The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

It might be useful to add into the OP that unsigned drivers can be installed by pulling up the F8 menu during bootup and selecting "Disable Driver Signature Enforcement". You can install unsigned drivers until you reboot.

# ¿ May 26, 2009 09:05

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 23:56

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

syphon posted:

Weird, I'm running on a system with only 2gb of RAM, and it still runs great. I can't imagine using 5gb just for torrents, browsing, and movies (I have all of that and more running most nights). It's gotta be how Windows handles memory management these days.

Windows is loading stuff into memory and keeping it there so that your memory doesn't go unused. It's actually the way memory should be used, but we're used to wanting a large unused memory number.

# ¿ May 26, 2009 11:16

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

After spending a few minutes running around trying to find a touchpad driver, I'm good to go on my Latitude D830. I'll give IE8 a try for now. I know, turning my back on Firefox :aaa:

# ¿ May 26, 2009 21:32

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Is there some way to make the taskbar preview for Internet Explorer show windows instead of tabs? Previews of all tabs clutters things when I'm trying to choose between windows.

I'm using IE problem because Firefox 3.5 doesn't support a lot of the extensions I use, specifically mouse gestures.

Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 17:40 on May 27, 2009

# ¿ May 27, 2009 15:44

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

toxick posted:

According to the video nerds that put together CCCP, Haali Video Renerer is the best choice, followed by the Overlay Mixer (if your computer can't handle Haali). They seem a bit iffy on EVR at the moment.

It should be noted that Overlay Mixer disables Aero, though.

It disables Aero for the entire desktop or just the player? Does it automatically turn off Aero, and if so, does Aero automatically come back when you're done?

# ¿ May 28, 2009 21:53

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

DarthBlingBling posted:

It's spinning down to save energy I believe. You can change this in the power options. You're hard drive is not hosed.

If I do Control Panel -> Power Options, I don't see anything of the sort :psyduck:

# ¿ May 29, 2009 02:42

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

MALCOLM XTREME posted:

Is it better for the life of the hard drive to let it turn off after awhile or to just put it on "never"?

Unless the hard drive will turn on and off rapidly, turning it off will increase the longevity of the motor, despite the myth that you should always keep HDs on.

# ¿ May 29, 2009 22:37

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

ElProducto posted:

That's not going to significantly extend the life of your battery. What will, however, is setting it to charge until 100%, but not to start charging until it's at 90%. That way, little drains like being moved in sleep mode ore taking it off the main for five minutes to drag it into another room won't require a recharge. That takes cycles off of the battery and will extend its life.

Technically, letting it drain until 90% or only draining it for 5 minutes counts toward the same number of cycles.

# ¿ May 31, 2009 12:57

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I've been running 7100 on my laptop for a few days now. Every time I leave for at least 4 or more hours to go do something, when I come back, my fan is on full blast. All that's running in the background is uTorrent, Pidgin, and some browsers -- the same apps as when I left, except the fan wasn't goign crazy when I left. Any ideas?

# ¿ May 31, 2009 22:29

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Aleksei Vasiliev posted:

I checked the internet, and apparently to boost performance you should:
1. Disable all visual features
2. Disable UAC
3. Disable System Restore
4. Disable some random services with no explanation of why

Isn't the consensus that UAC is something you shouldn't disable?

# ¿ Jun 1, 2009 05:57

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Fallom posted:

I dunno I think goons would be better off wasting their energy getting people to switch from XP rather than scaring them into leaving UAC on

Those aren't mutually exclusive. We should get people to switch to Win7 and use UAC.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2009 07:14

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I would just like to say that it is loving beautiful to have almost everything work with Windows's built in drivers. Almost everything works without downloading drivers.

Mido posted:

Does anyone have a SHA or md5 for 7137?

32bit
MD5: 2f7520915dff55380e979e67ae4687db
SHA1: ff9c8751095e77be0fd4a0a0a937e3eab0c18943

64bit
MD5: 0d863472414efc337d032e8ed33c347b
SHA1: 8e35d15281a554fd890ad682249e485b9b82278c

# ¿ Jun 1, 2009 10:22

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

tofufish posted:

After switching from Vista to Win7, I now somehow have a 'scrollbar scroller' on the edge of my touchpad, why this is a pretty cool feature that wasnt available beforehand, is it possibly to change the width, or position of it on the touchpad?

Assuming you mean that you can scroll by sliding your finger along the side of your touchpad, you probably didn't install the proper drivers on Vista. You should be able to adjust it in the Win7 mouse settings, but if it isn't there, you might have to install drivers.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2009 05:16

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

tofufish posted:

The official laptop drivers from the manufacturer dont have the scroll on the side, I guess ill just have to live with it.

What model do you have? I had to do some legwork to find ones for my Dell D830.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2009 06:08

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Is it just me or does Java run like horseshit? It auto updated a few days ago and now it runs like rear end in IE.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2009 15:04

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

Default policy is that shares may not work unless you have a user with a password set.

Also, even if the Share gives them permission someplace, the NTFS permission may be denying them access to that place. Deny always overwrites Allow.

So basically Win7 made it a huge pain in the rear end to share stuff over a network?

# ¿ Jun 6, 2009 17:15

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Unexpected EOF posted:

This is absolutely true for most people. Live mesh is pretty well brilliant and honestly seems to blow stuff like mobile me/.mac/whatever the gently caress that piece of poo poo is called now out of the water.

I just signed in to Mesh and it looks pretty cool. While reading through the Wikipedia entry, I saw stuff like Live Sync and Live SkyDrive. Who knew that you could get 25GB of free online storage just by registering an (email) account? :aaa:

# ¿ Jun 6, 2009 19:56

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

ElProducto posted:

I'm really impressed with WMP this time around. It's easily more compact than any other player I've used, and I swore by MPC for a really long time. Just a window that's nothing but video. No menus, nothing. Even the player controls fade in and out over the video. It's very clean and very nice. The video is as large as it can be when the window is maximized, the same size as when it's fullscreen. If you installed something else and didn't try it (I usually do) you should give it a shot. It's very nice.

I've actually found it to play some media, especially DVDs, better than VLC. There's a lot of aliasing going on in VLC but no such blockiness in WMP.

Now if only WMP could have simple seek controls like alt/ctrl left/right.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2009 13:17

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

ripvf posted:

Haven't yet installed Win7, but do you mean like left/right for a ~5 % jump and shift+left/right for a small jump (like 15 sec or 0,25 % I guess) seek controls that work in WMP11 on Vista?

Those do not work in Win7 and WMP12.

# ¿ Jun 7, 2009 17:25

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

The SourceForge PDFCreator seems to be breaking my x64 Win7. Does anyone have a suggestion for a free PDF printer?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 22:29

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

LooseChanj posted:

Isn't that exactly how Sasser worked?

Back when Blaster was all the rage in 2003, I saw a newly formatted/installed WinXP machine contract it in under 5 minutes. True story.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 23:46

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

doPDF is what I've been using for a while. It works fine on all systems I've put it on. XP/32, Vista 32/64, and Win7 32/64.

doPDF is giving me weird PDFs where text isn't smooth and everything looks like it has been poorly resized.

# ¿ Jun 9, 2009 19:50

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

For some reason, Hulu stutters when in full screen mode but if I pop out the window and maximize the window so that it's rendering the same image size, everything is fine. The full screen stuttering also occurs for Youtube, and this is in both Firefox and IE. I'm running the RC. Thoughts?

# ¿ Jul 16, 2009 15:32

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I just "upgraded" from RC to MSDNAA version yesterday night. Everything is okay except Firefox is slow as hell. Everything from opening tabs to rendering to responding to mouse clicks. I had upgraded to 3.5.2 in the RC and has used it just fine; this FF install in RTM is clean of course.

# ¿ Aug 25, 2009 21:39

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

GreenNight posted:

All 32 bit programs will work fine. It will install into \Program files(32)\ or something along those lines.

I'm running Win7 64 and so far no troubles with 32 bit programs.

The only program I know offhand is peerguardian, which if you google has some hacks but I hosed my poo poo up when I tried em.

Most schools and business only have the 32bit version of Cisco VPN available for download, and SAS (a statistical analysis package) won't install under x64 either. As an academic, this is extremely frustrating.

# ¿ Aug 28, 2009 21:47

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I have an 8GB USB flash drive that 7 Pro x64 won't read properly most of the time. It will just hang. It will also halt any other processes e.g. opening Winamp until the drive is just unplugged. The funny thing is, this wasn't a problem when I was using XP Pro SP3 before and the drive works perfectly fine on other computers so it's not the drive. It's not the USB port because other flash drives will work fine on it. Does this sound familiar to anyone?

# ¿ Sep 29, 2009 10:29

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Cojawfee posted:

Have you tried a different USB port? One flash drive I have works fine in one port, but locks everything up in the other port, yet every other device works fine in that port.

And yeah, just reformat the whole thing, or run a consistency check. If there is anything really big on it, it's probably spread all over the flash memory and slowing it down. I once had a three gig file on my four gig flash drive be totally garbage because it was spread all over the place because of other files on the drive.

I've reformatted it multiple times. It always reads fine in WinXP and it just read fine on a Vista 32bit machine, but in both the Win7 64-bit RC and RTM I've had this issue on all of my laptop's USB ports. Basically, the activity LED on the drive will flash for a few seconds when I plug it in, then it will go dark (this is when it doesn't work). It may or may not show up in Windows Explorer right away, but even if it eventually does, it's non responsive, i.e. opening it up in explorer the LED still won't flash.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2009 20:58

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

GreenNight posted:

Cisco is phasing out the IPSEC client. Their solution is the AnyConnect client which is SSL only. They now require you to purchase SSL cals for their PIX to use VPN, where as before IPSEC was "free".

The AnyConnect client works in 7x64, for I use it daily.

Is there any reason to use AnyConnect over the built in 7x64 VPN tool? Cost is a non-issue.

Cojawfee posted:

I meant you need a license for whatever OS you are running. So if you are wanting to run any Windows versions, you need a license for it.

I can confirm that XP Mode for 7x64 Pro includes a fully licensed and activated copy of WinXP Pro.

# ¿ Oct 1, 2009 05:45

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I'm running Win7 x64 on my main laptop and I love it. However, one of my old machines which is basically a media center PC is up for reinstall. It's only 2GHz Pentium M w/1.5GB DDR. Should I reinstall XP Pro SP3 or go for Win7 x86? Surely XP will run faster than Win7 and obviously there aren't any apps that require Win7 right now, but can anyone foresee a reason why an HTPC would be better off with Win7 despite the lackluster hardware?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 08:00

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Cojawfee posted:

People are running Windows 7 one worse. Windows 7 runs better than XP on my laptop from a couple years ago and uses less power now somehow.

Can you elaborate "runs better"? What are the hardware specs and which version of Win7 are you running?

# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 08:16

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

I run Windows 7 on my ThinkPad T43.

Pentium M @ 2.0 GHz
2 Gigs DDR2
Radeon X300

Windows XP seems a tad faster at loading some programs, but Windows 7 runs so smooth on it, and the hardware actually seems to work better under Windows 7 than it did under XP.

WiFi doesn't drop under heavy CPU load like under XP, my fingerprint scanner works natively under Windows 7, and of course with the DX9 card I get Aero.

I've got an X300 on this machine too so it looks like I'll take the plunge.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 19:23

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

Windows XP seems a tad faster at loading some programs, but Windows 7 runs so smooth on it, and the hardware actually seems to work better under Windows 7 than it did under XP.

WiFi doesn't drop under heavy CPU load like under XP, my fingerprint scanner works natively under Windows 7, and of course with the DX9 card I get Aero.

Are you able to runs Hulu videos at full screen on yours? My machine chokes on them like a $2 whore.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 02:20

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

It eats 100% CPU, but they work. Mostly smooth. Commercials jump and skip around.

Setting Quality to "Low" (Flash quality, not Hulu) drops CPU usage to just 60%-80%, which helps a bit without making the video look bad.

gently caress, no dice on my side

. I do have Aero Glass on but I can't imagine it'd make a huge difference.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 05:38

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Xenomorph posted:

Aero does eat up a ton of GPU power, but Flash doesn't use any of your video card's power. It's all CPU-based. Performance should be the same (or even worse) with Aero off.

On the other hand, HDTV would work better for me with Aero disabled, as the X300 will struggle trying to decode that while doing 3D.

I figured out why my laptop couldn't do full screen Hulu and was slow in general. It's an old machine and there's something broken in the power system where it won't clock up on its own so I have to use something like Notebook Hardware Control to manually set it at 2GHz.

Unfortunately, NHC doesn't seem to work in Vista even though it says it does, and RMClock didn't work either though that might be because I didn't use it correctly.

Does anyone know of any utilities that actually are able to set the CPU speed correctly? If not, I'll have to go back to XP.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 09:57

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

200th Poster posted:

Are you using 64-bit Vista? RMClock requires a signed driver or it won't load. A quick google should reveal something suitable. I use it to undervolt my laptop's CPU. Now it doesn't overheat when under load.

Running 7x86 on this old Pentium M. Have you had success adjusting CPU speed? Are you running 32 or 64bit Win7?

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 20:48

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

redeyes posted:

Its some kind of ACHI bug because the Intel controllers do that as well. And with internal SATA connectors too.

I installed 7x64 on a C2D notebook w/AHCI turned on in the BIOS and it detected and installed drivers just fine.

# ¿ Oct 13, 2009 19:45

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Weinertron posted:

They will likely be a little older, if you game frequently then it is worth it to manually update your drivers, especially if a new title comes out and has a hotfix driver. Otherwise, no.

Like all drivers in the Windows Update repository, Rey are never bleeding edge. If you're happy with twirl performance, there's nothing wrong with them, bit they often won't have the new features of the latest manufacturer drivers until ay least 6 months past.

# ¿ Oct 14, 2009 00:50

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

PopeOnARope posted:

Now that I've (finally) upgraded my work D830 to 4GB ram, I think it's time to load 7 x64. Is there anything I should know or watch out for?

I have a D830 on 7x64 and I only needed a toupad driver to get scrolling to work

# ¿ Nov 4, 2009 00:18

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

I'm running the latest version of uTorrent 1.8.5 and 7x64 Pro. When I try to download a large file (say 8GB) to an external drive (NTFS), it has issues where it basically just stops downloading after a while but the drive activity light keeps flickering. I can't end uTorrent in the task manager so I have to manually shut down my external drive. Any ideas why that's happening?

edit: Nevermind it just seems like it's allocating file space and USB 2.0 blows goat cock.

Josh Lyman fucked around with this message at 10:52 on Dec 7, 2009

# ¿ Dec 7, 2009 01:40

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 23:56

Josh Lyman: May 24, 2009

Why would Win7 leave C:\Boot on the drive after installation? It looks like it's just installation stuff but C:\Boot\BCD were accessed the last timed I started up Windows :psyduck:

# ¿ Dec 11, 2009 22:17

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