The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > The Windows and Windows Software Megathread

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Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Sereri posted:

I'm surely not going to install an old OS first before I can reinstall a fresh install.

Is there not the option to just put in your Vista disc/key to prove you own it without actually installing that first?

# ¿ Aug 25, 2009 00:12

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:41

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

toxick posted:

All of that discussion about font rendering, and ClearType still looks like poo poo. Shame.

Have you tried tuning it?

What I'm disappointed about is the apparent continued lack of support for vertical pixel arrangements (ie. a monitor rotated into portrait mode). They could at least detect when you've rotated your desktop and automatically disable subpixel rendering

# ¿ Aug 29, 2009 23:15

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

fishmech posted:

They don't have explicit options for it, but the tuning assistant includes modes suited for such displays.

By "modes" do you mean regular font smoothing without subpixel rendering? I can't find anything about vertical pixel support being added to 7, it's a real problem on my tablet laptop running Vista.

# ¿ Aug 29, 2009 23:46

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Always install the newest OS last, it should pick up the older one and automatically configure the boot process for you.

# ¿ Sep 4, 2009 19:41

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

DarthDommo posted:

I did that, however the next lowest setting is "never notify me of anything ever". I guess my anger lies with Winamp for apparently making "changes to my computer" whenever it plays a song, rather than with Windows for notifying me of it. I was hoping a fellow Winamp user had come up with some kind of work around.

Is winamp already running when this happens, or starting up for the first time? I know there's a setting that checks all your registry entries upon loading for associations and asks you to fix them if they've been altered from what it knew at installation.

# ¿ Sep 9, 2009 04:04

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Windows has never touched a partition you didn't tell it to install on, but it will absolutely write its own boot loader in place of what you currently have.

# ¿ Sep 17, 2009 05:16

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Cojawfee posted:

You might get lucky with the 32 bit and see 3 gigs, or you might only see 2.5 gigs.

He's on a laptop, I seriously doubt he has enough reserved hardware addresses to chew into his 4GB cap. Then again I also doubt there's no drivers for his other devices, and the benefits of 64 bit are worth the 5 minutes it would take to search the manufacturer's website.

# ¿ Sep 20, 2009 03:33

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Mensur posted:

If you haven't already gotten your win7 key through MSDNAA you no longer can. It's gone and won't be coming back.

Note that this only applies to people scheming to get it through ACM or IEEE membership, schools that offer MSDNAA access to registered students through individual departments have not changed a thing.

# ¿ Sep 23, 2009 19:05

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

No, it's just as campy and awkward through the whole thing. There's a whole series of instructional videos on how to host your party too, with silly events like "Use the new start menu search!" that they suggest.

# ¿ Sep 24, 2009 20:40

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

CoreAVC using CUDA has nothing to do with most GPUs accelerating h264 playback, which they have been able to do through DXVA (WMP11+ supports this) since Vista, namely radeons since 2600 series and nvidia since G92 core 8800s.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2009 01:46

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Casao posted:

Not everyone uses WMP11

Other players will support it too, such as anything that will implement the built-in EVR renderer like MPC Home Cinema.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2009 01:51

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Bozz posted:

The fact that a new version of Windows shipped 2 years later is a testament to it's unreliability.

No, it's a testament to the fact that a large majority of the population bought into some marketing and believed it was unreliable without ever trying it themselves.

# ¿ Sep 26, 2009 04:01

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Bozz posted:

I never saw any marketing and decided for myself not to try it based on the massive amounts of problems I was reading/hearing/seeing about.

Second hand marketing/word of mouth is just as bad as buying it yourself directly, chances are none of those people you heard complaints from had tried it either. But yes, this is a stupid direction to drag the thread in.

# ¿ Sep 27, 2009 07:09

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

That's the best you're going to get, Cisco does not and has no plans to support the free client in 64-bit Windows.

# ¿ Sep 29, 2009 22:51

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Black Pants posted:

And what's he gonna do with that if he's just going to be gaming and dicking around on the internet?

Feel better about himself for sticking it to the man? Maybe he'll need XP Mode to run some of his older games, it's not like it will hurt to have.

# ¿ Sep 30, 2009 06:46

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

IE does it just fine, unless you meant strictly third party products. I'd expect Firefox to get it before the official launch date, maybe a little after, but you know it has to be coming.

# ¿ Oct 2, 2009 07:56

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

They're either keygenned or MSDN/technet resellers, probably best to avoid it altogether.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2009 19:45

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Certain applications written to take advantage of the 64 bit operations will run significantly faster than their older 32 bit counterparts, for instance de/compression programs like WinRAR or anything to do with multimedia.

# ¿ Oct 5, 2009 22:06

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

WattsvilleBlues posted:

just making sure its slightly higher RAM requirement wasn't going to negatively impact on things.

It won't.

# ¿ Oct 6, 2009 17:57

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

INTJ Mastermind posted:

So basically, if I install Win 7 now, do I have to reinstall when my key arrives or can I just type it in?

This same question has been asked several times in the past few pages, and the answer is "we don't know please stop asking already" because the only install discs out are full retail.

Lord Commissar posted:

In Vista, I just ran under the Admin account because even running as a regular account set Admin caused weird issues.

Does Win7 have the same problems?

Define "weird issues" because what you're doing is a huge security risk.

# ¿ Oct 8, 2009 03:44

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

Have any sites done a major breakdown in the differences between the various versions of 7? Everybody knows about the large differences between the versions, but sometimes the small stuff can be a deal maker/breaker as well.

That's what wikipedia is for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_7_editions

# ¿ Oct 8, 2009 06:49

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Set the Blank screen saver to happen 1 minute before powering off your monitor...

# ¿ Oct 9, 2009 00:54

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Only if you're running AHCI, and there should be a way to disable the hot swap feature so they stop showing up on that list. I couldn't imagine trying to eject a USB drive and spinning down my data storage :pwn:

# ¿ Oct 9, 2009 18:14

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

You could always use the XP mode VM file in another VM, it's licensed and activated though I don't know if the EULA prohibits such things.

# ¿ Oct 10, 2009 15:59

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

echinopsis posted:

Now, I was trying to encode something in handbrake, and it was making my machine run really hot and eventually it shut itself down.

I'm currently running some 720p video which is stuttering like gently caress, it's getting hot enough to run the fan at max speed, but the processor isn't speeding up.

Sounds like your heatsink came loose or is severely plugged up with dust.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 18:59

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Your CPU should not be getting that hot at half speed, if it is then it will not allow itself to speed up for fear of melting.

# ¿ Oct 11, 2009 19:53

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Stunt Rock posted:

Is it even necessary to use a codec pack if you're using MPC-HC? I'm getting tired of VLC, and was going to switch over. I'd read that MPC-HC, like VLC, doesn't really need codec packs.

VLC has its own decoders built in and no method to load external filters. MPC-HC has no decoders built in and depends on external filters, but with the EVR renderer on Vista/7 will use DXVA hardware decoding of VC1/VC2 video depending on your graphics card.

# ¿ Oct 15, 2009 21:30

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

That's news to me, I didn't know they were going that route; MPC only had enough to run DVDs. Any idea what they're using for that?

# ¿ Oct 15, 2009 21:59

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Cheesus posted:

Thanks to Google, I discovered the problem; I use a solid color background for my desktop. For whatever reason that is the cause of the slow down. I changed it to a random canned picture and the Welcome screen only seemed to last 4 seconds.

Try making your own background image of a solid color in paint? That's really annoying if true, because I do the same thing.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2009 01:48

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Cheesus posted:

Yes, I ended up making a .gif the size of my desktop with my desired color. Very annoying to have to do that.

Just like OS X! :downsbravo:

_{(This is a joke, I could never figure out how to solid color a desktop (if there's a way))}

Cojawfee posted:

Make a smaller gif and tile it?

That's no different, it's annoying that you can't just use the solid color option without the weird boot lag.

# ¿ Oct 16, 2009 05:12

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Casao posted:

If it's easy access to your files abroad, there are better ways.

Such as? I run an FTP server 24/7 for swapping files between my desktop and laptop, and can't imagine anything easier, simpler, cleaner, or lighter.

# ¿ Oct 17, 2009 23:42

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Casao posted:

Live Mesh. Hamachi w/ Windows fileshare. These both work best between pre-defined systems.

For generic access from any system, FTP isn't bad, but unless you use sftp or scp, it's terrible insecure (and outdated in terms of functionality), and those lose some of the inherent easiness of FTP.

I only have these 2 "predefined systems" which I'm not always using, sometimes I require access from macs, and occasionally I set it up for my friends to grab things. It's just easier to do all this with an FTP server, especially when some of the files are massive.

I'm not worried about security because I don't transfer sensitive data, mostly lab images and game-related things like demos or maps. What do you think is outdated about the ftp protocol, and what exactly does sftp lose besides ftp:// support in web browsers?

Does Windows 7 build in support for anything besides Mesh and file sharing?

# ¿ Oct 18, 2009 01:02

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Casao posted:

Everything you transfer is in plain text. Including that password you're using to log in. So anyone sniffing would have immediate access to your FTP and all data it contains.

I'm well aware of the plain text problem, but like I said nothing is at all sensitive that I transfer, and the user/pass isn't shared with anything else; at worst someone could download a bunch of boring autoradiograms or flood my hard drive with junk data. I'll look into seeing what's available for SFTP servers since I'm almost always using a client anyway (there's got to be a portable client you could run off USB for computers you don't have admin), but I'm not really worried about the security.

To me hamachi is solely for when friends have firewall problems or really old games that only support LAN play.

echinopsis posted:

just an idea.. dropbox..

I have USB drives bigger than that which I'm almost never without, I'm not concerned with syncing anything but for those times when I realize I'd like a random file for whatever reason.

# ¿ Oct 18, 2009 02:27

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

brc64 posted:

What the poo poo is this ExpertZone thing? Man, Microsoft just loves giving things away, but I never learn about it in time.

It's for retail employees to get free products, keeps them happy and hopefully they learn something about it to boost sales.

# ¿ Oct 19, 2009 19:13

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Cizzo posted:

Unless you're like me and going from 32-bit to 64-bit in which case it's impossible for me to do that.

Have you actually tried, or are you just going off some Mac propganda website's horror stories?

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 02:47

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

redeyes posted:

The key thing here is the word upgrade. You cannot upgrade but you can use an upgrade version with a clean install.

And it will still back up your old system files. You do NOT have to format from XP to 7, you just need to reinstall your programs.

Don't start spreading rumors you can't substantiate, this is what killed Vista.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 03:33

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Pyr0 posted:

I've been trying for a while to get this loving download copy of 7 unpacked and every time it trys to extract everything it comes up with this error:

What exactly did you download and from where? Do you use a FAT32 hard drive and is it trying to extract over 4 GB?

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 03:47

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Did they give you any special instructions, like unpack directly to a DVD or something like that? I've never heard of .box being used for anything but email, and the only other info I can find on that error is people having the same problem.

If all else fails get a copy of the RTM disc and use that.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 04:16

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

Urfdser posted:

I think someone hosted it on the last page.

That was the RC, hosting the RTM or Retail images would be questionably illegal.

Malay posted:

I think a lot of us bought the Upgrade so downloading the RTM (which is a Full ISO) doesn't make a lot of sense.

A lot of reports from people contacting Digital River support claim that's actually the full installation, but I don't know if that's true yet or if it would apply to the european deal.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 04:24

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# ¿ Apr 26, 2024 15:41

Swilo: Jun 2, 2004; ANIME SUCKS HARD

SiLk-2k5 posted:

Downloading. Also... wtf do I do with a .box file?

Apparently nothing because their unpacker is broken.

# ¿ Oct 22, 2009 05:40

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