Windows Vista beta 2

[Jim]

Windows Vista beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mspx

Who's got it and what do you think of it?
Anyone score a "5". :?:

[glorfy]

I like the interface so far. Its still very much a beta. I like the way it recovers from errors rather than having to restart most of the time. Need a few more drivers:

Synaptics Pointing device is most annoying - fixed by updating to the latest drivers :o
Intel wireless driver (MS one works)
Need overclocking to be unlocked for the graphics card.

Every rating I've seen so far has been dragged down by its HDD - being as I'm using a laptop this is no different! Not a bad rating overal though!

[Hawk]

Windows Vista beta 2

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/default.mspx

Who's got it and what do you think of it?
Anyone score a "5". :?:


I would not say "5" yet. Right now, i'd go with a 4.5-4.8 I love the features and speed. On my Dell lappie, works just a good as XP. :rock:

[5-Clicks]

I have it downloaded by since I don't have a DVD burner I can't install it anywhere :( Anybody have an extra one they'd sell for cheap? :D

[joeMan]

I haven't DL it yet. I am such an anal retentive obsessive compulsive tweaker that I know I'd be obesessed with it for several days if I did load it anyway :coocoo: . Eventually it will be inevitible though :chit: .

[Bandit1]

I would not say "5" yet. Right now, i'd go with a 4.5-4.8 I love the features and speed. On my Dell lappie, works just a good as XP. :rock:
do you think the os is faster in general then xp,aside the fresh install?.have you tweaked it any or is it faster outta the gate?thanks for reply as i have'nt felt need to try it out yet.need incentive:)

[Hawk]

do you think the os is faster in general then xp,aside the fresh install?.have you tweaked it any or is it faster outta the gate?thanks for reply as i have'nt felt need to try it out yet.need incentive:)


Hmm, this is still beta, but I would say in line with XP. Not faster, nor slower. Tweaks, not too much as of yet, I usually go for a clean baseline and then tweak it. Right now i'm still trying to get used to the interface and location of some of the tools.

[BB_One]

Ummm.....by the sound of things it might not be a painfull transition this vista thingie - darn curious to know about it's final version and how bug free it will be.

Also wondering about the hidden DRM and the infamous call home cannot disable feature. :hide: Where is my Shielded Cone Head hat ???:hide: :bonk: :deviltail

All this to get DX 10 arrghhhh....:smash: :beat:

[Worren]

5456 is out which is a bug fix release for beta 2. They're getting there. This one's slick.

[RotorHead]

Been up and running for two days now, appart from some minor hardware issues and drivers, everything is running along smoothly.

First impressions are good, the interface is a little strange but not to difficult to work with.

I also downloaded the Beta Office Pro 2007, very nice!! :thumb: I would suggest you check it out if you get a chance.

Anyway, we'll see how things are after I get some more time with Vista.......so far, so good.

and what's up with the rating thing.......will anyone get higher then a 5 ??

[glorfy]

:lol: Well that shows how screwed MS rating sysems is. It rates your Xeons substantially higher than my T2400, 1GB RAM and 2GB are rated the same, It seems it rates HDD on free space :rolleyes: It rates a 7800 Go the same as a GTX.

I'm getting really fed up of the disk thrashing thats going on. Constant disk accessing is going to get me binning this beta.

[Hawk]

I also downloaded the Beta Office Pro 2007, very nice!! :thumb: I would suggest you check it out if you get a chance.





Office Pro 2007 ROCKS. . . :rock:

Only thing, it's going to be difficult to intergrate into existing environements. (new format's, macros, etc. . . ) :bonk:

[sodface]

I'm getting really fed up of the disk thrashing thats going on. Constant disk accessing is going to get me binning this beta.

Yup, me too. Just in case you haven't checked it out on Vista yet... Start | Run | perfmon <enter> and then click disk activity (something like that I'm not on it right now) should help you track down the source. Perfmon has seen some nice improvements. A big source of my disk activity was a background defrag that was running on its own accord.

I know there are a ton of things that run automatically (services) but defrag? I'll start that myself thanks.

[RotorHead]

Woke up this morning to a popup saying that it found an XBox 360 on my home network, and it's asking me if i want to share media content.

Ya sure, why not........so I clicked "yes" and .........I guess I'll figure out what it did sometime after my 3rd cup of coffee :scratch: :scratch:

[RotorHead]

hehe......Well, I spoke to soon in post 10......

I just tried to reformat my 300G drive, but forgot that I had a linux partition on there :beat:

Now I gota figure out how to get that crap off so windows can boot from it.....:(

Stupid Linux !!! :smash: :smash:

[RotorHead]

Ok got the disk thing all sorted out.....didn't seem to help my rating very much :(

SoundBlaster Audigy 2 ZS Gamer seems to be working Ok, except for the game port :scratch:

Media Center won't play any DVD's.......Gota figure out whats going on with that :beat:

[hightest]

ive been fooling around with vista beta for a few days now

all seemed o.k except i couldnt get any sound to work tried all the drivers i could find

couldnt get any virus protection to work
i went to f8 during install and disabled driver signing
anyone have probs getting sound and antivirus to work

[RotorHead]

What sound card are you using Hightest?

Creative does have a beta driver that seems to work ok for me (Audigy 2 ZS Gamer)..........all except the game port :rolleyes:

I've found a few intresting things so far.......On my second install of Vista, I did an upgrade from XP......This seemed to really confuse Vista. It kept telling me that the Vista drivers, for various hardware, where not supported. But then I would load the XP drivers and everything worked good for a short time. Things soon got very unstable and I ended up having to wipe everything and start over.

Doing a straight clean install has worked the best so far......two devices not found on my system, and I can't figure out what they are.......But everything I use seems to work, so I just disabled the devices.

[hightest]

audigy2/ and onboard sound couldnt get either to work

i had to do a fresh install of vista beta after i messed up first install only tried 64bit version but downloaded both

im going to get another sata2 h drive then try agian

my only spare h drive was a ide 40gb/so i dissconected sata tried the 40 gb ide

couldnt get those 2 things to work so i hooked up my sata h drive agian and xp was corrupted some how/so i did the 64 vista beta install on my sata and still could not get sound or antivirus

now im back to xp home on a fresh install
vista only takes 45min to install/xp home about hr and a half

im going to keep reading about fixes ect cause it sure seemed like a good o.s

[hightest]

well im going to give up on vista for a while::scratch:

i reinstalled it agian yesterday tried some other things i found at planet amd64 :beat:

still no sound /no antivirus will work/the furethest i get is with trend micro it installs tells me to reboot after reboot trend just sais loading/ then when i click trend it freezes rig up

my brain has gone:coocoo: trying to get these things to work

[glorfy]

Trend Micro have a 90 day beta: https://www.trendbeta.com/index.php?get=80

I'm having a bit of sucess running things in XP compatibility mode.

I'm using the 32 bit version, so my experiences may not be relevant to you :(

[5-Clicks]

How do you install Vista? I'm trying to install the 64 version but I'm at a loss as to how to do it. Do I NEED to use Virtual PC? I'd prefer not to, if possible.

[glorfy]

:scratch: Not sure I'm with you. You burn the ISO then install it.....

[5-Clicks]

Right....how do you burn the ISO? I downloaded it, then burned it to a DVD as a data disk with Nero. It won't boot from that though and it won't let me burn the file as a Bootable Disk because it's larger than 2GB.

[glorfy]

The first time I did it, it didn't work either. I had to slow the ISO burn to x2, and then it worked. I used Nero's option to burn an ISO

[5-Clicks]

Where is that option? I'm using Nero 6 Express...

[glorfy]

Where is that option? I'm using Nero 6 Express...

I can't remember and I was using a trial version (expired) of Nero 7 :hide: sorry!

[hightest]

this is what i didwith my nero6
1/incert blank dvd
2/nero burning rom
3/then recorder
4/burn image
5/browse for image
6/select file open
7/burn
remmeber to select boot from cd in your bios/hope this helps

[5-Clicks]

Nope didn't do anything :( That's what I did before, but I did it again just to be sure. Still no go. It's not the drive, I don't think, because it boot up into WindowsXP setup just fine.

Ok, so just to be sure.
1)I boot into Nero StartSmart
2)Under the *Data* tab, I click on Make Data DVD
3)I add the Windows file to the "to be burned" list. It gives me an popup that says since the file is greater than 2GB, it'll be read under Windows 98 SE, 2000, and XP.
4)I click OK and go to next and do the burn bla bla bla.

I'm fairly certain step 3 is the hang up part. Is there any way to disable this? The exact message is:

One of the files to be added is larger than 2 GB. If you add this file, the disk will only be readable under Windows 98, 2000, and XP (the UDF file system will be used). Do you want to proceed? [OK][Cancel]

[RotorHead]

5 Clicks, give this one a try...... http://www.cdburnerxp.se/

It's free and it worked great for me.....

[Master of None]

Nope didn't do anything :( That's what I did before, but I did it again just to be sure. Still no go. It's not the drive, I don't think, because it boot up into WindowsXP setup just fine.

Ok, so just to be sure.
1)I boot into Nero StartSmart
2)Under the *Data* tab, I click on Make Data DVD
3)I add the Windows file to the "to be burned" list. It gives me an popup that says since the file is greater than 2GB, it'll be read under Windows 98 SE, 2000, and XP.
4)I click OK and go to next and do the burn bla bla bla.

I'm fairly certain step 3 is the hang up part. Is there any way to disable this? The exact message is:

One of the files to be added is larger than 2 GB. If you add this file, the disk will only be readable under Windows 98, 2000, and XP (the UDF file system will be used). Do you want to proceed? [OK][Cancel]



1) Start Nero StartSmart
2) Under the *Copy and Backup* tab, Burn Image to Disk

[5-Clicks]

I already tried that, Master. :(

I downloaded the Nero 7 trial. So far, I like it a lot better than Nero 6. :D I'm burning it now using "ISO 9660 only" instead of the default "ISO 9660 + Joilet"

EDIT: OK, so Nero 7 worked. :) Thanks everyone for the imput!

[BB_One]

and what's up with the rating thing.......will anyone get higher then a 5 ??


In the wake of criticism from computer manufacturers, Microsoft has updated its Windows Vista PC assessment tool.

Microsoft Revamps Vista Assessment Tool (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nf/20060710/tc_nf/44332)