ppgrainbow

As you may haven't noticed lately, I will soon be decommissioning my Pentium 4-based desktop computer very soon. I was successfully able to type this post from my Toshiba Tecra 720CDT laptop released in April 1996 (almost 18 years ago) and I want your opinion on this as I patiently wait for my new computer from AVADirect to arrive. Do you ever know what it's even like to browse the MSFN forums and the internet under Windows 95 using Internet Explorer 5.5, Firefox 1.5 or even SeaMonkey 1.1.19? Let me tell you... 1. This is a very slow laptop. With a 133 MHz mobile Pentium processor and only 2 MB of video RAM, it is somewhat difficult, if not impossible to browse many websites, even graphics intense ones. 2. The EDO RAM maxes out at 144 MB (the laptop has 16 MB of memory soldiered to the motherboard, plus another 128 MB of EDO memory installed). This causes the physical memory to run out pretty quickly when launching a app or browsing a website. I have a 288 MB swap file that consumes at least 7% of the total disk space. 3. The BIOS doesn't properly support hard disks over 7.88 GB (~ 8.4 GB) due to the limit of 16,383 cylinders, 16 heads and 63 sectors per track. You can try to overcome the limitations by installing a dynamic drive overlay (DDO) software such as OnTrack. However, the Windows 95 operating system cannot even properly support hard disks over 32 GB (~ 34.5 GB) without a high probability of data corruption. 4. The good news is that laptop is capable of livestreaming internet radio broadcasts using the WinAmp 2.95 player. However, it is not very capable of browsing a lot of websites properly as most of the functions don't work properly anymore. This is due to almost all websites dropping support for older browsers, including Firefox 1.5 and SeaMonkey 1.1.19. 5. Along with memory, launching apps can put a drain on system, user and GDI resources. If the resources fall too low, Windows needs to be restarted. As I previously ran Windows NT 4.0 on this laptop, Windows NT 4.0 has no issues. 6. The Toshiba Tecra 720CDT laptop is not internet capable by default. If you want internet capability, you have to use a PCMCIA wireless network card and install the drivers (either for Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 98) in order for it to work. 7. Lastly, on top of all of this, I usually use this laptop, but only as a secondary computer. But since I stopped using this old computer, this creates massive compatibility issues. Almost all vendors ceased compatibility with Windows 95 and older hardware many years ago in order to improve the quality of products that they created. When I get a new computer, I won't have to deal with this issue. Thoughts anyone?

Thanks for all of the help. I appreciate it! My new PC should arrive on at least the 24th at the earliest!

OMG! How awesome it would sound for Windows Vista to support eight cores!

Thanks for telling me. But since I finalised the configuration earlier, I'm settling with the quad-core.

Wow, that's awesome!

Okay. It's finally over. After about two months of consideration, research and planning, I made a final decision of what I'm planning to get. The specs that I provided are final and will not be changed anymore: 1. ZALMAN, Z9 U3 Black mid-tower Case w/window, ATX, Steel/Plastic 2. ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard with AM3+, AMD 970. Support for up to 32GB DDR3-2133 SDRAM, PCIe x16, SATA3, RAID support ATX 3. Quad-core AMD FX-4300 3.8 GHz - 4 GHz AM3+ 95 watt processor with 4MB L3 cache and support for up to DDR3-1866 SDRAM 4. Fractal Design Integra R2 500 watt power supply, 80 PLUS Bronze, 24-pin ATX12V v2.31 EPS12V, 1x 8/6-pin PCIe 5. Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO copper/aluminum CPU cooler, Socket 2011/1155/1156/1366/775/FM1/AM3/AM2 w/1 gram of thermal compound 6. Western Digital 1 TB WD Black (WD1003FZEX) 7200 RPM SATA3 hard drive w/64MB Cache 7. Crucial 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) Ballistix Sport PC3-12800 DDR3 1.6 GHz CL9 1.5V Non-ECC SDRAM DIMM 8. EVGA GeForce 8400 GS 520 MHz w/1 GB GDDR3 1.2 GHz w/VGA+DVI+HDMI, PCIe x16 9. Lite-on, iHAS124 Black 24x SATA DVD±RW Dual-Layer Burner 10. Sabrent CRW-UINB USB 2.0 internal card reader (eBay) The cost of this custom built PC that I ordered was $630.95. The internal card reader off of eBay was $10.99. If you include the shipping and handling on al of this, then the final total amounts to $706.47. If there are any issues arising, I will report it to the MSFN forms. By the way, what are your thoughts on this final configuration? Do you think that it's all good to go?

The NVIDIA GeForce 710m driver uses the GeForce 320.00 firmware, which is only compatibile with Windows 7 (SP1) or Windows 8. It's obvious that you could be out of luck as the GPU came out after Microsoft ended Windows Vista OEM sales on 22 October 2011. Windows Vista is slowly suffering the same fate along with Windows XP...especially since it's marketshare is down to just 3.3%. I further suspect that drivers for Windows 7 may no longer be tested or available after Microsoft ends Windows 7 OEM sales later this year.

I can't wait for a unofficial patch to come out for Windows Vista on the AMD FX processor soon!

And since Windows XP nor Windows Vista are getting the hotfix, I bet that these OSes will function as-is without the hotfix, true?

Thanks so much for the help. I can't wait to get the new PC and the Processor Affinity tool to control which executables should control one of the four cores.

Thanks for the help. I'll look into vLite.

I don't know if it's possibler to make the hotfix compatible with Windows Vista or not. But other than that, Windows Vista will run on the AMD FX processor even though they don't fully support it and there are chances that you may run into some performace issues. I'm going for the quad-core AMD FX-4300 and I sure hope that Windows Vista SP2 will work with the new motherboard without any major problems. The last time Windows Vista was sold legally and only as a pre-loaded OS was on 22 October 2011. Since that date, OEM system builders were no longer permitted to pre-load Windows Vista on new computers which is the reason why vendors were no longer allowed to test Windows Vista installations on a computer with a motherboard that has a AMD FX-based processor. The only way Vista can be tested is by the end user who installs Windows Vista.

True. The AMD FX-4300 processor was released on 23 October 2012, three days before Windows 8 was even publicly released. I honestly can't believe that Microsoft is only using the AMD FX processor to only fully support Windows 8. And since the AMD FX is fast enough, I would TOTALLY avoid the AMD Kabini APUs.

Good for you! Because the DVDs that I have are the original Windows Vista RTM versions, I will need to get the DVD slipstreamed with SP2 in order for it to work on the AMD FX based M5A97 R2.0 motherboard.

The point is that with the original Windows Vista RTM DVDs, Windows Vista will most likely BSOD with a STOP 0x0A error due to the bug associated with 3 GB or more memory. In order to get around this, Windows Vista SP1 would need to be slipstreamed.

I find this strange, since Windows 2000 (2000) and Windows NT 4.0 (1996) recognize 4GB of RAM, DOUBLE what Windows Vista RTM (late 2006) will recognize. So true. The same applies to Windows XP on some modern motherboards whose support is still increasingly limited.

I will do that...that is only if I can find a way to slipstream SP2 and get it to work on the new computer. As for the original CDs that are still around, I agree. Windows Vista RTM (without any fixes incorporated to the DVD) won't even run properly, if not at all on modern hardware and on computers with more than 2 GB RAM.

It's a fact the FX architecture is not fully supported on vista and only barely better on win7. They would be throwing away performance running an FX on vista, so why spend more money? It's like buying 8GB RAM and running a 32Bit systemppgrainbow, do you have any use for those 8 threads? Only few programs actually scale that well with so many threads, if you don't do video encoding, it's not worth it. Don't get blinded by numbers. A Phenom II X4 (or X6), if you go the AMD route, is the better choice for the majority of people, especially if you are running vista. The sad thing is that the FX chips didn't really improved single threaded performance by much compared to the Phenom IIs, and this is what actually counts most of the time, still. I don't think that having more than a quad-core processor is a good idea. Also, why is the AMD FX processor not fully supported on Windows XP, Windows Vista and the original release of Windows 7? As far as I know, the AMD Phenon II X6 and the 2nd generation Intel Core processors are believed to be the fastet processors that Windows Vista will fully support and run. AMD's Kabini APUs, 3rd generation (and later; Ivy Bridge and Haswell) Intel Core processors will be incompatible with Windows XP or Vista at all as there are no drivers available: http://www.hitechreview.com/it-products/pc/amd%E2%80%99s-kabini-apus-won%E2%80%99t-run-windows-xp-windows-vista/42774/

I'll bet that since the CPU perforance improvement is lackluster, I'm disabling Turbo core once I get the M5A97 motherboard.

Thanks for the help. In that perspective, to overcome the 3 GB limitation, I will have to get the OS slipstreamed with SP1 and SP2 respectively in order for it to work. Otherwise, I will have to start with 2 GB RAM, install Windows Vista, apply the service packs and then upgrade the RAM back to 8 GB.

True that. However, without the KB929777 patch, Windows Vista may not install correctly as I may need to slipstream SP1 in order for it to work reliably. I'll let you know how this will all turn out when I get the new PC.

Thank you for telling me. Can Turbo Core features be disabled in the UEFI BIOS on the M5A97 R2.0 motherboard? Why doesn't Windows Vista work correctly with Turbo Core capabilities?

Thanks for telling me. I appreciate it.

Hey there! :wave: Incase you haven't already noticed, I won the unused retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate DVD as a Christmas present and now I'm planning to abandon Windows 2000 and migrate to the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard soon. Once the new computer has been built, it will have 8 GB of DDR3 RAM and can max out at 32 GB. However, looking at the contents of the 32-bit and 64-bit DVDs, I found that the date stamp on the files is 2006-11-02 12:00:00, meaning that it is the original release of Windows Vista (with no service packs installed). If I want to install Windows Vista on the ASUS M5A97 R2.0 motherboard, how can I do it with 8 GB of memory installed? Would I have to: 1. Downgrade the RAM to 2 GB and install Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit? 2. Slipstream Windows Vista Ultimate SP2 64-bit? I looked on this website regarding the instructions on slipstreaming Vista SP2 on a new computer, you can view it here: http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/230249-sliptream-vista-sp2.html However, I'm a bit confused about all of this... I have concerns that I will most likely get hit with a STOP 0x0A error when attempting to install Windows Vista with more than 3 GB of memory. Does anyone have any ideas how to get around this? If so, please post your thoughts. I would like to hear it.

Thanks so much for telling me. I'll look up online for what other options that I can consider.