greenhillmaniac
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Posts posted by greenhillmaniac
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On 13/08/2016 at 4:43 AM, Dibya said:
i made a new kit for skylake /kabylake
Where are the links?
Also, any ETA for AMD drivers?
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I guess now Vista is the only sane Windows version left... Let's pray that the Redmond bafoons don't exclude Windows 8.0 from the monthly rollups.
BTW, I just tested this on my laptop, and apparently Windows 8 Embedded Standard updates also work on Windows 8.0, which means x86 PCs can also have a fully updated client NT 6.2 OS. I would update the repository, but I'm currently on vacation, so only next Tuesday will I be available.
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Patch Tuesday has arrived!!! Brace your PC's, updates are coming...
This is the first month in the year where the looming threat of Windows 10 isn't upon us. Not that it matters for Windows 8.0 anyway
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms16-aug.aspx
Awaiting reports...
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8 hours ago, Dibya said:
I hope that if i succeed to get read of these problem then the driver can be applied to both xp/vista
Don't forget that XP and Vista are two almost entirely different beasts. What might be crashing a lot on XP and require a lot of reverse engineering of system and driver files, will probably be a lot easier on Vista (given it's basically Windows 7, but a lot prettier and lighter
). NT 6.0 and NT 6.1 are a lot closer than NT 5.1 and NT 6.1.
8 hours ago, smeezekitty said:You're very right. I haven't been on much. And I guess I've sold out since I have installed Windows 7.
Who can blame ya! Vista is suffering a worse fate than XP, with drivers being made only for XP and 7+, and programs that abandon both XP and Vista, without even considering the latter.
8 hours ago, smeezekitty said:It is relatively easy to figure out the missing function and create a wrapper for usermode code. Things get trickier with kernel mode code (including the .sys) that is loaded in device manager.
Unfortunately, my experience with driver development is a little limited and the meaning of the errors isn't clear to me. A patch is probably possible but will require research
Unfortunatly I am even more illiterate when it comes to this kind of thing. I can't promise much help, but I can give a test system (since my card needs the latest drivers, I think it could be a perfect test subject
).
Also, did some more research, and here are the driver versions AMD has developed up to this day, which might be useful, if you intend to do your research (in chronological order):
- 14.50x - AMD Catalyst 14.12 up until Catalyst 15.6 beta. Based on the Catalyst Omega release, these drivers don't support the RX 300 series, but are the last known ones to support Vista.
- 15.20 - only found these on the Gigabyte website, which leads me to believe these are an early version of the Catalyst 15.7? They are dated from April 2015, according to the files inside the exe, so they seem older than the AMD released 15.15, which are dated June 2015... (link: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Driver/vga_driver_amd_w7_w8_15.4.exe)
- 15.15 - just found out about these on the AMD website. These are the first official drivers to support the RX 300 series, but seem to be newer than the 15.20 that I found on the Gigabyte website (which is weird, going by the build number). Haven't tested these on Vista, but I'm assuming they won't work, like all 15.xx drivers and later (link: http://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/AMD-Radeon-300-Series.aspx)
- 15.20 - the first 15.xx drivers supporting all other cards from AMD's lineup, and made for Windows 10. Starts with Catalyst 15.7 up to Catalyst 15.11.1 beta
- 15.30 - introduced with the Crimson UI overhaul of the drivers. Starts with Crimson 15.12 all the way to Crimson 16.2.1 beta
- 16.101 - discovered by the good folks at Guru3D forums. The only drivers on the 16.xx line to support the non-GCN GPUs (link: http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=408883)
- 16.15 - Vulkan support and a few new AMD features. The first official 16.xx release. Starts on Crimson 16.3 and ends on Crimson 16.5.1 Hotfix
- 16.20 - honestly, I don't know what these drivers brought to the table... Begins on Crimson 16.5.2 Hotfix and ended on Crimson 16.7.2 Hotfix
- 16.30 - recently released with the Crimson 16.7.3, made for Windows 10 RS1. Still haven't tested these. Apparently this driver version reduces DX11 driver overhead, according to the Guru3D forum guys (great forum for AMD drivers BTW)
I think this is everything. If you find anything new, tell me. This info should provide some ground work to get started.
EDIT 1 - Corrected some info and added the missing driver entries, up until the most recent
EDIT 2 - Added info on the 16.101 drivers.
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30 minutes ago, 2008WindowsVista said:
Smeezekitty might be able to tell if the missing functions can be stubbed, and he may be able to stub them. Sadly, it doesn't seem anyone else cares about Vista
There are dozens of us! We might not be many, but what we lack in numbers we make up for in passion.
Does @smeezekitty go online often? I still think that atimdag.sys is the main file preventing the installation of the basic drivers (even if stubbing the missing fuctions is possible, other driver functionality might still be semi-incompatible, and require aditional dll files, like power management, or hardware encoding).
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5 hours ago, 11ryanc said:
I've been out of the Radeon loop for quite a while, so can't really comment too much. User smeezekitty did various patches that went as far as Catalyst 15.6, I think? Personally used 15.4 on my 8570d and R7 240 setups. Beyond that got quite murky. Nvidia I'd like to believe will be more lenient towards mods. It always has been in the past. Hoping somebody is willing to step forward in making some patches to various graphics drivers. Most significant drawback using this OS anymore.
Actually, the patch @smeezekitty did for the 14.12 drivers worked for all releases until the 15.6 drivers (the last ones to belong to the 14.500 branch). He did an extra patch for the 15.3 drivers, I think, but that's it.
If you'd like to know, the Rx 300 series (released June last year) do not work on Windows Vista, because the only drivers working with the cards are from the 15.20 branch or newer, which introduced some extra dependencies that the OS doesn't have. No INF modding works this time. Some extra work is needed. That's why I oppened this thread.
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12 minutes ago, HarryTri said:
How do you know which ones are for Windows 8? You just install them or you have to use any tricks?
Nope, he just installs thems, reboots and hopes for the best
But Server 2012 and Windows 8.0 are practically the same, and @JodyT has been installing updates successfully since February 2016, so we can make a good assumption they will keep working moving forward.
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I've decided to start a little investigation on recent AMD drivers and Windows Vista (mainly the ones that work with the Rx 300 series and newer), because those drivers won't install, giving error 31 when trying to do it on Device Manager (even with the appropiate INF modding), and I love Vista too much, to let my GPU be the only reason I can't have it installed
.
The earliest drivers I found, supporting the Rx 300 series, were located on the Gigabyte website, dated from April 2015, version 15.20 (link, in case you're curious: http://download.gigabyte.eu/FileList/Driver/vga_driver_amd_w7_w8_15.4.exe). I do believe these are prior to the big driver revision of 15.7 (all of the drivers until 15.6 are revisions of the Omega drivers 14.12. I know this because in the INF file they all say version 14.50x). With Catalyst 15.7, the driver version bumped to 15.30. Starting with versions 15.20 and 15.30, a simple INF mod would not suffice to make the drivers work with Vista.
As such, I started to dig around the .sys and .dll files of recent drivers with Dependency Walker on my Vista laptop, to see what kind of dependencies were introduced. I started by first comparing the 14.12 .sys files, with the drivers provided on Microsoft Update Catalog, dated 19-04-2016, version 16.150, and here's the difference (since it's too many images, I've compressed all the results to my Mega account): https://mega.nz/#F!ApB1hQZL!dsRHCNz9HPSyJUOYI2AZZA
Basically, atimdag.sys introduced two dependencies on NTOSKRNL.EXE that Vista doesn't have, namely sprintf_s and RtlDowncaseUnicodeChar. All the other .sys files have the same group of missing dependencies, which I'm not sure matter, since, like I said, 14.12 installs just fine on Vista.In terms of .dlls, both versions seem to have the same kind of missing dependencies, that is, missing IESHIMS.DLL and a missing function in MFPLAT.DLL, MFCreateMFByteStreamOnStream (there are A LOT of dlls on AMD's drivers, so I only looked at the main ones, like amd_opencl64.dll, amdh264enc64.dll,...).
Now I'm kind of stumped. I don't know where to go from here. What do I need to do? Mod the drivers? Mod the system files? How do I add calls to DLLs? I feel like there might not be too much work involved in making these drivers work on Vista, because certain basic parts of it work. What do I mean by this? Well, when trying to install the drivers through Device Manager and getting Error Code 31, if I go to change the display resolution, my monitor's resolutions appears, where it otherwise only listed 600x480, which means basic display detection might be working.
So, can anyone help me/guide me to making the Rx 300 (and perhaps Rx 400) series work on Vista? Summoning @blackwingcat and others
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Just updated the repository with this month's updates. Here's to 6 and a half more years
BTW, a little bit off topic, but I was digging around about Windows Vista and Server 2008, and it turns out Server 2008 got Powershell v3.0, but Vista never got it! You'd think that both OSs being the same would make installing the update easy, but it blocks itself on Vista! (I've tried.)
Windows 8.0 and Server 2012 might have the same thing with Powershell v5.0 (it says it's only compatible with Server.) Is there any way to remove the OS restriction on these kind of updates?0 -
10 hours ago, Dibya said:21 hours ago, greenhillmaniac said:
Surely GURU.
I need to stabilize some kernel modification otherwise it may cause too much bsods
I have not added skylake hd graphics as it also has same issue.
15th/16th of this month i will provide few hundreds of mordern hardware driver
You're doing God's work
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Any chance for AMD drivers?
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20 hours ago, dencorso said:
And there is a sister NAG for plain vanilla 7 (viz. non-SP1) and 8.0, which was released as KB3163589, too!
Wow, they sure are desperate... I mean, Windows 8.0 and vanilla 7 are EOL. They shouldn't even recieve more updates! M$ are really trying to get every last ounce of the market. Windows 8.0 only accounts for 1% of the market FFS!
I'm actually surprised Vista users haven't been nagged yet. Or better yet, XP users.
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I just formatted my main PC and was installing updates for Windows 8.1, when suddenly a Get Windows 10 screen shows up on reboot, right after logon, and before the desktop showed up... Turns out M$ released today KB3173040, that introduces this "feature" to Windows 8.1 and 7 SP1.
This one's fresh out of the oven, and I let it slip because it was not on this list (and only recently appeared on askwoody.com). I urge dencorso to update his thread.
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6 minutes ago, xpclient said:
I haven't had to shell out money for Windows ever since I started using it and activation was introduced in XP. Mostly I got free genuine licenses during promotions but I know a trick to activate Windows and pass all genuine Windows checks without any patches or cracks. It has worked since activation was introduced.
I would ask you what trick did you use, but that would probably get us both banned from the forums
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4 hours ago, NoelC said:
FYI, I have read that the Windows 10 anniversary release is likely to be AFTER the drop dead date for the free "upgrade".
Yeah, I already have a Windows 10 license secured, but honestly, I don't see a whole lot of improvement on this Anniversary Update. Sure, the UI will be more consistent, but Cortana will be more integrated, which means harder to disable or remove (thank god my country doesn't have Cortana
), the new start menu looks like s*** IMO, and there will be all around more bloat accompanying the OS. I don't see any kernel or performance improvements, and I've had the "System and Compressed Memory" process take up all of my RAM, and making my system unusable for a minute, so the OS really needs those improvements.
Dunno... maybe some decent DirectX 12 games will force me to upgrade in the future, but for know, Windows 8.1 is very good to me.
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6 minutes ago, NoelC said:
I think AMD must be struggling to pay its engineers, and thus looking to cut costs in any way they can.
They're dropping features with each new release of Crimson, which is the driver suite that followed their Catalyst drivers. Calling them out on it only results in the support drones telling you to do something different, even when that something doesn't address the functionality they eliminated.
-Noel
My main gripe with the new Crimson suite is that it's too unstable... always crashing. For example, if explorer.exe crashes and then starts right back up, the tray icon for Crimson will no longer be there. You'll have to end the process for it, and start again. Also, when you change the default language, it has a 50/50 chance of not oppening after restart.
But yeah, I wish AMD would support atleast Vista. It got dropped before XP! (last driver for Vista was 13.12 and XP was 14.4). They could atleast launch some sort of legacy drivers, like, once a year or something for those old OSs.
There are also a lot of games that just work better on XP. For example, any game that uses DirectSound3D, or games that use weird shader calls from DirectX 8/9 (Far Cry 1 does not render montain reflections on water on anything but XP! And there's no fix in sight.)
Oh well... guess I'll stick with Windows 8.1. It's still the best OS for gaming IMO. Light, fast, and it doesn't randomly start spinning my HDD, or using my Internet for some callback to the motherbase (I'm looking at you, Windows 10)
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1 hour ago, JorgeA said:
To date, I've had trouble with only one single application on Vista -- a second-line security program. Also, a few months ago I was considering changing my first-line protection to Emsisoft Security, but then they dropped support for Vista for reasons that still mystify me.
I can't install any IE newer than 9 of course, but then I've changed over to Pale Moon (thanks, @dencorso!) and things are going great.
No compatibility issues with any other programs I use on Vista. So far, anyway. Fingers crossed!
--JorgeA
It all depends on the uses one needs from the OS. If you only write documents or make spreadsheets and surf the web, I think XP would do a great job, even today (or even Windows 2000, but that requires a bit of extra tinkering). On the other hand, if you do more heavy tasks, like gaming (me) or video editing, 7 is the bare minimum OS...
Also, speaking of app compatibility, AMD does not make drivers for Vista... So, yeah!
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15 minutes ago, Tripredacus said:
Wanting to go back and actually doing it is two different things.
Tell me about it! I love Windows Vista, and I would love to go back to it, but there are no drivers, and program support is very weak....
It really is a matter of heart vs brain.
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9 hours ago, JodyT said:
Well there was one for .NET v3.5 and there was a Flash update. (KB3157993)
Both those updates are from last month, and the Flash update was quickly replaced by the newer KB3163207.
The security bulletin for this month's updates doesn't mention Flash or .NET updates, that's why I said there are non for this month: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/security/ms16-jun
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Just updated the repository with this months updates, and added a few updates for previous months that were in the security bulletin, but missing.
It's weird that this month there are no .NET Framework updates or Flash Player updates...
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On 18/05/2016 at 7:33 AM, Stefan43 said:
Hi,
I had the same results, when looking for updates, as you. Except for the Flash update, I found KB3163207 instead of KB3157993. But KB3157993 also is a flash update, according to this page: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3157993
And it does work on Windows Server 2012. So this month, there are 2 updates available for Adobe Flash?
This .NET updates I found:
3.5: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52196
4.5.2: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52189
4.6 & 4.6.1: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=52135
Just noticed this.
The flash Player update KB3163207 was release 3 days after KB3157993, so it superseeds the later.
As for the other updates, they were already in the repository.
If you notice any updates missing from the repository, please let me know!
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4 hours ago, JorgeA said:
BTW how did you arrange it so that the video would start at the desired time? Pretty cool.
On Youtube there's a share feature that lets you share the link of the video, with the time in which it will start. It's quite handy, so people won't have to search the video for the thing you want to show them.
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39 minutes ago, xpclient said:
Hahaha I couldn't resist posting this funny:
A golden opportunity was missed in here, to replace the "Installing Windows" prompts to "Doing Something"
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20 hours ago, JorgeA said:
And check out the little notice at the bottom about using this feedback to improve our experience. Yeah, right.
I think that's the default message they give to all feedback posted, but I get where you're going.
I wish M$ stuck with the Aero theme from Windows 8 CP. It was like Windows 7, but less flashy, more sober. I liked it.
If they improved the Windows 7 start menu and bundled all of Windows 8's improvements without the Metro crap (like the improved task manager, the ability to mount ISOs, the reworked Explorer, the new windows coloring that adjusted itself depending on the background, better DWM performance...) people would call Windows 8 a worthy successor to the almighty Windows 7.
2
). NT 6.0 and NT 6.1 are a lot closer than NT 5.1 and NT 6.1.
).
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Official - Windows 10 Worst Crap Ever!
in Windows 10
Posted · Edited by greenhillmaniac
Well, DirectX 11 also adds a bunch of effects that DirectX 9 can't render, like tesselation, that can take away a large chunk of performance... If you want to do an apples to apples comparision I would suggest comparing Windows 10 DirectX 9 vs Windows XP DirectX 9. Only then can you say that Windows 10 is slower.