Running Windows Vista Ultimate

[Jason Dunn]

<img src="http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com/images/slumming-rig-testing-vista.jpg" /><br /><br />A little over a week ago, a few days before I went to CES, I installed Windows Vista Ultimate (the RTM version) on my test machine. My Shuttle SD11G5, the one that <a href="http://www.jasondunn.com/more-technology-dysfunction-100">eats video cards</a>, has been shipped back to Shuttle for repair/replacement (I'm sure <a href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=176">Ed Bott</a> is nodding his head at this point). I'm doing my "real" work on my 17" Fujitsu laptop, but it gave me a good excuse to put my test machine up on my desk and tear into Vista Ultimate in a big way. I've been beta testing it for over a year now, but never using it as a real platform to do real work on. I would use the test machine to poke around Vista, try a few new things, see what was different - but it wasn't until recently that I realized that in order to truly grasp a new operating system, you have to use it for hours on end.<br /><br />The hardware on this machine is quite modest: a 3.2 Ghz Celeron D CPU overclocked to 3.36 Ghz, 1 GB of RAM, a 100 GB 5400 RPM hard drive, a 16x DVD burner, and an ATI Radeon 9600 Pro in the AGP slot. A pretty average system, and definitely less powerful than any $999 computer you'd buy today. How would it run the finalized version of Vista I wondered? Testing on the beta it worked fairly well, but I never pushed it hard. To get started, I did a complete wipe and install of Vista Ultimate and it was a very painless - Vista recognized all of my hardware and 100% of my system was working by the time the install had completed (which has gotten much faster - I think it was finished in under 20 minutes). That really impressed me - unlike XP, which is pretty dysfunctional until you get all the right drivers installed, Vista was ready to rock. My <a href="http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/pages/458117.aspx">Windows Experience Index</a> score for the overall box is a 3.7. That means I can run the full Aero interface without trouble - the processor ranked a 4.1, the RAM was a 4.5, the graphics a 4.3, the gaming graphics a 3.7, and the hard disk a 4.9. The score is based on the lowest performing part of the equation, so the old video card I had wasn't doing me any favours. It was fast enough to allow me to experience all that Aero has to offer, which is all I wanted.<br /><br />Over the next few weeks, coming off the heels of the Vista Lab and CES, I'll be talking quite a bit about Vista - what I learn as I use it, why I think it's a worthwhile upgrade (which I definitely do), and exploring solutions to problems I might encounter. A new operating system isn't easy to summarize in a few bullet points, which is why I think some people think that Vista isn't a very big deal. I hope to explain over the next few weeks why it very much is.

[aroma]

My upgrade experience hasn't been quite as good as yours, but it's not Vista's fault. I've had the RTM Vista running on my test box (also a Shuttle) for a couple of weeks now and finally decided it was time to upgrade my other boxes. I have three boxes to upgrade: My dedicated HTPC box, my day-to-day task box, and my high-performance gaming / video and photo editing box. I started with my HTPC box. I'm of the camp that any time I do an OS upgrade, I back up my data, and do a clean install as opossed to an upgrade. I began the actuall OS install late at night, and after supplying all required information, I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning, the install was completed, but the machine seemed to have locked up. I had to power the machine off, and when powering back on, discovered that one of the drives in my RAID 0 config had died. The drive was a 500GB SATA drive, and I had a horible time trying to find a replacement. After finally replacing the drive, I've been able to get it up and running, but I'm having a probleming getting my audio working though the optical port. Seoncd was my day-to-day use box. On that machine, Vista wouldn't natively recogize the SATA RAID, and since my DSL line was down at the time, I had to wait until the next day to download the RAID driver at work, bring it home, and continue with the upgrade. The upgrade proceded fine on this unit, but I have no driver at all for the audio card in this box. (It is due by the end of January.) I've not begun the upgrade on my high-end box yet, because I'm upgrading the drives in that unit first. (I actually stripped out the 500GB drives I had in it to replace the bad drive in my HTPC box and then to upgrade the drives in my day-to-day use box.) It's been a hassle so far, but Vista is nice once it's up and running. Unfortunately I'm running into those few driver issues that us early adopters are going to face.

[Jason Dunn]

Yes, driver issues are painful for the early adopters - it seems like many vendors are waiting until the 30th of this month to release their drivers and they don't think about the tends of thousands of people who have MSDN or another source for RTM'd Vista. Hopefully your experience gets better!

[Macguy59]

Typical or average system? I don't know about Canadiens but in the US I would bet that system is head and shoulders above what the average household has currently. Heck most of the new systems at box stores like Best Buy have less than your modest test system. I also think a large number of laptops will not be able to run Aero.

[Jason Dunn]

Heck most of the new systems at box stores like Best Buy have less than your modest test system.

Sure, that's a fair question. What type of system is the average person out there running? Hard to say - we know that there are still a large number of Windows 9x-based systems out there, many of them overrun with viruses and spyware. Will these people try to install Vista? Perhaps. Should they? Heck no. ;-)

Looking at what's average today, here's the system that was advertised on the front page of BestBuy.ca:

http://www.bestbuy.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?sku_id=0926INGFS10079966&amp;catid=20217&amp;logon=&amp;langid=EN

The specs:

* AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 4200+ and 2.2GHz Processor Speed
* 250GB Serial ATA Hard Drive (7200RPM)
* 1024MB Speed Type memory for multitasking power, expandable up to 4GB.
* 16X DVD+/-RW Dual Layer With LightScribe
* Integrated NVIDIA GeForce 6150 LE graphics with 256MB video memory.

The price? $849 CAN (about $750 USD) and that includes at 19" LCD monitor. Pretty typical entry-level system I think, though the bargain hunters might be getting the Dell $400 boxes.

I also think a large number of laptops will not be able to run Aero.

Yes, very true - but remember that Vista can run without Aero. There's definitely going to be a bump in the baseline GPUs that laptops are shipped with though, because no one is going to want to buy a laptop and NOT have Aero on it...which means the companies that are used to saving a few bucks by offering Intel's crappy integrated GPU are going to need to step up. It might mean a bump in laptop prices, but ultimately I think that's for the best.

[Macguy59]

Off topic but I hear Mike from HardwareGeeks passed along a "Hello" to you from me at CES.

Back to laptops, I'v heard from a member of the Vista team that there is a hack (or setting if you will) that will allow Aero on some 64MB laptops though I'm not postitive about the shared versus dedicated.

[Jason Dunn]

Off topic but I hear Mike from HardwareGeeks passed along a "Hello" to you from me at CES

Ah, yes he did - I recognized your username, but I couldn't remember what forum you were from. I told him to say hello back - hopefully he did. :-)

[Macguy59]

Off topic but I hear Mike from HardwareGeeks passed along a "Hello" to you from me at CES

Ah, yes he did - I recognized your username, but I couldn't remember what forum you were from. I told him to say hello back - hopefully he did. :-)

He sure did . . . . that is when he wasn't knocking Allchin down in the restroom :lol:

[David Horn]

It's weird - eight months ago I thought Vista was going to crash and burn, and in that time they've made some incredible changes. Everything seems to work; it's fast, it sees my hardware; games work; I'm coming around to IE7, and I adore Aero.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to eat my hat... ;-)

[Philip Colmer]

I finally took the plunge at the beginning of the year to upgrade my PC in order to start doing some HDV editing. Due to the use of hardware acceleration on the video side, I decided to do a dual-boot installation of XP and Vista, with Vista being used for the day-to-day stuff.

I went totally over the top on the hardware specification(*) of the PC but I was pleased with the Vista score as a result - 5.3. It would have been 5.8 but the graphics card has let me down!

Getting XP &amp; Vista to dual-boot wasn't a trivial exercise (http://papillonpictures.vox.com/library/post/getting-xp-vista-to-dualboot-nicely.html) but it was worth it. So far I'm pleased with the way Vista is shaping up. I've hit a couple of application quirks but they haven't resulted in anything breaking. They could just do with being brought up-to-date for Vista.

--Philip

(*) Dell Precision 690 with 2 x 2.33GHz Quad Core Xeons, 4GB memory, 500GB SATA boot drive, 2x750GB SATA drives configured as RAID 0 array for storage, ATI FireGL V7200 graphics card, Matrox RT.X2 for HDV acceleration.

[aroma]

Disaster again. I mentioned in my previous post that my dedicated HTPC box had a hard drive fail during the upgrade. Well, after replacing the drive, the upgrade went fine. I ran this box on and off for a few days, copying files back over to it that I had backed up, setting up all my devices, such as a TV tuner card and such. I also upgraded the RAM while I was at it. After finally getting the machine back to where I wanted it, I put it back into my AV stack. (This is a much bigger hassle than it sounds because of the placement of this box.) The machine was pretty much ready to go back into use. I left the box on, just as I normally do, and went to bed. The next day, I noticed it was off. I really didn't think twice about it, I figured it probably was suspended or hybernating. I hadn't checked the power save features yet. After a couple of busy days, I decided to get back to this machine. I powered it back on, and low and behold, the NEW drive is now dead. This can't be a coincidence. I'm afraid to replace the drive again for fear of a third drive dying. Any thoughts? Should I suspect a funky power supply killing the drive?

[Jerry Raia]

I got forced into it (http://jerryraia.com/blog/?p=29) for a few days. While it is beautiful to look at, the lack of drivers and the fact that DxO and a few other applications don't run on it yet, made it a frustrating experience. I know it's early but 2 weeks away most stuff should be ready. OK OK I want it now! :P

[Jason Dunn]

Dell Precision 690 with 2 x 2.33GHz Quad Core Xeons, 4GB memory, 500GB SATA boot drive, 2x750GB SATA drives configured as RAID 0 array for storage, ATI FireGL V7200 graphics card, Matrox RT.X2 for HDV acceleration.

Wow. NICE system. I feel a twinge of hardware jealousy. ;-) That thing must shred through video!

[Jason Dunn]

I'm afraid to replace the drive again for fear of a third drive dying. Any thoughts? Should I suspect a funky power supply killing the drive?

Yeah, that's really odd that you'd go through two drives in such short order - I'd definitely suspect the power supply, or the motherboard. Something is killing those drives - you've got adequate ventilation?

[Philip Colmer]

Dell Precision 690 with 2 x 2.33GHz Quad Core Xeons, 4GB memory, 500GB SATA boot drive, 2x750GB SATA drives configured as RAID 0 array for storage, ATI FireGL V7200 graphics card, Matrox RT.X2 for HDV acceleration.

Wow. NICE system. I feel a twinge of hardware jealousy. ;-) That thing must shred through video!
I haven't had a lot of time to fully test it yet as it is taking me a lot of time to get stuff migrated off the old PC.

On one level, it is not that fast. The reason is simple - a lot of currently available software, like Adobe's Premiere Pro, is mainly single threaded and so doesn't take advantage of the multiple cores. On that basis, my choice of a 2.33GHz clock speed means that a 3GHz single or dual core system would perform some functions faster than my system.

Vista clearly doesn't care, though ;-).

Also, the Matrox hardware definitely helps on the HDV side. I ran a Premiere Pro benchmark that someone had put together. Without using the Matrox hardware, my system came out middle of the road - as I would have expected for comparable clock speeds. Engaging the Matrox hardware moved it to the top of the list.

I'm getting occasional glitches on the audio side under Vista. I need to boot back into XP at some point to see if the glitches still appear. I'm wondering if they are happening because Media Player is reaching the end of a track and it starts to do something with the next track and hits a problem with disc buffering.

At the moment, I'm using the onboard audio hardware (SigmaTel High Definition) but I'm planning to get an X-Fi system as soon as my credit card cools down!

--Philip

[Filip Norrgard]

Talking about Windows Vista, has anyone seen if it is possible to turn off the driver digital signature requirement in the 64-bit version? I know that the RCs had that possibility, but this is supposidly impossible to do in the RTM version -- which I'm running.

It's the digital TV drivers that aren't signed but (supposedly) WHQL'd which I'm trying to run without any success.

I must also say that I'm happy with the computer I bought almost two years ago. For a notebook and a Windows Expierience Index of 4.0, I'm still happy with the purchase today. :) Vista Business edition will do nicely, since I don't need to have MCE wasting precious space doing nothing useful.

[David Horn]

There are mixed views on whether or not this works - it definitely did in the betas, but I'm not sure about the RTM version. I think it's extremely important that the command is given from an elevated command prompt:

Bcdedit.exe –set nointegritychecks ON

You can also just push F8 at startup, but no one wants to do that every time they switch on their computer.

[Jason Dunn]

Talking about Windows Vista, has anyone seen if it is possible to turn off the driver digital signature requirement in the 64-bit version?

That 64-bit version is nothing but bad mojo - the more I hear about it, the more I want to stay away from it... 8O

[Jerry Raia]

I thought the 64-bit was supposed to have better security?

[Philip Colmer]

I'm getting occasional glitches on the audio side under Vista. I need to boot back into XP at some point to see if the glitches still appear. I'm wondering if they are happening because Media Player is reaching the end of a track and it starts to do something with the next track and hits a problem with disc buffering.
Well, it doesn't happen in XP and, if I'm in Vista, it doesn't happen with SonicStage.

I've found a posting on a forum that says "The only problem I've found is Windows Media Player stuttering as it buffers a new track, but it seems like everyone has that problem." but that was posted in July and I can't believe that the issue is still there in RTM!

Has anyone else got this issue?

--Philip

[Filip Norrgard]

There are mixed views on whether or not this works - it definitely did in the betas, but I'm not sure about the RTM version. I think it's extremely important that the command is given from an elevated command prompt:
I tried that, but it seems like that option has been removed:

The specified command line is not valid.
Run "bcdedit /?" for command line assistance.
:(

You can also just push F8 at startup, but no one wants to do that every time they switch on their computer.
True, especially when I don't like to wait for the computer to boot the end result is that I'm doing something else when the time comes to hit the magic F8 button... :)

[Filip Norrgard]

I thought the 64-bit was supposed to have better security?
It has and it is in fact so good that you cannot install any third party antivirus for the moment... that is a big maybe from Microsoft's side. And the drivers that are unsigned cannot be run under 64-bit Windows Vista.

Furthermore (and sadly adding to the insult of running a 64-bit OS) it seems like running third party codecs is an impossibility under 64-bit Vista -- I cannot get VLC nor Windows Media Player to play Xvid video (trying to look at the tutorial videos from Mediaportal). The only thing getting through is the sound and a blank video screen. :? Can it be that this has something to do with VMR-9 being the only video showing method (i.e. overlay is gone for-ev-ah)??

Sigh, maybe it is time to switch back to 32-bit soon... I was hoping for more but all I get is less with 64-bit Windows Vista. :roll:

UPDATE: It seems Windows Media Player on Windows Vista can find the right codecs for once! I clicked on the "Web Help (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/webhelp/default.aspx?&amp;mpver=11.0.6000.6324&amp;id=C00D10D1&amp;contextid=84&amp;originalid=C00D10D1&amp;codec=XVID)" button expecting nothing useful, and for once wmplugins.com pointed me here (http://www.xvidmovies.com/codec/). To codec works, so this is looking nice. :)

[Bob Christensen]

Before you get too excited about Vista--especially if you're thinking of using it with digital media--you should read (or listen to) this:

Peter Gutmann, the author of the highly controversial white paper detailing the significant cost of Windows Vista's deeply-entrenched digital rights management (DRM) technology, joins Leo and me this week to discuss his paper and his findings.
http://www.grc.com/SecurityNow.htm#74

[Jason Dunn]

Before you get too excited about Vista--especially if you're thinking of using it with digital media--you should read (or listen to) this...

I don't have time to listen to it all right now, but I read some of the paper that this guy wrote and it seems like a lot of smoke and mirrors to me.

(listening to some of it now)

Ok, this is lame. They're saying that Vista won't be able to let you rip DVDs. That's BS - I installed AnyDVD and Spb Mobile DVD and ripped a DVD just fine.

SO much of this is based on speculation, guessing, and paranoia. This is FUD at it's finest.

[Bob Christensen]

Whatever... but before you form an opinion so quickly, you might note that it's not DVDs they're talking about, but AACS-protected content (eg. HD-DVD, Blu-ray). Since this DMT forum is usually all over DRM issues, you might want to consider some of the author's points. Or not.

[Jason Dunn]

Whatever... but before you form an opinion so quickly, you might note that it's not DVDs they're talking about, but AACS-protected content (eg. HD-DVD, Blu-ray). Since this DMT forum is usually all over DRM issues, you might want to consider some of the author's points. Or not.

Whatever? Come on Bob, that's how 12 year old girls start conversations. ;-)

I'm definitely willing to consider all his points, but of the 15 minutes or so that I listened to (the last 15 minutes), they talked about Vista stopping people from doing things they did on Windows XP, and the specific example they used was DVD ripping - and I'm crying foul on that one, because I have Vista Ultimate RTM and I can rip DVDs on it today. So that part of their argument is completely false, and that's spreading FUD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fud). Are you running Windows Vista and you can't rip DVDs?

I also happen to know that AnyDVD is actively working on getting their products to work with HD-DVD and Blu-ray discs, and they've apparently been successful at it so far, so I think within the next few months we'll see solutions for ripping next-gen DVD content under Vista.

I'm not saying that 100% of what was said is wrong, because I truly don't understand enough about software design and electrical engineering to grasp the "tilt controls" they were talking about with an electrical component on the motherboard sagging in voltage and Vista thinking it's an attack...I can only shrug at that and say "Well, we'll see."

Look, I'm not above being highly critical of Microsoft when they screw up, but this is pure SPECULATION and I think it's very unfair to criticize Microsoft based on how people THINK something might work. That's like someone telling me my review of product XYZ sucks before I even write it. ;-)

[Bob Christensen]

"Whatever? Come on Bob, that's how 12 year old girls start conversations." You're right, of course. Kind of like "OK, this is lame." :wink:

[Jason Dunn]

You're right, of course. Kind of like "OK, this is lame." :wink:

Touche! ;-) Although, in my defense, I do use the word "lame" a fair bit. :lol: