Good Bye Windows Vista

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[City Builder]

I have bid a fairwell to Windows Vista.

Since it was first released and installed on my rig I've apparently been in denial about it's performance.  I kept telling myself that it was just as fast in daily operations as is XP.  Well, I bought the second Nvidia 8800GTS video card so that I could get SLI up and running on my computer.  I spent a good 10 hours yesterday after installing the second card trying to get Vista to recognize that it should allow me to turn on SLI, to no avail.  I read forum after forum and people saying that the nvidia drivers were not working correctly with vista towards allowing us to turn on SLI.

I finally got fed up about midnight last night and whipped out my Windows XP Pro disc and wiped the primary hard drive clean and did a reinstall of XP Pro.  I had been putting it off because I've installed XP so many times now that I have to call them every time now to activate it and that just annoys me.  Suprisingly it activated through the internet this time without needing to call a techie in India.

Now SLI is up and running like it should and when I try to copy 28GB from one hard disk to another it only takes a couple minutes.  In Vista it might have taken 2 hours to transfer that 28GB of data, depending on how many files, if they were all large, or small etc.

It may not be as pretty as Vista, but things work the way they should and XP runs faster in my opinion.

Im still going through the process of reinstalling everything and making sure I don't have any hardware left in the device manager of which I may have forgotten to install the drivers, but hopefully by the end of weekend, I should have it filled back up with my junk and running and acting the way I've always setup XP to run and behave.

However, I won't deny, it really was a chore to even get to this point and I went to bed last night about 3:30AM and then got back up again at 5:00.  I fell asleep in my chair a couple times last night as well as this morning.

[MaxBeta]

  Good Grief CB... all that work.  One thing for sure you have to be at EXpert level.. going through this procedure.. Certifiable at the least. 

Yes you're right SLI and Vista aren't on the same page..as can be said in quite a few other areas.  Most of all this can be attributed to the way Vista deals with drivers in general..aside the 64bit parity that is always in the mix.  My sister had Vista installed and promptly had to find a new printer as her old one didn't have "signed' drivers.. and that is just for starters..some of her software just didn't work because of its "dated" presence.  She's a Phy/Therapist..and some of the programs she uses are not replaceable.. So she's miffed to say the least.

My SLI advice is to make sure you have a Mobo that is configurable to whatever you want to use.. so that limits it to a few Highend Mobo's.  I've always liked ATI for the service is has given me personally..so not to debate other qualms,  I thought I'd mention ATI's latest G-Cards specs..which has nearly twice the number of transistors as Radeon X1950 XTX, which incorporated 384 million transistors, and 19 million more transistors than the G80 GPU inside NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800. <sheesh>

Whoee!!  It's memory interface consisting of eight 64-bit memory controllers.. in comparison the Radeon X1950 XTX relied on eight 32-bit memory controllers for its 256-bit memory interface ..what a leap.. ..probably have to plug directly into a Bonneville or Edison power station to run this deal.. j/k..   

Oh Well...This is just Bleeding edge tech showing its persistent "carrot" to all us Graphic Addicts.. 

[City Builder]

I had a similar problem with my printer.  I had the Brother MFC 420CN printer and when I upgraded to Vista, I found out that there was only the most basic of driver for the 420cn printer, that would basically allow you to print some text on the page, but no other functions of the multifunction device.  I contacted Brother who told me at that time that they had no idea if or when drivers/software would be made available for the 420cn and vista.

I splurged and upgraded to the Brother MFC 440CN since they had released drivers and software for it only a couple days after vista went live to the public.  So basically I had to abandon my perfectly good printer because I had upgraded to vista because well.... I needed the other functions of the printer.

So I kind of figured Brother would just let the 420cn fall to the wayside in hopes of getting people to buy the next model up, but I just got an email from them about a week ago announcing that they now have drivers and software for the 420cn and vista.  Ummmmm, that's what... like 3 or 4 months since vista was released and its only now that they have the new drivers? 

Oh well.  I shall keep that printer in the garage as a spare in case this one ever craps out on me.

I found out all kinds of interesting info on SLI yesterday, the biggest positive would be that games don't have to be programmed to take advantage of SLI at all.  When using two GPU's they can be configured in the driver software where each one might take on the job of rendering hallf of the frame, in this way you get a definate boost to the performance of many many games.  Im quite suprised to see how many games that I own can use SLI in this manner even though they're not designed for SLI.

Anno 1701 is one of these games that can have this done to it.  However Anno 1701 never really was a video hog on my computer even with the ATi x1900gt video card so it would really matter if I ran it in SLI or single GPU mode.  But I did boost my Lord of the Rings Online framerate from about 30fps to about 70+ depending on the area and population of course, so that was a positive thing out of the experience.

Yeah, Im waiting to see how the new ATi card does, I thought I'd already read a preview or two that said it was definately noticibly slower then the 8800 card, but because it was a preview edition they wanted to wait for full retail card before exclaiming how fast or slow it really was.  I think it would be interesting to see if Xfire works the same way with ATi cards, in that games that are not designed for xfire can still take advantage of them the way that games not programmed for SLI can still take advantage of SLI.

[MaxBeta]

  Good to know my Sis isn't alone in this Vista saga of despair..  I'll share your similar episode with her.  She gets so down when she's duped..might give her some solice for a change.

Like you.. I read everything I can dredge up on SLI..and that's where I came up with the "configurable" comment.   Being able to setup whatever your going to play..is paramount to having the ability to take advantage of all this expensive hardware.  Granted some games will need it..and others are just as enjoyable without it..and having a content player is the real goal.

As for the latest from ATI..I'll watch it ..see how it really does in out in consumerland before I'll have any inkling of trying myself.  I just hope my latest nVidia setup doesn't prove to be a big headache..since I prefer to have a setup that just plays all the games I'm involved with..and is a stable worry free experience. 

[City Builder]

Stable is always the key word in computers for me.  I was quite suprised at how easily XP installed on this rig.  I've had some out and out failures with XP installing in the past.  There were times when XP would tell me that it couldn't continue for one reason or another.  Turned out that it didn't like the CD/DVD drive that I was using and I had to install an older one to accomodate it.

I've also had times where I've isntalled XP and then found out that something was corrupted upon installation and the windows update didn't function.  Had to reinstall it again that time.

This time though it went really smooth, especially for someone that was dozing off at the keyboard in the wee hours of the night while installing it.  I figured I'd better take advantage of installing it while I was tired because I know if I was fully alert I'd have been worrying about losing this data or that data.  I've been writing in a nice red leather bound journal all my usernames, passwords and urls to sites that I have to remember since I've never been able to figure out what file or files in windows holds that information so that I could transfer it to a reinstall of the OS.  So I was saved there.  The only thing I lost this time was my email from years and years, however I've still got them in the windows vista format which is basically each message is stored as a text file so I can open them with notepad and read those old emails if I should need to.

Otherwise it's been very very stable today, without so much as even a hiccup, and definately more responsive then Vista was.  However once MS puts out a service pack or two then I'll probably reinstall vista to give it another go, as Im pretty confident that after a SP or two MS will get it performing to the equivelant of XP or better.  Hell, I now own 2 DX10 video cards so I'll have to make the switch back over to Vista at some point in time to take advantage of any new DX10 games that come out.  But I think most of those initially are going to be first person shooter types of games which I don't play.

I know that while I would have liked to stick with ATi because the X1900GT has served me very very well, but I knew that eventually I'd have to make the switch to Nvidia due to my mainboard being a NF4 mainboard so crossfire wasn't going to be an option for me.

I may purchase windowblinds ($19.99) or Object desk ($49.99) from www.stardock.com in the meantime just to get a fresh look out of XP because I've been with XP since release and it's looking rather dated at the moment.

[MaxBeta]

   Good to know you were able to catch a nap during a hassle free install.. that's a relief.

Once you have a system going in the direction you want..it is also nice to have the luxury of not worrying about .."the next boot".. and will that game error out..etc.

That why I'm building for the future.. mine..and the games I play.  I don't really need SLI yet, but just want to be prepared for it.  I manage to play in an OK mindset working out of a performance setting rather than ultra High quality graphics.  I think this habit started over the years of testing games and being under the gun to get through everything..and keep moving forward.  Now that I am free of this chore, I do like to have the opportunity to savor some of the games..at least when I remember that I can... 

I pay very little attention to the OS "look".. It just serve me as a Menu holder..and as long as it functions without to much effort, then I continue to ignore it.

Hope everything hangs together for you..and you get some playing time over the weekend.   

[Lengo]

In Spanish, "vista" means view. Can you see it?

I think the writing was on the wall before it was released, based on past experiences with previous Microsoft OSes.

Like the Cell phone commercials -- "can you see me now? Can you see me now?" said the OS programmer. Yeah, I can see. I can see clearly now. I can see what Microsoft and P.T. Barnnum have in common.

[Oregon Taz]

I have bid a fairwell to Windows Vista.

Since it was first released and installed on my rig I've apparently been in denial about it's performance.  I kept telling myself that it was just as fast in daily operations as is XP.  Well, I bought the second Nvidia 8800GTS video card so that I could get SLI up and running on my computer.  I spent a good 10 hours yesterday after installing the second card trying to get Vista to recognize that it should allow me to turn on SLI, to no avail.  I read forum after forum and people saying that the nvidia drivers were not working correctly with vista towards allowing us to turn on SLI.

I finally got fed up about midnight last night and whipped out my Windows XP Pro disc and wiped the primary hard drive clean and did a reinstall of XP Pro.  I had been putting it off because I've installed XP so many times now that I have to call them every time now to activate it and that just annoys me.  Suprisingly it activated through the internet this time without needing to call a techie in India.

Now SLI is up and running like it should and when I try to copy 28GB from one hard disk to another it only takes a couple minutes.  In Vista it might have taken 2 hours to transfer that 28GB of data, depending on how many files, if they were all large, or small etc.

It may not be as pretty as Vista, but things work the way they should and XP runs faster in my opinion.

Im still going through the process of reinstalling everything and making sure I don't have any hardware left in the device manager of which I may have forgotten to install the drivers, but hopefully by the end of weekend, I should have it filled back up with my junk and running and acting the way I've always setup XP to run and behave.

However, I won't deny, it really was a chore to even get to this point and I went to bed last night about 3:30AM and then got back up again at 5:00.  I fell asleep in my chair a couple times last night as well as this morning.

I'm glad you guys cussed and discussed Vista. I am hoping to get a new computer for Christmas, to play the next generation games. This one just barely handles the present generation. But now I know that I do not want Vista as an OS! But that presents a problem - all new computers are coming out with Vista, so how does one get a bigger, badder computer that is not loaded with Vista? Without building one, that is, which I'm incapable of.

[City Builder]

You need to snatch up a copy of windows xp now while you still can.  Most big chain stores are no longer carrying xp (at least not near to me) but stores that are about 140 miles away or so do carry the non oem copy of xp.  On my next trip into LA, Im going to stop by there and pick up a full copy of xp pro non-oem version for about $165.00 with taxes, so that I have it for my next store bought computer or laptop as I want the choice of which OS Im going to use and not have one shoved down my throat.

The way that I look upon it, is that until MS stops supporting XP (which will happen in the next 5 to 7 years), stores should still sell it and computer mfg's should still give the user the option which OS they want on their rigs.  Of course by the time that MS stops supporting XP, they will have produced their next OS anyway, so it seems to be a cycle where the user can generally skip one full release of an OS.

I found it quite interesting that when I reinstalled XP this last time I was expecting to have to call them again to activate it as I've had to do the last 5 or 6 times, but I didn't have to.  I don't know why not, but since I reinstall my OS about every 6 months or so, I usually use up my alloted internet activations in no time at all.  And since I've had XP, I think I probably activated it over the web about 3 or 4 times and had to phone home to activate it about 6 to 9 times.  Maybe it works on how long it's been since it was last activated on the web.  So for example if it doesn't get activated on the web for 7 months, then it purges the database and starts over allowing internet activation again.

[Oregon Taz]

I have the windows XP CD. Will I be able to uninstall Vista from a new computer and then install XP from that CD?
Thanks for your reply.