWulff YouRegistered User, ClubPA regular
    edited May 2008
    The most I'd ever go up to is 4GB RAM. 8GB is overkill unless you're working with like, 50megapixel sized images for a living. Otherwise your CPU is going to spend a lot of time just moving things around in RAM.

    Also it should be noted that it also means you need 8GB of space if you want to use hibernation..

    FyreWulff on
  • Lucky CynicLucky Cynic Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Meh, I see not why in doing it. It's not like it is that expensive since I can get a set of 2 2gig sticks for $85.

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820145184

    I see as it one of those things where you can just spend just a bit more and get a whole lot more. Unfortunately, I doubt I can sell my system ram now, since nobody wants 2gigs. Nope!

    Lucky Cynic on
  • squirlysquirly Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Oh, and 1 awesome thing about the Quick Launch menu that is Vista only, you can press Win+x where x is a number. For example, Win+1 would open whatever is the first item in your QL bar -- this is incredibly useful and faster than using the Start Menu or something like Launchy.

    I have IE/FF/Windows Liev Mail/FeedDemon/uTorrent/Notepad++/Photoshop/Steam in there. So, I can open up everything I need for browsing the web, email, downloading or work in a ¼ of a second. When I log on I generally just hold Win and press 2, 3 and 4.

    I hate using XP for this lack alone. I do think the Start Menu in Vista needs a little work sorting results..

    squirly on
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  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Hey, cheers for the tip.

    LaCabra on
  • squirlysquirly Registered User regular
    edited May 2008
    No problem.

    You guys should read this (XP SP2/3 vs Vista/Vista SP1). It's quite short too.
    Final Thoughts

    If you were expecting a huge drop in performance as your eyes scanned from the XP to the Vista results, well, surprise! As many a tech analyst predicted, Windows Vista's gaming performance conundrum has largely been solved, and it was mainly due to early graphics drivers.

    In fact, I'd been planning to run a few other gaming tests, but the results from these were so uninteresting that further work didn't seem merited. Love it or hate it, Vista is performing far better than it used to.

    Game performance, it seems, has been exorcised from your concern when choosing a Microsoft operating system. That leaves a few other factors, of course: stability, responsiveness, eye candy, price, DirectX version, and a few other odds and ends.
    Besides, plenty of us have been gaming on Vista for ~ a year with no noticeable drop in performance.

    squirly on
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  • LaCabraLaCabra MelbourneRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Saw that coming.

    LaCabra on
  • victor_c26victor_c26 Chicago, ILRegistered User regular
    edited May 2008
    Excellent. I was waiting for Joel's article to be posted on Extremetech.

    Hopefully this will start silencing some of the same old repeated performance arguments out there. At least on the gaming side.

    victor_c26 on
    It's been so long since I've posted here, I've removed my signature since most of what I had here were broken links. Shows over, you can carry on to the next post.
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