Vista and Games II

Well we have a problems with Vista thread.

I'd just be careful to make sure your hardware is compatible. Most of the stuff made in the last year should be no problem, just make sure you can get past the 4gb limit and get the 64 bit version of Vista.

There are multiple advantages to Vista over XP at this point including

native 64 bit support
much better security
everything new is being made with it in mind
100 other things Prime Junta could point out

To me XP is getting long in the tooth. It doesn't support RAID very well and external drivers require a floppy drive.

Drivers were an issue at launch for sure but with all the controversy even my 4 year old, bottom end Samsung 1430 printer now has Vista drivers. I think Microsoft has being paying companies to write them because a lot of companies took advantage of XP to obsolete their older equipment in spite of being completely functional.

So in that sense, Vista has become a lot less evil than XP.

My only thing about Vista is do I want 64bit or 32bit? Obviously 64bit is the wave of the future, but the 64bit XP driver support was awful on a good day!

Been running Vista home premium for a couple of months now with no problems...

Games tested pretty thoroughly so far:

The Witcher
Bioshock
Stalker (had to get a fix for that one, but then works like a champ)
Eschalon Book 1
Geneforge 1
Temple of Elemental Evil
Chronicles of Riddick
Two Worlds
Star Wars: Battlefront
Star Wars: Republic Commando
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic
Gothc 3

All of these games work great, with great performance at high settings. I've had to do very little tweaking, and I've had very few crashes. But I tend to be very meticulous with my system... insuring newest drivers, patches, defrag, etc.

I actually am really happy with Vista... happier than I thought I would be.

I have seen somewhere on the web (forgot where, sorry ) That Vista is to get a SP 1 in March 2008. And that it the SP 1 for Vista should be out in Denmark in April 2008.

The SP 1 update will include better compatibily for drivers, programs and games? I think. I remember when XP first came out in 2001? people were telling the same horror stories about XP. But then, after the release of SP 1 in 2002, and SP 2 in 2004? the horror stories died down. 7 years after initial release XP is a very stable Operating System (OS) because of the varius updates to it.

The thing about The Witcher and Vista is that I think you need to turn off the annyoing UAC (user access control) as well as maybe right clicking the .exe file and choose 'run this program as an administrator'. The bad thing about Vista is that the first person that sets up the computer also will be the computer's admin. This means that if some one you install Vista on your friends or Mom's computer, you will be the admin of their computer (which is very weird, I think...). At least that what I've learned hanging around on the net at various Vista websites and such.

There's another deeper problem with Vista and that is that it needs to communicate the whole time with your drivers, constantly checking to see if your drivers are up to date. That's fine, but it also means that Vista suddenly won't load drivers or games if Vista thinks (or finds out) that say your graphics card's driver are way too old. Then Vista simply won't load the game or you get the famous '
sorry, the game .e.g the witcher has encountered a problem'...and needs to close..

The problem I'm having with XP and probably also will have with Vista (if I ever get it) is that in teh old days (win 95, win 98), I could decide what changes I needed to make and it was easier to alter autoexec.bat and config.sys that it is in Vista and XP. Also, the file structure for game saves in Vista and to a minor extent in XP, is very confusing, at least to me. In Vista, I know several gamers that can't find their saves if they want to back them up. In Vista the program is being written in such a find that the folder? 'program files' is very protected which means that if you install say Oblivion to Program Files in Vista, and then install usermade mods, the game breaks since Vista won't rcognize usermade mods as part of the Program Files folder. The solution is easy, though: Just install all your games to C:/Games/Oblivion/ or whatever the name of the game is. It just seems to be a lot of trouble to do this...

On the varius websites for Vista I have visited, too, have heard both horror stories as well as great stories about Vista. The advice most people get or give is this:
Turn of the Aero (the smart glass) interface as well as UAC. And then Vista is as good as (or even better) Windows XP when Operating Systems are concerned.

As for the whole phone support thing, I think it was a mistake when US companies oursourced their customer support to India or the Philippines. Quite simply, because the people offering the support aren't sitting anywhere near the company for whose products they're offering support. That way, they really can't give support on anything that isn't written down in their manuals. [We have the same sort of problem in Denmark where more and more support goes from the company itself to call centers throughout the land - the call centers really can't answer questions other than those written in their manuals...].

/aries100

blatantninja said:

My only thing about Vista is do I want 64bit or 32bit? Obviously 64bit is the wave of the future, but the 64bit XP driver support was awful on a good day!

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I've been running Vista x64 pretty much since it came out. I have had some driver issues with copy-protection drivers, but thus far the only game that I haven't been able to run at all is Sacred -- its CP driver won't load, I couldn't find an updated one that would, and the no-CD crack I tried causes the screen to fade to black immediately after the first scene loads.

Conversely, 4 GB RAM is nice.

Advice?

(1) Don't upgrade just the OS on your own money. XP SP2 works just fine. (I got my license from my employer; we wanted to have someone use Vista so we wouldn't be completely clueless about it, and I volunteered.)

(2) If you buy a new box, Vista is just fine. I would suggest going with the x64 version *unless* you have some specific games in mind that you know won't work on it (e.g. Sacred). New games will work great on it, and really old ones (Fallout, PS:T, etc.) generally do too.

(3) Linux interoperability is still slightly problematic; I have a home server that I had set up to do automatic backups of my box, but that system broke down with Vista. It might be possible to get it working again, but I haven't gotten around to it yet (I use an alternative system for making backups in the meantime.)

@aries, a lot of this message was flat-out incorrect.

aries100 said:

The thing about The Witcher and Vista is that I think you need to turn off the annyoing UAC (user access control) as well as maybe right clicking the .exe file and choose 'run this program as an administrator'.

Click to expand...

This is incorrect. The Witcher installs and runs on Vista with no problems.

The bad thing about Vista is that the first person that sets up the computer also will be the computer's admin. This means that if some one you install Vista on your friends or Mom's computer, you will be the admin of their computer (which is very weird, I think...). At least that what I've learned hanging around on the net at various Vista websites and such.

Click to expand...

How is this different from WinXP? It makes you create an "Administrator" account as well.

There's another deeper problem with Vista and that is that it needs to communicate the whole time with your drivers, constantly checking to see if your drivers are up to date. That's fine, but it also means that Vista suddenly won't load drivers or games if Vista thinks (or finds out) that say your graphics card's driver are way too old. Then Vista simply won't load the game or you get the famous '
sorry, the game .e.g the witcher has encountered a problem'...and needs to close..

Click to expand...

Again, incorrect. Vista's system update is no different from XP's; however, Microsoft's site does have a wider variety of drivers on it, so you'll get more updates automatically. In no case will Vista shut down a driver simply because it thinks it's too old -- what you're describing is a crash to desktop (CTD), which can occur for any number of reasons, and also occurs on WinXP for those same reasons.

One thing Vista does do is reduce the number of ring-zero drivers. That means that, for example, if your graphics driver crashes, Vista will be able to restart it; the screen will go blank for a while and then you'll get a note saying that the driver restarted. On WinXP, the driver crash would have taken the system with it (or at least caused the screen to freeze or go blank, requiring you to hit the reset button).

The problem I'm having with XP and probably also will have with Vista (if I ever get it) is that in teh old days (win 95, win 98), I could decide what changes I needed to make and it was easier to alter autoexec.bat and config.sys that it is in Vista and XP.

Click to expand...

Yep-o, you should absolutely not touch any of those files, in XP or Vista. If you want that sort of control over your system, I'd suggest you go with Linux -- you can access *everything* there. It's all in neatly laid-out text files.

aries100 said:

... In Vista, I know several gamers that can't find their saves if they want to back them up. In Vista the program is being written in such a find that the folder? 'program files' is very protected which means that if you install say Oblivion to Program Files in Vista, and then install usermade mods, the game breaks since Vista won't rcognize usermade mods as part of the Program Files folder. The solution is easy, though: Just install all your games to C:/Games/Oblivion/ or whatever the name of the game is. It just seems to be a lot of trouble to do this...

Click to expand...

Are you sure about that? because i ordered Oblivion and intended to install a lot of user mods together with the game.

That was also incorrect. I've installed and run Oblivion, with user mods (specifically, OOO), with no problems at all.

There, aries -- see what happens when you post hearsay as fact? Next somebody else is going to read it, remember it slightly wrong, and going to tell someone that you can't run *any* current games on Vista because the drivers will crash and pop up a screen that installs your user mods in your trash can, after which it'll shred your homework and steal your lunch money.

Prime Junta said:

This is incorrect. The Witcher installs and runs on Vista with no problems.

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Wrong, the main problem I had with Vista was with Witcher. Tutorial and Act one were a pain due to the constant crashing. Once I setup WinXP it ran as smooth as silk. If I had known at the time that maybe the conflicts were caused by that lame smart glass thing or UAC I would of tried that before rolling back to XP but I knew that all the games she had and that I brought worked with no problems with WinXP. Once I did roll it back every game I've mentioned before including Quest for Glory 5 worked wonderfully. Well there was a problem with the Quicktime and XP but that is a tale for another day

skavenhorde said:

Wrong, the main problem I had with Vista was with Witcher. Tutorial and Act one were a pain due to the constant crashing. Once I setup WinXP it ran as smooth as silk. If I had known at the time that maybe the conflicts were caused by that lame smart glass thing or UAC I would of tried that before rolling back to XP but I knew that all the games she had and that I brought worked with no problems with WinXP. Once I did roll it back every game I've mentioned before including Quest for Glory 5 worked wonderfully. Well there was a problem with the Quicktime and XP but that is a tale for another day

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That's very strange... I played well over 40 hours of the Witcher, and I think that it crashed twice. I was able to play it with all settings maxed, and it ran like a champ. I think it all boils down to the fact that every PC is different. So many different hardware configurations... so many different installs. So for you Vista has been a bad experience... for me it's been a great experience. I don't even turn off the aero interface... it all just runs great...

skavenhorde said:

Wrong, the main problem I had with Vista was with Witcher. Tutorial and Act one were a pain due to the constant crashing. Once I setup WinXP it ran as smooth as silk. If I had known at the time that maybe the conflicts were caused by that lame smart glass thing or UAC I would of tried that before rolling back to XP but I knew that all the games she had and that I brought worked with no problems with WinXP. Once I did roll it back every game I've mentioned before including Quest for Glory 5 worked wonderfully. Well there was a problem with the Quicktime and XP but that is a tale for another day

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*You* had a problem with The Witcher and Vista. That does not mean that, in general, The Witcher has a problem with Vista.

I'm quite sure you can find somebody who had trouble getting The Witcher to run on XP. That doesn't mean XP in general has a problem with it.

Prime Junta said:

(1) Don't upgrade just the OS on your own money. XP SP2 works just fine. (I got my license from my employer; we wanted to have someone use Vista so we wouldn't be completely clueless about it, and I volunteered.)

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Well, I doubt my company is going to buy it for me! (Though I did get Office 2003 for $20 a few years ago through work!) I went ahead and purchased it. If nothing else, I wanted the MCE components, and since I have XP Pro, it was buy Vista or buy MCE 2005. The OEM version was only $114.

I'm going to build my machine as a dual boot with XP that way 1) my wife won't freak if she doesn't like Vista upfront! and 2) If I do have compatibility issues with some older games, I can just switch to XP.

Two more questions for you since you seem to be in the know!

1) If you have experience with a dual boot system, do you think it is possible to share an installation of a program (like Office). Basically what I usually do is install my OS on one partition, then my apps on another. I figure rather than have two full installs of Office, I could go into XP, install office onto the E: drive, then go into Vista and install Office in the same place. That way both OS's have anything they need dumped in the OS folders, but I don't end with double the files on E. Sounds like it might work, but I have fears of fiery doom!

2) What is the 2GB/4GB things I hear about? I read once that 32bit OS's were limited to 2GB, but I'm running XP (32bit version) at work with 4GB. We upgraded to 4GB for a specific application that was crashing with only 1 or 2 GB. I can definitely tell the difference, but my thinking was that my computer shouldn't be able to use more than 2GB?

Thanks for your insight!

blatantninja said:

1) If you have experience with a dual boot system, do you think it is possible to share an installation of a program (like Office). Basically what I usually do is install my OS on one partition, then my apps on another. I figure rather than have two full installs of Office, I could go into XP, install office onto the E: drive, then go into Vista and install Office in the same place. That way both OS's have anything they need dumped in the OS folders, but I don't end with double the files on E. Sounds like it might work, but I have fears of fiery doom!

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I haven't tried a dual-boot Vista/XP setup, so I can't say. In theory it ought to be possible, but in practice... well, I'd be surprised if it's that easy.

2) What is the 2GB/4GB things I hear about? I read once that 32bit OS's were limited to 2GB, but I'm running XP (32bit version) at work with 4GB. We upgraded to 4GB for a specific application that was crashing with only 1 or 2 GB. I can definitely tell the difference, but my thinking was that my computer shouldn't be able to use more than 2GB?

Click to expand...

A 32-bit processor can address 4 GB of RAM, tops. Some of this address space is needed by the operating system. It's possible to gimmick 32-bit WinXP into using 4GB or RAM, but 32-bit Vista can only address 3 GB. I don't know if there are hacks available to get the extra GB, but since Vista x64 works so well, IMO you're better off just to go with it to start with. (It even has a slight performance edge over the 32-bit version, even when running 32-bit apps.)

blatantninja said:

2) What is the 2GB/4GB things I hear about? I read once that 32bit OS's were limited to 2GB, but I'm running XP (32bit version) at work with 4GB. We upgraded to 4GB for a specific application that was crashing with only 1 or 2 GB. I can definitely tell the difference, but my thinking was that my computer shouldn't be able to use more than 2GB?

Click to expand...

I'm not Prime Junta, but... take a look at this thread:
http://rpgwatch.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3447

Jaz, could you move the last section of this thread over to the Tech forum, I think it would be of interest and help there, thanks!!

Done......

Thanks Jaz. The only frustration I have with Vista, is everytime I do something new, I have to put in my Admin password to give permission. Do you know how difficult it is for someone my age to remember all these passwords!! So far, I've had more driver hassles with XP 64 than with Vista, so I'm hoping that's a good sign.

Corwin said:

Thanks Jaz. The only frustration I have with Vista, is everytime I do something new, I have to put in my Admin password to give permission. Do you know how difficult it is for someone my age to remember all these passwords!! So far, I've had more driver hassles with XP 64 than with Vista, so I'm hoping that's a good sign.

Click to expand...

It is possible to turn that off, but I wouldn't recommend it. It's there for a reason -- namely, malware and viruses will (generally) pop up that dialog too. You basically know whenever you're doing something that affects the way the box works, which is a good thing IMO.

Prime Junta said:

*You* had a problem with The Witcher and Vista. That does not mean that, in general, The Witcher has a problem with Vista.

I'm quite sure you can find somebody who had trouble getting The Witcher to run on XP. That doesn't mean XP in general has a problem with it.

Click to expand...

Then why has this thread "Thing to try to get the game running on vista" on the Witcher's main forum been stickied http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=8583.0

Didn't see one stickied thread on getting XP to run Witcher.

Hmmm, I guess it's not just *ME* that had problems. So once again, wrong.

OK, I stand corrected -- looks like several people have had problems with The Witcher on Vista.

But several people haven't. In fact, since the thread was only six pages long, I'm pretty certain that the people having problems are a fairly small minority.

In other words, your blanket statement that The Witcher has problems with Vista is still wrong.

Edit: I did a bit of browsing from your link. It seems that there is a common problem: the combination of Vista 32-bit with an nVidia GPU has been causing grief for a lot of people. IOW, nVidia's Vista drivers aren't up to scratch.

Again, rather different from your blanket statement that "The Witcher won't run on Vista."