Windows Vista questions

[[AK]Abaddon]

I am on the verge of upgrading to Windows Vista from XP Pro, so that I can have DirectX 10 and be set to play the latest games.

I primarily use my computer for gaming (no surprise there). It is a Core Due 6600 with 2 Gb of memory and an 8800 GTS video card. Given the use and system specs, should I upgrade to Vista 64 or Vista 32?

[[AK]Rocks]

Vista 32,,, Driver support for 64 bits is less than ready (still). 2 cents. I have been running 32 bits since the day its has come out and BIOshock and DX10 is awesome.

[[AK]Mydrial]

I agree with Rocks.......driver support for the 32 bit version is much better currently. when I bought my Dell it was really the only choice I had....since I would have preffered WinXP over Vista, only because I feel it is still pretty buggy....lots of random unexplainable lockups.

But so goes the public retail BETA test of any Microsoft product. In a year or so I'm sure it will be much more stable after the first service pack or 2.

I do have and play Company of Heroes and have downloaded the DX10 patch for the game and find it to play well on the highest settings. I was however disappointed that allot of my older(read: over one year) games, such as Empire Earth, Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, Riven, Obsidian, and a couple others that I really liked wouldn't play at all or had very unpredictable playability. Unfortunately one of my all time favorite games just wont play.....System Shock2 (makes me sad in the pants)

However games that do work are pretty awesome!! FEAR & FEAR:Extraction Point, Company of Heroes, Star Wars Jedi Knight, Star Wars Empires at War, Age Of Empires(all flavors), DOOM3, and QUAKE4 all seem to work awesome.

It is sweet to be able to turn everything up to the max on every graphic and sound setting and still run at 60 FPS or higher :P

If you have any other questions let me know. I have been using Vista Home Professional now for about 3-4 months and have figured out some of the quirks and changes.

Overall I think you will be happy as long as you don't mind having to Allow or Deny every thing that you start, create, or want to change. That gets old.

Myd

[[AK]Abaddon]

Thanks guys. I will be buying Vista sometime soon :-).

[[AK]Rocks]

Ahh the dreaded UAC ... I turned it off the first day..

[[AK]Bribo]

If it aint broke don't fix it! Long live XP!

[[AK]Hylander]

DX10 is the only reason I can think of to upgrade to VISTA. I'm not sure that is compelling enough. Microsoft claims they are dedicated to gaming on the PC yet black out 95% of the gamers by not making DX10 available on XP.

Between this and crap like the securerom/drm crap... Mac & Console gaming sure look appealing. (Shut up Stitch!)

To be honest, I have played no game on the PC since I stopped playing WoW. Other than trying to get HL2 Episode 1 to run on my PC, I haven't purchased or attempted to play anything. Not having the itch for any of sure is nicer on the wallet... but I'm sure once fall / winter set in, I'll probably be looking for something. The question is, will it be a 360 system and games or PC based?

[Slaughter]

Ahh the dreaded UAC ... I turned it off the first day..

Hated it, took less than 1 minute to turn it off though.

[[AK]Mydrial]

Hi All,

Unfortunately some of us have family that all to often hoses a computer because they install all matter of scary crap.....UAC can have a useful purpose, and can be used at different levels of functionality. This is for Abbadon since not everyone is into computers neck deep.....enjoy Ab :-) Hope this helps clarify what the guys are talking about.

For the vast majority of users, UAC will offer a valuable level of security protection that will protect against malware: it simply won't have the rights to perform invasive actions like installing device drivers or services. Once a system is configured, you'll rarely see UAC prompts unless you're an inveterate settings tweaker. Incidentally, you can find out a great deal more about how UAC works, what you need to do to your own applications so that they co-operate well with UAC, and the rationale for its design at the official UAC blog.

It is possible to switch UAC off. I really don't recommend it - if you like full control over your machine, surely you want to know when something is attempting to perform an administrative-level action? Nevertheless, I'd prefer to have you run Windows Vista without UAC than having you run a different operating system.

There are two ways to disable UAC. The easy solution is through Control Panel. Type "UAC" into the search bar at the top of the screen and you'll see this task presented:



This approach is pretty brute-force, though. It just switches the whole thing off. There's a more subtle configuration choice that gives you some of the benefits of UAC without any of the prompting. You'll need to edit the local security policy to control this, as follows:

1. From the Start search bar, type "Local Security Policy"
2. Accept the elevation prompt
3. From the snap-in, select Security Settings -> Local Policy -> Security Options
4. Scroll down to the bottom, where you'll find nine different group policy settings for granular configuration of UAC.



Perhaps the best choice to select is to change the setting:
User Account Control: Behavior of the elevation prompt for administrators in Admin Approval Mode
from Prompt for consent to Elevate without prompting.

What does this do? Despite the warning from the Windows Security Center, UAC isn't actually switched off. It's still there, and all your processes will still run as a standard user. To prove this, open a command prompt and try to save a file to the c:\ directory. You'll get an access denied error message. However, when a process is marked for elevation, instead of getting the secure desktop elevation prompt, the request will be silently approved. To show this in action, right click on a command prompt shortcut and choose "Run as Administrator". You'll see the command prompt open without elevation, but the window title will show that you're running with full administrative privileges.

Using this approach is better than nothing, but it's a bit like relying on everyone else having a vaccination against measles to protect yourself from infection. Read the explanations on the second page of the property sheet for each policy setting before tinkering, and be careful!

And No.....I wish I were this smart to right this on my own, it was found on some guys techie blog from a google search.

Laterz,

Myd

[[AK]Abaddon]

Thanks! I opted for Vista Home Basic since I really just wanted DX10. So far, I like it.