Tobold's Blog
Sunday, April 08, 2007
 
Hasta la vista, Vista!

I got my new Alienware computer 3 days ago, and I can't remember the last time when getting a new computer was such a struggle. Part of the problem is a known crash bug with Nvidia nForce 680i SLI motherboards and SATA disk drives. For some reason I can't get Nvidia's hotfix for that to run, need to wait for Alienware to provide me with a BIOS update. But apart from the rare random blue screen of death, the main problem with the new computer was Windows Vista.

The computer came with one user account with admin rights, and at first I didn't create anything else. That turned out not to work well, I got constant "security options dialog" error messages. Some research with Google suggested that this happens because Vista is trying to kick up some security requests to the next higher level of account, and if you are at the highest level, you get that sort of error message. Not sure if I understood that right, but I created a second account, a simple user account without admin rights, and running on that this sort of error message disappeared. What didn't disappear was Windows Vista's annoying habit to doubt everything I did. You start a program, any .exe, and Vista tells you that running programs on a computer is a potential security risk, and asks you to confirm whether you are really, really sure you want to do that. That drives you up the wall pretty quickly.

The one program that ran well under Vista was World of Warcraft, which is because WoW puts all its data in the same directory, and doesn't use other directories or the registry for anything. I had less luck with other programs. The Lord of the Rings Online beta client I couldn't get running at all, because it works with several different directories, having parts of the information in your Documents folder. And again Vista's security features kicked in, and didn't want to let LotRO have access to the Documents folder. Apparently there is some way to assign rights and exceptions so that programs can actually use data from folders, but it is damn complicated.

In any case, after 2 days of working with it I still couldn't see what the advantage of Vista should be. It worked exactly like XP under a new coat of paint, and with lots of annoying security features that prevent you from working with your own computer. It was often annoyingly slow, even on this new high-end computer. And there was no good documentation to navigate around all the pitfalls that Vista still had. So yesterday I just gave up on Vista. Reformatted the hard drive and installed Windows XP. A friendly Alienware technician told me that the mainboard SATA crash bug might be less frequent if I put the SATA cable in another SATA port on the motherboard. I did that, and didn't have a crash since. And under Windows XP I don't get any other error messages either, and a lot less security warnings. Even LotRO was running without problems.

Finally I was even able to run 3DMark05, which doesn't run under Vista, and compare the speed of my new computer to the previous one. Not bad, a 3DMark05 score of 13,928 is more than twice as high as my last desktop from 2 years ago.

Vista only caused me trouble. But hey, it was an experiment. I knew I could always go back to XP. I can't recommend Windows Vista for gaming at the moment. Maybe in a few years, when the game developers have programmed their games to take account of Vista's security standards. But for the moment I'll stick to Windows XP.
Comments:
A colleague of mine who had problems getting older software to run on his new vista laptop managed to install XP in a virtual machine running in a window under vista. I was intrigued and played a round with virtual machines myself for a bit. It is amazingly simple to set one up and there are a couple of free options to try. It won't work for 3D gaming sadly because graphics card support is limited. I posted some details in my blog for anyone who is interested.

The whole vista thing just annoys me - a part of me would love to abandon Windows altogether and switch to Linux but I can't because I know that most of the software I use including almost all the games I play won't support Linux.
 
lol that reminds me of the mac security commercial. I'm a PC guy too but decided to wait until vista is good to go.

security commercial here if you haven't see it, love em all, esp the web cam one lol
http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/
 
Next time, buy a Mac. It runs WoW.
 
Been running Vista since before retail (Got a full copy through MSDN) and have only had a few smaller problems. LOTRO works perfectly, so I don't know what you're doing exactly (your description of why it doesnt work seems a little far fetched as everyones installation is the same, and many people are running it on Vista). BTW, my computer is over 3.5 years old, with little upgrades, and yes all my hardware works perfectly in Vista.

I agree that the windows admin authentication gets annoying at first (but isnt this because u got a BRAND NEW CLEAN computer, so you have to install everything you need). You do realize this annoyance is hardly noticable once that 'initial' phase is over?

Just a comment to the other annonymous person recommending a Mac. Yay it runs one game, ya as a gamer you should have totaly gone with a mac, sheesh what were you thinking.
 
There IS a rather easy workaround for LOTRO in Vista, but I fully concur in your conclusion. Go XP when you want to play!
 
I read somewhere that you can turn off all those security features, but then you lose all the security of course. Just like that Mac commercial says. Loved them by the way, even as a PC guy. :)
 
MS's big push to get gamers to upgrade to Vista is Halo 2. Yes, it will be available for the PC. Yes, you can go head-to-head with the console scum...er...I mean XBox players. Yes, you must have Vista.
 
Oh my gosh. I hate those Mac commercials with a passion. Macs aren't cool, they are over-priced and the only perk mac owners get is how stable their OS is. Which hasn't been an issue since windows came out with XP. I wish bill gates would spend some $$$ on some anti-mac adds.......


Back onto the topic, I've did a fresh install of vista on my machine about a month ago. I havn't had any problems with it so far. WoW crashed only once so far. On xp WoW would crash every few days so I take this as an upgrade. The only thing that is teh sux is that my dvd burner software wouldn't load. However Vista comes with burning tools built in...so no biggie.

I think the Mac adds should really reflect that their machine isn't perfect either, and no one bothers with spyware or key loggers on macs because no one uses macs....thats their security. If macs do become more popular they will need the same security features vista has.......

and tacos!
 
Should we even go into all the problems with audio drivers - i.e. does your surround sound work? How about proper driver support for widescreen TVs (my 50" Plasma looks like shite on Vista - not so on MCE2005). And Vista is supposed to be the uber media OS.

As with all Windows releases, it's usually only until SP1 is released that things get good. Till then - XP, I feel your return...
 
Thanks, after reading all the comments I'll be waiting for awhile too. LOTRO runs on low on my current computer, which could look better but... is more than acceptable.

Many of us probably work in computers (I'm a developer) and even then when we get home we just want it to work. I really don't want to fiddle with security settings, even as a one time setup - ESPECIALLY as a one time setup - because invariably you forget and then when something happens and you reinstall you never really get things working the way they used to.

It is pretty ridiculous to expect the average user to learn that stuff. My parents never could, on the other hand, they regularly break their computer and i have to reinstall XP because of god knows what they did. So.. it seems the fix is as bad as the disease for the average user.

That's why I'm going to do what my friend does, get another drive and just ghost it over, then save that drive as the backup in case of a crash. Much easier than reinstalling. I don't know what to do for my parents though, they live in Florida so I can't just stop by and fix everything all the time like when they lived by me.
 
"A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection"

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.html

I will not switch to vista ...
 
Vista basically defeats the purpose of having a computer and in return, your computer is kept safe...i don' see the point of all those security features if it blocks or cripples by making "compatible" every single program you try to download.
 
But we're not only talking about LOTRO and WoW here. There are hundreds of MMORPG's (e.g. Ragnarok, RF, Ran, Flyff, O2Jam, Audition, Perfect World, Silkroad, Linage, Rose, Gunbound, etc.) now and they all might not work in a Vista OS. Someone has to post a list of compatible MMORPG's with vista and or post a way to bypass the errors (if there's such a way.) As of now.. VISTA=NOGAMES

-avidgamer
 
ASDA Story, although in beta stage, works with Vista. I actually downloaded the client for Perfect World and played it for a few hours....before Vista decided it didn't like it. I was angry...I got to play for about a fourth of the time that it took to download the d%&# thing. It seems like a fun game, but I can't play it. To top that off, my computer has been acting up since I tried downloading clients other than ASDA. It sometimes loads web pages without all the links in their animated forms. It, frequently, will not download things properly...this is annoying. I've been running vaccines, defrag software, and anti-spyware - all things that I know to do to do as much as I can to keep my computer healthy. I won't even start on Internet Explorer...XP
 
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