Albuquerque

Not bad, perhaps, for a machine that was built "only" two years before the OS was released. Let's test Vista on a machine that's two years old when the OS is released, say a Prescott 3.4Ghz, a 160gb drive and a gig of ram? How do you suppose it will run? I can give you a guess...

I keep responding because you and others in this thread keep lodging invalid, non-factual and nonsensical allegations against Vista but somehow are completely ignoring those same fallacies in the OS that you support. You (and others) say that Vista is bloated, but you can only compare Vista's "bloat" to what XP currently has. When I point out that XP was "bloated" in comparison to the 9x era, you casually ignore it. You (and others) say that Vista "needs" new hardware and the minimum system requirements are asburd. You also point out that Vista should run on hardware that's eons old... But when I point out that XP had the exact same limitations and performance implications when running on the lowest-class supported hardware, you casusally ignore it. And finally, you (and others) continually lodge complains that new features are worthless and you don't need them. When the same complaints were shown to exist against XP, you ignored those too. Howabout instead of telling everyone how shoddy Vista is, you simply come out and say exactly what you actually mean? You don't intend to buy it, because you don't want it. Not because it's "bloated" (it isn't) not because doesn't support your hardware (it does) but maybe because the features it has really aren't interesting to you right now. Tada. Perfectly understandable and valid response. I have no argument whatsoever when someone says "Hey, you know, I just need a basic commuter car; a BMW 7-series really doesn't interest me". But when you say Vista sucks canal water because of a bunch of things that aren't true, I'm going to show up to set you (and anyone else who utters it) straight.

Maybe it doesn't. But where did I say I don't like XP? Putting words in my mouth? Aka "straw man" argument? You know, I happen to like XP. And I defended XP when it came out in the same way that I'm defending Vista right now. People argue, whine, cry and complain because (XYZ) new operating system from Micro$oft (the haters always use the dollar sign) is soooooo much more about profit and not about making a new OS and why is it so bloated and why is it so expensive and why does it have all this crap I don't need and I'm just not going to buy it I'm gonna use Windows 9x forever and ever and ever and then a few more days and why doesn't MS support my software that's going to be 10 years old? It's stupid, it's ridiculous, and it's utterly against the progression of computing to cry about upgraded software and anyone who's been doing computers for more than a few OS generations should know why. This is how PC's work. Even Mac's need new operating systems from time to time, and I bet there are people out there whining that their Mac Classic can't run OSX and it's unfair of Apple to stop support OS 7 just because they don't want to upgrade. If you don't want to stay within half a decade of being current, then you know what? PC's aren't for you.

Really? And this is a 100% wholly stock, no services stopped, no removal of software, no nothing outside of the standard install of Windows and associated drivers? Right? Because I don't believe you, and neither does the 533mhz 256mb ram box in my basement... Bloated in terms of what? Windows 3.11 wasn't as "bloated" as Win9x, care to discuss? Win9x isn't as "bloated" as 2000/XP, care to discuss that too? What is it that you define as "bloated" that somehow gets passed over when you defend XP from a previous operating system?And 500mhz and up processors... When did those come out? A quick glance through Google says March of 1999. Ok, so we want support for processors that are more than seven years old? How well did Windows XP run on a seven year old processor? Lemme give you a hint: Pentium original, non-MMX at 133mhz. Are you serious? Oh, maybe you meant that you want Vista to run on a processor that's in the middle of processors that are two generations behind the OS release date: Counting backwards we will be at the Core 2 Duo, so the P4 architecture (we'll be nice and say that Prescott was the same architecture as the original P4, which it wasn't...) and then the P3 architecture. Ok, how well did XP run on a processor that was at the bottom rung of two previous generations processor-wise at release? Let's count backwards from 2001 (the era of the shiny new P4): P3, P2... Yeah, there we are again at the 200-300mhz level Pentium setup. Big performance increase? Doubtful. Yeah, and look at what you're asking Vista to do in comparison. The minimum system requirements of XP were 2 generations-behind processor core, 2-generations behind memory capacity, and 2-generations behind hard drive space. So let's look at Vista: 1ghz machine? That's P3 territory, aka 2 generations behind. Hard drive space? Yup, 2 gens behind. Memory capacity, arguable, I'll let that slide and say it's only one generation behind. Grand scheme of things? If you run an OS on the bare minimum, then you're going to get bare minimum speed. Same rules apply for XP too, do you agree? Your case was full of straw-man arguments and false information. Come back when you can counter with something factual.

if your content with 5 minute boot times, then so be it. i ran it on a 1.8ghz machine with a good video card and a lot of memory, and it took forever to install and run. i dont like it. xp imo looks better too. not trying to be rude, just stating my own personal experiences. So? How long did it take XP to install and boot on a P3/533 with 256mb of ram, a 16mb TNT card and an 8gb harddrive? From personal experience, it took just as long. If you're going to run a NEW operating system on an old machine, then you're going to get sub-optimal results. But saying that the new OS requires uber hardware is incorrect. You're sitting here talking about a four year old operating system running on hardware that we were just dreaming of when the OS was released... How happy with XP were you when it first released? What hardware were you running then? Everyone continues to gripe about how "bloated" it is and how it needs more resources and all this nonsense. But nobody stops to consider the bigger picture -- those resources, on today's machines, are a spec-on-the-radar in scope. When XP came out, it used ~100mb of ram on a 256mb machine. Today Vista is using 400mb of ram on a 1GB machine. We're not too far off, now are we?

You just got done typing that? But then in your sig you have more hardware than Vista needs already at your disposal? Try installing Vista on a 1.4ghz P3 with 512mb of ram, a 64mb GeForce3 and a 4200RPM 40gb drive. Guess what? It actually works just fine. I don't understand why everyone assumes it absolutely requires uber-end hardware to run? If you want to use all the FEATURES of your brand new hardware, you should probably buy Vista. XP has crappy multiprocessor support, has crappy tack-on 64-bit support... Why are people griping?

Just to add a second opinion -- Rainyd is correct. The drivers that ASRock provides are nothing really more than the bare chipset drivers that are re-packaged with their own logos and verbiage. Indeed, using the standard chipset drivers from either NVIDIA or VIA would allow those motherboards to work correctly (and normally) on a Windows 95/98/ME platform. The only detriment would be the missing UAA audio driver, which is not actually supported (as RainyD has mentioned in his last post)

I do because Id really like to install win3.11, which is just perfect to me (interface etc). Well. You can still install it, nothing is really stopping you. Your video card undoubtedly supports VESA video modes, so install away. Just don't try installing it on a partition larger than 2GB, and it may be slightly more difficult to get anything resembling current software to run on it. No, applications do not have to be completely rewritten. A lot of the kernel overhaul provides improved performance, stability and security to current (and past) applications. Examples: use of the cool TOE, RSS and RDMA acceleration functions in the new network stack is entirely transparent to existing applications. Depending on the NIC hardware you have (or purchase) your app could see a 40% increase in network throughput with no additional coding. Same goes for audio: using the much higher speed, much lower latency and much less kernel-overhead-inducing audio stack is also entirely transparent to existing applications. But in both cases, even more functionality can be extracted if the app is patched or updated to support the better featureset. But that's not to say it requires an entirely seperate code base -- just like you can have a game that works on all graphics platforms from DX7 thru DX10. Yeah, if you want to play an older game, it will still work and likely will benefit (in performance) from some of the new technology under the hood. But if you want all the newest features, the app will need to provide a seperate "mode" to use them all. That doesn't mean the same app couldn't work on 2000/XP/2003...

Irritated? No, I'm really not. Part of living is acknowledging that things change on a continuous basis which forces you to stay moving or get left behind and die. Other common examples might be: job duties, relationships (romantic and friendly), kids, income, cars, houses, health, clothes and of course electronics. If you don't want to keep up, then don't. Simple as that, and nobody is going to force you. I have an old HP Vectra XA -- a P-166MMX with 192mb of ram, a 4200RPM 4gb drive, a pair of 3C905C nics and an old Matrox Millenium 2064W 2mb video card. It works fantastically as a firewall, NAT, DNS, internet cache, QoS, telnet and FTP host. It runs Windows 2000 and has chugged along nicely for the past seven years. I will never on God's green earth put Vista on that machine. Why should I? Nothing that Vista offers is needed on that box. So what if Windows 2000 goes "out of support"? I still have drivers, I still have backup discs, the box doesn't need anything else. But if you DO want to keep up (as you've stated) then you DO have to upgrade eventually. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is. Nobody's forcing your hand either way, but don't complain about something you want to do. All things come to an end, and you can't stay in the past forever. Nobody is going to feel sorry for someone who still wants to have their C64 supported, or their PS1 supported, or their Windows 3.11 supported. The same way that, in 10 years, nobody's going to feel sorry that XP isn't supported either.

And where do they buy their computer? Best Buy? Circuit City? CompUSA? Dell? And which of those four companies is going to bundle Vista instead of XP? A dollar and a free cup of coffee says ALL OF THEM. And are these generic users you speak of going to be smart enough to upgrade to Vista? Probably not, they won't care, and you're generally right in that they'll never know the difference. Arguable... It's user friendly according to who? A 40 year old housewife, or a 25 year old guy who's been using a computer for the last 15 years of his life? It's "speedy" when compared to what? Windows 3.1 on a 486DX2/66 booted faster, loaded faster and navigated windows faster. Windows 95 on a Pentium 233 probably went just as fast. It's reliable compared to what? MSDOS 5.0 on a 386? Windows ME on a P3/733? In what way is it reliable? Is it reliable when you have dependable hardware? Is it reliable when you update drivers? Is it reliable when it gets infected with spyware? Why do people consistenly want more and more features? What else were you going to do with that extra 0.5% of the CPU it's taking up? What were you going to do with that extra 150mb of memory? Remember when XP first came out, computers with 256mb of memory were "normal"? You should, because even 128mb computers were being sold (at the low end) as normal. We're now at the point where 512mb is ridiculously cheap, and 1GB is becoming "the norm." When Dell bundles a Vista machine with a dual core processor and a gig of ram (the ram is being specified directly by Microsoft) your "normal user" is going to have no problem using the operating system -- even if it takes up 350mb to boot. Even if they play some basic Mahjongg it's going to be fine. And the uber gamers? Well, you don't expect to be a "leet gamer" on a $700 cheap rig, now do you? And what about 7gb of space used? Who cares? When harddrive capacity can be purchased for ~35 cents a gig, why should we whine about 7gb of data? It's approximatley 4% of your entire disk on cheap 160gb drive. Maybe you're even CHEAPER and are trying to use an 80gb drive? Fine, it's like 9% of your disk. But when you buy a PC at that price point, you probably aren't going to care that you "only" have 70gb left for storage. People keep bringing up the whole "bloated" issue, but I've yet to see how Vista is bloated when loaded on a current computer versus when XP was released on then-current computer hardware.

Maybe you should do more reading and less looking at the pictures? It isn't even based on the same kernel anymore. WDDM (D3D10) is enough to write a book on; the new way it handles audio streams could be similarly long. The entirely new network stack and kernel level interface with TOE/RSS/RDMA functions take up about 100 pages in their whitepaper form and is incredibly different than what we have now. Native support for IA32/IA64/x86-64 architectures versus some tacked-on BS with XP is also incredibly different. Even the entirely new driver interface is WORLDS better in terms of performance, stability and functionality than the NT5.x kernel. To someone who just looks at the screenshots, you might somehow say "well, you can do that with XP." The reality is, no you can't. You can't have sub-0.5ms response times from any audio streams let alone ones processed in full 32-bit floating point format. You can't virtualize video ram and send "multithreaded" apps to GPU functional resources. You can't use TCPOE technology nor receive side scaling on your network interface, the list can go on for miles. What is all that crap I just spewed and why is any of that important? Maybe you should go read a bit I've mentioned it before on this forum elsewhere, and I'm going to reiterate it here. Vista will be the single biggest leap into new OS technology that Microsoft has ever undertaken. And yeah, it's going to soak up more resources because of the new features. A Kia Rio can haul you back and forth to work daily without issue. A BMW 745iL can haul you back and forth to work daily without issue. Why might someone buy a BMW over a Kia? Why might someone buy Vista over XP?

Windows 95 used far more resources than Windows for Workgroups 3.11... Why did anyone upgrade? Windows 2000 used far more resources than Windows 98SE... Why did anyone upgrade? Windows XP / MCE used a bit more resources than Windows 2000... Why did anyone upgrade? Notice a trend? We don't use Windows 3.11 anymore because we wanted our new hardware to "plug and play", we wanted support for bigger drives, we wanted a 32-bit operating system and not a 32-bit tack-on (Win32 for Win3.0 anyone?) We wanted better memory management, etc. Did we get all of that with Windows 95? Fundamentally, yes we did. Did it actually solve all our problems? Not really. Did we still end up using more CPU, more memory, and buying more hardware to support it all? Yup. We don't use Win9x anymore because we wanted better plug-n-play support, true USB functionality, a more stable kernel, support for even bigger drives, better security features, and oh yes better resource management. Did we get all of that with Win2000? Fundamentally, yes we did. Did it actually solve all our problems? Not really. Did we still end up using more CPU, more memory, and buying more hardware to support it all? Yup. We're moving away from 2000/XP because we need true 64-bit support and not some slapped-on extended version. We want even better security, we want our plug-n-play features to be really stinking easy, we want self-healing operating systems, we want better performance out of the hardware we're buying, we want a more stable kernel, and we want extensibility for future improvements to the OS. Are we getting all of that with Vista? Fundamentally, yes we are. Is it going to solve all our problems... Duh, of course not. Are we still gonna end up using more CPU, more memory, and buying more hardware to support it all? Yup. We'll move away from Vista and do something else by the beginning of the next decade. And you know what? It will need more CPU, it will need more memory, and probably will need some newer hardware to make it all work. That's life.

I'd say it was nice knowing you, but... g'bye!

Aha, that was indeed the problem. Anyone who is wanting to integrate this fix into their PE image, make sure you do the following: Integrate the SNP update into your raw OS files Edit the PE ODK extra.inf file, insert the following: [ExtraFiles] ; ; Following files were added for SNP support ; afd.sys=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,4 w03a2409.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 wshtcpip.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 ; ; Following files were added for NetSH support ; netsh.exe=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 ipv6mon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 ipmontr.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 ifmon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 ippromon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 rasmontr.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 rpcnsh.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 dhcpmon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 winsmon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 aaaamon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 hnetmon.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 fwcfg.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 nshipsec.dll=1,,,,,,,,0,0,,1,2 Edit the PE ODK file Hivesys.inf, insert the following: [AddReg] ; ; TCP settings for TOE/RSS/TCPA offload functionality ; HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters","EnableTCPChimney",0x00010001,0x1 HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters","EnableRSS",0x00010001,0x1 HKLM,"SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters","EnableTCPA",0x00010001,0x1 That should do it. The NetSH pieces from the extra.inf are optional, but I chose to keep them because I can enable/disable TCP Chimney on the fly just to see how it works. And other functionality provided by NetSH is actually pretty nice; I hadn't been paying enough attention previously.

I think I may have found the problem -- at least two of the necessary DLL files were not copied into the WinPE image. I integrated the package straight into my R2 distribution files, but PE by default didn't copy a few of the updates over. It may also be related to some missing NETSH components. I'm building a new CD that contains all the appropriate DLL files along with all the NetSH components and will report back.

I'm using PE 1.6 based on 2003 R2. The code that's breaking is just a simple WMI query looking for an installed NIC so that I know I can continue. (No nic? Well, then there's no network functions in the menu...) Removing the SNP "fixed" the issue, and also fixed the problem with a blank IPCONFIG too. Makes me wonder... And regarding your performance findings, that's mostly what I would expect. Smaller files aren't going to have the continuous TCP overhead like one big huge hulking file... Since I'm transferring multi-gigabyte ghost images, I'd hope that some performance delta could be seen.

Hey all, About every quarter or so, I re-compile the company PE CD image with code updates, fixes, newer drivers and other new / improved features. For my next release, I'm doing some testing with the Microsoft Scalable Network update, which allows a ton of the TCP stack (more than you're getting with the current OS) to be offloaded to NICs that support the features. In combination with this integrated update, I also went through and downloaded all the newest and bestest Intel and Broadcom NIC drivers for the stuff we use in-house. So I start testing. Works fine under VMWare Workstation 5.5, works fine on one of the Intel Pro/100 chipsets on an older Dell desktop, but my code breaks on a Thinkpad x41 tablet... The break came from a null return value from a WMI query asking which NIC I have installed. Normally a null value means I don't have a nic, but in this case, I know I do. Sure enough, NETSTAT does indeed show I have a Broadcom B57 nic, I have TCP protocol bound, and I have the Microsoft client bound. But IPCONFIG returns a blank, and all the WMI entries are blank too. I downgrade drivers, use known-good drivers, and nothing works. I return to a pre-MS Scalable Network update state and suddenly I'm back in business. **** So I'm curious if anyone else has played with this, and if so, did you get it working? I think the stack offload could help a few of our machines that have the newer NIC's but less-than-stellar processor speeds, especially when performing a Ghost upload (compression soaks up a ton of CPU cycles, reclaiming a few extra from TCP overhead could definitely be a win) The only reason I'm going down this road is because we're using gig links with the standard MTU value of 1500 and downloading images no less than 2gb in size, as well as uploading images in excess of 10gb in size. Obviously there's going to be a lot of TCP overhead in such a scenario, and since changing the MTU value doesn't seem to be an option (don't ask, ugh... ) then I'm looking for some other opportunities. Thanks for reading...

Hmm, interesting... Any numbers you can share? The company I'm working for has specific "imaging networks"; a gigabit switched setup (Cisco 4509) on it's own VLAN, along with it's own high-capacity imaging server (HP DL580, data-only RAID 5 array on five 15k RPM disks, dual-gig loadbalanced link) that we use to pull down Ghost images for all our workstations. Our land speed record up to this point is ~2400mb/min, or about 40mb/sec. Now part of that is CPU overhead for decompressing the Ghost image, but I have to assume we're hitting a bottleneck on the physical disk of the workstation we're imaging (that was actually on an IBM T42 with a 7200RPM disk -- our Dell GX620's don't even go that fast with a 7200RPM SATA drive)

The original problem was WINNT.SIF had to be renamed to TXTSETUP.SIF in order for WinPE to boot correctly. If you're getting a similar error but it only happens on your USB device, it may be a limitation of the firmware or bios on your particular machine. I've had almost zero luck with bootable USB media on IBM / Lenovo Thinkpad laptops, but plenty of luck with our various Dell workstations. Go figure...

Agreed. In fact, I'd be worried about this only if Microsoft was trying to hide it or side-step the issue. The simple fact that they owned up to it and said it was due to a flaw in their operating system is very telling to me, and further reinforces my belief that Vista is going down the proper path.

The 3.x versus 4.x might simply be the "additional featureset" of having 64 bit at hand. I'm guessing of course I wonder how much of the difference is driver immaturity, OS immaturity, or "compatibility degredation". As the betas continue streaming out and drivers continue to improve, the interesting part will be to see if Vista can meet or even exceed XP's gaming performance. In theory, there are a lot of reasons why Vista should perform better than XP in 3D and audio. Obviously that theory isn't being reflected in reality right now, but perhaps later? Dunno...

Microsoft doesn't create patches for third party developer code -- it is up to the individual game coders and engineers to develop the necessary patches and fixes. And while it might be arguable that somehow Microsoft "broke" the game, it might also be arguable that the game code was doing something shoddy that shouldn't have worked in the first place, and Vista is finally "doing it right" and as such making the game code break. There's no real way to tell, and I doubt a developer would come right out and say "Gee, the way we handle memory alloc's was badly programmed and Vista called us on it, so we had to fix it..."

There's probably some confusion around what Intel calls "Highly optimized SW pipeline built into DirectX*", but basically it means that it will work. The actual graphics chip will not be performing those duties, your CPU will... But ultimately, you shouldn't notice the difference because the graphics chip is so stinking slow to begin with Anyway, you should be fine. I've played T&L-required games on old crappy Intel graphics hardware before and it's worked as best as you'd expect for an integrated graphics solution (ie -- turn down the resolution and details and you will be fine)

Can you provide individual details on the three platforms you tested on? (or if its a single platform with drives swapping out, just give us the details on the rest). Here are the parts that would be pertinent: Processor (make, model, current front side bus and processing speeds) Ram (current operating speed and the timings that are being used) Video card (make, model, current speeds, drivers you're using) System board (make, model, BIOS revisions)

Symantec is facing a similar situation with their Symantec Client Security software. All the hooks into the IP stack and other assundry items just don't work anymore; the best you can do is their SAV 7.5 for Vista Beta 2 tool. In fact, only last week did my company get the info for making our SAV-enabled Vista B2 machines integrated into our coporate Symantec Management Console.