FORT90 forum

I needed to reinstall Windows because I was having some problems burning DVDs. I figured I would upgrade to Windows 7 while I was at it since the word on the street is that it's not the hog Vista is, and who knows, maybe I'll get to take advantage of this DX10 nonsense.

I really like the new taskbar, but the moved the show desktop button to the right side, and it can't be moved around. To make up for that annoyance, if you mouse over it, it will show you the desktop without actually hiding anything, so you get outlines of all open windows. I'm not sure what the point of that is since you could simply click it twice in the time it would take for the mouse over effect to activate. :?

So far the impression is good though. The default themes are very nice and swap through a few different backgrounds by default. Having widgets by default is nice, simply because I like having the weather up and a something monitoring CPU and RAM. Everything looks a little nicer too. Not as nice as OS X, but I do like it better than XP. I can't find a way to make the taskbar and window borders less transparent though. It would be nice to have the option to go opaque like OS X does (it's kind of weird to see the desktop coming through above and below your current full screen window).

Had some trouble getting CS4 installed, still trying to work that out.

I'll keep you guys posted how the compatibility is, and any annoyances that pop up.

Wait, so it came out already?

Anyway, as noted during my MS open house wrap up, I was shocked to hear that many of these improvements are simply shit I've been able to do on OS X for years now. Hate to sound like an Apple snob and all, but... Though the core issue is how Vista was such a colossal mess, plus I get the impression that most of these "new" features are already possible in XP, albeit with some modifications.

And once again, I'm kinda amazed that power up and down time is such a big hassle. I do recall XP taking a little while longer to shut down when compared to OS X on my Mac, but then again, perhaps I just didn't have that much installed?

Anyhow, not gonna lie... I'm really looking forward to the Windows 7 launch party later this week in hopes of snagging a copy. I'm actually following everyone's advice and waiting for that before buying a copy of XP. Let's see how 7 runs Touhou Project!

My mac mini doesn't boot as fast as my PC. I think everyone cares about boot time, it's not just a Windows thing. Yeah a lot of this stuff is similar to what you get in OS X, but now it's all done in Windows style (aka better). Imagine an OSX which had it's window style all application instead of window based, and that's kind of what Windows 7 is like.

I've run into a small problem with moving My Documents to another location. It's still kept a My Documents under my username and programs put stuff in there instead of the new location. I'm gonna have to google this one.

Mostly got that my documents thing worked out. Windows Vista and 7 keep track of all that stuff in a more mac like way (music, pictures, and video are not sub folders of my documents anymore).

Now I'm trying to VNC into OS X and I'm hoping someone has some VNC experience to help me out. I've tried a few clients and RealVNC seems to work the best, but they're all a little too slow. The screen refresh rate is pretty bad, and this is over my local network. Reducing the color palette and other bandwidth related stuff does not help either. Any suggestions?

re: vnc - i've never gotten a vnc environment that works all that fast. it was ok as a stopgap measure for some rip issues i was working around a while back, but if your machines are physically close, why not use a kvm or just km switch? they're not perfect either, of course, but it seems simpler than fussing with lag and whatnot.

I moved the mac to the living room because I thought it would be nice to have out there for internetting on the TV.

I ran a touhou game (Shoot the Bullet) today without any problems if that makes you feel any better Matt.

i assume it's like i figured:  most games are probably going to run fine.  and i assume if some games don't work, it will be a short while before people get around to patching them.

Kotaku just wrote a piece on Windows 7...

http://kotaku.com/5384543/windows-7-what-happened-to-gaming

... But since I'm not much of a PC person, many of its points are lost on me, so maybe you folks can tell me if the author knows what he's talking about and the such.

This is their only point:


So if you're a PC gaming evangelist, yes, you might not be happy with Microsoft right now. :/

yeah, i mean...backing off of games for windows live in particular is a good thing. it was totally fucked up and completely unnecessary. steam eats it for lunch, for starters.

speaking of windows and games:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/20/surfacescapes-dd-on-microsoft-surface/

wow.

Sidenote: I got my arcade PC set up with VNC to make things easier to set up (I have a keyboard and mouse tucked away inside the cab) and it runs so much smoother than it does on the mac mini. It looks like I'm right in front of the computer, with just a bit of lag. It's connected via a shitty wireless hub as opposed to the Mac Mini which is hard wired..

After watching this...

http://www.dannychoo.com/post/en/25197/Microsoft+Japan.html

... I gotta ask, what's the general consensus thus far? Does most folks like it? Does it actually work? Did people actually get it?

most folks i know who got the beta were very happy with it, but most of them were also going from vista.

i'm sticking with xp until my soundcard dies. so hopefully another 3 or 4 years.

My legally acquired copy from the MSDNAA refuses to install.  The only way to burn it again is to download it via an .exe from Microsoft and my only other computer is a Powerbook, *facepalm*

So I guess I'm reinstalling XP to download and burn Windows 7 again?

ouch. do you want me to burn something for you?

So apparently the touchscreen component doesn't work very well...

http://www.sankakucomplex.com/2009/10/26/windows-7-humiliates-ms-japan-boss-live-on-stage/

... But does it even matter? Then again, I think a completely touch-based Mac is a stupid thing, so I'm maybe not the right person to comment. Maybe they just care about it in Japan?

Took a trip to the in-laws and got a new copy out of it, thanks though.

Not very surprising, have you ever tried to use a Windows Mobile phone?

I was wrong about being able to make the window borders non-transparent. It's an option that I just missed. I just created a new user and moved everything over in a more proper manner to this new user and deleted the old one so that my games and apps can save without a problem now too, so no complains at the moment.

Well, I was somewhat impressed with the interface of 6.5 till I found out that the team behind it literally stole the frontend from the Zune HD and left the rest a real mess. I also found it funny that the very second it hit the streets, after months and months of championing it, MS went "okay, all problems will be solved with 7". Which everyone does, mind you, but their extremely nonchalant attitude was rather hilarious.

Poor Vista users...

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139879/Windows_7_upgrade_paralyzes_some_PCs_with_endless_reboots

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139991/Windows_7_endless_reboot_answer_evades_Microsoft

As noted in the gaming section, it's been hell trying to install Windows 7 on my Mac.

MS finally sent me a copy, which didn't work, and which I had to ask Dave for some help, by re-burning the disc image to make it Mac compatible. Online, everyone's pointing fingers at either MS or Apple. Mind you, this is only with the 64-bit version.

The actual installation process itself was a whole different headache. Everyone said that installing 7 on a Mac was much easier than XP, but not in my experience. Boot Camp (the program used to do so) is slightly changed in Snow Leopard, and for the worse. I had to fuss around with my hard drive a lot because I kept getting "not enough free space" errors despite having more than enough (the problem could be attributed towards having a fragmented drive, but I JUST did a clean install of OS X the day prior).

Once that was finally taken care of, I could go ahead and install, but... btw, thanks The Unofficial Apple Weblog for having the most bullshit tutorials online. Seriously, thank you. I kept scratching my head at one part in particular, the most important one, which I guess they assumed everyone already knew about, which led to lots of frantic Googling via the iPhone, and that's a real pain in the ass.

After I finally got the damn thing to install and figured I was finally on home base.... no sound. Wonderful. Plus, there's something up with the video. Basically, the final step is to install a bunch of drivers from Apple's OS X install disc, which is... you guess it... not compatible with Windows 7, 64-bit version. So I have to wait for the Boot Camp update, and who the hell knows when that's coming out.

Till then, I have a somewhat pretty, yet essentially unusable 64 gigs on my hard drive.

Just install the 32-bit version. The extra RAM would be nice, but it sounds like it's not even worth all the headaches you're having.

I figured that going with the 64-bit version would be the way to go, since I could use the 4 gigs of ram to off-set any deficiencies I have going on with my processor (a 2.4 ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) and video card (a ATI RadeonHD2600 with 256 megs of ram). You tell me Dave, how does your system compare since it handled Modern Warfare 2 just fine. How much ram do you have btw?

But after much research, and finding out how virtually every driver out there won't work since they need to be written for 64 bits, and how running old games that were written specifically 32-bits will actually cause problems, I guess I'm gonna have to switch.

I also neglected to tell you about the bizarre video problem I have. I was initially going to just wait for the Boot Camp update until I tried to install drivers for my Dell bluetooth mouse, and they too got rejected because of the discrepancies in bits. My mouse works, but the scroll wheel doesn't, and that's a deal breaker.

Hopefully I'll be bugging you on Steam by tomorrow night Dave!

I stick with the 32-bit version because of driver compatibility. It's probably not as much of an issue these days, but since I only have 2GB of RAM, there's not point in going 64-bit.

Having more RAM won't offset any deficiencies. It works in the opposite way: your computer is only as fast as it's slowest bottleneck. That's a gross oversimplification, but it's the best way to think about it. Having 4GB of RAM over the 3GB you would get with 32-bit Windows would probably not affect your gaming experience at all. You would probably only notice it while opening very large documents in photoshop (very large) or running tons of programs at once.

What kind of processor does your computer have?

(edit: just another quick point - quality of RAM is probably more important than quantity. I have 2GB, but it's also really really nice RAM so it performs well, and it's timed to sync with my CPU's frontside bus. Stuff like that would have more impact on performance, but I don't think you can play with that stuff on a Mac.)

Just went through all the additional and unforeseen hassles with re-installing Windows 7, the 32-bit variety, onto my Mac and I'm almost dead certain that I should have gone with my original plan and just gotten XP. I'm so fucking pissed right now (even for me) that I can't even describe it.

Well, I have sound now, great, but my video problem is still present; I get very feint diagonal lines that go across the screen... it's only noticeable when there's a white background, but it's there.

Oh, so my Dell bluetooth mouse no longer works. Even though it did just fine when I was running 64-bit, aka the totally broken version of the OS. I got an 0x80004005 error at one point, but I can't figure out what that means. But for the most part, the OS is trying to pair it to the device, and I just get an endless "connecting to device" message.

Tried looking at Dell's website for an updated Win7 driver but can't find shit, and I just don't have the patience to start yet another "help me!" thread over at NeoGAF.

Seriously, fuck Microsoft, fuck Apple especially, fuck everything. Sorry, to be in such a pissy mood, but after six solid days of this nonsense I JUST WANT SOMETHING TO WORK.

Did I mention how, after being on hold forever with Dell tech support for like 30 minutes (yes, to ask about a bluetooth mouse), once a person finally got on the line, I lost signal all of a sudden? lol AT&T/iPhones!

Anyway, to clarify: remember how I downgraded because Apple's Boot Camp software, which is mostly a bunch of drivers to allow Apple hardware (like it's keyboard and all it's special functions) to operate in a Windows environment? Well, the managed to install, though the video driver once again didn't do what I was expecting it to, and that was get rid of those scan-lines.

But one thing that didn't apply was its bluetooth drivers, which got a big red X in the post-installation summary. My Dell mouse, which worked before (though the scroll wheel was not functioning), is completely dead since I suspect that bluetooth got corrupted.

I managed to download the updated driver which is 7 compatible, which was a pain in the ass because Dell insists that you utilize their software install application which doesn't even work, so I had to boot into OS X to proper nab the file. Which of course didn't work, due to again the borked bluetooth. Apple has a special post-Snow Leopard bluetooth update, which naturally, is not 7 compatible!

I'm so sick of this stupid wild goose-chase. As is, the only mouse that works is Katie's old one button eMac one, which is hardly appropriate for Left 4 Dead 2 me thinks. My only option is to hope that Apple delivers an updated Boot Camp which will finally solve many of these stupid issues or get a wired mouse, and I'm kinda dirt poor right now.

I almost in a fit of rage wiped out the 7 partition, but at this point, just gonna leave it there dormant till a better solution presents itself. Again, still thinking about getting XP and going fuck it.

Another thing I forgot to mention was how the Boot Camp drivers wouldn't load off by store bought Snow Leopard disc, so I had nab them from The Pirate Bay. Which worked of course. Once again, thanks a bunch Apple!

Just go to XP. I do like 7, but I have had it blue screen twice, which is nuts since XP NEVER does that. The little benefits you get from upgrading to 7 aren't worth the trouble you're having. XP is a really nice OS.

Blue screens for me too, more than any other version Windows I've ever used (that would be from 3.1 - 7).  Back to XP for me, that extra 3gigs of RAM isn't worth it if my computer crashes almost hourly.

if it's any consolation, this thread has convinced me to keep my copy of Windows 7 the hell away from my Macbook.

Come to think of it, I honestly don't know why I bothered with it in the first place. Other than others saying that it was silly for me to nab XP with 7 just around the corner, plus it was free.

Other than the nifty desktops, I honestly can't think of any advantages the platform provides, at least for the time being. Everything that I'm interested in playing, which is mostly indie titles, were all done in XP and me thinks that's going to be the ideal platform for a while since they're mostly so low profile.

So is this all I really need?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16832116515&cm_re=xp-_-32-116-515-_-Product

The sooner I hear confirmation, the sooner I can buy it and get Steam on this sucker. Kinda miffed that I'll be missing out the killer holiday weekend deals... then again, can't I just buy stuff now and actually install them at a later date? I'm assuming that I don't have to re-pay for the two games I already purchased a while back, correct?

Steam is all about your account. Install on however many computers you want (not always true, some games have additional DRM, but mostly it's true), but you can only ever have one computer logged into your Steam account at a time. So you can buy the games now, and install them later. I bought UT3 months before I actually installed and played it just because it was on sale.

Cool. That's what I figured, but better best to ask beforehand.

BTW, think this is a safe purchase?

http://cgi.ebay.com/MS-WINDOW-XP-PROFESSIONAL-SP3-OEM-W-COA_W0QQitemZ110462028020QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item19b80cc8f4#ht_1418wt_1167

Hey Fort, check your PMs.

Well, finally got XP running on this Mac, and thus far, all is well. Other than an unexpected issue early on in the installation process that I was lucky enough to not encounter the last time I tried out XP (and which was almost the final straw, enough for me to swear off Windows on this Mac forever), it's been smooth sailing. Got bluetooth up and running, plus there's zero video issues!

Granted, XP is not nearly as sexy as 7, but since OS X trumps them both in that area, I just need something that will work. And XP just feels nice and tight (even more so than Snow Leopard in certain regards). At least I was able to swipe some 7 desktops! Plus, I know I can reconfigure the theme to my liking. Trying to get my hands on this...

(http://pics.fort90.com/forum/xptheme.jpg)

... Oh, and wouldn't you know, I can't seem to access Steam, but me thinks that's just because everyone is downloading some wacky Black Friday deal. lol

Check that Windows Firewall isn't blocking it for some reason because you shouldn't have a problem getting connected to Steam. Windows Firewall is in the control panel somewhere (one of the things about 7 is that made that stuff much easier to find and deal with, that is turn off).

Accept my friend invite and I'll send you your copy of L4D2.

I guess I should maybe start a Windows XP 101 thread...

Followed your suggestion and Steam began downloading almost immediately. But now that I have it, can I turn the Firewall back on or do I need to keep it off whenever I want to play? I'm assuming that I should have it on whenever possible...

Also, what's the deal with anti-virus software? Sorry, but because I'm a Mac guy, I've never had to bother with it... I absolutely need it, don't I? I'm pretty safe with my web surfing; I never download or click anything that I don't know what it is. But still, guess I should get something, just in case. What's my best options? Anything good that's cheap?

I don't use any anti-virus. I just check for spyware occassionally and then when feeling like it, do a quick online check for viruses (there are websites for that). I don't have the firewall on, I just let my router do the blocking. Our router is locked up though so no one else can get on it.

I would just leave the firewall off myself, but if you want to turn it back on, try running Steam again with the firewall on and the firewall should ask you if you want to block it or not. Or you can go in and manually add Steam to the allowed list somehow I'm sure. I'm not very familiar with it because I just don't use it.

i use avast for antivirus. it's free for home use, updates regularly, has a relatively small footprint.

add steam to your firewall exceptions (second tab under "security settings for firewall" if you're using vanilla xp install) and whatever programs you're running on steam and it won't be an issue.

Sweet. I'm re-encoding some avi's/burning a DVD in OS X in a moment, but the chance I get, I'll do the necessary adjustments to the firewall. As for anti-virus, I'm assuming this will work just fine?

http://free.avg.com/us-en/homepage

Okay, next question: I have an old Radio Shack USB adapter to use a PS2 Dual Shock for, you know, play games. But it doesn't seem to really interface with the stuff I've tried thus far, so is there some kind of program to help this out, or do I need to nab the device's specific driver?

EDIT: Just discovered Joy2Key! Though I need something to decompress rar files. Hmmm....

Also, my only major/minor interface gripe is how stuff I continually tell the operating system to always hide in the task bar keeps popping up. Is that just one of those things that XP does that I should just accept? Just wondering.

What sort of stuff are you referring to?

to decompress rar files, i generally use winrar.  it's kind of old now i guess, but it seems to cover absolutely every kind of compression around, so it works out.  plus, i think the guy who made it is dead now or something, so...his LEGEND LIVES ON THROUGH YOUR DOWNLOAD.

edit cause i misread: depends on what's popping up. some stuff (Adobe suite, java, etc) bring their icons back to the taskbar whenever they're updating, which is usually always.

Hey, so Apple finally updated Boot Camp to allow Windows 7 installation! So long story short, am getting a MacBook very soon, and was going to install XP onto that as well, but now I might give 7 another shot. Will be nice to finally experiment with it, though I'll always have the real deal on my main machine at the end of the day.

Though I must say, the problem with icons on the task bar continually popping up, no matter how many times I command it to hide, even when it's active, still bugs the shit out of me. I know it's minor and all, but I have to wonder if anything is broken. Speaking off...

(http://pics.fort90.com/forum/possibleXPweirdness1.jpg)

Here's a picture of what my login screen looks like. First the actual login field...

(http://pics.fort90.com/forum/possibleXPweirdness2.jpg)

And immediately above it, where the light blue and the dark blue is separated. Notice has lines appear broken? Is that just the way it is, or is there something going on here? Sorry to ask, but I've looked for screenshots across the web for comparison, but can't find jack.

Bump? This issue is really driving me nuts, despite it being so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But aren't most annoyances the same, really?

is the login the only place it does it?

As far as graphical issues, yes. But along with my task bar popping stuff up, no matter how many times I chose the "always hide" option, I'm beginning to wonder what is up. Is it simply because I'm on Apple hardware?

maybe? it might be reacting to certain programs depending on how the window locks. but it may just be an issue with your install. dunno.

just upgraded to 4gb ram on my 32 bit xp install. obviously it only sees 3.25gb, but photoshop and illustrator are much, much happier. whee!

I am in heaven right now. On monday i got the parts for my first system replacement in over 4 years. I went from a 3gig RAM/80Gig IDE HDD/single-proc AMD chip setup to a quad-core i7 intel chip, 6gigs of ram, and a 1TB SATA drive.

It's silent as the grave, fast as fuck, and Windows7 is pretty darn spiffy. In fact, this is the first time in quite a few years I've had PC-related gearlust.  It's just delightful.

And Antec has now become my god for any future case purchases. the P183 is just a fabulous piece of workmanship all the way around.

Stupid question, but why didn't you just upgrade to 3 gigs? Is it for a future OS upgrade or simply easier this way?

the cost difference was minimal and things work better in dual channel mode (i.e. matched pairs of dimms)