I made the switch to Vista

[Imakeholesinu]

On my workstation at work. I have to say I like it. This machine is definitely more responsive than my last one.

Scores a 3.5 on the Vista score but that's not too bad.

[Louis]

Vista isn't so bad. I had mine looking and behaving like XP. I'm Running Windows 7 now and I'm getting ready to put Vista back on soon. I haven't been able to get Windows 7 set up like I had Vista.

[Zeus]

More responsive?

[Zeus]

Vista isn't so bad. I had mine looking and behaving like XP. I'm Running Windows 7 now and I'm getting ready to put Vista back on soon. I haven't been able to get Windows 7 set up like I had Vista.

This is meant as an honest question with no implied commentary:

What the hell is the point of installing Vista if you want it to look and behave like XP?

[Louis]

Direct X 10

[Shrinweck]

Yeah I actually like Vista more than XP. There's a few things that I set to be like XP, but that was stuff in XP that I set to be more like Win98 (lolz) so no harm done. I have much fewer codec problems with media, but that may just be a progression over time and people starting to use less dumb ass codecs (yay for mkv being used more and more).

The only thing that pissed me off with Vista is for a couple months before they released SP1 I had restarting problems. As in it wouldn't. I was getting real worried about how I had to do a hard restart 2-3 times a week but luckily the problem stopped and then I upgraded to SP1 and I've maybe had to do it once since.

The best part of Vista is that I haven't had a single virus (well, I've only had one ever and that was with Win98), trojan, or even any ad/spyware.

I would suppose the point in upgrading if you want it to act like XP is that you can do that and it's still better than XP. Note I did wait almost a year after Vista came out before putting it on my desktop.

[Chris]

oh fuck here we go again.....cue ranting about S$ and Shitsa

[Zeus]

oh fuck here we go again.....cue ranting about S$ and Shitsa

I wasn't, I was trying to find out why it ran better. It was actually an honest question considering he set it to run and behave like XP. Obviously he did it for DX10

[Julius Seeker]

I've been using Vista for over a year now and it's been 100% smooth sailing. It is better than XP, just not as much better than XP as XP was over 98; and yes, no Trojans, spyware, or anything.

[SineSwiper]

You act like it's so easy to get Trojans and spyware. Just quit clicking on stupid email links.

[Louis]

Or going to free porn web sites. I used to be a security and abuse support rep. There was this guy I worked with that was always telling customers that if they "want to watch porn, pay for it" and "don't go to the free web sites." Every time he went on his free porn rants I would have to go smoke a cigarette because I would start laughing so hard.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, because YouPorn and RedTube are nothing buy spyware. Riiiiiiiight!

[Tessian]

Yeah, because YouPorn and RedTube are nothing buy spyware. Riiiiiiiight!

Prior to these mainstream sites though the guy had a point. You go back maybe 3-4 years and free porn sites were just as bad as most warez/crack sties. Loaded with spyware and adware and junk. It's not like that anymore for the most part thanks to mainstream sites like these and Torrents, but it wasn't always.

[SineSwiper]

Yeah, because YouPorn and RedTube are nothing buy spyware. Riiiiiiiight!

Prior to these mainstream sites though the guy had a point. You go back maybe 3-4 years and free porn sites were just as bad as most warez/crack sties. Loaded with spyware and adware and junk. It's not like that anymore for the most part thanks to mainstream sites like these and Torrents, but it wasn't always.

Even before that, you still had The Hun. Sure, you don't click on porn ADS, but everybody knows that some program that dials a number on your modem is going to be really bad news.

That guy was just a moron who actually fell for that bullshit. He's the same type that always clicks on the links in spam messages.

[Mental]

DX10 would indeed be the reason to upgrade to Vista, if such a reason can be argued to exist. It looks sweet.

You all can tell me how that goes, be sure to report any computer fires so I can have my faith in running XP reinforced.

[Shellie]

Ive been running Vista for a while now with no problems, besides an overheating video card problem that was remedied recently.

[Louis]

You should post pictures of that heat sink on your video card. That has to be the largest heat sink I have ever seen.

[Shellie]

This is what it looks like on a video card. I also have the optional fan "add on". The kit has made a 30C difference in the core temps. The heatsink is 20 on newegg and the fans are 8 bucks I think.

[bovine]

yous guys haven't been playing L4D lately, so what is this graphics card even used for? LoTRO? It's my understanding that you can usually play those sorts of games out of a spreadsheet program.

[Louis]

Well, I haven't been playing PC games because my computer has been acting weird. So in the meantime I bought a Wii, a new TV, traded my old 360 for an Elite (plus cash for the difference of course), and a new Asus Netbook to play with. So far my 360 Elite has locked up on me twice (Once playing Kung Fu Panda and once playing Oblivion). This kind of worries me already.

Whats been going on with my PC is that it has been restarting when playing games on max graphics settings. I've tried several things and I'm back to square one thinking its a driver issue. Coincidentally, this issue started when I bought L4D and it asked to update my driver. Almost instantly I had restarting issues the next time I loaded up LotRO. Rolled the driver back and everything was fine. Then I messed with some NVIDIA settings and tried the new driver again. Everything was fine for like a week and the issue came back again. But it would only do it when playing WoW or LotRO. I've yet to see it do it playing other games (tried L4D, Bioshock. Half-Life, TF2, Couterstrike: Source).

So at this point I resorted to thinking it was a hardware issue. Tried both a new PSU and video card. Same issue. I've ran Prime95 for several hours one day and never reached a critical temperature. I've ran NVIDIA graphics demos on max settings for hours on end and the video card never reached a critical temperature. Neither of these tests resulted in a restart. Ran memory tests for like 36 hours straight. No errors or restarts.

I've been running Windows 7 since the open beta started. It will do the same thing with the "special" NVIDIA driver for Windows 7.

So Saturday I'm going to do a fresh Vista install and put the old driver I was using back in to see if the problem goes away.

Here's my hardware if anyone has experienced similar issues:
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 021">Antec Nine Hundred Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... hermaltake W0116RU 750W PSU</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 03773">AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM2 125W</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... ">GIGABYTE GA-MA770-DS3 AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX All Solid Capacitor</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 0325">EVGA GeForce 8800GTS (G92) 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 27267">OCZ Reaper HPC Edition 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit (x2 for 8GB total)</a>
<a href="http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 9">Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s (x2 RAID 0)</a>

I should also add that school is back in session and that takes up some of my time also. Now, if I didn't work full time and go to school I might have time all the time in the world to play games

[Shellie]

yous guys haven't been playing L4D lately, so what is this graphics card even used for? LoTRO? It's my understanding that you can usually play those sorts of games out of a spreadsheet program.

Yeah I haven't been really on my PC at night lately. I've been pretty tired after work.

[Louis]

Got Vista Ultimate 64 loaded last night. There is a new NVIDIA driver dated 18 February 2009. I went ahead and installed this one. Downloaded Lord of the Rings Online overnight. I played LotRO for about five hours today. No restarts. Fucking NVIDIA...