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wilder
SiNFeCted
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 347
Joined: Nov. 2006 |
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Posted: May 13 2007,12:17 |
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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!
Edited by wilder on May 13 2007,12:19
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wilder
SiNFeCted
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 347
Joined: Nov. 2006 |
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Posted: May 13 2007,17:34 |
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I did a quick search online, looks like Vista Ultimate does not suport Raid1 either.
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Posted: May 13 2007,21:17 |
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#### bro.. that's F.U.B.A.R! 
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wilder
SiNFeCted
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 347
Joined: Nov. 2006 |
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Posted: May 14 2007,15:39 |
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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.
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slatts
Overlord
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2509
Joined: June 2003 |
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Posted: May 14 2007,17:27 |
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| 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.... 
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slatts
Overlord
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2509
Joined: June 2003 |
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Posted: May 14 2007,17:29 |
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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.
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slatts
Overlord
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2509
Joined: June 2003 |
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Posted: May 15 2007,23:22 |
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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..
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slatts
Overlord
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2509
Joined: June 2003 |
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Posted: May 15 2007,23:24 |
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and i still hate vista... do you want to try Ultmt? i have 9 more keys for 32 and 64 bit...lol
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wilder
SiNFeCted
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 347
Joined: Nov. 2006 |
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Posted: May 16 2007,12:48 |
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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.
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slatts
Overlord
Group: Super Administrators
Posts: 2509
Joined: June 2003 |
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Posted: May 16 2007,22:15 |
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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... 
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