Is Vista a lost cause on modern hardware?

[burd]

Just now, 11ryanc said:

How I feel reading this thread right now

 

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[98SE]

2 hours ago, 11ryanc said:

 

 

First off I'm hoping based on the flags we are all American and speak English fluently.  So maybe there's a miscommunication on how you troubleshoot vs my old school style.

But second if you're pointing to any graphics card that is Maxwell based even this is way beyond what you would need for every day tasks which is why when you're mentioning higher end 900 series graphics that implies you have more interest in gaming.  There was supposed to be a Maxwell 930 that never got released.  This card would have been 15 Watts and capable of Vista and the perfect single slot fanless HTPC graphics card in existence.  Instead they released the Pascal 1000 series and dropped XP and Vista drivers.  So I would actually have recommended the GT 930 had it existed and that would have been released in 2016.

http://wccftech.com/nvidia-geforce-gt-930-launch-q1-2016-maxwell-kepler-fermi/

The AMD Radeon HD 6450 series I mentioned isn't a gaming video card but does the job of running Vista desktop duties just fine which is the reason I brought it up because it's cheap and still available.  It's a little more powerful than the Intel HD Graphics 4000 found in the Ivy Bridge CPU.  It's not about when it was released but what has been tested by myself without problems and I've probably built and installed more XP and Vista systems than you on a variety of hardware.  But if you're not trying to isolate the problem and aren't into testing things to death like myself since I'm not there testing your hardware it's not so simple to conclude what's the culprit.

I've been building machines based when the 8088 and floppy disks were considered expensive so if you want to trust just your own troubleshooting skills to make a definitive conclusion that's your prerogative.  I can only conclude from my own experience building PCs that Vista 64-bit Ultimate SP2 DX11 works on SkyLake Z170 and if it doesn't on yours then any number of differences between our systems can be the source of the problems.

As for the GPUs I tend to stick to the fanless models when possible and the Strix 960 would be at the upper end with half fanless mode.  And if it takes a single slot instead of hogging two or three than I can use other empty slots for add on cards.   The fastest dual socket GPUs doesn't always equate to long term stability.  If you judge a GPU because of age then you're not into longevity of a system.  If you're into upgrading graphics card just to have the best then we are at different ends of the spectrum.  I've tested each generation including the GTX 1050Ti so no I don't only use 2011 GPUs only.  I don't want or need dual jet engines in SLI blowing and making noise or collecting dust inside my computer chassis.  If you examine some of my Ivy Bridge systems there is still no dust in the entire system and the motherboard looks brand spanking new.

You're welcome to continue using high end GPUs you paid for but anything above nVidia GT 730 is beyond the needs of what Vista requires and any card above the AMD Radeon HD 6450 is the equivalent.  Mid level gaming kicks in around GTX 750 Maxwell so anything like GTX 950 as you stated owning is already capable of gaming at mid range settings.  GTX 960 and  up would be geared to high level detail.  I do plan on getting a GTX Titan X when the price of that sucker drops to $300 or less for some retro XP / Vista PC in a decade.  It would be nice to see how well games perform on this monstrosity.

2008WV?  I'm not sure what you meant here.   I don't deal with the Server editions at all 2K3. 2K8, or 2K12 if that's what you were referring to there I can't comment on the stability on those OSs but if they're server class they "should" be more stable.   I usually install DOS, 98SE, XP, Vista, Windows 7 and 10 on each build to cover all the major OS bases and test them out.  Now if Quick Launch / Clear Desktop can be correctly adapted to Windows 7 like in Vista I would probably consider dropping Vista from test builds entirely and save me another partition of space.

Edited October 6, 2017 by 98SE

[burd]

9 minutes ago, 98SE said:

 

 

You're welcome to continue using high end GPUs you paid for but anything above nVidia GT 730 is beyond the needs of what Vista requires and any card above the AMD Radeon HD 6450 is the equivalent.  Mid level gaming kicks in around GTX 750 Maxwell so anything like GTX 950 as you stated owning is already capable of gaming at mid range settings.  GTX 960 and  up would be geared to high level detail.

 

you said this sentence 2 times was this a mistake or on purpose to point it out a second time?

[11ryanc]

3 minutes ago, 98SE said:

First off I'm hoping based on the flags we are all American and speak English fluently.  So maybe there's a miscommunication on how you troubleshoot vs my old school style.

You do realize there are nearly 65 million people that don't speak English in the United States, right?

Creative differences aside, I wish you the best of luck in your testing.

[98SE]

1 hour ago, burd said:

you said this sentence 2 times was this a mistake or on purpose to point it out a second time?

You caught my post mid editing.

I tried pasting a link which ended up duplicating everything and I tend to backup my compositions in case the browser crashes I won't have to retype everything again.  So any finished post you'll have to wait 10 minutes or so before I'm done.

There's only so much of the composition screen you can see at once so when it double posted I had to read / update, remove the duplicate portion, repeat.

If I typed shorter sentences like you then this wouldn't happen.

 

Edited October 6, 2017 by 98SE

[xpclient]

Vista doesn't support automatic TRIM for SSDs in its storage driver. Also its DWM is very memory-inefficient compared to Windows 7/8/10's. No support for Bluetooth Low Energy either or NVM Express or USB 3.0. Or proper DPI scaling. Or WiFi Direct. Or USB attached SCSI. So yes it's a lost cause on modern hardware.

[98SE]

1 hour ago, 11ryanc said:

You do realize there are nearly 65 million people that don't speak English in the United States, right?

Creative differences aside, I wish you the best of luck in your testing.

I'm assuming you're talking about non U.S. Citizens?  Naturalized citizens have to learn English unless they allowed citizenship through interpreters. 

Looks like they do.

https://www.uscis.gov/ilink/docView/AFM/HTML/AFM/0-0-0-1/0-0-0-2449/0-0-0-2798.html

Are you saying you had a language barrier understanding what I wrote?

It will probably be the last barrage of tests, I hope you give my suggestions a shot.  Maybe it'll resolve your problem or you pinpoint the problem.  If all else fails for you then time to find that old Ivy Bridge X79 which could still run Vista properly and have more than 4 cores.

[WinClient5270]

1 minute ago, xpclient said:

Vista doesn't support automatic TRIM for SSDs in its storage driver. Also its DWM is very memory-inefficient compared to Windows 7/8/10's. No support for Bluetooth Low Energy either or NVM Express or USB 3.0. Or proper DPI scaling. Or WiFi Direct. Or USB attached SCSI. So yes it's a lost cause on modern hardware.

I'd have to disagree in regards to DWM, at least somewhat. Vista's window animations are much smoother than those of Windows 7 (7's are quite choppy; Vista's are buttery smooth). The only difference I can find is that Vista uses Direct3D 9 to render its window animations whereas Windows 7 uses Direct3D 11, so maybe this caused a decrease in performance?

Whatever the issue is, it doesn't exist in Windows 8.x (one of the many things I like about 8.x over 7); animations there are buttery smooth once again. As for the other issues you mentioned, they're also applicable to Windows 7 but the biggest difference is that Windows 7 at least is provided drivers for most modern hardware, whereas Vista is not. It largely depends on your needs, and if you need those things you're better off using Windows 8.1 anyway imo.

[98SE]

2 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

Gaming??? I never said anything about gaming! Where are you getting this from?

Burd uses Skylake and experiences the error too. He claims that he doesn't experience it as often but he does experience it.

I don't know what else to tell you, so I think I'm just going to end it here. If Vista works for you, enjoy. I really don't know how else to explain it to you. I strongly believe that my conclusion is fact and I have more than enough people to back me up.
Perhaps this will help you to understand, it's a last ditch effort on my part (all of these have been tested. Not all by me, but by other users. The error occurs on all of them regardless of ANY SORT of tweaking, hardware combinations, drivers, or updates.):

Vista+Ivy Bridge= ✔

Vista+Haswell/Broadwell= ✘

Vista+Skylake=✘

Vista+Kaby Lake= ✘

Understand?

The = Icon I'm not seeing anything but two numbers above two numbers in a domino.

You might need to spell it out or is that a picture of something?

But anything Haswell/Broadwell you can eliminate since I haven't tested that and for good reason.

The last Two SkyLake and Kaby Lake you'd have to get their entire hardware configuration and OS configuration and detail it so I can examine what they used in their test.

Unless you have a particular game title that has a demo version to download and test that constantly crashes or has problems I'll test it out on my system when I get a chance to see if it occurs.  That's the best I can do unless they had the exact same hardware and software and method used to install everything I can't say for certain it's conclusive.

If there were 1000 people with my exact same hardware build and OS version I used and the same exact problem for 90% of them I would be more inclined to believe the result is conclusive and even give it a test myself to confirm and add to the tally.

But how many users total are we talking about here realistically with Vista issues on Z170 and Z270 and using Vista 64-Bit Ultimate SP2 with DX 11.0?

Narrow that list down first.

But if Vista isn't really a necessity and Windows 7 64-Bit Ultimate SP1 works fine on the same exact system just move on would be my suggestion even though I think Vista is a great but I also thought the same of Windows 2000 until XP gained favor just like 7 has.  The same thing happening to Vista has happened to 2000.

And now that Windows 10 is trying hard to dominate over Windows 7 I would concentrate my efforts to keep Windows 7 64-bit SP1 staying alive as long as possible to avoid a Windows 10 dominance.  If no one cares about DX11 we will be seeing Windows 7 64-Bit alive in 2029 which I hope puts a dagger in Microsoft's back.

[98SE]

2 hours ago, 11ryanc said:

How I feel reading this thread right now

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It looks like your profile states:

Windows 7 x64

as your OS so you can save your brain and avoid this Vista thread.

Looks like Vista disappeared off the pie chart.  I remember it still had a few percentage inkling a few years ago.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0

0.43% share.

Windows XP is hanging in at 4th 5.69% and will probably outlive barely 3rd place Windows 8.1 as that one starts dropping.

 

Flashback the good days 2 years ago when XP was in 2nd place beating Windows 8.1, 10 and every MAC OS X version.

https://www.netmarketshare.com/operating-system-market-share.aspx?qprid=10&qpcustomd=0&qpsp=201&qpnp=1&qptimeframe=M

As long as we're all not using Windows 10 here the goal is served.

Edited October 6, 2017 by 98SE

[burd]

 

45 minutes ago, 98SE said:

The = Icon I'm not seeing anything but two numbers above two numbers in a domino.

You might need to spell it out or is that a picture of something?

But anything Haswell/Broadwell you can eliminate since I haven't tested that and for good reason.

The last Two SkyLake and Kaby Lake you'd have to get their entire hardware configuration and OS configuration and detail it so I can examine what they used in their test.

Unless you have a particular game title that has a demo version to download and test that constantly crashes or has problems I'll test it out on my system when I get a chance to see if it occurs.  That's the best I can do unless they had the exact same hardware and software and method used to install everything I can't say for certain it's conclusive.

If there were 1000 people with my exact same hardware build and OS version I used and the same exact problem for 90% of them I would be more inclined to believe the result is conclusive and even give it a test myself to confirm and add to the tally.

But how many users total are we talking about here realistically with Vista issues on Z170 and Z270 and using Vista 64-Bit Ultimate SP2 with DX 11.0?

Narrow that list down first.

But if Vista isn't really a necessity and Windows 7 64-Bit Ultimate SP1 works fine on the same exact system just move on would be my suggestion even though I think Vista is a great but I also thought the same of Windows 2000 until XP gained favor just like 7 has.  The same thing happening to Vista has happened to 2000.

And now that Windows 10 is trying hard to dominate over Windows 7 I would concentrate my efforts to keep Windows 7 64-bit SP1 staying alive as long as possible to avoid a Windows 10 dominance.  If no one cares about DX11 we will be seeing Windows 7 64-Bit alive in 2029 which I hope puts a dagger in Microsoft's back.

How about you give us some hope porting win7 drivers would be really kind and generous of you(ofcouse if possible),i think many people would want to return to vista if drivers would work
eg. gfx,usb network cards?

Edited October 6, 2017 by burd

[98SE]

1 hour ago, burd said:

 

How about you give us some hope porting win7 drivers would be really kind and generous of you(ofcouse if possible),i think many people would want to return to vista if drivers would work
eg. gfx,usb network cards?

Not that you should rely on me as what you guys did would be similar to what I would be doing.  It's just a lot of work comparing driver files and then testing them.  But I understand a little more now how driver files are structured so I do a lot of trimming down of the actual file so it's much easier to digest and analyze.  If you examine enough driver files you'll see a pattern.  A lot of sh!t inside the driver files are just copying the same code over and over and altering a few characters here and there.  Once you recognize the pattern you can trim it down to its basic structure then do some testing of what driver files are essential for it to work properly.

As an example if you look closely at the nVidia drivers there's a bunch of duplicate unnecessary language files.  If you can recognize which are not English versions of the same file you can modify it so it's all English based and reduce the amount of clutter.  Intel and AMD also have the same problem.

I tested a few legacy 2000 and XP drivers and had some success on some newer graphics cards but not all newer graphics cards will work with really old drivers.  So you're basically like Edison trying every driver and mod change to see what happens.  It helps if you can image a clean state of your OS before testing so you always start with a clean OS that won't revert back to a previously installed driver.

Anyhow it's very boring stuff and you'd be just as bored.  Not to dissuade you but anyone with an unlimited amount of time and persistence could probably figure it out eventually.  How many filaments did Edison test before he found the right one for a light bulb.  This is exactly how this feels as you don't know if you'll ever find it.

The Windows 7 to Vista driver ports are going to be harder to do.  Someone like Dibya would probably have a better grasp of that than me since he uses the right tools but both him and I are totally exhausted and he's the young one so that should tell you something.   I was only working on trying to get XP drivers to work in Windows 2000 by comparing them but it consumes so much time and most often the end result is another failure.  So this process can be quite demoralizing.

Edited October 6, 2017 by 98SE

[xpclient]

4 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

I'd have to disagree in regards to DWM, at least somewhat. Vista's window animations are much smoother than those of Windows 7 (7's are quite choppy; Vista's are buttery smooth). The only difference I can find is that Vista uses Direct3D 9 to render its window animations whereas Windows 7 uses Direct3D 11, so maybe this caused a decrease in performance?

Whatever the issue is, it doesn't exist in Windows 8.x (one of the many things I like about 8.x over 7); animations there are buttery smooth once again. As for the other issues you mentioned, they're also applicable to Windows 7 but the biggest difference is that Windows 7 at least is provided drivers for most modern hardware, whereas Vista is not. It largely depends on your needs, and if you need those things you're better off using Windows 8.1 anyway imo.

Don't get me wrong. I love Vista for its innovations and it's far better than Windows 10!  I think the animation smoothness might just be an internal setting? that you can't control - they tweaked the animation speed in 7 and again in 8. I remember they were smoother in Vista (especially noticeable when minimizing windows) but it's such a minor thing. My eyes aren't sharp enough to notice any differences between 7 and 8.1's animation smoothness, but now that you mention it, I'll check this when I reboot to 7. 

But Vista's DWM does consume more memory (read the Reduced Memory Footprint section of this article: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/e7/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-graphics-performance/). And Windows 7 does support TRIM making use of SSDs possible without the SSD's performance reducing over time.

Edited October 6, 2017 by xpclient

[burd]

3 hours ago, 98SE said:

Not that you should rely on me as what you guys did would be similar to what I would be doing.  It's just a lot of work comparing driver files and then testing them.  But I understand a little more now how driver files are structured so I do a lot of trimming down of the actual file so it's much easier to digest and analyze.  If you examine enough driver files you'll see a pattern.  A lot of sh!t inside the driver files are just copying the same code over and over and altering a few characters here and there.  Once you recognize the pattern you can trim it down to its basic structure then do some testing of what driver files are essential for it to work properly.

As an example if you look closely at the nVidia drivers there's a bunch of duplicate unnecessary language files.  If you can recognize which are not English versions of the same file you can modify it so it's all English based and reduce the amount of clutter.  Intel and AMD also have the same problem.

I tested a few legacy 2000 and XP drivers and had some success on some newer graphics cards but not all newer graphics cards will work with really old drivers.  So you're basically like Edison trying every driver and mod change to see what happens.  It helps if you can image a clean state of your OS before testing so you always start with a clean OS that won't revert back to a previously installed driver.

Anyhow it's very boring stuff and you'd be just as bored.  Not to dissuade you but anyone with an unlimited amount of time and persistence could probably figure it out eventually.  How many filaments did Edison test before he found the right one for a light bulb.  This is exactly how this feels as you don't know if you'll ever find it.

The Windows 7 to Vista driver ports are going to be harder to do.  Someone like Dibya would probably have a better grasp of that than me since he uses the right tools but both him and I are totally exhausted and he's the young one so that should tell you something.   I was only working on trying to get XP drivers to work in Windows 2000 by comparing them but it consumes so much time and most often the end result is another failure.  So this process can be quite demoralizing.

Idk man,Dibya doesnt seem interested so it comes down to the other guys like you and few others who have some knowledge unlike people like me

[Dibya]

5 hours ago, 2008WindowsVista said:

I'd have to disagree in regards to DWM, at least somewhat. Vista's window animations are much smoother than those of Windows 7 (7's are quite choppy; Vista's are buttery smooth). The only difference I can find is that Vista uses Direct3D 9 to render its window animations whereas Windows 7 uses Direct3D 11, so maybe this caused a decrease in performance?

Whatever the issue is, it doesn't exist in Windows 8.x (one of the many things I like about 8.x over 7); animations there are buttery smooth once again. As for the other issues you mentioned, they're also applicable to Windows 7 but the biggest difference is that Windows 7 at least is provided drivers for most modern hardware, whereas Vista is not. It largely depends on your needs, and if you need those things you're better off using Windows 8.1 anyway imo.

Dx9 is far faster than dx11 regards of performance . Donot believe? Do some benchmark 

1 hour ago, xpclient said:

Don't get me wrong. I love Vista for its innovations and it's far better than Windows 10!  I think the animation smoothness might just be an internal setting? that you can't control - they tweaked the animation speed in 7 and again in 8. I remember they were smoother in Vista (especially noticeable when minimizing windows) but it's such a minor thing. My eyes aren't sharp enough to notice any differences between 7 and 8.1's animation smoothness, but now that you mention it, I'll check this when I reboot to 7. 

But Vista's DWM does consume more memory (read the Reduced Memory Footprint section of this article: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/e7/2009/04/25/engineering-windows-7-graphics-performance/). And Windows 7 does support TRIM making use of SSDs possible without the SSD's performance reducing over time.

You believe on stupid words of ms. Anyway modern ssd do trim at their chipset level so no need of such stupid features anymore.  After one year when I ran trim command on my ssd how long it has run? Any one can guess.  Less than 10 second yes man I am not joking.