attention HPC and OTHERS

[ME BIGGD01]

If you have installed Vista, I am curious to know

what version you used
What devices you have currently in that system
what devices are not working
what devices are working
how much ram
how much hard drive space
how big is your boot partition
are you using this on a ide or sata drive
did you install on sata 1 or II drive
what problems have you encountered during install
what problems do you have after install
what main app do you usually use before vista and can not with vista.


Ok the reason for the questions is I have been going through F'ing hell with this particular system
I have had every problem you can imagine. I have extremely high end parts in this unit and have run into problem after problem. I will get into more when I am complete with this "let's give Vista a try and see what the good and bads are"
I hope some of you take the time and answer if you installed vista. I will delete any post that has nothing to do with the subject or people that just want to comment about Vista. This thread is strictly for people using vista and to eliminate problems.
I have learned so much about this os in the past 24 hours and although extremely frustrated I have thougths I will add once I can get it on this particular system.

I have tried the bestas and have installed them with no problem on my other system. Again I will comment more later because the system I am installing is not someones ordinary unit.

Thank You

[BobtheCkroach]

what version you used
I'm using the Vista Business edition; I would prefer to be using either Home Premium or Ultimate, but this is the free copy that my company got, so that's what I'm using.

What devices you have currently in that system
Nothing huge. I've got a logitech MX 1000 Mouse, a logictech keyboard, a RAZR phone that I use as a modem. Sound is on-board. Video card is a Nvidia 7600 GT OC.


what devices are not working
None of my devices are giving me any kind of probem whatsoever.

what devices are working
Everything is working fine.

how much ram
I'm running a gig of RAM, and honestly haven't noticed an real performance hit over XP. Maybe a tiny bit of lag once in a while, but that's it. Nothing major to report.

how much hard drive space
I've got a primary partition of 40 gigs and a secondary partition of 80 gigs.

how big is your boot partition
40 gigs

are you using this on a ide or sata drive
Both are IDE

did you install on sata 1 or II drive
N/A

what problems have you encountered during install
I didn't have any problems during install, except that I had no sound be default when I finished installing. The only other thing is that it asks if I would prefer to be set up as a "Home", "Workplace" or "Public" network, and doesn't clearly explain what the differences are. That's not really a problem, though.

what problems do you have after install
The only major issue that I had after install was that the sound wasn't working, and ASUS didn't have any drivers out for my board for Vista. However, the sound was a basic Realtek AC'97 and a quick glimpse @ realtek's drivers gave me a driver that fixed the problem. Additionally, I was able to get Nforce4 drivers from NVidia, so all my drivers are working correctly.


what main app do you usually use before vista and can not with vista.
The only application that hasn't worked right for me so far is MSN Messenger. however, there a couple things to note. 1) I was using version 7.5, which is out of date. It might be that Vista doesn't let me use the old version. However, the only issue that I had was that it wouldn't connect to the internet - it installed and ran fine, just would't connect. Since I was @ home and trying to connect via my 14.4 phone modem, it might just have been that.

Other than that, every app I've installed has worked fine - ITunes, Oblivion, a few others. To be honest, I haven't tried installing a ton yet.

My CPU is decently high end (x2 4800, on the 939 chipset) but has seemed to work fine so far. Like I said, I do note a bit of lag from time to time, but that's not entirely unexpected. The min for the OS is 512 w/ 1 gig recommended. I believe 256 was "recommended" for XP and Lord knows there's lag if you have that much running on that OS.

So far my experience with Vista has been nothing but pleasant. I think the install process goes a lot smoother than XP (finally, a GUI for partitioning instead of that stupid DOS screen!) and I haven't had any issues with the OS itself yet, either.

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

I PM'd you Mr Bigg. :)

[ME BIGGD01]

Well this weekend did not quite go the way I was hoping. Actually it was a very bad experience because of all the troubles I had with my machine.

I have had my system Opteron dualz cores socket 940 based nforce 4 professional system with raid 5- 3x 320 sata@ on an adaptec raid card w/ 128 mb ram (pretty expensive card close to 400 when purchsed but super fast) I also had another drive on that raid card which was a sata2 300 GB drive. Off the raid card I had an 80 gig drive stat attached to the nforce controller with xp pro on it. Video card = Quadro fx 1400 with sli (quadro is the only card that will let you run dual display while in sli mode just so you know). Ram was 2 gigs registered ecc ddr400==1 gig per processor. System had all of my editing software including Avid, adobe, pinnacle and other. System was flawless before I was finished.....

Project
Test out Vista and use as new editing system
(Why would I do this if it was running good alread? Why bother with Vista?)

The aswer is this, Vista does handle the memory subsytem of the AMD platfor and Intel for that matter when using larger amount of ram. It also would speed rendering. Besides This was just a test and planned on installing on a seprate HArd drive this way I could just put the other back in if needed which had a full installation of XP pro. I was hoping to be able to make this one system do everything from gaming to work. I was planning on quick switches of HD's to do what ever.

Items purchased in past week.
Additional 2 gigs of ram = 320.00
PNY 8800 GTS-- 449.00
Removale SATA tray -30.00
WIndows Vista Ultimate 189.00 (purchased a couple of weeks ago) (stupid company needs to get subscription back because paying sucks)
Hard drives--Have plenty so did not need to buy anymore.

System upgrade and update. Before I got to install vista I needed to gut the unit. This is not a regular board in a regular case. There is only one pci slot and two pci e slots for sli and 3 pci x slots 2x 100, 1x 133.

Figuring out what I planned on doing was more of a concept. MY ultimate plan was to use the new abilities in Vista which would speed up everything. I was not worried about the DRM and spyware crap because this was all legit and going to be a power horse as it was but better.

Cards to be rearranged were the sound blaster xfi plat unit , and the raid card. The raid card uses a 133mhz pci x slot so I needed to have that on the bottom slot. The 8800 gts card was so damn big it ate up the spot where the one pci slot was. This card sucks and I am so pissed as my intention was for an r600. MY impatience caused this little problem so I deserved it. SO now I have 1 less slot and it had to be the one pci slot that the xfi audio unit was in. Fine, I moved the card to the 1st pcix slot and set jumpers so it would work correctly. Installed and changed the drive configurations. This was a pain because the way the case is. It's huge and their are sata cables going through every where. They are attached to raid card and motherboard which made me make a huge mistake because I was so frustrated with everything already. I accidently put the 80 gig drive I had XP on on to the raid card. I wanted to boot of the raid card because the 300 gig was really just a temp drive for junk. I wanted the speed and 128 mb card to utilize the boot drive. That's all great but it would of been smart had not put the original in instead of the new one. Once I initialized the drive in the raid config that was it for my xp and all that editing software already installed and configured just right. (yes I am am still disgusted about that.) Well what was done was done and I now have to live with it. I tried to stay positive after a wept a few tears and snapped the belt i was trying to hang myself with.

OK drives are all done and configured. Sata removable tray is in with the boot drive. extra ram is installed giving each processor 2 gigs of ram with the expectancy of NUMA to kick in once Vista is installed. A total of 4 gigs of ram should make Microsoft’s Frankenstein love me. Let's boot up into bios.

Hit the power and the fans go on. You have to wait a little because ecc will cause the system to take a little during power on. Waiting, waiting, Hmmmm, this biatch isn’t booting. Reset the cmos, nothing. Make sure ram is installed right once again, nothing. Take the sound card out, still nothing. Pull the new ram out, nothing. Pull out all card except vga and guess what, still nothing. SO I take out the cmos batter and wait 5 minutes (went to bathroom and threw water on face)and then boot up and I hear that magic beep. I go into configuration ck all settings and restart all over. Again something was wrong and my temper was getting to me. I decided to keep all the card out at this point until I can get the system to boot with 4 gigs of ram. I decided to update the bios on the board which all know that there is reason for bios updates. Since there is no floppy drive on this system I needed to attack one via the floppy controller. I could of just used my USB floppy but I could not find it when I need it but trip over when don't. So downloaded new bios files and flash program. Had to make a bootable disk with not mem programs running on it during boot. That was easy enough as I just hit f4 during bootup of the floppy. I flashed the bios and I was ready to rock----UMmm NO!!!! After reboot I could not get the damn thing to boot. I got concerned that the flash did not go too well which would of meant project is now over but I made extra sure the file was correct. SO I did the water on the fact routine again and sure enough I had the latest bios file booting my machine. Installed the ram again and chked bios settings, still no good. I am no frustrated and considering it was saturday I know I was not going to get Tyan on the phone. Next best thing---Google. Sure enough I found the answer. I am not the only person with 4 gigs of ram with the k8we board. Took a while to find the answer and the problem was with the memory hole setting. Actually this is a Tyan glitch that nees to be resovled which I will get to later but all i need to do was set the feature to software (yeah that's not right but it worked.)

I am ready to start now with Vista. I decided to leave all the card out except the raid and of course vga. At this point I just wanted to get the installation complete and then worry about the rest.

Boot up with Vista DVD in the DVD burner but does not detect bootable disk. Go into bios and make sure the burner was first boot drive and it's not showing up. This went on for about a half hour because it would show sometimes in bios but after reset it would not. Holy Frustration and decided to use another drive--Still the same problem. Finally just change the cable and what do you know. I mean when does a IDE cable go bad? WTF this is just not my day.

OK so again I Attempt boot Vista and it seems to be going through but locking at a certain spot. Again, Again, I say F it and take the new ram out. Bang the thing started to install. Got passed the part where it was locking and I was now at the start up screen asking me for a code. I decide to take a break and go to my wife and say I finally got it. I was relieved thinking I was now going to get this OS on the system.


Break over---Ok what do we have. OK Vista is not detecting the raid card which according to Adaptec’s site it would. One nice feature is of Vista is you now have a GUI to install a driver so the OS recognizes the device. You also can plug a USB drive in with the driver and it will recognize it. This is a great feature and two thumbs up to MS because this was always a pain in earlier versions of MS OS’s. The ability to use anything other than a floppy just sucked in the past. I spent an hour looking for a driver for this card with no luck. I tried everything and wondered why Adaptec would say this and it not be true. I then think maybe I need to update the bios on the SCSI card and then it will detect it. Again I had to hook up a floppy, install the bios firmware and reboot. Everything updated fine but upon the detection there was none. At this point I was ready to forget it and quit. Damn, I can’t do that so I just take the drive off the SCSI controller and attach it to the Nforce controller. Once again it boots into are and now it is asking me to pick a drive. I choose the 160 gig drive and tell Vista to partition and install only to get an error message telling me Setup was unable to locate attached hard drive suitable. I am like what the hell? I try resizing it and still same error message. I start to think let me just install on another drive and sure enough same error on that drive too. I am starting to think about all the horror stories and I can relate to Anthony from Opie and Anthony and shred the disk. I google the error message and find out that the drive needs to be the first boot device in order to install. So I Just do that and it worked.

Vista installed.

As soon as OS was complete I did the driver installations and did all the updates. I refused to activate just yet (make sure you uncheck that feature during license installation. It asks if you want windows to automatically activate once network connection is established. Always choose no until you are damn ready)

I was hoping that Vista would find a suitable driver for my scsi raid card but it did not. I tried a few things but it just did not work. I decided to install the ram back in and it booted up into vista fine. I then figured it was time to test out the performance of the system with the OS only to find out that only 2 gigs of ram is showing. The system during boot, and in bios showed 4 gigs of installed ram but Vista was not seeing it. I googled but found no answer. The next thing I wanted to do was put the I-Ram card in which had 2 gigs of ddr 400. This attached into a pci slot and acts as a hard drive. The concept I was aiming for was to use this unit a smart drive which is a new feature of Vista. It’s a great concept which allows you to use a fast USB drive or flash card and make it cache the frequent apps you used. None the less, this did not work out the way I wanted it to and at this point I was done with this project. I did not even bother to install the sound card. Considering that the raid card does not work and there are no driver available I am forgetting about Vista.

How do I feel?
Well If I calculate the time I spent on this project and the knuckles I banged up from hitting the floor of disgust I would say I am just disgusted. I am depressed I screwed up what I had on accident and I spent money I should of just saved. Another concern hit me though which bothered me and that was I usually or at least use to love this stuff. I loved a challenge. I feel like I just do not want to waste any more energy on this and that must mean something. Am I getting bored of this? Am I getting lazy? Could be because I never quit before and this is the first time that I just gave up and not only gave up I screwed up. It’s ok to screw up on your own machine though but thank the lord it was not a clients. I guess I would have been devastated if the data was actually gone but that raid 5 is still intact so I will pay by doing a clean install of good ole reliable XP pro.

As far as Vista goes, I am not mad at Microsoft one bit. I think the OS looks great and it has a lot of features. I am a MS guy when it comes down to it and think they do a good enough job considering how many customers they have. Yeah we can bitch about the price and all the different versions of Vista they have but I think it makes sense. MS is a company that everyone loves to hate. People complain no matter what and blame MS. I will give anyone the right to bitch about the Agreements you have to accept to install and I will agree on the DRM crap as well but nothing else is that bad you don’t get from other simple apps you install. As far as the ease of installation or the problems I have run into. Hey this OS is new. I do not blame MS for not having drivers for my raid card. I blame all the companies for not having the drivers for their devices. Let’s remember Vista was late as it was. TO be honest everyone else is even later which is killing this OS. I think every company should have had drivers ready by now. I remember installing rc1 beta over a year ago so the manufacturers have no excuse. Most of my problems with this project came from the system board I have. I blame Tyan for not having a bios that works correctly. I will be looking into this issue further later in the week considering I have the memory. I will see what happens when I install XP again. I also blame Adaptec for not having drivers on a 300-400 dollar raid card.

At this Point
I will say Vista seems like a decent desktop machine. It is not a workstation capable OS yet as I have learned. People should not complain about the price either because It is very well priced when you consider a simple game cost 50-60 dollars today. Another key note is you can buy a laptop for 600 bucks with Vista on it. Bottom line Vista is too new to consider for me although I may try it on my gaming machine. That is if I get the energy to do that. All the companies out there that sell devices are a lot of the blame for the problems with Vista. The companies make billions off of windows and they all have slacked off. I also think Vista is a different direction from XP. People keep saying XP is good enough and that is probably true but Vista will be a second step to the computer world. Apple still does not have anything to say about MS either. When they are providing an OS to 95% of the world then they should be able to open their mouths. Until then they should just stick to their pretty and fad marketing material. I will stick with MS and although MS seems to be going against privacy issues, I will make sure they MS will not see what I am doing. I think they will have to make changes because they are pissing people off more than they should. This may be the biggest mistake and as some of you probably already know, Vista has already been cracked. I think all of this calling home stuff is what bothers me most about MS. Those that think it’s not in XP are mistaken also. Turn on a firewall and see what’s coming in and out.

Now I bet you all think this is over right? Wrong….. All I am going to say is that this weekend sucked for me and nothing went the way I had hoped. I guess I will get to that another time. Though because if you have time to read all of what I typed, you either have too much time on your hands and bored or maybe you just like to read what I post. If you ask me why I bother I will say that this is just me.

[BobtheCkroach]

Good read, bigg - that must have really sucked.

" Video card = Quadro fx 1400 with sli (quadro is the only card that will let you run dual display while in sli mode just so you know)."
...that would have been a really expensive mistake for Vista if you're running it in sli...as NVidia doesn't support SLI on Vista at all yet.

I agree with you. A TON of people are complaining about Driver support, and it's not MS's fault. The beta has been fairly stable since july, and the full product has been out to businesses since Nov 30. There's no excuse for modern equipment to not have Vista drivers yet.

[ME BIGGD01]

Well The quadro cards I have are good but I wanted something that would be good enough for the next two years. The 7800 gtx is ok but dx9 and only 256 memory. I figured if if I was going to do it, I would do it right. To bad the only thing I did was spend money. I could have gotten a demo card also but being so impatient I moved too fast.

[OUTLAWS high ping camper]

Thanks for your post Mr Bigg, it was a long one, but worth reading. I consider it a good way to learn more about the ins and outs of putting a PC together and installing an OS.
Also nice to see someone else with a 940 pin mobo. I read that even the 939 is being put to rest.
I yanked my hard drive with vista out, and put a drive with XP back in, along with the Creative Live sound card that vista wouldn't love.

Thanks for sharing your trials and tribulations. :)