Windows Vista

[Matt Midgley]

Ok, time for a real geek thread! Who's got/thinking of getting Windows Vista? I have to admit I really really like the look of it - but thats about it. If I bought a new high performance PC from Dell, I'd rather have XP on it as it uses less sytem resources so there are more for the games I run!

I'll consider Vista in a couple of years time when it has been tested on everyone else

Matt

 

[monaghan]

I was just about to order Vista for a customer, I'd found a motherboard with Vista drivers (including Vista 64bit) for all the internal components, however it turns out that OKI still don't do Vista drivers so we'd not be able to print, this is of course a bit of a let down as the customer needs an office machine and only has access to a shared OKI multi-function printer (it's not even an old model, they're still on sale now)

My company machine will be the next one to build, again lack of drivers is a problem, although this time the hardware has Vista 32bit drivers, so I guess I can run a nice new 64bit PC in 32bit mode

 

[wsac]

I tester on that new OS but it better wait of a month or 2

 

[monaghan]

I can see the reluctance to go to Vista if there is a lack of drivers or a known software incompatibilty, however there seem to be a lot of people saying they will wait for others to go first. This product is only new for retail, it has been on the MSDN and previously on feature complete betas and RC's for quite some time, so it's hardly a new and unknown system.

 

[apthost]

I'm running Vista on a slave drive and I must say. It was Awesome!

I'll be using Vista as a secondary OS until it becomes compatible with all of my current programs.

I never thought I would be saying this either but I have experienced my first program crash in Vista. It was the widget bar. However the good thing is that it actually closed when I clicked the close button, didn't have to open up task manager or wait.

The thing I also like is that each program basically acts independently. So if one program goes a-wall, your computer will still be 100% responsive and it even seems when I'm installing a program, I don't notice any difference in the speed or response times of programs when running them.

I'm using the minimum requirement of ram for vista which is 1gb

 

[Will]

I've seen some pretty bad stuff in Visual Studio + SQL 2005 - I'm not hopeful about Vista. I'm waiting for SP2 - which will be less than 12 months away if it's anything like SQL 2005. (SP2 has been in beta for ages now)

 

[Matthew]

I might order a PC for the office soon to run some tests on with some of our custom software. Or in other words... it's just an excuse to test it out For my own machine I will probably end up waiting till I upgrade or until a spare copy becomes available in the office which happens from time to time.

 

[Will]

I've got Vista on this machine at home. It's really fast and had no problems installing it. Although I do get random system hangs which I suspect the fault lies with the graphics driver update through Windows Update. Only time will tell.

My problem at the moment is a Toshiba Laptop - it has all our data on the hard drive and has just failed badly. It starts up with lines ont he manufacturer's splash screen and will not install Windows XP because it says the the BIOS is not ACPI compatible. (Pressing F7 when prompted to install 3rd party scsi / raid drivers gets further into the install but it still fails with a random blue screen. Safe mode hangs on atisgkaf.sys but all problems point to something more than just the onboard graphics.

 

[Matthew]

How about installing Windows 2000 to see if you can get to your data Will? Maybe that will be allowed to install.

 

[Will]

I don't have a copy of anything pre-XP. Pre-XP is a nightmare to network, too. I have no drivers for the wireless / NIC as they were all using the built-in XP drivers or the ones on the recovery disk.

 

[Matthew]

That sucks. Any other ideas what you might try to get it going?

 

[Will]

Mini IDE 2o IDE connector possibly. Dunno - might have a look for my screwdrivers and see if the graphics processor is removable.

 

[Matthew]

Sounds scary! Good luck

 

[Matthew]

I am going to try out Vista tonight or tomorrow. I just got hold of it through work Luckily it's a new PC I am installing on, so if it messes up then there is nothing to loose as it currently is only a basic XP Pro install with no other software on it.

 

[Will]

This PC is new (self-build, though) but Vista is still annoying. So many security warnings that you just get used to pressing OK, which defeats the purpose of the security in the first place. First thing you should do, if you actually like being the administrator of a PC is disable User Access Control. I still haven't got classic ASP running in IIS - if you get that running can you post the instructions here?

 

[Matthew]

Do you mean running IIS on Vista and get classic ASP runnning on there?