Hi guys, I'm back from Italy, and there's obviously a lot of catching up to do, if that's even possible.
I got some nice pictures and impressions which will come later.
I had some money left after returning home, so I bought some extra RAM. The thing is, I can't do anything with it, until I go 64-bit.
I have been thinking about installing the 64-bit Beta of Windows 7.
My question: Would that be a good idea? What are your experiences with Win7?
My experience is very good. I've not heard from anyone who is actually competent with computers and not a moron who has had compatibility issues other than IE8 which is just horrible but you can always replace that. As for which version to get, I wouldn't advise Home Premium because there's nothing premium about it. Professional has the all important XP compatibility and allows you to create recovery media to restore Windows 7 with the license and all your data and programs without having to do it manually. Just put it on DVDs or a hard drive and when your computer explodes you don't have to spend 3 days getting windows and all your programs back.
Between Professional and Ultimate, well the only difference that people who don't run a corperation or speak an impossible number of languages will notice is Bitlocker, an encryption system. To be honest if you've got data worth encrypting then do it on and Ironkey. Use freebie software and you might as well rename the files to "Take me, I will give you lots of money and a doughnut."
The only people who would buy Windows 7 Ultimate are people who want to say "Hey look, I have Windows 7 Ultimate" But then again it will only be about £20 more than professional.
OK thanks.
Professional it is.
I have XP Pro now, and I like the freedom I have as admin (the only user on the pc's). I imagine a home version would have lots of settings pre-set by microsoft, because they don't trust my home competence. So that means I must be a professional 8)
Always good for the old ego. :D That's one thing I've always hated about Windows though, they tailor it completely towards hiding stuff from the idiots. I used to work for a PC retailer and the number of complete muppets who buy a computer and don't even know which end you're supposed to look at is unbelievable. I think people should have to take an aptitude test before they're allowed to own a PC. The first question should be, 'Are you considering buying a laptop or netbook?'. If they answer Yes then throw them out of the store.
Anyway, so I hate how Microsoft enfore user accounts on us even if you're the only user. No one ever touches my pc except me, so why do I have to protect my files from being interfered with by other users? I might go and look for a program or something to remove it.
I found windows 7 to run great. I only had some wireless driver issues awhile ago but im sure if i was still running it would be working by now. And thats not microsofts fault, thats intels ;)
but as an os in general, i liked it a lot. personally i like vista too and don't see what all the fuss was about it as with a few tweaks it runs great :P.
basically 7 just what vista shouldve been at launch ;)
Quote from: PG on August 04, 2009, 05:38:48 PM
Anyway, so I hate how Microsoft enfore user accounts on us even if you're the only user. No one ever touches my pc except me, so why do I have to protect my files from being interfered with by other users? I might go and look for a program or something to remove it.
I fixed that on install.
If you do a fresh installation of XP, when you come to the part where you are forced to create an account, reset the pc without continuing, and you will have no account whatsoever, except for the admin. I found this out when I accidentally touched the reset button with my knee while installing XP :o 8)
HANG ONN!!! :o Dang. I just finished installing 600GB worth of games.
Use Windows 7. The best thing Microsoft has done for years (excepth their hardware of course. How can a company that makes such excellent hardware create so many crap OS's?) I have been using the Final RC since the day after it was released, on my WORK PC!! and I haven't had a minutes problem with it. The install is just a dream, even my 7 year old scanner and a couple of old printers were installed without it asking for a single disk. It even joined our network for me, and I hadn't even realised it had done it. Definately what Vista should have been.
Miles
Great!
I downloaded the iso. Now I have to find a disk to burn it on... haven't used one of those in a while since I have one of those 8Gb usb sticks.
Quote from: Mohawk20 on August 04, 2009, 06:40:13 PM
I accidentally touched the reset button with my knee while installing XP
I'd love to see a photo of the position you adopt when keying-in / installing stuff. ;D
John
Quote from: schmeerlap on August 05, 2009, 05:39:16 AM
Quote from: Mohawk20 on August 04, 2009, 06:40:13 PM
I accidentally touched the reset button with my knee while installing XP
I'd love to see a photo of the position you adopt when keying-in / installing stuff. ;D
John
No you wouldn't ;)
Nah, this was when I had an old computer case, where the reset button was fairly large and placed very easy to reach... call it a design flaw.
Does Windows 7 have problems with permissions for the main user?
Every Windows version on NT technology has. You know the error message you get saying you don't have permission and need to ask the administrator. Even when you're the administrator.
i dont think i checked when i was running windows 7, someone want to check something for me?
did they finally learn to calculate file transfer/copy/delete times?
10 seconds remaining.... 20 days remaining... 2 seconds remaining (5 minutes later) 2seconds remaining... 5 minutes remaining... 1 second remaining... (finally done)
I've been the administrator of every machine built since Windows 1, including Windows 3.11, NT, etc. and have never seen the debacle of Vista at any time (not giving the local administrator access, for example).
As the local administrator of a server, you don't get messages like that. Windows 2003, for example, gives a local administrator all of the rights necessary to do anything administrative including installation and configuration. Rights can be complicated, but once someone is the local administrator of a machine, they should be able to do anything.
Here are some tidbits - http://www.sophos.com/support/knowledgebase/article/11464.html
So, Mohawk, does Windows 7 have these same problems?
Quote from: PG on August 05, 2009, 09:04:49 AM
Every Windows version on NT technology has. You know the error message you get saying you don't have permission and need to ask the administrator. Even when you're the administrator.
Well, I have to install it first, and that's the first problem!
At least, it's really slow in starting up... I burned the iso on a DVD+RW, and booted from CD-ROM. Windows was reading files, and after a while Windows was starting, at least that's what the screen said. But after the blue background showed up, nothing happened for more than 5 minutes. So I reset the pc. Same thing.
So I left it running and started typing this post on the other pc, to ask if anyone else had to wait this long. But in the mean time the installation wizard has started, so not a big problem, just impatience.
LOL From what I could work out when I did it, Windows install procedure seems to gather virtually ALL its info before starting, instead of previous versions where they whold then start asking you a million questions as the last part of the setup. ;D
Thanks Mohawk for sharing your experience. I'm curious about the administrative headaches it might cause you, if any.
Mr. Miley, thanks for explaining about that. I had no idea and now I'm liking Windows 7 a little better. Jury is still out for me, though.
When I run into something I'll let you know here right away.
Something I haven't checked yet: My brother said Win 7 has some issues with Firefox, resulting in browser crashes. Those issues might be fixed though...
I may well be using this.
I intend to build a new computer soon. 3D Coat is out for Linux now so that pushes the idea ahead. It will be a 64 bit dual core Ubuntu system. However, TG2 will be better on Windows rather than Wine so I may have to dual boot.
So far Firefox is running fine, so no problems there.
Mostly the problems installing software might be because of the 64-bit nature of the OS. A side-to-side configuration error, and Java JRE not being able to unpack all it's data.
Meanwhile, TG2 is rendering fine, being able to render my last scene a lot bigger without error with this extra RAM!
Good to hear, Mohawk. Keep us posted, if you have the time.
Sure!
I'm now installing Microsoft Visual C 2008.
After that dotnet 3.5.
I hope stuff wil install better after that...
You get .net 3.5 included in Windows 7. Visual Studio 2008 works in 7 so VC should too.
Yeah?
Well, I tried installing .net 3.5 SP1, and it failed with the message that is was lacking language packs. So I should install those first or something. A strange error message for something allready installed right?
And when I wanted to install the demo of 3DsMax 2010, I got this side-by-side configuration error, which means I dont have some dll's needed. I thought the dll I needed was msvcr90.dll. Looks to me like Visual C Runtime 9, also called 2005, but I was wrong. I can't find out what the problem is with this sxsconfig error...
Strangeness.
3.5 SP1 is included in Windows 7 already (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.NET_Framework#Versions) ref: Windows 7 is final and includes .net 3.5 SP1 (http://blogs.windowsclient.net/rob_relyea/archive/2009/07/22/windows-7-is-final-and-includes-net-3-5sp1.aspx)
Not sure about 3DS max though, Microsoft Office 2007 tends to screw up certain DLLs, if you have that installed already try uninstalling it and then installing 3DS max.
Nope, I have a very bare system so far...
I'll try some more Google.
Have you tried running the installer on a compatibility mode or anything? Sometimes that sort of thing does the trick.
also for any driver issues, often you can just steal the latest version of vista drivers and run them instead on 7. depends on the driver though. but when i first tried 7 a few months back my video drivers for 7 were pretty bad by default and kept crashes, i used vista ones and they were a lot more stable. though by now a lot of vendors have stepped up getting decent 7 drivers out.
Yeah I think nVidia and Creative hooked onto that. Their Vista and Windows 7 drivers are the same.
Yeh thankfully i dont think windows did too much in the backend driver wise, which is good so there wont be another fiasco with drivers like vista was when it launched. That was like half the problem at launch, horrible drivers were available.
No that's right. Microsoft changed the format of drivers to WDDM rather than WDM from XP so manufacturers had to learn a completely new way of making drivers, and the DDK changed dramatically. Windows 7 still uses WDDM.
I got this '0xc000007b' error when trying a 3ds Max install that I finally managed to install. No luck yet finding out how to deal with it, but I'm definitely considering Blender 64-bit now. Once I get the hang of the viewport navigation I should at least be able to create some simple stuff.
The error means that it can't initialize, but apparently it is frequently caused by viruses. The WORM_KLEZ.E in particular. Try a virus scan, if that doesn't find anything then download the Malicious software removal tool (http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=ad724ae0-e72d-4f54-9ab3-75b8eb148356&displaylang=en)
Don't have a virusscanner installed yet. But I can't imagine that one would have infested already...
Can do. Most of the security software companies estimate unprotected users getting infected within 15 minutes. Although that could be to sell products, but they do release the source of their findings, so it must have some weight.
Thats why first thing i do is firewall->antivirus-> then plug in internet -> get firefox -> run updates.
OK, it's been a loooong time since my last visit here...
For some reason I can't make the time to check out the forums here anymore.
Anyways, Win 7 is running fine, no more problems, except fore some stupid empty folder I can't remove because of lack of authorization (?!)...
I'm currently doing an anim in my last scene that I entered in the NWDA contest, only set at night with fairies flying around.
Still in test phase, only 30 frames in 2 versions.
You'll be hearing from me in another thread soon I guess.
Well, here's more news about Win 7...
It died!
The disk it was installed on (granted it was my smallest, oldest IDE hard drive) just died. When I got home the screen was black and there was this distinct clicking noise coming from one of the drives.
There's not much lost as the disk contained only the windows install. All Program Files were installed on another drive, as is all my TG work. But that's unavailable now, until I install Windows again on another drive, preferably a new one.
So in the mean time the only projects you'll see from me are new ones, as the running projects are unavailable.
But I don't think Windows 7 is to blame, so I will continue to test it with a new installation.
The only downside to the OS is that I've been unable to install PhotoShop CS4 (not even a fresh trial version downloaded from the Adobe site). But that seems to be system related as well, so maybe a new hard drive will fix that as well...
Sorry to hear about your troubles. Hope you're up and running in no time.
Biggest problem is that I'm away tomorrow, so first chance I'll have to buy a new disk is Monday...