New comps are here!

Well the day has finally come! We’re up and running on our new rigs and we’re spending probably the rest of the entire day getting everything setup and running just how we like it. We bit the bullet and went with Windows Vista because we felt that if we were going to upgrade, and to the top-end cards, we might as well take advantage of Dx10. Wow… Windows Vista is… different. We’re both first time users and everything from getting to your display settings to finding the old Start > Run > Msconfig seems 10x too difficult. Words do not describe, but I’m sure those of you who made the switch to Vista can relate.

While we get used to these rigs and Vista we welcome any and all advice on how we can tweak or setup Vista. We’ve already disabled that UAC crap that asks for double confirmation before anything can be done (Who designed that bs?) and we’ve disabled quite a few features we both feel only bloats the operating system.

Okay, that’s all the updates for now. Time to get busy installing games!

  • Will do! Right now we’re busy downloading all our games from Steam again and installing anything we feel the need to play.

    Anyone know how if Trillian and Skype work well with Vista?

    Also, does anyone have a good FTP program they recommend?

  • be careful with the UAC off..it is known to cause lots of problems with compatibility. and you get used pretty fast to the uac prompt. Or you can do this to stop the prompt while keeping the UAC:

    1. From the Start search bar, type “Local Security Policy”
    2. Accept the elevation prompt
    3. From the snap-in, select Security Settings -> Local Policy -> Security Options
    4. Scroll down to the bottom, where you’ll find nine different group policy settings for granular configuration of UAC.

    Perhaps the best choice to select is to change the setting:
    User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
    from Prompt for consent to Elevate without prompting.

  • Hi
    I’ve been running Vista ultimate x64 for some time now and I think it works excellent. Haven’t had any serious issues with programs and no problems with the UAC off either. I honestly don’t get why lots of people are being so whiny about Vista. It’s fine.

  • You will come to love it. SP1 took care of a lot of problems, and DX10 really helps on games like Hellgate.

    Oh and Keen… I’m suddenly thinking Squigherder. With your brother going Black Orc and you a Shammy… we shall reign supreme! 🙂

  • The biggest problem with Vista is it took so long coming that everyone is used to XP. Things are different, but for the most part they’re also better.

    Now instead of doing start, run, then typing the program exactly, you can just hit the windows key on your keyboard and start typing. It searches all programs on your computer, as well as documents in places it has indexed (your personal folders to start off with, but you can change it). Or you can do the tried and true windows + r to bring up the run menu, but that’s vastly inferior to the start menu find. Organizing the start menu is obsolete. Just type the first part of the program you want.

  • My bro is actually going Squig Herder – both Goblins. The more squigs the merrier though!

    My comp specs:
    Intel Quad CPU Q6600 @ 2.40GHz
    Nvidia Geforce 8800gt x2 SLI
    4gigs Ram @ 800mhz
    Windows Vista

    I used SmartFTP on my previous comp however after the 30 days ran out I had to start it a dozen times to get the program to actually launch. Maybe it was a bug or something…

    I’ll look into Filezilla. Thanks for the tips all!

  • Squig herder looked the most interesting to me at first glance, too.

    Interesting Bildo is looking ahead to War. Shine coming off on AoC?

  • Hey Keen,

    Did you purchase that computer as is or did you buy all the parts individually ?

    I’m thinking of getting myself a new computer that would be fully able to run WAR or AoC, and I was wondering how much I would have to throw down to get what I was looking for.

    Would you be willing to say how much you paid for your new computer, or maybe where a good place to look for deals would be ?

    Thanks !

  • Dood, a new PC is like christmas morning. First thing I do is decorate the desktop…then fire up one of my games!

    Congrats on the new loot!

    Beau

  • I got windows on my laptop, I don’t hate it like others do. It’s different but not worse than XP in my head, I use both. It’s a bit slower, maybe because my laptop but you’ll get used to it just as you did when you first used XP.

    My advice, when an updates come out and it wants to update click to see what the update is about. Some are optional and not needed and stuff you just may not want.

  • @UFTimmy:

    Not quite. I just play pretty much everything (even quite a bit of Auto Assault way back when). And I’d be stupid to NOT want to play WAR, AoC or no.

  • why would you need new comps? your old ones will run warhammer just fine. i have a gf4 and i should be fine. the gme loks old

  • I don’t think being used to XP is why people don’t like Vista. Seriously, XP was already out for like 4+ years, I doubt that had anything to do with it. Vista is very similar to XP…

    But I believe the main problem is that the system requirements is pretty steep for everyday folks. But 4GB is cheap these days.

  • @ Bernard:

    New comps I doubt are for Warhammer alone. If I know Keen and Graev they’re probably itching to play some of the more graphically intensive PC games out there (Crysis for one).

    And to do that, you need an upgrade.

  • Vista still sucks. I mean it is usable but you sacrifice performance and hardware sound for DX10. Problem with DX10 is that developers still learn how to use it.

    So at the moment Vista is not worth it. On the other hand sooner or later it will be OR will be just replaced and forgotten by Windows 7.

  • So far Vista has been nothing but a pleasure. A confusing pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless. Comp runs COD4 at over 100fps on ridiculously maxed out settings and almost no load times and runs everything I throw at it with zero slowdown and I have not even tweaked it yet. After I tweak it I’m not sure I’ll even see an increase from how fast it already is running.

    We’re going to probably pick up Crysis this week and play through it and that should be a serious test right there.

  • Keen, I built a bought myself a nice kick ass computer about 2 months ago. I had the option of going with Vista of course.
    I really considered. I thought, hey, I have all this new horsepower, 4GB of RAM, SLI graphics cards, why not.

    Thank god before I made the purchase I did a little research. Even months and months since Vista has come out, there are still loads of driver issues. Several manufacturers still release new Vista drivers weeks or months AFTER they release the new XP ones.
    However the primary thing that made me stick with Windows XP is the fact that some games don’t even RUN on Vista. Among those that do? WORSE performance. I saw several benchmarks where the only difference was Vista and you take a big performance hit.

    Also, by using Vista you ‘reward’ Microsoft. You tell them by spending money on Vista ‘Hey, thank you for Vista! YUM!’
    No thanks 🙂

    Now I’ve been subscribed to this blog for a long time now and I’ll keep on reading everything you post. It’ll be interesting to see if you make any posts in the future (weeks, months) about how bad Vista is or if you stick with it and sing it’s praises.

    Oh, by the way, congrats on the new hardware! 🙂

  • Congrats K&G, I hope you enjoy it!
    I think it’s ironic how Crysis was meant to be such a groundbreaking game, but it’s used by people as, basically, a benchmark program! I think your point about stylised over realised is proven there!

  • Ive been using Vista since I recieved my new computer, just over a year ago.

    It has plenty of horsepower and Vista isn’t without its quirky and annoying issues, but what OS isn’t? I have VERY little complaints about Vista.

    You just have to learn how to set things up to YOUR liking. Thats the only real trick to using it. Making sure you pay attention to how its running.

  • Vista is fine now. I have been using it for a few months at work and my new laptop has it as well. I am going to convert my Desktop to Vista as well, when I have time. (But my new laptop is as good as my 2 year old desktop for gaming)

    Now I won’t upgrade my 5 year old system, but it does not do much except office and surf the net.

    The people who “hate” Vista are the same people who most likely hated XP when it came out since 98 ran so well and was stable. There are just people who are uncomfortable with change.

  • Ran into my first Vista problem. 😛

    My print screen button is not functioning properly. It’s displaying images that have black horizontal lines going across and it’s displaying images from games I’m not even playing. For example it’s showing bits and pieces of Warcraft 3 in the background of the screenshots when I clearly don’t have that program running. Quite bizarre. I think it may be an issue with Nvidia drivers or something.

    I would update the drivers but I’m not quite sure how with Vista. Do I just uninstall the drivers, restart the computer, install new ones, restart the computer? I’m incredibly scared of botching something in Vista. 😛

  • well put gustavef. Umm Keen thats a good question. Uninstalling the drivers will probably be ok if they are just the video ones cuz vista has packaged ones it will install quick if it detects that there are no drivers at all. Hopefully those ones are not corrupted though. Have you tried just re-downloading the installer from Nvidia and re running it first? I think thats a better idea. See if that works.

  • I had always heard that it’s best to uninstall drivers instead of just running an install file over them. Anyone out there know for sure how Vista works? Should I uninstall drivers before installing new ones?

  • Whenever I install a new driver, I uninstall the old one, reboot, install the new one and reboot. That’s the 100% safe method. No issues so far.

    Pretty much the same, safe and steady method used on XP. Its done me nothing but good thus far.

  • First of all you can use the guide that blackviper.com to disable not needed services, which should resolve in the memory use of Vista will go from like 1.5GB down to 600-700mb.

    You can also use vLite to make your own edited Vista installation disk, so you can remove all unnecessary stuff you don’t need in Vista (yeah, it’s a lot you can remove!)

    Are different tweaks written here:
    http://www.speedyvista.com/tweaks.html

    The very best thing you can do is simply downloading Windows Server 2008:
    http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2008/en/us/trial-software.aspx

    The trial can be extended to 240dagers, which makes it rather useful. Everyone should really consider to re-install their systems before it’s 240days old anyway, so you kinda get it for free without any disadvantages!

    The reason why you should run Server 2008 is because it got no DRM (which Vista got a lot of!) it’s the same core as Vista SP1 and no matter how much you tweak Vista, Server 2008 will be up to 20% faster!

    And as it got the same core all Visa applications and drivers also work with Server 2008! So there are no disadvantages there! You got DirectX10 etc.. Server 2008 is Vista how Vista should have been.

    The difference between Server 2008 and Vista is the system being more tweaked by Microsoft, there is no bloody DRM, a lot of the completely useless crap in Vista is auto-disabled (you can enable it if you want to)

    So it’s free, about 20% faster!

    It’s damn easy to setup Server 2008 as a desktop-os:
    http://win2k8.msfn.org/

    And you use the same simply guide at blackviper.com to optimize the services, and as it’s the same core all the Vista tweaks also works with Server 2008!

  • And of course, it’s darn important to update your drivers!

    The Vista drivers aren’t as good or stable as the WinXP drivers, and they are constantly being updated!

    Running old drivers will most likely have a bad impact on your system performance, as well as it might cause bluescreens and other issues.

    Before installing new drivers you should ALWAYS remove those you already got. Go to programs and features and remove them, use drivesweeper (from guru3d.com) to remove the rest, boot up in safe mode and install new drivers.

  • Boot up in Safe mode… hmm.. is that mandatory? I’ve never done that so I’m not too sure on how to go about using safe mode.

  • It’s always best to install new drivers in safe mod in order to make sure no anti-virus or anything else interfere with the installation.

    It normally wont, but you don’t want a broken driver install and lots of bluescreens when you reboot.

    The easiest way to get into safe mode is to simply crash your computer while it boot into Windows (you know, when you see the loading bar). Then on the next boot you should get the lest where you can select safe mood, last known working configurations etc.. Then simply select safe mode, do the installation and then reboot again and it’s back to normal.

    You can also do it without “crashing” the booting, normally you can do it by hitting the “F8” key while booting (depends on your BIOS) and then you should be entering the booting menu, where you can select what device to boot from, here you select your hard drive and hit the F8 again really fast before Windows start to load, and then the same screen with different options as you get after crashing should appear.

    A third method, one I’ve never used myself is you can simply write “msconfig” in the run prompt in Windows. Or for you that got Vista, simply use the search function and write “msconfig”. In that console you got a tab named “boot.ini” there you can select /safeboot which should make your next reboot auto boot into safe mood.

    Using safe mod is just like using normal mode, just that lots of things are deactivated and look like crap. The navigation, your desktop etc are exactly the same.

  • What kind of hardware did buy?

    It’s much easier helping you with the best performing drivers etc.. If I knew what hardware you’ve got.

    A specified list would be awesome 🙂

  • Hola Keen&Graev and gz with ur new rigs.

    Couple of tips to you both from someone who works with techsupport on both Vista and XP;

    Do NOT turn of UAC, if you run without UAC you might as well just install the giant security hole also known as Windows XP. UAC is annoying at first, but its the core of making Vista lightyears infront of XP in terms of security.

    Not all “bling” is “bloat”. Windows Aero may seems as uneccesary bloat at first, but fact is that it not only looks better but also improves performance in most situations, removing strain on the CPU by letting the graphics card do some of the work on the desktop. This has been argued to steal performance from games, but for some reason I have been experiencing better performance in WoW with Aero on.

    Just about everything I can think of is easier to accomplish in Vista than in XP, once you learn 2 things:
    1. how to find stuff that has been moved from where it was in XP
    2. that there’s a search function at the bottom of the startmenu, USE IT, you’ll find everything lots faster than by using the menu.

    That search function you’ll find on many other spots too, like in the control panel. Open Control Panel, in the search field (upper right corner) type “mouse” (without the “”) and voila! there’s every setting that has anything to do with mouse left in the main view and nothing else!

  • (note: I’m not claiming that Vista has no security holes or is invulnerable, but its lightyears ahead of XP)

  • Note2: starting msconfig is also easier in Vista, instead of choosing Start -> Run -> msconfig and hitting ok, all you need to do is Start -> msconfig (in the searchfield at the bottom) and hit enter.
    On both XP and Vista there’s also the option of hitting the Windows key+R to open the run dialog. Hotkeys ftw. 🙂

    Here’s a list of hotkeys in Vista, I use many but still just a fraction of all there is:
    http://allhotkeys.com/windows_vista_hotkeys.html

    Enjoy. 😀

  • You’ve got one point about Aero, you wont really seen any performance increase by disabling it, though I find running “Win98” look (as I always do) more user-friendly, Aero and Vista theme is just too much, it’s hard to use and navigate with in my opinion.. But that’s simply a matter of taste.

    But on the other hand, if you disable Vista Theme you are able to disable the “Desktop Window Manager Session Manager” service along with the “Theme”. And the combination of no Aero and being able to deactive those two services should leave you with Vista using about 80-100mb less RAM. Which surly is not a bad thing!

    When it comes to User-Account-Controll all you claim is wrong. Windows Server 2008 (same core as Vista SP1) is supposed to be more secure than Vista, at least not less secure and it doesn’t have UAC at all. Dear to explain that?

    Microsoft themselves have admitted that UAC isn’t working as intended, that it’s becoming more of an annoying message popping whenever you try to install something and not a security enforcement. There are actually applications not being able to install correctly because of the interference of UAC.