The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

/bin/laden posted:

I keep seeing people refer to the fact that x64bit versions of Windows Vista/7 cannot install unsigned drivers, yet when I try using hacked drivers for my scanner, windows will throw a warning, but will still continue with the install. Am I misunderstanding what everyone is talking about?

(I love Windows7's snipping tool)

That's not the typical driver signing issue.

# ¿ May 18, 2009 17:57

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 13:10

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Why are game companies still using punkbuster? That poo poo hasn't worked, well ever.

# ¿ May 20, 2009 12:36

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Data posted:

The only time I've ever seen ClearType look good is on my VGA PocketPC, which has incredible pixel density. I'm using two reasonably high quality BENQ and Samsung panels, 22" and 19", so the pixel density is much lower than on a tiny PocketPC screen.

Cheap TN panels are your problem.

So you're telling me that every single tuning option looks fuzzy/blurry to you?

That .pdf you linked is in no way conclusive or have any real statistical relevance. A study involving a sample group of 25 people on an old rear end laptop, sign me up.

# ¿ May 22, 2009 12:34

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Data posted:

Why do I have to go through this every time I mention cleartext? It's tuned correctly, yet it still looks blurry compared to the crisp pixel outlines of regular text.

Is it really so hard to believe that some people don't like this feature?

Not hard to believe, but I'm going to stick with the crappy panel, bad eyes, get your head checked line of thought :shobon:

In all seriousness it probably has something to do with the rods/cones in your eyes working differently than the majority of people or something like that.

# ¿ May 22, 2009 17:54

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

G-Philez posted:

The demos did what they promised to do. I am now going to see if I need to have both programs or just one... TotalMedia Theater 3 appears to be a fantastic program. Thanks again everyone!

And in regards to my name... well, G for my first initial. I was an X-Files fan and was part of a fan club of X-Philes... hence X-Philes. Then I changed the s to a z just because it was a common thing for hackers to do at the time, and, yes, I used to hack. Mind you, this is over 10 years ago.

1990's IRC ----> that way

/tr0ut G-Philez

# ¿ May 26, 2009 15:04

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Hi I'm Philez McGee,

you might remember me from such groups as THG, and TRSI. :whatup:

# ¿ May 26, 2009 15:21

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

tasslex posted:

Is there something limiting the resolution of Video Playback in Media Player Classic? DRM perhaps? Everything in Media Player Classic looks like rear end. I can tell it's using the proper codecs that I have manually installed, as Process Explorer shows the filters being loaded.

Try media player home-cinema. You don't even need any silly codec packs installed, and it supports EVR playback (GPU assisted decode).

# ¿ May 28, 2009 18:57

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

zapateria posted:

Is there anything special I need to do to show thumbnails in a folder? IrfanView is my default program for picture extensions. Folder listing view is set to "Content"

Edit: Turning on the preview pane only shows the irfanview icon.

Even my Libraries\Pictures folder doesn't show them:

Alt, view -> select icon size?

# ¿ Jun 2, 2009 14:16

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

deltawing posted:

I presume Steam and all the games work fine with W7?

I am loving this new taskbar thing, I love the Windows Explorer thing where all the folders are just grouped together and can be easily closed out of without opening them!

Also, is there any reason why my old games like Starcraft and Diablo II look like poo poo? How do you run in XP mode?

So far the only steam game that hasn't worked for me is Freedom Force, which caused a blue screen. Haven't tried fixing that yet.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2009 17:43

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

billy cuts posted:

I dunno, it's pretty straightforward and a much faster install than using DVD media. Once you have the tools, it takes all of 3 minutes to reformat/reinstall the media to the USB key.

(For XP)

Download MultiBoot_USB Tool
Run USB_MultiBoot_10.cmd
Option H > Format as NTFS
Mount Windows 7 ISO
Open command prompt
Go to Windows 7 ISO root, then \BOOT directory
run BOOTSECT /NT60 H: (where h: is the usb key)
Copy DVD files to USB key, reboot and install

Yeah, installing from a USB key/drive is dirt rear end simple and REALLY fast.

I use the HP software (http://thenine.ca/makeboot.rar) and then just copy over/extract the iso to the root of the USB and boot from it. Hasn't failed me yet.

# ¿ Jun 5, 2009 13:07

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Not only do I leave UAC on in Win 7, but I crank it to 11 :smug:

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 17:36

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

redeyes posted:

Yeah sure buddy. My points stand.

No, not really. I've only run into maybe 2 or 3 programs that haven't installed properly, and run-as admin/compat mode pretty much fixed them up. How often are you installing programs after an initial re-install?

What do you mean by accessing HDs from other computers? Are you mounting drives from other systems that often. You might benefit from actually setting up the Administrator account on Vista/7.

I still fail to see how an occasional annoyance is a good reason to forego security.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 19:37

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

redeyes posted:

Yes mounting drives from other systems. Turning off UAC sets your account as Admin from what I can tell. That works fine for me. I don't need any security as I do this for a living. Also I install programs every day, mostly for trial, sometimes to figure something out for someone, or just my own curiosity.

I can understand disabling on a machine that you're doing work on, specifically stuff like that. But on a surf everyday box, I'd never disable it :\

# ¿ Jun 8, 2009 19:53

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

I love UAC arguments. I love people's smugness about malware as well. It'll just take one occasion of something slipping past your impenetrable shield of smugness +5 to understand why a little bit prevention is worth whatever hassle clicking something 1 extra time :\

Up next, I have UAC disabled, no A/V software installed and I run my poo poo on the DMZ yo!

# ¿ Jun 9, 2009 12:03

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Shannow posted:

Is this the wrong place to mention i turn UAC off and have never in my life used an AV program?

But yeah. I've been using win 7 for a good few monthsa now, and the only major gripe i still have is the most insignificant gripe one could have - see the width of my 'show desktop' button after installing my wacom tablet drivers

It bugs the hell out of me and i dont know how to make it go back to normal size.

I am going to throw it on my main machine soon, the only thing i want to know is if it's possible to have the sidebar from vista back, as I'm used to having that permanently on top and would miss not having my wee clipboard history gadget always there.

I hope your PC catches AIDS!

I wish I could outright remove the show desktop button. I have my task bar up top and I missclick the max/min/close buttons all the time :goleft:

# ¿ Jun 9, 2009 13:50

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

El Diabolico posted:

I just got around to popping this on to try it out and I'm really liking W7 (it runs as good and snappy as XP on this hunk of junk)...except for one thing.

I am getting this bizarre network issue where, for whatever reason, the DNS will not resolve and the internet generally ceases to function. It seems to work by typing IPs in. I can connect to my router and anywhere else if I use the IP but it wont connect normally. Firefox and IE times out. Also, the network stuff says that everything is connected fine but when I run a diagnosis it tells me it mysteriously cant connect to the internet.

I've tried 4 different drivers for my on-board nic, an Nforce4: 32bit in compatibility mode, vista x64, W7 x64, and the ones W7 comes with and they all act the same. Even manually setting IPs and DNS servers doesn't work at all. It acts the same. I managed to find a work around, though. by disabling and re enabling the connection then unsettling and resetting a DNS server (I used opendns in this case)and verifying the connection by checking the box, eventually it starts working normally until you turn it off and then goes back to its previous behavior.

Anyone got any ideas on how to permanently fix something like this? Its tarnishing what would otherwise be the smoothest OS install I've ever done.

I would've dumped this in the support forum but this place seems more appropriate. I've also been hearing others have been having similar networking issues.

I've had the exact same thing happen on an oldder AMD system (Nforce chipset, socket 939 processor). I eventually pegged it down to a windows update patch breaking browsing. I could still ping sites via domain name or ip, but nothing worked in any browser.

I have no idea what could be causing that on Windows 7? :|

# ¿ Jun 10, 2009 12:36

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Femur posted:

I've been having a weird problem of late, or I've noticed it lately. I have 4GB of ram and it seems that It fills up really fast and stays filled until a reboot. I can't firgure out what would do this.

I only have firefox, NOD32, daemon-tools, running at any one time.

Anyone know what it could be? This never happened in Vista, and I am running pretty much the same setup.

Possible troll bait, but, you actually want your RAM filled up. Win 7/ Vista do a good job of caching stuff they think you might need/want in RAM.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2009 02:01

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

FlyTB20C posted:

I'm almost positive someone else had this problem in this thread, but for the life of me I can't find it now. I installed the x64 version from Microsoft's website last night on my crummy Dell Inspiron 1525 (I was surprised it checked out okay for x64, honestly), and it is so much faster then the 32 bit Vista was, however now the touch pad no longer scrolls and I cannot find a driver that doesn't freak out and say it can't run on this operating system. Also, the buttons on the laptop for volume up/down don't work, but the one for mute does.

Anyone know of a driver for the touchpad that might work? Or a setting I just can't seem to locate?

You most likely need the Vista 64 drivers for synaptics:

http://www.synaptics.com/support/drivers

# ¿ Jun 17, 2009 16:51

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

FlyTB20C posted:

Unfortunately that driver seems to think the touchpad is a mouse. Oh well, thanks for posting it, it was worth a try.

How is your touchpad detected by Win 7? Does it show up as a touchpad or a mouse?

# ¿ Jun 17, 2009 17:54

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Kameleon posted:

Standard W7 drivers detect a ps/2 mouse for every trackpad I've seen. For me the default drivers are better than the manufacturer's as they let me do three-finger gestures in Opera.

The touchpad on my Dell was detected as a touchpad, and the Synaptics drivers installed no problem. My only guess is that FlyTB20C's touchpad isn't a synpatics one.

# ¿ Jun 17, 2009 18:22

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

FlyTB20C posted:

Much like Kameleon said, Win 7 just thinks it is a ps/2 mouse. Hopefully closer to the actual release someone will provide a working driver.

At lease the computer actually shuts down when I tell it to now, with Vista it just hung around pretending to shut down for several minutes.

What if you uninstall it via device manager and run the driver install? Are we sure that it's a Synaptics touchpad, or might it be something else?

# ¿ Jun 17, 2009 18:23

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

LooseChanj posted:

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware personal experiences required documented and peer-reviewed references.

15-20C cooler is an insane number though. If your Vista was running upto 20C hotter than your Win 7 install something was really, really fubared.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 12:11

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

LooseChanj posted:

I speak in Real Degrees.

Still fairly significant. My guess is Win 7's idle routines are actually kicking in for your CPU and not so much under Vista. Or a process or two are mysteriously eating away at some CPU cycles somewhere.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 14:35

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Gvaz posted:

Say I, right now installed windows 7. On wednesday when I change my cpu/mobo/ram, will that gently caress up everything and I'll have to reinstall anyways? I really hate not having my settings all there and it takes a week to a month to get everything how I want it.

Mobo replacements are sorta 50/50 for fubar potential. I usually do a fresh install when I change motherboards. Depending on the SATA controller you may be able to just swap boards, boot windows and be fine.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 18:46

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Gvaz posted:

I'm going from this http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=939SLI32-eSATA2 to this http://www.gigabyte-usa.com/Products/Motherboard/Products_Spec.aspx?ClassValue=Motherboard&ProductID=2978&ProductName=GA-MA770-UD3

I have no idea how you tell what chip is what.

Did you install any chipset drivers, specifically ones for the SATA controller? Are you running SATA in IDE Mode, AHCI, RAID?

If you didn't any special drivers, and run in the same SATA mode between mobos you'll be ok. The other problem would be that they are two completely different mobo chipsets (ULi vs AMD).

I'd plan on having to re-install.

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 18:56

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Gvaz posted:

I run in non-raid mode (whatever my mobo calls it), with all 3 Sata drives. even my dvd burner is sata. No special drivers.

Well that's one problem down and a few others that might creep up. It'll really depend on how gracefully Win 7 is going to handle you replacing the entire subsystem of your computer. I've heard of people doing mobo swaps in XP without much issue, so give it a shot and let me know what happens

# ¿ Jun 23, 2009 19:25

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Kali11324 posted:

Apparently my sound card is just not compatible with Windows 7. I have Creative Labs Sound Blaster SB0460. The driver download site is all hosed up and just takes me around in circles.

Is it compatible with Vista?

edit:

You fail at google as well :P

It looke like you have the Xtreme Music, which has Vista drivers that should work.

http://forums.driverguide.com/showthread.php?t=30984

Stanley Pain fucked around with this message at 18:39 on Jun 25, 2009

# ¿ Jun 25, 2009 18:33

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Ryuga Death posted:

I'm assuming MS hasn't said anything about being able to reformat from the Upgrade disc if you've already used it to install 7? I've been trying to see if there's been any kind of info on it. I just need this to feel 100% safe about my purchase, seeing as I enjoy wiping my computer every once in a while.

If you want to feel 100% buy a full retail copy instead of an upgrade. This is grey area at best, so who knows what they will/won't allow.

If they "allowed" it why would any buy anything BUT the upgrade?

# ¿ Jun 29, 2009 18:42

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

kapinga posted:

It was "allowed" with Vista - you could use the upgrade key to upgrade from the free trial version of Vista. That didn't stop people from buying the full version anyways - its far more convenient to only install the OS once, and its more 'legit' if you care about these things.

Exactly why we're using :airquote:

If you don't really care about how legit your install may or may not be, upgrade is probably the wisest choice.

# ¿ Jun 30, 2009 13:05

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

capr1ce posted:

I skimmed this thread but couldn't find the answer.
I'm having trouble even installing w7, when the option comes up to pick a partition and I pick my specified windows partition it gives me this error: "Setup was unable to create a new system partition or locate an existing partition. See the setup log files for more information".

I used Gparted initially to resize my windows partition as w7 needs more space than my original xp installation. Does anyone know how to fix this or where to find the setup log?

Also does w7 use NTFS?

Win 7 sometimes makes a 100MB partition at the beginning of your first HD. If it can't the install might fail. So if you have a strange partitioning scheme it might cause you problem.

Yes, it uses NTFS.

# ¿ Jul 3, 2009 12:19

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

LooseChanj posted:

Looks like this post is what got the rumor mill grinding.

So the guy copying stuff over his network to an OCd machine manages to kill his RAID10 setup blames Windows 7? Am I reading that correctly? :P

# ¿ Jul 6, 2009 13:05

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

LooseChanj posted:

Pretty much.

I guess his 2hr prime "stable" OC isn't actually stable. :twisted:

Another good question to ask would be why do the majority of people who OC come off as illiterate retards? I mean a lot of the "pro" OCing community folk are not native English speakers so that's forgivable, but the rest of them must be like 13 year olds or something.

In other news my short-stroked HDs boot Win 7 in under 12 seconds, on a heavily OC'd q6600 :xd:

# ¿ Jul 6, 2009 14:04

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Tetrodotoxin posted:

Seems this is my first post to SA (did not find an "Introduction" section) so, Hello!

Anyways, I would like to ask someone that subscribes to Technet if you have heard or read about a Microsoft sort of roadshow where they will be featuring Windows 7 and also a demonstration of the new Microsoft Office 2010.

Apparently in this roadshow they will be giving the chance of attendees of purchasing a voucher to get any edition of Windows 7 with a very hefty discount of up to 70% (according to the version).

I would apreciate any information regarding this.

And as far as my experience with Windows 7 goes, it has been extremely good and the system appears stable even under heavy load.
The only thing I found annoying amongst others, was the Homegroup having so little settings that does not allow you to fully configure it properly. Perhaps a bug ?
Or if someone sucessfuly managed for it to work, would be nice some feedback.

Thanks!

-Tetrodotoxin

Like Mensur said, don't sign your posts.

Haven't heard anything about the TechNet roadshow, but your TechNet subscription actually gives you licenses to Windows 7, and just about every other piece of Microsoft software out there.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2009 15:19

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Blue Footed Booby posted:

My guess is that grownups who want to up performance buy a better processor, or more rarely one that's actually good for overclocking. The 13 year old retards are stuck with what mommy bought and have no option to increase performance other than OCing, which they inevitably gently caress up because 13 year olds suck at careful planning. Then they bitch on the internet 24/7 because they don't have jobs or enough homework, while the non retards keep to themselves or ask for advice somewhere where they won't be responded to by 13 year olds.

On an unrelated note, who the gently caress bought and what is it.

In the vein of even more massive thread derailment, negativeman to the rescue! :negative:

as soon as he picks himself up that is.

In further news, I installed Win 7 on a work computer (1.8GHz c2d, 1GB of RAM) and it runs significantly better than XP. Now if I could just get our security dept. to actually sanction this as a legit install

. For now I'll just stick with reducing the graphics fluff to XP levels so that my co-workers don't ooooh and aaahh too loudy.

# ¿ Jul 6, 2009 18:32

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

CitrusFrog posted:

Yeah I've been wondering about that being a bottleneck of sorts because it's mismatched and, as you said, slow as gently caress. Any recommendations on that front? I thought Kingston were supposed to be a decent brand but I've had this RAM for years now.

Overall your system isn't that great for playing most modern games :|

What games are you trying to play?

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 12:09

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

ibroxmassive posted:

Media Player Classic-HC 64 bit resolves some framerate issues on .mkv files in Windows 7 as well, at least for me.

Especially when you use the EVR output option. It'll default to using DXVA which offloads the decoding to your GPU.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 13:10

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

big mean giraffe posted:

It's actually pretty awful, the CPU and GPU are also pretty crap.

I was trying to be nice :shobon:

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 13:23

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

CitrusFrog posted:

Well, first of all, I went into services.msc and MSConfig and disabled an absolute shitload of superfluous and unnecessary

I'm going to pretend you didn't do that :P

CitrusFrog posted:

USB blowjob device.

I want me one of these. Moreso if it has a suck/blow switch on it

# ¿ Jul 7, 2009 13:37

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

Edoraz posted:

Stupid question, but I have the Media Center edition of Windows XP (just a fancy way to say Home Edition and squeeze some more money out of people, I'm sure).

What the hell am I going to upgrade to? I'm assuming, Home Edition of Windows 7?

You can get whatever version of Windows 7 you want.

# ¿ Jul 9, 2009 11:41

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# ¿ Apr 19, 2024 13:10

Stanley Pain: Jun 16, 2001; by Fluffdaddy

If there weren't a few versions of Windows 7 available we'd probably be talking about how microsoft are a bunch of capitalist pigs by only offering 2 versions instead of 8 so people could have choice and all that.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2009 14:08

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