Because nobody cares if Vista dies!

Stingray

It booted just fine today and another security update popped up and without thinking twice about it, I rebooted my laptop for the last time. I have all three Windowses XP, Vista and Seven. All three got a security update today and two survived and one died.

Now my question is, what happened and why? Who can I kick in the balls?

Fortunately it was just my gaming rig, but imagine it was a critical system? Nobody cries after a tree that falls in the woods, nobody cares. I didn't even shed a tear. Nobody heard a scream of utter frustratration. Just a sigh... a blank stare. There are half a dozen ways to repair, recover, restore, roll back and none of them do $h1T. Again, who can I kick in the balls? Vista is the OS that never was and that's the reason why I will never install it again.

Biggles

[QUOTE=Stingray;189449]Who can I kick in the balls?[/QUOTE]

Steve Ballmer. It's even in his name.

Vertigo1

It's better to let Vista die, and replace it with 7 instead. :)

WORF

Why do you have three different versions of Windows installed on a single machine?

CurZ

[QUOTE=WORF;189453]Why do you have three different versions of Windows installed on a single machine?[/QUOTE]

He's a masochist.

Stingray

The three Windowses run on three different machines of various ages and degrees of obsolescence. If you work in IT you have to eat, drink and sleep this stuff and suffer. There are things you will only figure out by doing and I'd rather figure it out before rather than later.

Since Vista is not supported, it doesn't really matter but this doesn't change the fact if this had been important. Updates shouldn't mess up your systems this way.

The iphone 4 shouldn't need a jacket. $h1t happens.

Stingray

[QUOTE=Vertigo1;189452]It's better to let Vista die, and replace it with 7 instead. :)[/QUOTE]

Unfortunately I'm stuck with Vista, the critical driver for my video card refuses to run in Windows 7. One of the drawbacks of OEM hardware and drivers.

I've tried everything else, so I guess I'm stuck in Vista hell. :D

I could go back to XP... but I don't feel like it.

A2597

what kind of video card doesn't have drivers for Win7?!

Stingray

Dell? But the dust hasn't settled yet. I may have a hardware problem after all. Vista won't boot once the nVidia drivers are installed either.

Never had that problem before. Perhaps something else broke but I haven't figured out what yet.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone! :D

Vertigo1

You shouldn't be having issues with 7, since both vista and 7 use the same driver model.

As for booting multiple operating systems, why not just run one as a client, and the others [url=http://www.virtualbox.org]as a guest[/url]?

Stingray

Virtualization is great in theory (we use plenty of virtual servers at work) but since this appears to be a hardware problem I wouldn't have any system to work with now. So thank you but no thanks. :)

I don't get it, now it works again... it wouldn't yesterday. It's almost like these things can be stubborn some days.

I wonder for how long though. Weird. Still not sure if it won't run Windows 7. IMHO it's still inconclusive.

Tyvar

A piece of hardware, be it motherboard or PSU is starting to fail. My machine started acting wonky months before it gave up the ghost, and I switched to a backup (and started the quest to upgrade)

Stingray

After doing some more testing I narrowed down the problem to the GPUs.

I'll get the dual video card kit replaced on Monday and then I'll try to get the rig to run on Windows 7 again.

I'm also thinking of switching to mirroring mode on my RAID system. I wonder if mirroring will slow down my gaming experience though?

Biggles

Only if your games are writing huge quantities of data. In general, it should speed up load times, impercetably slow down save times and have no other effect.

Stingray

Ok, I got my GPUs replaced this morning and I'm now running Seven instead of Vista on a mirrored HDD.

My rig is now free of any additional bloatware.

I've jacked up the laptop half an inch over the table top to allow a better air flow to hopefully keep the GPUs from prematurely dying on me again. I'm still not sure it's the GPUs themselves but rather the GPU controller circuit that died on me. What are the odds that both cards die simultaneously?

Anyway, the next question is, which game should I install first? :D

C_Mon

I always install Forged Alliance first. :p

Stingray

No kidding, I dug up my Supreme Commander Gold Edition discs and I intend to install the game first thing tomorrow. Not sure how to go about Forged Alliance. I still have to enjoy the original first. I may need some advice. ;)

Biggles

[QUOTE=Stingray;189490]I'm still not sure it's the GPUs themselves but rather the GPU controller circuit that died on me. What are the odds that both cards die simultaneously?[/QUOTE]

Apply enough heat and the odds get pretty high. ;)

Vertigo1

It doesn't matter if you install Forged Alliance first or not, since it goes to a completely different folder. Supposedly you can just install FA, and join vanilla SC games, but I've never had the chance to test that.

C_Mon

I only install FA and havn't tried if it's possible to join vanilla SC games, but I mostly play with people who only have FA over hamachi as it's faster to set up games than GPGnet.

My GF 8800gts stopped working again, I would throw it in the oven again, but I really need a new GPU so am getting a new one instead.

Vertigo1

Oh man, hamachi is a godsend! Though for those of us running an OS past XP, you need to [url=http://www.descentbb.com/viewtopic.php?t=4089]set it up properly[/url] since they started from scratch, and re-worked how the OS handles network adapters.

AnlaShok

I put Win7 x64 on a SSD and my boot time is 33 seconds, including BIOS POST.

I despise Vista. In fact the firm I work at has decided to skip Vista altogether and upgrade from XP to 7.