Vista Advice

[Capt.Marion]

Well, Santa Claus contracted out to UPS and delivered me an early Christmas present, consisting of a Seagate 1.5TB HDD and a copy of 64-Bit Vista.

As I look forward to installing the new HDD in the next couple of days, is there anything I should know about in regards to setting up Steam on Vista?

Or anything else that I should know when installing any of my old apps on Vista...?

Any advice is appreciated
-Capt.Marion

 

[Gardner]

No Steam Issues

No Steam Issues

I've been using Vista since it first hit the street, and have never had any conflicts with Steam. If you do have issues, Vista is pretty good at sorting them out or notifying you which programs you'll probably need to re-install once Vista is finished installing.

Now the 64 bit, though, I have absolutely no experience with that other than a buddy of mine who said it really screwed up his music collection.

 

[Zips]

May be some issues with UAC and Steam, no idea though. Disabling UAC was the first thing I did for my personal install of Vista. However, I kept it enabled for my sister's and mother's computers.

 

[Monkwarrior]

I would think twice about installing a 64-bit version.
I hear too many diificulties concerning games & vista 64 bit.
Vista64 and gaming do not match every time would be my assessment.

Monk.

 

[=GG= Mr Moe]

I don't have it (still using XP), but I know a few people who do who say they never have had any problems. I also know a few people who have endless problems (with games mostly) and have had to reformat several times and still have ongoing issues and that is with higher end, new gaming rigs.

How about giving yourself the option by leaving your current OS on your current hard drive and installing VISTA on the new one?

~~~Edit~~~ I even have a spare hard drive in my machine that I was going to put VISTA on just to have that dual boot option, but since I know of a few people with those gaming problems, I decided to spare myself the expense of buying VISTA for now.

 

[SheepDip]

Same experience as Mr Moe here, and I'll make the same recommendation.

I can't be arsed to upgrade to Vista, even for DX10.

 

[Mahnsikir]

Same as Zips for me, always had UAC off and not had a problem with steam and Ive never had any 'gaming' issues using vista64 . One thing to make sure of is that your sound card is compatible with Vista, for some reason some models still dont work quite right or even not at all.

Oh and they dropped IPX support so no old lan games like C&C

But apart from that had no major problems because of vista on either 32 or 64bit.

 

[Kenza]

I had vista 64bit before sp1, so i dont know what its like now. But the biggest problems i had was getting working drivers for every device, game performance went down about 5-10% and CTDs in some games. After a long period on XP im back testing vista again, 32bit this time, and i must say things have improved, drivers are working and not so many CTDs but performance is still bad.

Oh and UAC off, unless you want to go crazy.

 

[Xendance]

I would think twice about installing a 64-bit version.
I hear too many diificulties concerning games & vista 64 bit.
Vista64 and gaming do not match every time would be my assessment.

Monk.

My laptop works (or worked before my RAM got fried) just fine with 64 bit vista installed.

 

[Zips]

I had vista 64bit before sp1, so i dont know what its like now. But the biggest problems i had was getting working drivers for every device, game performance went down about 5-10% and CTDs in some games. After a long period on XP im back testing vista again, 32bit this time, and i must say things have improved, drivers are working and not so many CTDs but performance is still bad.

Oh and UAC off, unless you want to go crazy.

What games are you playing that you get CTD's? I've only had a few happen in Source-based games over the months and years I've been using Vista.

 

[Capt.Marion]

Thanks for the advice guys. I left my old HDD intact, I just threw it in a USB clamshell. Already restored my steam stuff from where I backed it up, and everything seems good. I turned UAC off, thanks for the tip, it was getting old real quick!

So far so good, downloaded all new drivers for everything, smooth sailing so far mates.

Will advise as to running various games when I get to it this evening.


Thanks for the advice.

 

[{Core}Craig]

ive been using v64 for well over a year. no issues.

main thinkg is to get ALL the drivers u need .. iirc lots were needed but that was when 64 was newish.

have fun with it and i pray u have 4 gig of ram. if not ask santa for some while u still can.

 

[Kenza]

What games are you playing that you get CTD's? I've only had a few happen in Source-based games over the months and years I've been using Vista.

Have only had one crash in a source game (L4D) so thats alright with me but ArmA crashed more or less regular. Lotro and UT3 has had its fair share of crashes too. Now i havent tested ArmA and UT3 on vista 32 yet, but most other games runs fine (CTDs have happend but they are too few too make a big deal out of)

 

[Capt.Marion]

I just went and downloaded all of my drivers, I didn't use any of the driver CDs I had that came with my hardware. That way I got all of the newest drivers for my GFX card (one of the nVidia 8800s that used to have real bad stuttering or whatever), my Mobo, etc and so forth.

 

[Oldih]

(CTDs have happend but they are too few too make a big deal out of)

Reminds me that compared to my old PC that had XP and this laptop with Vista, I've had far less CTDs and problems overall than I used to have.

And only game I truly haven't been able to get working at all no matter what you do with Vista (atleast from the games I've tried) is Resident Evil 2. And that's old as hell.

I guess I am lucky not to have any real problems at all.

 

[Sined]

Running Vista HP x64 and x32 all good no dramas, but UAc sucks


side note
If you into ROEd and your hardware supports DAP (Data Access Prevention) after months of work on Gefangene, DAP now stops ROED from writing to HDu every now and then, have tried making Roed an exception etc.. but x64 doesnt seem to remember this...and havent tinkered yet to disable DAP totally, as it appears its a driver for hardware i need to remove....Somewhere hidden in side ther OS

Merry Xmas all

 

[Capt.Marion]

Running Vista HP x64 and x32 all good no dramas, but UAc sucks


side note
If you into ROEd and your hardware supports DAP (Data Access Prevention) after months of work on Gefangene, DAP now stops ROED from writing to HDu every now and then, have tried making Roed an exception etc.. but x64 doesnt seem to remember this...and havent tinkered yet to disable DAP totally, as it appears its a driver for hardware i need to remove....Somewhere hidden in side ther OS

Merry Xmas all

Can you try and have it write to an external location, i.e. ext HDD or USB drive..?

 

[Sined]

Can you try and have it write to an external location, i.e. ext HDD or USB drive..?

good point...will try l8r thanks

 

[Mormegil]

I had to upgrade my 7 year old sound card, as no drivers were available for 64-bit. And at first, my new Sound Blaster drivers were a bit flaky, but it's been sorted out since then.

So at this point, no issues with Vista 64 bit + Steam. Computer runs solid, but I do have a lot of memory (for the Photoshop work I do).

 

[Capt.Marion]

I had to upgrade my 7 year old sound card, as no drivers were available for 64-bit. And at first, my new Sound Blaster drivers were a bit flaky, but it's been sorted out since then.

So at this point, no issues with Vista 64 bit + Steam. Computer runs solid, but I do have a lot of memory (for the Photoshop work I do).

What type of soundblaster card do you have? My X-FI got itself uninstalled (But still plugged in) because the drivers were crap and it wouldn't work with TS.

Maybe I should try it with newer drivers.