Vista?

All I can say is that, in hindsight, I wish I would have gotten my new computer last month with XP rather than Vista. I'm not a technical expert however.

I remember having this problem when I upgraded to XP, a techy friend of mine told me about it - OEM versions of Windows XP are "meant" to be installed on the pristine hard disks of new computers, so they behave weirdly if there are already partitions on the disk. There was a way around it.. but I've forgotten what it was *sorry* I'll ask him and repost here.

A lot of advice gets out of date real fast. Several issues here:

- I am now running SL on Vista 64-bit Business: after a few weeks of Vista Updates coming in from MS, and putting on the proper vendor graphics drivers, this is fine. I conclude that most likely, while Vista was busted on first release, it's got better fast and is now reasonably usable.

- the best way to downgrade a Vista machine is to buy a new hard disk, as well as your copy of XP. Disks are cheap these days - sure, they used to be $200, but nw they are closer to $50, and pretty much all machines whether laptop or dekstop can be taken apart and the drive removed. That way, you can preserve the whole Vista setup in it's entirely, and start with a known clean slate for the XP install. Then, when Vista gets better, you just slot the original drive back in.

(though I think Vista is OK now, really)

Vista seems to be working great at this time with the viewer. I updated my ATI graphic card with the new 7.3 version and it has worked well. The system froze about 2 times but i was able to unfreeze it without restarting. The second hard drive is a good idea.

My new computer has vista. SL works as well as it ever did on my old one.

last point: IF you have a DESKTOP computer (not a laptop) AND you went for my idea about a second drive, THEN when you finally get to run it in Vista, try to leave the second drive in the machine. I connect them on the spare IDE connector to the CD drive - most desktops have enough room inside for this, and spare power too, and almost all CD drives and hard disks come in "cable select" mode, which basically means "it will just work".

With two drives set up like this, you can use the SL client preferences to put your SL cache directory on that other drive letter you can now see. This means the system can multi-stream data to and fro much quicker. Vista istself makes use of other drives it finds in the system, including a feature whereby it detects compatible flash drives and uses them as an accellerator, so this is all win-win stuff...!

Ok I have my 2 hour old computer before me and it makes popping noises while playing music from the internet or music from SL but ONLY when SL is up on the screen. I'm dumbfounded! Any idea what is causing that??

I just bought a brand new laptop with Vista Home and an ATI card, and I crash out before I even get to the login screen... any ideas?

Take it back and get another one, seriously.

Read all the threads in the tech forum regarding Vista and ATI, particularily laptops with Vista and ATI and you will see what I mean.

ok, people say "take it back" if you have boughten a computer with an ATI graphics card..but i have read this whole forum and some people infact DO get their ATI card to work..i just purchased a laptop today, heres the specs..its a Gateway.

AMD Turion 64 X2, 1.6GHz, 1024MB DDR2, ATI Radeon Xpress 1150M w/up to 256 MB of hypermemory.

I unfortunately DONT have the funds to just take back the computer and upgrade the card.. i have went to the ati.amd drivers site and uploaded the drivers (catalyst)...any links or suggestions to get this thing to work?

any help is appreciated..i now know that my card sucks for sl, but it seems that some people are having some luck, how can i get some too?

and if there is really NO way..what card should i get and how much does one run?

Yes some people, very few, and I don't think anyone with ATI Mobility chips.

Why can't you take it back, seriously, walk back into the store, say hey, this does not suit my needs and does not work as advertised, give me my money back. Pick out another one that had a nVidia video chipset, and if they don't have one in your price range, go to another store. You are the consumer, you have the power, don't forget that.

The last laptop I saw with ATI graphics (was windows XP though) worked fine with SL. Up until it was killed by apple juice and replaced with an nvidia based one

You'd think they'd fix things so they work, really.

That is great and all unless you have laptop where generally exchanging vid cards is not an option...I have a 3 gig...256 vid card machine running vista premium and am getting the same results you got and this just started happening with the 1.14 update.

Meh...@#$@!

I've just added vista to my dell dimension 4700 (2.8Ghz 1GB RAM nVidia 7600) and once i got the latest drivers for the nVidia, SL works fine

My system multiboots to Vista Business N, XP pro and PC Linux OS 2007 and SL works well under all three O/S

As to the comments about M$ ending support for XP already, mainstream support is due to end in April 2009 and support for the forthcoming SP3 will last until 2010. Extended support will last until 2014 and support for any service packs will last for 2 years after the next SP is relased.

Support for Windows 98 SE only ended in 2006, M$ may be money grabbing but they are not stupid. Many businesses dont have the capital to invest in replacing XP right now, so as their equipment ages and is replaced, Vista will slowly invade the business place. M$ cannot afford to risk losing market share to linux, now that Red Hat and Suse are both big players and many newer flavours are easy for windows users to switch to...

Shopping for a new laptop, here's first find-
Inspiron E1705, Intel Core 2 Duo processor T5300 (2MB/1.73GHz/533MHz)
1 17 inch TrueLife Wide-screen
1 2GB, DDR2, 533MHz 2 Dimm
1 256MB NVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS
1 160GB 5400RPM SATA HARD DRIVE
1 Microsoft Windows Vista Home Premium Edition

where can i afford to skimp? Is 1.7 too small? is the 7900 Nvidia the way to go?
thx for any suggestions

1.7 is plenty fast with core duo and with that much ram you'll be flying. The vid card also seems well above what is needed and so that is good...if anything id say you can skimp on the HD...160 is a good bit and unless you have tons of stuff you need on there that can be excessive...also if you found you ever needed more memory you can buy to add on...30-80gig should be plenty and that would save you money...the vista home premium is good, not their highest but not their lowest, would be hard to save much there unless you went with XP which I might even say would be a good thing having a similar setup to what you are mentioning.

vista gives me all kinds of grief...lots of random crashes, sl says they offically dont support vista. i know for a fact xp works well with those specs so that is another way to save money. one other thing i would consider is screen size. if you can get away with 15.4" screen vs a 17" that would save you money and you wouldnt really notice ton of difference with sl viewing.

hope this helps.

Hi everyone; thought I'd throw my newbie-ish two cents in here, after scanning this thread: I have a brand new Dell, Core 2 duo, 2gb's ram, 7900GTS nVidia, Vista home premium ed, blah, blah, etc, etc.....

Anyway, for the first 3-4 days, I'd be lucky to go for 15 minutes w/o crashing..... >.< ; this got old fast! After looking around the SL forums and then just going to Google, it seems that if you have a new computer (Core2 duo, or whatever AMD has that is dual core) that you need to set the Affinity to run SL on one core. For some reason, this solves the problem, for me anyway, but wanted to let you folks with new comp's know that all is not lost.

The procedure is to launch SL, then before log-in, go to the Task Manager and right-click the Second Life client, click the Affinity tab and select only one of the cores (I personally think that Vista is schizophrenic, or, maybe it's my computer... LOL).

Hopes this helps......see you all later,
Judi

That's peculiar. I'm a dual processor perv - had 'em since the P90 - and never seen SL crashes I could positively assign to either dual processing or hyperthreading.

Re the laptop spec posted above: I posted elsewhere about the excellent SL performance I got out of my Thinkpad Z60, which - on paper - is way, way slower than that Dell. In particular, the Thinkpad has Intel Extreme graphics, which use shared sysem RAM and are in most other ways, "not well regarded" shall we say. Nonetheless, under XP, it ran like a trooper.

To stick to the point of the thread; I've not yet tried a Vista laptop, and I'm not sure I see the point of such a thing.

thx Calix, i'm planning on running with XP if at all possible now!

Because sometimes that's the version of windows on offer. For the record, my vista laptop runs SL fine*

*as fine as SL ever runs on anything.

Hi, I am running Vista on my new laptop and it seems to run fine. After reading alot of posts here about ATI cards and the problems, I decided to get the NVIDIA Gforce GO 7300. Once I updated the drivers for it, SL runs great.
Hope that helps anyone with their choice until ATI and SL can get sorted

I have an HP laptop, Intel dual core, 2GB RAM, 1.83GHz, NVIDIA GEforce GO 7400 video... it's running SL just fine on Vista, no problems at all beyond the usual ones that everyone has anyway , and I am running both cores.

I hate Vista though... I'd have stayed with XP if it didn't come installed on this laptop. But just saying, not everyone is having problems running SL under Vista or dual core.

I have a Sony vaio laptop, I am running Vista as it came installed on it my specs are:

Intel core 2 Duo processor, T5500 @ 1.66GHz
1 GB Ram, (2 x512) My computer properties says 1022MB
Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce Go, 7400 GPU

Sl runs just fine for me, though when there is a lag at peak times, I do get that! lol

I hope that may help someone

I wish. I am running vista and cannot even get the start screen for Second Life to start. When it does the initial hardware detection schtick, it erroneously produces an error message instead stating:

Driver components mis-match. Exit is the only option.

Nice. Real friggin nice. I don't care what SL thinks, I want to FORCE the damn program to run. There is NO mismatch anything on my system. Just the latest/greatest Nvidia driver, thank you.

Anyone see this nonsense issue and have a fix?

I found someone in another threard who's fixed my SL/Vista compatibility problem. I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 with an ATI Radeon X1300 video card (have downloaded the lastest driver which include an OpenGL), and I'm running fine now (compared to crashing before the login screen before). The thread is titled "Ati - Vista - OpenGL drivers out" and this is what I found--

Post # 279 (page 19) from Lockhart Cordoso:

" VistaSL 1.15.0.2: http://www.noxforum.net/files/Secon...0-2%20Setup.exe

I switched over to the installer files that Linden includes with the sources. This means that the program will install as if it were the official version. So I suggest that you uninstall the official version if you plan on using this version. Shortcuts will no longer be VistaSL but just Second Life. If you have any questions, IM me in-game or post here. "

Maybe this will help some of you Vista people, too!