The Vista Hive

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: RideFree
Windoze key + L + L logged you out of XP in a flash...anyone know what does it in Vista?

Winkey + L locked the system in XP, and does the same in Windows Vista in my experience.

 

[stash]

Originally posted by: RideFree
Windoze key + L + L logged you out of XP in a flash...anyone know what does it in Vista?

You might see a delay in Vista, but it works. The delay is being worked on, I believe.

 

[shortylickens]

I hate to sound like a little nooblet here but I am having a little trouble downloading the 64 bit ISO.

It keeps coming up as a 13 meg file. I seriouslt doubt that little thing will fill up an entire DVD.
The 32-bit link seems to work OK, its going to finish at 3.12 GB.

Anybody else have this problem from the MS download page?

 

[uallas5]

Originally posted by: shortylickens
I hate to sound like a little nooblet here but I am having a little trouble downloading the 64 bit ISO.

It keeps coming up as a 13 meg file. I seriouslt doubt that little thing will fill up an entire DVD.
The 32-bit link seems to work OK, its going to finish at 3.12 GB.

Anybody else have this problem from the MS download page?

It's probably the install routine for their download manager from Akami. Either that, if you click on a link under using your own download manger and you don't have one installed or it didn't start, you'll get a 13mb ISO file. That's what happened to me and not the full thing obviously.

After that, I just used their's and it downloaded fine. I only had to burn it once to get a usable copy.

 

[shortylickens]

Nope. I used DAP (download accelerator plus) with the "Other" links.

Normally it works fine for me.
No matter. The file-sharing networks got it for me last night. Which is a heck of a lot faster than MS could do.
Now, I just need to rip my machine apart and slap in my old 20 GB drive.

 

[CZero]

System specs:

ASUS A8N-SLI Deluxe [nForce4 SLI, Realtek ALC850]
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+
OCZ PC3200 Platinum R.2 [2x512MB]
ASUS EAX850 Pro
Western Digital Raptor 74 GB [2x on nvRaid]
Antec TruePower II 550W
Canon Pixma MP500

I am having some minor driver issues, which I'd like to resolve before moving forward with any application installations. I say 'minor' because I'm posting from Vista x64 Beta 2.

nforce4 SLI nvRaid Beta: required for Vista installation. Put these on the root of a floppy disk and Vista install process recognizes them.

Realtek ALC850 AC'97 Beta (www.realtek.com.tw): reports that driver could not load because a file is missing or corrupted after install. The XP x64 drivers work, but have limited functionality.

nForce4 SLI Beta (www.nvidia.com): details in installation instructions do not match actual situtation in Device Manager. PCI-E root remains listed as standard PCI bus. Tried about 6 alternatives from ASUS - various versions of XP x64 and Windows Server 2003 x64 - all failed to install properly.

RADEON x800 GTO: installed by Vista. Have yet to install ATI Catalyst Vista Beta.

Canon Pixma MP500: XP x64 drivers installed. Full functionality.

2 Unknown Devices: completely lost here.

Why is it that when I right-click a driver .INF file and select "Install" I unconditionally get the error "Installation Failed".

 

[RideFree]

I'll bet they are the Marvell boot BIOS ...I just disabled it in the BIOS & Vista quit pestering me about it.

 

[smopoim86]

Does anyone have a good way to back my current setup up so i can play with vista and not worry about slaughtering my computer

also, how much will it cost to upgrade from the beta to a commercial version

 

[BehindEnemyLines]

Originally posted by: smopoim86
Does anyone have a good way to back my current setup up so i can play with vista and not worry about slaughtering my computer

also, how much will it cost to upgrade from the beta to a commercial version

Probably the best way to test out Vista is installing it on a SEPARATE hard-drive and disconnect your main one from power and IDE cable. Installing on the same main drive on a different partition involves risk too. Once everything is working properly, you can reconnect your main drive as Master and Vista drive as Slave. And boot into either one using the BIOS boot-device menu.

 

[TSCrv]

old 3200+ s754 on an asus k8v-x everything installs fine, lan, sound, etc using MS's drivers... havent attempted to use any other due to everything is working...

unfortunatly stuff i have installed i cannot uninstall... i have an uninstall running in the background now that is frozen, (older version of aim), and also ati catalyst software wont uninstall, (using a 6600gt now instead of my ati card)... will try safemode to pull these suckers out

im surprised i can play some games, copied WoW from my network drive and runs fine, other games require to be installed because of missing dlls, bah no more pulling from network for me

 

[shortylickens]

Well, I finally got the old hard drive back in and installed Vista 64 bit.

Its nice, but not earth-shattering.
All the neat little features I've played with could have been made for XP.

I guess I wont know how good this OS is until I try a few new games later this year.
Wont be using it for my main office machine until the first service pack comes out.
And they'll probably go with Windows 2003 at work when the time comes.

Overall I had no real problems during installation. Things seem to be working fine but now I have to go find drivers for my 7900GTX. After that I may try a few older games.

EDIT:
Personal Note, I think they are trying way too hard to copy OSX and Linux.

 

[smopoim86]

Originally posted by: shortylickens

Personal Note, I think they are trying way too hard to copy OSX and Linux.

No kidding, its rather funny that Microsoft does nothing but copy other ideas and stays on top.

 

[thereaderrabbit]

So far the 64-bit flavor of Vista has been working nicely on my home PC. Part of the reason I upgraded was because of crashes due to how WinXP interacted with my USB controller. So far these problems seem to not exist in Vista. For the most part, the new Vista OS is nice. Warning windows are frequent, but livable.

Most of the software I've tried works with the exception of LaTeX. I must say, it was a pleasant surprise to get Civ 4 running without difficulty.

On the hardware front, I can't get my Creative sound card (poor drivers) and networked HP color ink jet printer to work (no drivers) to run. I have yet to try my scanner or webcam. Otherwise most hardware is working which includes USB drives and my onboard audio options.

-Reader

 

[RideFree]

Originally posted by: BehindEnemyLines

Originally posted by: smopoim86
Does anyone have a good way to back my current setup up so i can play with vista and not worry about slaughtering my computer

also, how much will it cost to upgrade from the beta to a commercial version

Probably the best way to test out Vista is installing it on a SEPARATE hard-drive and disconnect your main one from power and IDE cable. Installing on the same main drive on a different partition involves risk too. Once everything is working properly, you can reconnect your main drive as Master and Vista drive as Slave. And boot into either one using the BIOS boot-device menu.

Watch out for this one folks.
Vista has it's own idea(s) about boot drives, Drive C: & so forth.

Be sure that your partitions are labeled so that you have a positive ID on them as it will be the only way to tell with Vista at the wheel.
i.e. Sea160_E or Max300_C
With Vista it's no longer I before E, except after C:!
It's more like E: (or what used to be E is now C: - and D: is lawdie only knows what?
And where the F: is F:?

 

[CZero]

Originally posted by: RideFree

Watch out for this one folks.
Vista has it's own idea(s) about boot drives, Drive C: & so forth.

Be sure that your partitions are labeled so that you have a positive ID on them as it will be the only way to tell with Vista at the wheel.
i.e. Sea160_E or Max300_C
With Vista it's no longer I before E, except after C:!
It's more like E: (or what used to be E is now C: - and D: is lawdie only knows what?
And where the F: is F:?

RideFree is right. I've been working with multi-boot setups for about 2 years - it's tricky at times. At one point: Fedora, 2000, & XP. A Windows installation will only boot from a drive recognized as C:. My strategy is to partition the hard disk(s) prior to any installation.

For example:
WD_1
WinVista - install this second
WinXP - install the oldest Windows first
MyFiles - keep all your data here (downloads, documents, media and so on)

Using a MyFiles partition may save a lot of trouble. I keep Windows XP Service Pack 2 here, so after a clean install, it doesn't have to be downloaded again. But I still back up to DVD anything critical before working with a new OS.

Just be aware of RideFree's advice. Windows XP may see itself as D: and MyFiles as E:. And then you boot into Vista and vice versa.

 

[smopoim86]

Originally posted by: CZero

A Windows installation will only boot from a drive recognized as C:.

not so sure about that, i built a machine the other day and i beleive that after booting up the system drive was E or I (not sure), it definately wasn't C

 

[Underclocked]

I've installed and removed it three times. Vista is now happy on drive K. Drive letter assignment seems to depend upon whether the install is done from boot or started from within an existing OS.

 

[CrystalBay]

Vista tricks you into thinking that , It is actually E:/active labled as C: in Vista

Just name the Volume Vista intead of apps or whatever. it should help...

 

[Underclocked]

Just tried Flock beta 1 on Vista beta 2 :Q Don't do that. :roll:

 

[professor1942]

Does anyone know if the XP drivers for a USB wireless network adapter (SMC 2662w) will work in Vista 32-bit? I don't want to bother installing this beta only to find out I have no internet.

[edit] I went ahead and tried; it works fine with the old drivers.

 

[jlbenedict]

Here is an update from the Vista site. I'm not sure if it has been noted in this thread or not yet:

Please note: The Customer Preview Program will close to new orders on Friday, June 30. For registered customers who have received a Product Key the download sites will remain open until Friday, July 14.

 

[gorcorps]

Originally posted by: smopoim86

Originally posted by: CZero

A Windows installation will only boot from a drive recognized as C:.

not so sure about that, i built a machine the other day and i beleive that after booting up the system drive was E or I (not sure), it definately wasn't C

Yeah my boot drive is I: (don't ask) and I haven't had any problems in XP. But I don't have any other installations.

 

[CZero]

Sorry people if I was mistaken about Windows boot partitions. Sounds like you have a lot of drives and/or partitions? Is there a C:?

It's been my experience that the boot files for Windows 2000 , XP have to reside on a HD partition C:. There are 3 boot files I think. NTDETECT.COM , NTLDR , and BOOT.INI . Don't know about VIsta though - the documentation is incomplete.

 

[unkn0wnhacka]

anyone have a key for me?

 

[erikistired]

Originally posted by: Kaervak
For anyone installing the 32bit version, for whatever reason there's no included driver for 3Com3C920 (3C905C-TX Compatible) NIC. The driver from 3Com's site works perfectly fine and you don't have to install it in safe mode. No idea why it's not included since 2k & XP have it.

Driver Link (First one listed worked for me)
http://www.3com.com/products/en_US/resu...&sort=effdt&sku=3C905C-TX-M&order=desc

just a note, this isn't supported under xp64 and i'm guessing the same goes under vista64. i guess the xp driver works for vista32 (the driver linked it 3 years old). neat, but still disappointing that this nic won't be supported anymore, considering it's still being sold.