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+--Forum: ~ GENERAL CONVERSATION ~
+---Topic: Pwn'ed by Microsoft's Windows Vista started by wilder
Posted by: wilder on May 13 2007,12:17
I'm doing it. Upgrading my environment to Vista.
My main fileserver RAID5 crashed, and I lost almost all my files except for my really important ones. Oh well, Wasn't too bad, but all my movies, music, media files, collection that I dont use gone. It was about 400GB of crap. So, since everything is already lost, nothing to stop me from going to Vista, nothing to backup and worry about.
BUT before really going in, I decided to test it first on another box lying around. I played with Vista on a "test" box, and it went pretty good. The upgrade was pretty simple too. But it also has just 1 IDE HD, with pretty recent (2006) parts. It's one of those uATX mobo with build in video, sound, and nic, using the nvidia nforce4 chipset. Everyone seem to work out of the box. So, I decided to upgrade my "main" box consider my test box was just an Athlon64 754-3200+ with 2GB ram. My box was an X2-4400 with 4GB ram.
... It was NOT as smooth. About 20 hours (10 hr on Fri and 10hr on Saturday) into it, and I still cannot get everything to work. I end up needing to spend more money to get new HD, and Sound card. It couldn't re-use my old SBlive!24bit.
Pain:
1) Vista Business Edition did not support Drive Mirroring or software RAID1. Ugh.
2) Tried to use nvraid for IDE mirroring. Set up RAID1 with the 2x300GB IDE HD I got. Vista still didn't pick up the drive, instead it pick up the 2 independent 300GB drive. Ugh.
3) Bought 2x200 SATA HD -- cost me $100+tax. Put then into a nvraid raid1. I wished Vista Business edition supports software RAID1, I want to avoid hardware RAID for this; because I want to be able to move these 2 drives to any other machine I want, especially when this machine dies on me. I am tempted to try Vista Ultimate to see if it has drive mirroring.
4) My build-in sound card is not compatible. My SB Live! is not compatible. I end up buying an X-Fi USB external for $40+tax, which works for sound.
I still have to get my other peripherals to work. But atleast I worked with my 2x7300GS and 3 monitors.
At about 12 hours into the upgrade, and buying new hardware at bestbuy, I started thinking about that Apple commercial where the "PC" was going into the operating room to get upgraded for Vista and how true it was in my situation. And if after all my "upgrade" if I could have spent enough money to get a Mac.
Remember this is my productivity system, not my gaming system, so I dont have the latest video card here. It's meant to be my workhorse, and be STABLE and support 3-monitor so I can do work.$500 spent just to get the same crap working as I got before under Vista (and not even get a new mobo+cpu+ram), and not completely upgraded and up running...
touche' microsoft, touche'...
Yes. I, WILDER, got pwned by Vista [this weekend].
I *was* hoping everything would just work with what I had, and upgraded both that system AND my gaming system by now. Oh well. Round 2 next week!
Posted by: wilder on May 13 2007,17:34
I did a quick search online, looks like Vista Ultimate does not suport Raid1 either.
Posted by: Guest on May 13 2007,21:17
#### bro.. that's F.U.B.A.R!
Posted by: wilder on May 14 2007,15:39
So far this is what I got to work under VISTA -- hardware/driver wise:
My current config I'm re-using that worked:
* mobo - MSI Neo4 Platinum with NF4 Ultra-SLI chipset
* 2 x 7300GT with 128MB each. Cheap video card to power 3 monitors. Dont need them to be so fast, as I dont play games here. More than enough power for "office" stuff.
* 4GB RAM
Now what I had to get new to work:
- 4 SATA Drives. IDE simply didnt work for hardware raid1. So I got 2 raid1 arrays. 1 for drive C: and 1 for my drive W: (workspace).
- New sound card.
So $500 was spent on the 4 new HDs and new sound card.
Now a got a bunch of old HDs lying around.
Posted by: slatts on May 14 2007,17:27
| Quote (wilder @ May 14 2007,15:39) |
| So far this is what I got to work under VISTA -- hardware/driver wise: My current config I'm re-using that worked: * mobo - MSI Neo4 Platinum with NF4 Ultra-SLI chipset * 2 x 7300GT with 128MB each. Cheap video card to power 3 monitors. Dont need them to be so fast, as I dont play games here. More than enough power for "office" stuff. * 4GB RAM Now what I had to get new to work: - 4 SATA Drives. IDE simply didnt work for hardware raid1. So I got 2 raid1 arrays. 1 for drive C: and 1 for my drive W: (workspace). - New sound card. So $500 was spent on the 4 new HDs and new sound card. Now a got a bunch of old HDs lying around. |
i have the exact same board. was a paint of me.
2X geforce 6600gt 128 meg. 2 gig ram. running Vista Alt.
yes i feeel for ya.. BTW i spent last week DUMPING vista... went to XP-64 bit instead.
for you onboard sound blast i managed to use the XP 64 bit driver for this. gave it a shot had nothing to loose... durring the install it did come up not compatable for some reason i tried to install a second time... same thing but after i rebooted i had sound.. go figure.. i did manage to DL video drivers from web site.. worked fine.. so did the MSI 64 drivers for the board.
all in all i gave vista two thumbs down.
my new prob... can't get my vid cards to run in SLI mode? go figure....
Posted by: slatts on May 14 2007,17:29
oh btw.... my boot drive was a sata. on the raid 1 i had 80 gig and a 40 gig.
with burner and 10 gig HHD on raid 2. under vista.
Posted by: slatts on May 15 2007,23:22
Wilder you will be happy to know that our MSI Neo4 Platinum boards are second on the list for Cert Vista... see for your self... go down to 939 sockets...!
< See Here.. >
Posted by: slatts on May 15 2007,23:24
and i still hate vista... do you want to try Ultmt? i have 9 more keys for 32 and 64 bit...lol
Posted by: wilder on May 16 2007,12:48
holy 9 keys? all legit?
hehehe
my copy is legitate. compusa retail went out of business here, so I bought several copies for 50% off.
Posted by: slatts on May 16 2007,22:15
yep.. legit. sorry made mistake... have 10 keys for 32 bit, and 9 left on the 64 bit... Windows Vista Ultimate RC1. full blowen version. try before you buy.
doesn't expire... but after some time no more updates... thats why the 20 keys... get all your buddies on the Vista band wagon...
Posted by: wilder on May 18 2007,20:46
naw I warn my friends against vista. I finally got Vista someone working. I'm still doing my own certification on it. I cant get adobe reader to be installed. =/ I wonder if it's one of my tweaks.
But so far I got most things working. Even photoshop CS2, Office2007, etc. I still need to test vmware.
Posted by: twistytank on Aug. 16 2007,17:41
I havent heard a single good word about vista
Posted by: wilder on Aug. 25 2007,13:45
I got it running on my gaming system, with practically every feature turned off.
For my workstation, it's nice WHEN you upgrade all your other obsolete and imcompatible hardware to something that actually has native support on it!
It wasnt worth trying to get some old hdw to work. Itune//ipod still does not work well on X64 version of vista.
Posted by: slatts on Aug. 25 2007,16:55
if you want i can up a disk of the 32 bit rc1 with a key for you to test...
Posted by: wilder on Aug. 30 2007,00:23
i have it. I bought the 32bit Vist premium from compusa when they were closing down. Got it for 40% off. Then paid $10 to receive the 64Bit DVD from M$. And installed that. I could fall back to 32bit just to use ipod... but... naa it's not worth it. I need 64bit. --- When you got 4GB of RAM, 32bit doesn't cut it as it can only really address 2GB.
Ipod didnt work with XP X64 either. when everyone hit the 4GB ram out of the box, you practically need to upgrade to 64bit windows. Thats like probably 1 year ahead. Funny thing is, most people wont need 64bit capabilites; except for getting more RAM beyond 2GB.
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