More Vista nonsense

[blakerwry]

1600x1050 and 1440x900 are relatively new resolutions and many divers (and some hardware) don't support it... especially anything over a year old. I'm guessing this is both of your guy's problems. Whatever default driver your OS came with for your video hardware, it didn't include proper support for this resolution.

I just setup 30+ machines with wide screen LCD's. At least 27 were Vista setup with a mix of 1280x1024,1440x900, and 1600x1050 monitors. All worked perfectly without me having to install additional drivers or set resolutions manually.

Out of 2 XP machines I had to manually set both, no biggie.

1 win2k machine would not support a wide screen resolution with the onboard S3 graphics... known issue with the hardware, so I upgrade to a TNT2 (first AGP card I grabbed), also did not support a widescreen resolution, updated to latest Nvidia drivers, I believe I had to manually set the resolution, but now it works fine.

 

[mubs]

I had to reinstall my wife's PC again from scratch. XP Pro, C2Q6600, 2GB DDR2, Radeon 3870, Acer 20" LCD via DVI, 500GB Samsung, etc. Despite a very vanilla install, it always winds up becoming a BSoD box over time.

Why aren't you imaging it and just restoring the image when it craps out?

 

[Mercutio]

blakerwry, I can attach a 1440x900 display to an XP machine that doesn't even have SP1 or anything like current devices drivers and have it work OK. I found this out last night while I was messing with an old Pentium4 machine with a Radeon 9200 I'd had sitting in my pile of spare parts. I'm talking about a machine that hadn't even been powered on in probably two years. I checked an old Tbird Athlon with a Radeon 7200 as well. Same thing.

That's what pissed me off enough to post about this in the first place.

Fushigi, given your config I'd say that you more than likely have a hardware issue if that collection of parts is bluescreening.

 

[Fushigi]

Why aren't you imaging it and just restoring the image when it craps out?

Well, if I imaged it and the problem child is a driver in the image (one suspect are the mobo drivers which I'm omitting this time), then it wouldn't do much good. I could image the base install, I suppose, but that wouldn't save much time; XP installs pretty fast and I typically don't sit around waiting for things to finish. I start something installing & walk away for a bit.

The File Transfer Settings app was used to migrate her files, Favorites, and whatnot from the old to the new. In general that's a good enough backup before a wipe/reload.

I am backing up the machine to my Windows Home Server, but that's new since the last rebuild back in August.

And so far the box has Windows, Office, AV, and her data. Other apps will only be added as needed.

 

[Fushigi]

Fushigi, given your config I'd say that you more than likely have a hardware issue if that collection of parts is bluescreening.

I haven't discounted that possibility, but I'm trying to do what I can for free before I have to $pend or go to the effort of moving parts from machine to machine.

FWIW, though, upon rebooting after a BSoD, the Windows error reporting widget would always point to a driver being the issue. That's why I'm loading as few drivers as possible beyond what MS itself installs. Just Catalyst, the Realtek HD Audio, and Netgear PCI wireless card.

And yeah, it doesn't exactly help that the machine runs Folding all the time. But machines really shouldn't have any trouble with that. I'm not OCing it.

 

[Handruin]

I noticed something else with vista last weekend. I was at a LAN party with a few other guys who all have vista on their systems (i'm still running XP pro). One guy shared a file and we were all going to download it (about 500MB) and i noticed that during the downloads that my XP system gets paused until the vista machines are done copying. Basically my progress bar said 1-2 minutes and was moving along and then it would stop and the time would go up to 15-30 minutes remaining and the progress stopped. As soon as they finished mine progressed again.

We even tried it where I was the first to start copying the file as a test (no one else was moving files) and then as soon as someone else copied my connection was basically paused until they finished. It seemed like XP gets the lower priority in all cases when connecting to vista? We all were in the same room connected to the same switch.

 

[sechs]

Loading Catalyst fixed it (automatically). Now, what bugs me is that Windows had to have seen the VESA modes to know it would do 800x600, but it didn't see/use the monitor's actual resolution. WTF?

SuperVGA (800x600) is the minimum requirement for Windows XP. So, it's the fall-back resolution.

 

[Mercutio]

It's more of a general windows complaint than a Vista one, but why the hell doesn't the Printer driver selection screen have a search box? Drivers are named so inconsistently that logical alphabetical order isn't always the correct place to find a printer.

 

[sechs]

Has that dialog seriously changed since 3.1 days?

 

[Mercutio]

No, but it needs to.
The most annoying part is scrolling through all the drivers in the "HP" section, looking for a Officejet 5600 only to find out that the 5600 is a Officejet Pro and therefore listed after all the regular Deskjets... and also that it's in a category called "Hewlitt Packard" instead of "HP." I'm just saying there should be a little search where you can type in "5600." That makes a lot of sense.

 

[sechs]

Maybe the problem is that HP sucks, and Microsoft simply aids and abets.

 

[LiamC]

Lo, and it was fscking funny

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/28/vista-doomed

 

[time]

Good stuff, although I wonder if even 10% corporate adoption isn't a flight of fancy ... :rotfl:

 

[Mercutio]

I have Vista on all my classroom PCs. Of course, they all have XP on them and that's what they boot to by default, but Vista is at least installed.

I only know of one business that has made a coordinated effort to move to Vista. I know of four or five that skipped XP and have chosen to remain on Windows 2000. I get calls pretty regularly asking me to remove Vista and Office 2007 from newly purchased machines in small offices.

 

[ddrueding]

I've already told these guys that Vista won't be happening ever, and that I'm going to try and go linux before we are forced to Windows 7.

 

[Fushigi]

I hope the folks who insist on skipping Vista in favor of waiting on 7 realize that 7 has the Vista kernel. Application compatibility will be basically the same as Vista and performance probably won't be all that different.

 

[Mercutio]

Application compatibility is going to suck no matter what. That ship has sailed. As time goes on virtual machines are going to be a better solution for a lot of that, and for the rest I'm really hoping to see a move in the direction of largely platform-independent web applications.

I'm looking for performance and most especially stability enhancements, myself. And a large base of available 64-bit drivers would be high on my wish list as well.

 

[ddrueding]

I hope the folks who insist on skipping Vista in favor of waiting on 7 realize that 7 has the Vista kernel. Application compatibility will be basically the same as Vista and performance probably won't be all that different.

Yup. I'm not looking forward to 7, I just know that support for XP will go away eventually (drivers, apps, etc). When it does, I would love to be OS independent. Web apps, VMs, even terminal servers are all preferable to being pinned down.

 

[Tannin]

I hope the folks who insist on skipping Vista in favor of waiting on 7 realize that 7 has the Vista kernel. Application compatibility will be basically the same as Vista and performance probably won't be all that different.

So, what you are telling us is that at least it won't be any worse. OK, I'll take that.

 

[Tannin]

Hmmm .. according to the Register, Microsoft have actually started work on making it better. I'll believe it when I see it, but you never know.

Microsoft "promised hard work on performance. The goal is to make Windows 7 run not just on your existing hardware but also on small-footprint netbooks ..... Changes include a reduction in the overhead of the desktop Windows manager ... a "substantial" reduction in the disk I/O when reading from the registry, and an attempt to reduce the memory footprint of the core Windows 7 install"

 

[Mercutio]

Apparently the demo unit for a lot of the Windows 7 stuff at WinHEC last weekend was a 1GB netbook with a 1.0GHz Via processor. That's pretty ballsy for a Microsoft beta OS.

 

[sechs]

If you were to strip out all of the crap, would Vista not run lickity-split?

 

[ddrueding]

If you were to strip out all of the crap, would Vista not run lickity-split?

If they let you strip out all the crap, I wouldn't be complaining. Even if it was all there by default (to be user-friendly), the option to remove it all would be awesome.

 

[mubs]

vlite does not do for Vista what nlite did for XP?

 

[Handruin]

I like what I've seen for windows 7 so far... I played with the beta a little bit today on a VM running on a laptop and it was responsive. Some of the UI improvements look useful, like the revised task bar and shaking minimize feature. For a beta it seemed good. I hope it only gets better even if its foundation is vista. Windows 7 seems to be what vista should have been.

 

[MaxBurn]

What vista nonsense causes this?

I have a Color Laserjet 5 that won't print in Vista x64 for some reason. I know it works fine in XP and the process for adding the printer seems to be the same in Vista as it was in XP. The only catch is the printer is IP attached via the network card in the printer.

Problem: Printer does not print or even acknowledge that it received data via the yellow light. In Vista the print job goes into the print queue and disappears, as if the print job completed normally. No errors displayed anywhere and test page sent to printer acts the same.

My install process is:
-Add local printer, select standard TCP/IP port
-Enter IP address -(from past experience I know if it can't see the printer (ie, it is OFF or not connected) it will stop you here but that isn't happening)
-Select driver HP, Color Laserjet 5/5M PS
-Done.

The only difference I can find from XP is the printer driver selection is named different, under XP it is"Color Laserjet 5/5M" and doesn't mention the PS which I presume is post script.

The printer pings and has the same address it always did.

I am baffled and have no error message at all to research, suggestions?

 

[P5-133XL]

For Vista x64:

Turn printer on; Since the printer is using a network card on the printer, you need to be using add network printer rather than local printer. then if it is not seen then click the printer I want is not listed; then click add printer using tcpip address->next;insert ip address into hostname or ip address text box (the port name will be automaticly created) + checkmark query printer and automaticly load device driver-> next

 

[MaxBurn]

For Vista x64:

Turn printer on; Since the printer is using a network card on the printer, you need to be using add network printer rather than local printer. then if it is not seen then click the printer I want is not listed; then click add printer using tcpip address->next;insert ip address into hostname or ip address text box (the port name will be automaticly created) + checkmark query printer and automaticly load device driver-> next

Exact same behavior, plus I never had to do that in XP. BUT if I do that in XP it works find both ways.

BUT:

I see the issue, that is a Postscript driver verses PCL.

I don't have a Postscript SIMM in the printer and I don't see a PCL driver listed in Vista anymore (sc*** you bill gates).

Can I somehow load the default XP PCL driver out and use it in Vista? Searching to find where this is stored now...

In XP when I load the PS driver it behaves exactly the same, docs sent but never sees data at the printer so this is definitely the problem.


also seems my trouble post was #666

 

[sechs]

Install the PCL driver and use that.

PS: Just another reason that PS rules and PCL drools.

 

[P5-133XL]

Don't automaticly add the printer driver, but rather choose from the list: Vista x64 should come with the PCL driver too...

 

[MaxBurn]

My point is there is no PCL driver available in the included windows driver list. I either get this list or the option to load from somewhere else finding an INF. I spent a LOT of time on this last night...

I can't even share the printer through a virtual machine:
1. In the guest I can't load other OS drivers, asks for a disk that doesn't exist.
2. In the host I see the printer but I can't load drivers, asks for a disk that doesn't exist.

I even tried out the HP Unified PCL driver but that doesn't support this printer.

I have attached the vista INF file that the printers are in, the "Color Laserjet 5" or a derivative with PCL or no PS mentioned isn't there.

edit, I would have attached it except for the ridiculously small 19k file limit.

So I either keep a VM loaded with XP and office just to print, buy a PS SIMM for my printer or buy a new printer. I was looking for a reason to get a new printer but I was hoping for that to be a dead printer or running out of consumables, not MS just saying meh that's too old for us to bother copying and pasting the driver. I guess now I totally get the people that were irate over older printers and scanners not being supported.

 

[Fushigi]

On my Vista 64 machine I do add printer - let it try & find the printer by IP and fail since there's no printer at the IP I gaave it - manual driver selection - and select HP. There's a full run of Laserjets, including "Color LaserJet 5500 PCL 5". I'll grant that for the Color LJ 5 they only list PS but surely any of the other color PCL 5s would work.

Why are you blaming MS when drivers are the responsibility of the device manufacturer? Blame HP for wanting to force their customers to buy new hardware.

 

[P5-133XL]

If the driver is not included in Vista, the first thing one does is look to the manufacturer. In this case HP. I just went to www.hp.com and searched for their X64 vista driver for their color Laserjet 5 driver.

 

[MaxBurn]

On my Vista 64 machine I do add printer - let it try & find the printer by IP and fail since there's no printer at the IP I gaave it - manual driver selection - and select HP. There's a full run of Laserjets, including "Color LaserJet 5500 PCL 5". I'll grant that for the Color LJ 5 they only list PS but surely any of the other color PCL 5s would work.

Nope, just prints garbage.

Why are you blaming MS when drivers are the responsibility of the device manufacturer? Blame HP for wanting to force their customers to buy new hardware.

HP says the driver is supported and in vista, just like they say it is in XP. Only it is in XP and left out of vista.