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chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

c0burn posted:

:filez:

Would you expect anything less from someone named 'G-Philez'?

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chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

-Dethstryk- posted:

I'm wanting to get in on this pre-order deal, but I'm not sure if it can work for me.

All copies of XP I have are academic serial keys, from college. My Vista Business serial is from that "watch some videos, get Vista" deals. I'd be worried if it would count any of these as legitimate upgrade media.

And it says that as a Win 7 beta/RC tester I'm eligible, but I'm not sure how all of that is going to work since I'll want to do a clean install. However, my serial number is one of the unique ones, before they started handing them out differently during the initial beta phase.

Does anyone know what I should do? And if you really have to have a previous copy installed before it counts for the upgrade to install, instead of just reading media or older license keys, I don't know if I want to buy an upgrade in the first place. That's too much hassle.

Are those Academic licenses or MSDNAA licenses like SynVisions? If there the former I *think* you'll be okay (but I'm far from an MS licensing guru so don't quote me on that); if the latter I'm not sure (see below).

SynVisions posted:

Yeah I have the same problem. My Windows XP/Vista CD-Keys are MSDNAA keys and I'm unsure on the eligibility...

Are you still in school and in a department that participates in MSDNAA? I dunno if they've changed the rules since, but when I graduated in '04 there were two big restrictions on MSDNAA keys/media:

1) You are only licensed to install the products while you're enrolled in a department participating in the MSDNAA program. You can keep using them after that (i.e., starting in CS, installing a bunch of MSDNAA crap, then changing majors to History is kosher), but you're not allowed to reinstall. The keys still work fine after that, but you're not licensed to reinstall the software.

2) You are only licensed to use the software for non-commercial use.


Now, I have no idea how (if at all) that first restriction relates to upgrades. I don't know if buried in the fine print somewhere there's a blanket ban on using MSDNAA keys to upgrade to the various retail license types, or if it's kosher as long as you follow all the other rules.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
Obviously, until it ships we don't know exactly how Win7 upgrades will work, but this is how MS has always done it in the past. You have two options of installing with an upgrade disc. The first is what fishmech did and start the upgrade from within your current Windows install; assuming you're running a version that can do an in-place upgrade, your existing install is upgraded to the new version and you keep all your programs/settings/etc just like they were. The other option is booting from the upgrade disc like you would if you were doing a clean install from a retail disc. In that case, the upgrade disc asks for a full retail/OEM disc for a previous version so it can verify that you're eligible to use the upgrade media.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Neptune Blue posted:

I really want to get in on the preorder upgrade deal, just wondering if anyone knows if either of the keys I have will work.

1. I have an old laptop that came with Windows XP, but I don't have an actual Windows disc with it, just the restore cd with all the usual stuff plus Windows, but it has a key obviously.
2. I also have a student edition of Windows Vista Ultimate, but can't find an answer as to whether I can upgrade that or not.

1) Unless you're planning on upgrading that laptop to 7, what sort of discs you have for it doesn't really matter.

2) If it's an academic copy, then you should be fine. The only difference between an academic copy and the normal retail stuff is the requirement that you be a student to purchase it and prices that are more friendly to the typical student budget.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

kapinga posted:

This is not. Starting with Vista, the installer requires that the upgraded OS already be installed on the machine, and will only install to that partition. Merely having the CD/Key of the previous install is not sufficient.


Vista "upgrade" drops compliance checking, requires old OS to install


Edit: I remembered the part about same partition wrong. You can use an upgrade install to install to a new partition.

Doh. I haven't had to really worry about upgrade media in a while, so I assumed everything was still the same. Guess I'll have to reinstall XP in order to do my 7 upgrade. :/ (When I built my new PC a few months ago, I took advantage of my TechNet subscription at work to try out Vista since I had only use it briefly fixing people's computers.)

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
Just upgraded to RTM from Vista and everything went flawlessly. Only issue I came across was typing in the key wrong the first time. I only played around with the beta/RC a bit to check things out, so this is my first time using it as my main OS. But from what I've seen I'm really happy with all the minor changes from Vista.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
I think I'm going to have to plan on doing a clean install this weekend; I don't think my upgrade from Vista went quite as smoothly as I first thought. I've been experiencing some random sound-looping hardlocks since I upgraded on Friday night. :/ System was perfectly stable on Vista64, so unless it's coincidental I don't think it's hardware. It's an EP45-UD3L/E8400/HD4870 setup, latest drivers I can find, no compatibility issues were raised by the upgrade adviser or anything like that, so I'm hoping a clean install will make the problem go away.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

dorkanoid posted:

I got sound-looping hard-locks in the RC when my graphics card overheated - I have essentially the same setup as you, and I could only play Tales of Monkey Island for 10 minutes before hardlock :( I think the ATI drivers for Windows 7 sets the fan at a too low speed - you might have to force it in the control panel.

I'll check into that when I get home, but IIRC the drivers for Vista and 7 x64 are exactly the same. After the upgrade had finished, I went to download the 9.7 Catalysts for 7 x64 and it prompted me to download the same exact file I had downloaded a couple weeks ago when I was still running Vista. The upgrade adviser did advise me that CCC wouldn't work after the upgrade, so I uninstalled the drivers, did the upgrade, and then reinstalled them. So maybe there are some things that get set differently depending on if you're running Vista or 7.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

dorkanoid posted:

I got sound-looping hard-locks in the RC when my graphics card overheated - I have essentially the same setup as you, and I could only play Tales of Monkey Island for 10 minutes before hardlock :( I think the ATI drivers for Windows 7 sets the fan at a too low speed - you might have to force it in the control panel.

By force it in the control panel, you're talking about the "manual fan speed" slider on the ATI Override panel, right?

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
As far as screensavers go, electricsheep > *

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

diarrhea for girls posted:

It's been a long time since I've used XP but I think there's an option if you right click on an open area of the start bar that says something like "tile windows vertically" and it should do exactly that.

But don't tell your boss this.

That tiles *all* windows that are open though, so unless he's only got two windows open it won't quite do the same thing as Aero Snap.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Casao posted:

So, what's some software that takes advantage of the cool new poo poo you can do with the Windows 7 taskbar?

Foobar added media controls to the popup in a plugin or two, and ImgBurn adds a taskbar progress bar for burns. What else is using it. I need more uses for this, because it makes me giddy everytime I see them being used.

Chrome's started using the jump lists to show your open tabs and such, but I think right now it's just available in the dev/beta releases.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

GreenNight posted:

My sidebar is using 2.2 gigs of memory. What the gently caress.

What gadgets are you running? I had issues with retarculous memory usage by the sidebar and it ended up being one of the gadgets I was running. (Oddly enough, it was the 24 clock gadget; I can't fathom how something that simple could possibly have a memory leak.)

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
I haven't noticed any issues with my Vista to 7 upgrade, but my Vista install was only about 5 months old when I did the upgrade. And regardless, I'm still planning on doing a clean install at some point after I get my retail copy, just to be safe.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Blue Footed Booby posted:

Titan Quest seems to have some odd problems connecting to multiplayer servers if you don't right click and run as admin. Was it any of these?

The only problems I've run into with Titan Quest (which also existed in Vista) is that when you tell it to search for games, it'll spit out some weird Visual C++ Runtime error a few times. I haven't played in a while, so I forget exactly what it says, but just click OK until it goes away and then it works fine.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
So far, MPC-HC, a recent ffdshow tryout, and Haali media splitter have handled everything I've thrown at my Win7 box.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
I know this was already covered pretty extensively yesterday, but here's my two cents on the AV discussion:

- NOD32 is what I'm currently running on my desktop. Picked up an OEM copy for about $20 from Newegg when I built my system, and I seriously don't notice it's there. The fact that it picks up new Windows updates being available so quickly is mildly annoying (usually when I get home on patch Tuesday it's already telling me there's issues that need my attention because there's new updates I haven't installed yet), but that's really my only gripe so I feel like I'm being nit picky.

- Avast! has been my standard recommendation to anyone looking for free AV for their personal machines for a few years. I've tried both it and AVG, and (once set up properly) I prefer Avast. The whole deal with having to renew the Home license once a year is kind of annoying (especially if you install it for someone else and forget to tell them about it), but other than that once you turn the sounds off and such it's not bad.

- I installed MSE on my parents desktop and new (to them) laptop over the weekend after hearing such good things about it. Time will tell how it does from a detection/removal standpoint, but in some brief testing I didn't see any noticeable slowdown on either computer. Plus, it's stupid simple to use. There's been a couple times I've had to walk my mom through running a full scan with Avast! over the phone which was a bit of a pain in the rear end (especially since I forgot to disable the skins when I installed it.) Between saner/less annoying default settings and not needing to mess with a free registration key, this is likely to become my new recommendation.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
Here's another suggestion for a tweak that some people might find useful to have in XdN Tweaker: A button to toggle the "Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation" option for Windows Update. (If you've got automatic updates set to either download & notify or download & schedule, turning this on will allow updates that neither require a reboot nor restart any services to be automatically installed in the background.)

code:
Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
"AutoInstallMinorUpdates"="1"

Sure, this one can be changed pretty easily with the group policy editor, but there may be a lot of folks out there who don't know this option exists. It's been supported since 2000 SP3/XP SP1 but I didn't know it existed until I started playing with group policy settings at work when I was setting up our WSUS server.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

The Gasmask posted:

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.

Those of us who know a little bit about how all this works definitely can't justify blaming MS for third-party developers being lazy. But I can definitely understand how the average PC user would think "This worked in XP, and now it doesn't in Vista. Fuckin' Microsoft!" and blame them for it. Still sucks that MS got blamed and Vista got a tarnished image (although not just because of this) for things that weren't their fault.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
I just realized something. I'm going to have to get used to using a new shortcut key to open explorer in Win7. Most of the time when I'm opening explorer it's to interact with my documents/media in some way, so opening to the Libraries 'folder' serves as a great starting point. I'm assuming there's no way to change the starting location when you use Win+E, so I'm going to have to train my brain to use Win+3 to open explorer instead.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

rotaryfun posted:

I wasn't sure if that would be against the rules to post so I didn't, but just chiming it to say that yes. All that works.

Also, Microsoft really dropped the ball the way they decided to handle upgrades.

They say you are eligible for upgrade if you own a copy of 2000, XP, and Vista. However, only make it possible for an in place upgrade with Vista? How's that work?

Good to know. I've got that page bookmarked for when I eventually install my copy of 7 Pro but hadn't seen any confirmation that it actually worked. (Right now I'm running 7 Ultimate through my work TechNet sub, but bought a copy of Pro upgrade when it was $50 or whatever. At some point I plan on wiping the system and installing my copy, and now I know exactly what I need to do).


And IIRC, other than XP, haven't in-place upgrades always only been possible from the previous version of Windows?

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Stugene posted:

Back to my original question though, anyone experiencing CCC not opening for them, at all, on Win7?

Nope. I've been running Win 7 x64 since it hit TechNet in August and have never had any problems with CCC, even when ATI was still releasing "beta" drivers.


edit: ^^ I thought ATI still called the drivers "beta" until Win7's public release in October? Either way, my experience matches yours; no problems with 9.8 or newer.

chizad fucked around with this message at 17:25 on Dec 14, 2009

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
Maybe this isn't news to anyone else, but I just discovered a nifty little feature of Win7. The other night I had an external HD hooked up that I was copying some stuff off of. When I was done, I ejected it with the safely remove hardware deal, but had forgotten to first close the explorer window I had open that was displaying the contents of the drive. In every previous version of Windows I've used, this leads telling you to gently caress off because the drive is in use. But Win7 just gracefully closed the explorer window and then ejected the drive like I told it to.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Xenomorph posted:

Didn't Vista do that as well?

I don't recall ever seeing Vista doing it, although to be honest the "close anything that might be using it, THEN safely remove" behavior is almost second nature to me so I may not have ever had a situation that would've triggered it. I did a few quick tests on my Vista laptop here and I'm getting the in use message. Plugged in a thumbdrive, opened an Explorer window to browse the contents, but at no point did I actually access any files or copy anything to it. As soon as I closed the explorer window I was able to safely remove without any problems.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Xenomorph posted:

Yeah, XP is loaded ONCE in the background.

In "seamless" mode (or the "enable integration" or whatever its called), the XP VM is hidden/ran in the background (kind of like Classic mode in Mac OS X), and a Remote Desktop session is opened to it, showing just the window of the application you want opened (kind of like Citrix).


Ok, it looks like Vista did do this.

http://www.vistax64.com/vista-general/183044-vista-cd-eject-causes-explorer-close.html

http://www.vistaheads.com/forums/microsoft-public-windows-vista-general/104774-windows-explorer-closes-itself-cd-dvd-disk-eject.html

People bitched about Vista's annoying "feature" of closing the Explorer window! Man, Vista must have sucked with Microsoft cramming that kind of poo poo down our throats. Good thing we have Windows 7 now with cool features like closing the Explorer window.

Hmmm, wonder why they made the change for CDs/DVDs in Vista but not USB devices. (Or at least, I have yet to be able to reproduce this behavior with a USB device in Vista.)

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Thermopyle posted:

Yeah, that's what I just said.

But anyway, it sounds like people are interested in having a feature that I don't see a need for. I didn't realize people kept enough games installed to need a centralized list. After I beat a game, I uninstall it, and I only play one multiplayer game at a time. That's cool, though...people like a lot of things I don't like and vice versa.

When I play single player stuff, I tend to play the hell out of it for a while before reaching a point where I need to take a little break. Sometimes that "little break" turns into a few weeks or months, so my Steam games list or the Games Explorer are nice reminders of stuff I'm in the middle of and need to start playing again.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

the posted:

What are the most useful desktop gadgets you fellas use?

I don't really use gadgets in 7 anymore, and only ever used a handful in Vista. When I first started using Vista, and then again when I upgraded to 7, I spent a few hours looking at all the gadgets out there and just didn't find much that was very useful to me. Plus, a lot of the ones I tried either sucked in some way (features/interface/etc) or were buggy or had memory leaks or something like that.

Right now on my desktop running 7 I've just got the clock that comes with Windows and MultiMeter. On my work laptop running Vista I also use App Launcher v3 as a quicklaunch replacement (which I don't need in 7 thanks to the superbar) and a StockBoard so I can see how the markets and my 401K funds are doing. I leave work after the markets are closed, so I don't really have a need to check that stuff when I'm at home.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

GIMMEL posted:

That looks weird!
I want the icons to be bigger, so they fill out the boxes, not the boxes to match the small icons.

I can't believe how anal I am about a drat interface. :( Oh well.

This bugs me as well. With the normal size icons, they take up almost the full height of the taskbar button. Why can't we have the same thing with the small icons?

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Thermopyle posted:

I have Windows Update set to download and notify, not auto-install.

MSE has started downloading definition updates with Windows Update. This means that every day I get the prompt about wanting to install the updates, which gets quite old.

Any solutions besides turning auto-install on?

If MSE updates work the same way as Windows Defender updates, enabling the following setting in the Group Policy editor (gpedit.msc) should do the trick.

Local Computer Policy -> Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Windows Update -> Allow Automatic Updates immediate installation

If your edition of 7 doesn't have the Group Policy editor (are they even still doing that business where the consumer editions don't come with gpedit?) then you can accomplish this using the following registry key:

KeyName: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU
ValueName: AutoInstallMinorUpdates
ValueType: REG_DWORD
Value: 0x00000001

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Swilo posted:

Could you elaborate on this? I wouldn't mind updates downloading and installing themselves if they 100% don't require a reboot (which from the description it sounds like this does), such as the Defender/MSE definitions that come almost daily, but only if this applies specifically to updates marked important; nothing optional like the Realtek drivers WU sends me that don't work well.

I'm not 100% sure what logic is used by Windows Update when you have that option enabled. All the description in the Group Policy editor says is that with the option enabled it will only install updates that neither interrupt services nor require a reboot.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

YggiDee posted:

What's the learning curve with moving from XP to Windows 7 like? I'm getting a new computer within the week and it will finally have an OS made in the last ten years. I've basically never interacted with Vista or 7 in any significant way, but it's time to move on, I figure. Am I going to spend several days cursing everything for being different or do angels come out the screen and give me chocolate?

The one thing that still trips me up (and I've been using Vista since a bit before SP1 came out) is that "Add/Remove Programs "is now called "Programs and Features".

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Infinite Monkeys posted:

I am going to be building a new PC soon, and I want to put Windows 7 on it. I qualify to get the upgrade version really cheaply because I'm a student, but I'd have to pay full price for the full version. I have Windows XP on my current PC, does that give me the right to install Windows 7 on my new one using the upgrade version and one of the workarounds linked in the OP? Would they even work for a brand new system?

This bit from the OP should cover all your questions bout the XP license on your current PC and using it with a Windows 7 upgrade on the new one:

quote:


- If you buy an upgrade edition, you MUST have a licensed copy of either Windows XP or Windows Vista.
- If the OS you're upgrading from is an OEM version (came with your computer and has a COA sticker on the case), you MUST install the Windows 7 upgrade to the computer it was originally installed on. No transfers, you play by the same rules as the OEM version of the original OS.
- Purchasing an OEM edition can only be done with an accompanying hardware purchase (I believe that officially, the hardware must consist of motherboard + processor as a bare minimum). That OEM edition can then only be installed on that particular hardware. The Windows 7 OEM license can be purchased up to three months following the hardware purchase. The COA sticker must be affixed to the case the hardware is installed in.
- Once upgraded, you may NOT install the previous OS license to another machine or sell that license (eBay sales are shut down frequently for this very reason). You also can't have any form of dual-boot or virtual machine configuration; only one OS or the other can be installed at a given time. Downgrading is allowed, but the Windows 7 installation must be removed. Those wishing to dual boot will have to buy a Full version.
- Upgrades must be for the same base language as the OS being upgraded (i.e. you can only upgrade an English OS to an English version of Windows 7).

Basically, if the old PC has an OEM copy of XP (either because it's a Dell/HP/whatever or because you bought the OEM copy when you built it), then that license is tied to the old PC and you need the full version of 7 for the new one. Otherwise, you're fine as long as you uninstall XP from the old PC since you'll be using it plus the upgrade on the new one.

As far as using the upgrade media with the new PC goes, that shouldn't be a problem. I did a clean install about a month ago after getting an SSD using the double install method and it worked perfectly.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Anjow posted:

I use PuTTY a lot, but the saved sessions situation is pretty poor. The window is tiny and not expandable. Is there a way of getting it larger, or managing them elsewhere? I have a shitload of servers I regularly have to connect to and I want to be able to browse them like bookmarks. I ask because I'm aware of different versions of PuTTY that add functionality - like PuTTYTray.

It's a bit overkill if you're just talking about PuTTY sessions, but mRemoteNG should be able to do what you want. I use it at work for RDP sessions, and I've got it set up so I have folders (and tabs, since it opens all your sessions in the same parent window) for different sites and all that.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Anjow posted:

you have to click the tab THEN the console in order to be able to type there.

That's one of my biggest annoyances with mRemoteNG. The other only comes into play when using RDP (and maybe Citrix?). When I first started using it my AD account kept getting locked out. Finally figured out it was a combination of mRemoteNG defaulting to automatically poll the server for session info and me having my username but not my password (because gently caress having to update that in all my connections when I change my password). It must've bee polling the server for session info with my username and a blank password.

chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies
Does Windows 7 display GUI elements/dialog boxes differently if the system locale is set to "English (United Kingdom)" vs "English (United States)". I know there's going to be differences in spelling and units and all that stuff, but are there any other changes? I've got a machine here from a former employee running Win7 Pro 32-bit SP1, and the system locale is set to English (UK). I'm copying some data off of it, and when I click "more details" on the file transfer dialog box, it only shows the # of items remaining; there's no estimated time remaining at all. I'm just curious if this is somehow related to the locale or if there's something else going on.

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chizad
Jul 9, 2001

'Cus we find ourselves in the same old mess
Singin' drunken lullabies

Pilsner posted:

As for remoting in general, I recommend mRemote. It isn't being developed any more, but works very well still. You could also check out Royal TS.

There's also a fork of mRemote that's still under development called mRemoteNG.

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