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Are you a restricted user? Have you had Windows apply updates and tell you it was going to shut down in thirty seconds and not give you an option?
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I'm still using XP, and it even disturbs me that XP wants to automatically shut down in 5 minutes (but you can canel it). Well, in XP it's possible to disable this using gpedit.msc
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elektrowolf wrote: XP wants to automatically shut down in 5 minutes
I've never seen that. On mine, XP will download updates and then when I go to shutdown it says it asks if it should install them before it shuts down. I think that should be the default behaviour.
elektrowolf wrote: it's possible to disable this using gpedit.msc
After someone mentioned that about Vista I looked, but it seems Vista Home doesn't have gpedit.
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: elektrowolf wrote:
it's possible to disable this using gpedit.msc
After someone mentioned that about Vista I looked, but it seems Vista Home doesn't have gpedit.
Quote Selected Text
gpedit.msc is on my Vista installations; maybe it's only missing the Home version(s). May have been true on XP too.
I think you can also get that behavior just be choosing the Windows Update option to "Download updates but let me choose whether to install them." (At least I don't remember changing anything w/r/t updates in gpedit.)
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There's upgrades and there's upgrades.
Most of my systems (and I dare say, those in the outside world) are not particularly Vista ready, unable to "unleash" it's full (or dubious?) benefits.
How many systems max-out at 2GB RAM. Quite a few. Should I be driven to buy a new PC because of this bloatware? Even my Laptop screams now (XPsp2) with it's 2GB maxed out. I'm afraid those screams of joy would turn into tears of dispair.
Add to this the general experience that so much software needs patching and/or replacement in order to run and we have a product that would never sell if it were not being preloaded on systems. Sold largely to the innocent (although if it's there first PC, perhaps that doens't matter?).
Those of us who call it crap have various reasons. Let's put aside that it may need another service pack or two. It's the demand for hardware resources that do not encompass the generally owned user systems that's troubling.
Then I look at Linux upgrades. Backwards compatability to die for. Certainly when compared to Windows. Windows is just consumer-be-damned (but look at the pretty pictures!).
The 'crap' in it's nature is at a spiritual level.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein
"How do you find out if you're unwanted if everyone you try to ask tells you to stop bothering them and just go away?" - Balboos HaGadol
"It's a sad state of affairs, indeed, when you start reading my tag lines for some sort of enlightenment?" - Balboos HaGadol
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Balboos wrote:
Then I look at Linux upgrades. Backwards compatability to die for.
And that is both software and hardware.
John
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Dear all,
Any of you have code for a high-resolution precise timer under Vista.?(Expected atleast 1 micro-second precision). The purpose is to do data-transfer to and fro PCI device between very small time intervals(0.0001s). Even minute inconsistancy will affect the end result.
Stated below are two assembly functions which I've been calling till today from my VC++ application to attain this. Both works perfectly under all previous Windows OS (frm Windows 98 - XP) with acceptable consistancy (less than 0.2% error always) and nano-second resolution.
Though it is working on Vista, its not providing that sort of accuracy, even after disabling all eye-candy graphic options of Vista.
Function - 1
__int64 GetMachineCycleCount()
{ __int64 cycles; _asm rdtsc; // won't work on 486 or below - only pentium or above
_asm lea ebx,cycles;
_asm mov [ebx],eax;
_asm mov [ebx+4],edx; return cycles; }
Function - 2
void Delay(__int64 uSec )
{
__int64 n=0;
for(__int64 i = 0; i < uSec; i++)
{
n++;
_asm nop
}
}
Any suggestions on modification of these codes or support on a code for a consistant-high-resolution timer on Vista would is greatly appreciated.
Thanks in Advance - Jose
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Jose Praveen wrote: Any suggestions on modification of these codes or support on a code for a consistant-high-resolution timer on Vista would is greatly appreciated.
I think the problem is that you didn't use inline VB's uber nanosecond timing that can set to lower intervals that get ignored even though it's only like really a 44 ms resolution restriction.
You see the trick is despite the WM_TIMER restrictions Vista had a new feature that you can fool the OS by using a bogus value, but in VB only. So, try some inline VB like so to initiate the hax:
__int64 Delay(__int64 uSec)
{
_vb
{
Dim tHax As Timer
tHax = 1 \ 0 ' init hax
OnError Return tHax.HiddenWindowsCode.TinyTimer.Now
}
}
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I am getting "_vb - undeclared identifier" error when trying to use your codes under VC++. Do I need to set something?
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Jose Praveen wrote: Do I need to set something?
Yeah, check out MSDN for the /allowvb compiler switch.
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Genius 
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Duncan Edwards Jones wrote: Genius
Why thank you.
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Ok, I think Vista is crap but that could be because it is really the HP dual core AMD I bought that said it was Vista ready and it was not.
It has a NVIDIA graphics card installed ... I have had MANY blue screens of death. Also my graphic intensive WPF chromosome browser application runs very slow on my Vista dual core PC but very fast on my Sony VIAO laptop with XP.
I notice the half of my co-workers that do like Vista have Dell laptops and the others, such as myself, have PC's/laptops from different vendors.
So those of you that are having a good experience with Vista what is your hardware?
And those of you having bad experience with Vista what is your hardware?
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I have Dell Inspiron E1505, 3gb RAM, 120gb 7200rpm drive, 256kb Radeon video. This notebook originally had XP on it (with 2gb). When I put Vista Ultimate on (3-4 months after Vista's release), I made sure I added a Lexar 8gb ExpressCard drive and put ReadyBoost cache on it. with this configuration, I resume from standby in 12-15 seconds, and startup from cold in 30-45 seconds. It is much, much faster with Vista.
Is your HP and Nvidia graphics card using shared system memory? I have seen several machines where using slower system memory really drags down a system, both XP and Vista.
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Well, I've had several Dell Laptops running vista an it runs without a problem, my experience with Vista has been a lot better than my experience with XP (and I have more that 10 years as a user, not saying vista, but overall PC user). Also have an assembled PC at home that used to have XP and upgraded it to vista with 2Gb RAM and an NVIDIA 512Mb, and it runs a lot better that what it used to with XP, the CPU is an AMD 64 x2.
So in the overall I prefer Vista, it's much more stable and at least I do better with the options and desktop features, I've coded against XP and Vista and like Vista better (.Net coding). Also as a gamming platform I prevents a lot of crashes I used to have with the same hardware on XP. So I guess that like some people are saying it all adds up to your hardware configuration and overall needs.
I have been using Vista since the first Beta and I really miss it at work (I have to use XP due to company policies).
But in a fast remark I tend to agree that Dell hardware so far has been the best for Vista. 
It's not enough to do your best, you must know what to do and THEN do your best.
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"Is your HP and Nvidia graphics card using shared system memory? "
Not sure but I will check when I get home from work. I won't ever buy HP again though, I've been
burnt for the last time (I got this one on sale and that is the only reason I bought it).
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TonyJ wrote: It has a NVIDIA graphics card installed ... I have had MANY blue screens of death.
Recently? Or at Vista release? I have nVidia throughout all my machines, including two laptops with Vista, one 32bit, one 64bit, and a desktop with 64bit Vista.
Unfortunately it took several months after Vista release to straighten out the graphics bugs that were introduced by last minute market forcing Microsoft to support OpenGL and vendor-specific advances. Originally Vista was to be DirectX/Direct3D only, and supported absolutely NO vendor extensions (the Apple method). What you saw was what you got. The last minute shift away from this stance between RC2 and Gold release was part of the Vista disaster and I have tried to explain my part in that too. It took months of bug fixes to reduce the occurance of bugs popping up in the video drivers, especially blue screens. It is hardest for laptop editions, because laptop nVidia relies on Vendor releases of drivers, not pure nVidia releases, thus making it very, VERY difficult to get a non-blue-screen Vista laptop in the first 6 months of release. Vendors caught up, and nVidia and ATI both caught up.
Newer blue-screens pop up now and then when vendors try to adapt in vendor-specific updates to Vista. Remember that Vista was not designed internally for this, so they basically handed the vendor a pointer to memory to "do as you please, but be careful." There is absolutely no protection from vista for the video driver because of this. The 3D vendor, nVidia, or AMD/ATI has the absolute power to kill your vista machine at will, most other drivers do not have this ability under Vista.
_________________________
Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau.
Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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"Recently? Or at Vista release? I have nVidia throughout all my machines, including two laptops with Vista, one 32bit, one 64bit, and a desktop with 64bit Vista."
I just had a blue screen a few days ago. Vista did an auto-update yesterday and one of the downloads was a nVidia patch ... we'll see how it goes.
It's just sad when your XP laptop with 1G RAM runs a graphic intensive WPF app MUCH faster than your Vista high end PC with 4G RAM.
What graphics card would you recommend for my Vista PC? I'm 100% sure what you described above is what is happening with my graphics card. Thanks for the info.
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I have one BIG piece of advice and this applies to all graphics systems ati, nvidia, intel, s3:
NEVER use Microsoft drivers. NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER **EVER**!!! get your vendor or OEM drivers. In the case of nVidia I have always used nVidia OEM universal drivers except for laptops. Even my laptop is a cheat, it is a modified OEM driver to support the mobile 8600gt much more stable than even the sony driver. every system I have ever had runs nvidia drivers Linux XP and Vista. 
_________________________
Asu no koto o ieba, tenjo de nezumi ga warau.
Talk about things of tomorrow and the mice in the ceiling laugh. (Japanese Proverb)
John Andrew Holmes "It is well to remember that the entire universe, with one trifling exception, is composed of others."
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My XP laptop screams my WPF app and uses a nVIDIA 7400 ... my newer high-end HP desktop came with an nVIDIAGeForce 6150 SE nForce430 and is EXTREMELY slow at running the same WPF app and has MANY blue screens of death (I've had 3 in the last 3 days).
I blame HP more than I do nVIDIA because they claimed (verified?) my PC as VISTA ready. I will never buy another HP product again (only bought the last PC because it was on sale).
I'm going to go out and buy a newer nVIDIA graphics card that I know is VISTA compatible. I beleive the graphics card problem that you outlined is one of the main reasons VISTA has taken such a public relations beating.
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I think you nailed it when you brought hardware into the discussion regarding Vista. Hardware definitely plays a role in the performance of Vista, and any other current OS for that matter. If you skimp on hardware, you're not going to have a good experience whether it's Vista, XP, Linux, or other. I've been using Vista for over a year, and have had a very positive experience with it. The only issue(if you can call it an issue) was learning where to find some of the things that were moved around. Very smooth interface and performance with rock solid reliability.
I currently have three machines running Vista:
A home built 3.2ghz 64bit dual core, dual nVidia video, 8gig memory running Vista U64 SP1 (14 months)
An HP DV9000 Laptop 2ghz 64bit dual core, nVidia video, 2gig memory running Vista U64 SP1 (10 months)
A Dell Inspiron 530 2.4ghz quad core, ATI video, 4gig memory running Vista Home Premium SP1 (4 months)
I've had no problems whatsoever on any of these boxes, they have been rock-solid with zero instability or blue screens. But as you can see, none of the hardware listed is lacking. All of these boxes are maxed out on memory and run the fastest CPU the mobo supports. Also, all of the hardware (including my homebuilt box) is quality big-company-name components. I learned a long time ago that quality components cause far fewer problems. A $15 network card will cost you several times more in time and frustration than a $100 network card. It's even more true for video cards. You simply can not slap the cheapest parts on the shelf together and expect a solid performing machine and good user experience, Vista or otherwise.
BFinney
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Yeah... This hardware issue just gave some sense to me... In my case, I also have a good Vista experience partly because of an expensive desktop machine in the office. But when I compare it to my home PC, well, Vista did gave me issues... I mean both PCs have quite similar specs but the home PC was the cheaper brand... (AMD is not 'at all bad' compared to Intel, right?)
think fast, be brave and dont stop.
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Very bad experience with Vista. Hardware:
QX6850 OC (3.3GHz)
4GB 800MHz DDR2
nVidia 260GTX OC (need timings? I doubt it'd be relevant)
320GB 7200rpm hdd
Tried Vista Ultimate x64. It snailed like the slowest snail I ever witnessed - and then we're not even talking about The Annoyance (bad enough to deserve capital letters)
Now running XP Pro x64 like a charm. There aren't even any driver problems.
IMO Vista has no excuse to run bad on that hardware (it runs Crysis better than Vista, ha!)
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