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The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
While messing around with Aero, I had a bunch of windows open and tried to alt-tab, but pressed the wrong key and windows key-tabbed instead. Turns out it's like a 3D alt-tab, where you use the mousewheel to cycle through and click on the window you want up front! I have a feeling that's one of the touted aero features, but I've only been using Windows 7 for a few days, so I'm still awed by all the little things. Microsoft has really hit the nail on the head with this OS, plus offering an RC until March is fantastic. I can see OSX users getting into Windows 7, I use both and they're finally on par.

I originally got the RC for use with a new computer I'm building, but I ran into a bunch of issues with hardware incompatibility so I finally said screw it and decided to install on my old machine while I waited for the parts. Even though my machine is older 7 runs extremely smooth, which is in part caused by the upgrade to a 64-bit OS. Still having some trouble recognizing anything more than 3.5 GB of RAM though (there's 4GB in the system). Games run great, faster than on XP, so I can finally play Prototype at more than 10fps.

On a slightly less cool note, I've noticed that Windows has trouble with applications that need to restart during the install. Instead of picking up where it left off it starts the process over again, meaning that I can't install the programs. Not critical, but it is annoying. I've tried messing around with UAC, searching high and low for a setting, and doing it on a different drive, but to no avail.

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The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Lum posted:

Does your PC have onboard graphics by any chance? It's possible that you have the sort of onboard graphics that uses your main memory as video memory (this is often configurable in the BIOS)
Hmm, I never thought about this. I don't believe my system has onboard graphics, but I'll check that out. If it does, this might be an easier fix than I thought.


quote:

Are you trying to install Daemon Tools by any chance?

Yeah, that and Alcohol 120%. I had Alcohol installed, it was working, but for some reason (I can't figure out why), I uninstalled it. Going back and trying to reinstall, I ran into the issue of the SPTD driver not installing properly. I found some instructions saying to delete a registry key and delete the SPTD.sys file, before installing the drivers with the official SPTD tool, but that didn't work. Then tried Daemon Tools, but I hit the same issue.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
Awesome! Virtual CloneDrive works perfectly, thank you.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
The more I use 7, the more impressed I get with the speed and features. I had some large files which I needed to .rar up to transfer so they would fit on my USB flash drive (FAT32), and decompressing them with Winrar x64 took 5-7 seconds. On XP, it took about a minute.

I also managed to talk a friend into installing the 7 RC and he's sold. He went from XP 64, which he had tons of driver issues with. This time, the install went perfect and did that amazing drivers for everything magic. Just from that fact alone, I think Microsoft is going to expand their market a bit.
And for all the people who want to show off their new OS with Windows 7 Wallpapers, I scoured the net for the best ones and made a .rar of it. Get it Here (40.4mb, 59 files) (my own hosting).

I do have a question though. Has anyone tried the WinFS file system? What is the difference from NTFS? Any performance differences? I was considering using it when I did a clean install, but the (lack of) backwards compatibility scared me off.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Gyshall posted:

The big difference is that NTFS actually exists. WinFS is "still in development" according to Microsoft, though.

Does that mean it's not actually usable with Win7? I'm pretty sure I have the option to format my flash drive with WinFS, but I could be mistaken.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
Ahhhhhh I did mean exFAT. I read some article on Wikipedia on WinFS and got that mixed up with the exFAT option when I formatted my drive. So I guess my question is, how is exFAT?

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
I haven't run into something like that, but have you tried formatting it? It almost sounds like the computer is hanging because of some compatibility issue with the drive itself.

Check out the event logs when you insert and take out the drive, maybe that will tell you some more info.

E: I want to thank the person that posted about DisplayFusion. I have a 22" LCD and a 30" widescreen tube HDTV, and I hated the fact that Windows wouldn't let me fullscreen on only one display. With DisplayFusion and my video cards HDMI output, I'm able to watch movies and game on the TV while I browse the net and screw around on the LCD. And do independent resolutions for each screen, plus different wallpapers for each. It's only $23.02, totally worth it if you need expanded multi-screen functions.

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 13:38 on Sep 29, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
A few pages back someone posted about Ableton Live 7(?) not working on Windows 7. I just tested out my copy of Live 8, and it works great. This is without any interface (I haven't gotten around to setting up the Fireface or the 96/52) and just the motherboard sound. You might want to look in to upgrading if possible, 8 has some awesome new features. The warp engine alone is worth the price if you do a lot of time stretching and the like.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
I was having some problems with NFS:Shift crashing, so I decided to go looking for some advice. Google led me to the sevenforums.com forums, and hoooly poo poo. People are complaining about how [insert game company here] sucks for not fully supporting their game on 7, how any computer with AMD/ATI will automatically suck, and "Prototype has too many swaring, but after missions I get used to it". Oh, and I also learned XP 64-bit is "rapidly achieving cult status."

I'm not sure what I feel right now, but I'm happy I'm not posting there.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Black Tracky Dacks posted:

Oh god drat. Just installed Win7 RC on the family computer, and what do you know, the onboard audio (Realtek apparently) hates Win7. Trying to install its drivers from Windows Update just fails with an unknown error and various manual install/setup programs etc were no dice either.

Now I gotta come back down here next week to buy and install a sound card for them.

Get drivers from the motherboard manufacturer online. At first Windows Update screwed up my onboard Realtek sound, so I tracked down the Mobo drivers and it worked perfectly. Remember to uninstall the old ones first, so you're not making it more screwed up.

stickyboot posted:

Is there a way to ban URLs from your google results? Sites like that are worthless and show up all the time in searches.

I wish I knew. It would be nice to be able to block sites from search, but I'm not sure there's an easy way. As is, I'll spend 5 minutes just to get through the crap forum results like that.

As an aside, my macbook's "l" key doesn't work, so I have to copy/paste to use the loving letter :(

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 14:01 on Oct 3, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

fishmech posted:

I mean yeah it's slightly shady, but it's much less hassle than installing the RC NOW and then having to wipe it in under 3 weeks..

I set up the RC on a friends machine who isn't going to be able to buy a copy for a while, so I can understand why people are doing it. Yeah, you'll need to do a full reinstall, but you have until March to use it nonstop. That gives her enough time to use it and decide if she likes it.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Aryoc posted:

I've started liking libraries more now that I realised what the music library does if you arrange by artist or album. Instead of just listing them as folders it shows the album art, with albums stacked on each other when they're from the same artist.

Wow, that's pretty cool! I'd seen the stacking in Media Player, but I didn't know you could do that in the Library itself. It's also brought forth how lovely my ID3 tags are, so here's to the next 6 hours of fixing them up.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
I've been having a weird crash issue with 7, involving Plug and Play, the DCOM service, and the Power service. Every so often, my machine will pop up with a "Your computer will shut down in 1 minute" message, with no error or anything.

I checked the logs, and the 3 above services seem to be responsible. First the Plug and Play will go, then the DCOM, then the Power. The Faulting module is RPCRT4.dll. I first noticed this playing NFS:Shift, which after around 3 minutes of play will crash the Plug and Play service. It sucks, and it only started doing this a few days ago.

So far I've done the usual steps: uninstalled any recent programs, defragged, chkdsk'd. I'm open to pretty much any suggestion, as I have no warning when my PC will shut down.


E:

Fists Up posted:

Is there some simple problem i'm missing? Corrupted install perhaps?

What are your system specs? Does everything else run fine? I'd try reinstalling Word if you can, but if you can't here are a few other things to try. When word is running, check the task manager. I'm getting between 9 and 14 mb of RAM usage when typing on a blank document, so if you're getting a lot more, it could point to a corrupted install. Also check Windows Update, there were a ton of updates for Office 2007 when I last looked.

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 13:18 on Oct 5, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Yaos posted:

Within seconds I found the dumbest thread ever.
http://www.sevenforums.com/general-discussion/27179-would-you-trust-isp.html
He is blaming his ISP because his anti-virus software had a false positive and the ISP won't support a pre-release OS, it gets worse as the thread goes on. Maybe we can have a Tech Weekend Web on this fourm

That's actually what surprised me the most. I thought it was well understood that Windows 7 is not live for the public yet, therefore not officially supported by many companies. Even Microsoft says "This is a release candidate (beta, whatever), you're on your own if something goes wrong". I know the RTM is out, but some of those posts are from the beta days, and the goddamn entitlement is amazing. People are openly admitting to pirating 7 on that site, yet still demanding support when something fails.

But props to Microsoft for a smooth OS. It runs great on an ancient Toshiba laptop with 512 mb of RAM and a sub 2GHz Celeron processor, something I didn't expect. Hell, I might break out my 266 MHz Toshiba Tecra with 256(!)Mb of RAM and see how things go.

E: I found some dude running 7 on this-
Dell GX1:

P-III 600MHz
768MB ECC RAM
40GB HD
ATI Rage Pro Graphics (AGP x2)

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Oct 7, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
For the first 5 minutes of using 7, I got pissed at UAC for bothering me every time I did something. Then, I realized that I'd run into so many problems trying to get XP to work the way I wanted (admin account) thanks to programs doing whatever the gently caress they wanted. It's worth the 2 seconds it takes to click when I can stop poo poo that I normally wouldn't know about. Hell, I even bumped it up to max security just to get more of the messages.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Lord Commissar posted:

:rolleyes:


It's not UAC, I can turn them off, but frankly they don't bother me. The problems I had were that some programs needed to be run as admin, and even though my account was an admin account, it didn't work. Even if I used "Run as Administrator".

It was a while ago so I don't remember specifics, unfortunately, but I remember it being an issue for me.

I'm actually having a similar problem. The Blackberry Desktop Manager has a function that needs to be run as Admin to work. Thing is, if I run the program as admin, it can't find my Blackberry. It's not critical, but it is frustrating. I'm sure there's some command you can add to the shortcut to get it working right, I just don't know what.

E:^^^ Pin to Taskbar is a great feature. It brings Windows more in line with OSX, and setting it as icon only is great. That and Aero Peek have streamlined the taskbar, making it quite user friendly. ^^^

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Oct 8, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

syphon posted:

I don't suppose anyone has gotten CCC installed on Win7? (x64 specifically)

I have CCC working fine on x64, the exact same one that you're trying to install. I prefer just using the driver as I really don't need anything more than that, but I had it running before and I just installed 9.9 again with no issues.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

brc64 posted:

Just to recap, the release candidate is good until sometime next year, right? My plan is to just get an OEM copy of 7 at the same time I build myself an updated machine, but I don't see that happening any time soon (going off of recommended specs from the system building megathread, I'm looking at spending a good $800 on hardware... I thought computers were less expensive these days :()

I'll revert back to Vista if I have to, but I'd prefer to hold out if I can.

I was able to build a kick rear end machine for just under $500, and it can handle most anything I throw at it. an AMD Phenom II x2 550 3.1ghz OC'd to 3.8ghz (I tried unlocking to quad core, which you can do easily with these processors, but mine is a little unstable), Gigabyte MA770UD3P Mobo, CoolMax CU700B 700 watt modular power supply, Powercolor Radeon HD4860 1GB, G.Skill 4GB DDR3 RAM, and a 750GB WD "Green" hard drive (extremely low wattage with variable disk speed). I borrowed some components from the PC I was replacing (rackmount case, 3 other hard drives, fans, various PCI cards), but for $550 you could build one from scratch.

For the prices I paid, it's definitely been more than worth it. In the past I've spent large sums of money on computers, to have them custom built with top of the line hardware. Having less money and budgeting well allowed me to make a machine almost twice as powerful as the one it was replacing, for 1/4 the cost. NewEgg will be your best friend. Go for rebates too. That's actually what dictated my purchasing decisions, and I was able to save around $50 with the instant rebates, then another $45 with mail-in.

/derail

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
E:^^^What's your onboard sound? I remember reading some fixes for various chips, so I might be able to help you.

friendship waffle posted:

believe it or not "it just works" is the metric for software most people have



if you put in the disc, install, and "it just works" it's good stuff. If you have a bunch of device driver incompatibilities or need to feed floppies for your perc2 raid or whatever then it's frustrating

That has very little to do with Microsoft though, and what he's saying makes a lot of sense. Since Vista's buggy launch software companies have actually made compatible drivers, which is the only reason things work now. If you've noticed, most of the drivers you're installing for 7 are Vista drivers, not 7 drivers. Taking that into account, 7 is not as major an upgrade as people think. I understand that everyone was pissed none of their hardware worked, but MS had given developers a shitload of time to make working drivers (Beta, RC) and most of them didn't do squat in that time. You can't blame Microsoft for developers laziness.

I was convinced that Vista was a piece of poo poo, because that's what everyone told me. Besides my brother, not one of those people had installed Vista, much less used it even once. I took the same view until reading this thread. Learned that most of the "new" features I'd found in the RC actually originated with Vista, and that most of the problems with it were fixed at SP1. I'm not saying it's perfect, or anything of the sort, just that it's easy to assume something is crap without knowing poo poo about it.

/rant

In other news, I ordered my copy of 7 Ultimate to go with the PC I built for it. NewEgg says it's shipped, though I don't have tracking info yet. It's shipping from a state away though, so I should see it either tomorrow or Monday. Not that exciting since I've been using the RC for a while now, but there is one major plus:
I'm going to install a copy of 7 on a Toshiba Tecra 780CDM laptop. Pentium II 266, 128mb RAM, rear end-small hard drive (I'm using external), and Windows 98 currently installed. I've heard it's been installed on a similar machine with 96mb RAM, so I know it'll work to some degree. Beyond that, it's fossil-tech party time!

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Oct 23, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

FateoMcSkippy posted:

I ordered the same thing from NewEgg yesterday around noon. I got it today around one. Shipped from NJ (to Mass) and I didn't receive my tracking info until this morning. If you're lucky you'll get it tomorrow, if UPS ships on Saturdays.

Awesome. I actually ordered last night at around 5pm, and it's shipping from NJ as well (I'm in CT, so actually 2 states away). I got the "it's shipped!" email this morningI checked the site and saw it's shipped, but still no word about tracking. It usually takes one day to get here, though I got a WD hard drive in less than 24 hours from the NJ depot.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
E:^^^ This has been asked a number of times over the past few pages, with the same response every time: Get it from a torrent site and match the hash to the MS download. It's even in the OP (The hash, I mean).

Got my copy of 7 Ultimate in the mail Monday. OEM edition, because I'd built a new PC specifically for it. The installation process consisted of entering my Activation Key and updating the hell out of everything. So much easier than a full reinstall, considering I've installed 7 on six different machines so far and I'm getting rather sick of it. I did notice that pretty much every update required a restart, to the tune of 5 or 6 separate times. That sort of sucked, considering I didn't run into that with the RC.

This is also the first time I've gone and used scheduling to take care of system management tasks. It makes things much more streamlined, and I'd recommend everyone set up backups and defrags to go when you're asleep. One thing I don't know is how to do an automated shutdown. I'd like to set it to turn off at 3 am (or when defragging/backing up is done), and start up at 7 am. Not critical though, since my computer doesn't get too hot. It's actually significantly cooler than my old setup, even though I'm using the same rackmount case with acoustic foam for dampening. Thank god for low-power components.

On the topic of streaming to an Xbox or PS3: I use Vuze, which seems to work great for streaming to a PS3. You have a submenu in the Videos menu called "Vuze on [pc's name], and you can pick any of the media files you've set from there. I don't think it allows pushing, but when I lived at an apartment with four friends it was great for having more movies to watch. I could also play games on my PC while it was streaming, with no lag or errors for either me or them.

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 13:59 on Oct 28, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals
To chime in on ATI drivers: Me and a few other people on various forums have run into a pretty serious issue with 9.9/9.10 Catalyst drivers in Win7. What will happen is pretty much any game will crash after a random amount of time with a DCOM, Power, or Plug and Play error, and the PC will automatically restart. I have the 4850, but it's also happened with the 4870, I've heard.

There's been little help from AMD/Microsoft, but it seems to come down to the HDMI audio drivers/Mobo ethernet drivers being incompatible with the ATI drivers. From what I understand so far, it's the Realtek drivers that the card has problems with, and it's a bitch to fix. Besides the similar ATI cards and Realtek drivers, another commonality is Gigabyte mobos. I guess it could be any board that uses Realtek, but there's not enough known about it.

To fix, I had to roll-back to the 9.8 drivers, disable my onboard sound and the HDMI sound, and uninstall Catalyst Control Center. So far I haven't gotten a crash, but I'm not sure if I really did anything.

Obviously this isn't that common, and it probably won't happen to you, but if it does you'll at least know you're not the only one (even if there's no fix :()


E: I might as well comment on-topic. I just set up XP mode, and even though it's no VMware, it's an easy way to have compatibility with older software. Extremely easy to set up, and it even has a VMware-style menu bar when you fullscreen. I only ran into one issue, which is Gigabyte motherboards need a BIOS update to run Virtual PC (goddamn they have so many errors). I'm still in the process of testing it and seeing what it can and can't do, but so far so good.

It also plays nice with VMware, no need to uninstall or change settings.

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 13:44 on Oct 30, 2009

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Dominoes posted:

4890, Gigabyte MB, HDMI audio for speakers and realtek audio for headphones. Guess I'm boned!

(Hasn't happened yet, I'll report in if it does)

There's a good chance you don't have it, since it tends to happen even right after a clean install. Weird thing is mine didn't have the issue at first, I started using HDMI then it did, I stopped with HDMI and it still did, then I did the fix I mentioned and it (seemingly) corrected it. Be thankful you don't, it really sucks having something like Left 4 Dead crash in the middle of a campaign, when you've found that groove and your teammates aren't idiots :sigh:

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

nrr posted:

So after not being able to download the iso from Gizmodo/Digital River that DarthBlingBling gave me before, (and finding other people online having the same problem) I looked around on torrent sites for the iso mentioned in the OP, (7600.16385.090713-1255_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso) and grabbed it.

The hash values aren't the same though, and now I'm not sure whether I should go through with the install or not, or if it's going to screw things up for me. The Windows DVD/USB program sees it as a legit boot file, so what sort of risks am I looking at here if I go ahead with it?

Could be anything, from a minor upload glitch, to having rootkits preinstalled for your pleasure. I'd grab a new one and make sure it had a matching hash. You also might want to look for ones that claim to have the proper hash, and see if people comment that it does.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

nrr posted:

Cheers. I don't really see how it's ooga booga FILES when I have already purchased the program and have a valid key and the file I need is specifically mentioned in the OP, which means there has to be some legit uses for it and therefore it's possible that not everyone looking for it is a scumbag pirate. Like asking for your help to break into my own car, I don't think you guys are gonna get busted for Grand Theft Auto. But I'm not interested in derailing the discussion into a piracy shartfest, so thanks again for your help and 4 Day Weekend, I reckon you can probably sleep easy tonight knowing that your tenbux is safe bro.

How the gently caress do we know you bought a license? You sure as hell aren't willing to do any of the (absolutely minor) legwork to find what you claim you need, and a number of people have already told you how to find it. We're not babysitters, we're not here to hold your hand in the big bad world of torrents. And the thing is, by torrenting it, you're seeding it to people that most definitely don't have a key and aren't downloading it "legitimately", so cut the "I'm not doing anything illegal!" poo poo, because it's not true.

The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

nrr posted:

I don't know man, maybe you could've read the thread where I said so less than a page before I posted?

Guess what? I own a Ferrari and a Porsche and a million dollar mansion and Microsoft! And don't you give me any poo poo, because I said so and it must be true!

I believe you, but a thousand people have said exactly what you have and pirated it, and defensively talking poo poo about people who won't help you really doesn't make you look honest. It doesn't matter that this is a Microsoft product. Actually, I think it matters a little more, because their poo poo is some of the most pirated software around. Hell, they even have a multi-level, how to identify bootleg copies, from pro to sharpie'd CDs section on their site.

And you already got pretty direct responses on how to find it, even before a link was posted. So all in all, you're a huge human being.

The Gasmask fucked around with this message at 02:01 on Oct 31, 2009

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The Gasmask
Nov 30, 2006

Breaking fingers like fractals

Drox posted:

Here's the weird part, though. If I connect the printer to this laptop by USB, Windows update finds the driver in about 2 seconds and I can use it just fine.

Ideas?

The drivers that you've gotten for 7 don't work after it's back on the laptop? You've probably tried this, but find out which drivers Windows Update uses and link to those when you get the option to manually load a driver. I'm not sure where they'd be (besides in system32), but it's probably stored in a temp dir after you download it.

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