Vista recalled?

[kass]

Is it true that Vista is being recalled the first part of 2008? Does anyone know for certain?

[browneye]

I see no indication that Vista is being recalled at any time.

[cynthia]

They promised to release SP1 in that period - so why should it be recalled?

[MilesAhead]

Vista has been called a lot of things. But it hasn't been recalled. ;)

[Chewy]

If they didn't recall windows me, there's little hope for vista

actually the 2 have a lot in common, I have never seen so many people wanting to downgrade

maybe a service pack option to turn vista into vista lite instead of a RESOURCE HOG!

[MilesAhead]

If they didn't recall windows me, there's little hope for vista

actually the 2 have a lot in common, I have never seen so many people wanting to downgrade

maybe a service pack option to turn vista into vista lite instead of a RESOURCE HOG!

Chewy you should be more optimistic!! After all, it's only been since April
and already I almost have it tamed to where my HD doesn't
run on all the time!! I think I have it now so the HD stays quiet but the
booting time is reasonable. I have to log everything I do so I don't forget
how I got it here though!!
:evilconf:

[Jensen]

Chewy you should be more optimistic!! After all, it's only been since April
and already I almost have it tamed to where my HD doesn't
run on all the time!! I think I have it now so the HD stays quiet but the
booting time is reasonable. I have to log everything I do so I don't forget
how I got it here though!!
:evilconf:

Yeah I would like to see that log. I havent had too much problems with my Vista, but its still new to me.

[MilesAhead]

Yeah I would like to see that log. I havent had too much problems with my Vista, but its still new to me.

I would start here: http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial134.html

and turn off everything that idexes, shadow updates files on other
computers on the Lan, any Media Player stuff that scans your
drive for media files etc..

then I'd google for detailed Services descriptions and see which you
can turn off.

The other thing I recommend if you haven't already is to kill automatic
defragging.

Things I do manually:
run locate32 update databases
disk cleanup - to get rid of old restore points
disk defrag - I use Auslogics free one but that's cuz I'm cheap :)

How I set up my system is for how I use it. For instance I don't
run a swapfile. But then again, I don't use big office applications
either. I like to use small lightweight apps whenever possible.

The main thing I tried to get rid of were those sneaky file indexing
thingies hidden all over Vista. That's why you should read through
that features list. Even though I never run Windows Media Player
other than media player classic, and don't have a "media library"
set up,I found out WMP was indexing all the files on my drive even
though I had the Windows Indexing Service disabled(it doesn't get
the hint apparently.. so much for AI in the new age!!)

So, if you use WMP you might want to leave that on but I'd say
change one thing at a time and log it and watch your system
for a while. If all of a sudden it takes 5 times longer to boot,
you might want to undo the last change. Watch the HD light
and listen for that little clicking noise!!! ;)

[Jensen]

I talked to a guy in India today, who recommended that auto-defrag should stay on. I proceeded to argue with him about too. I would think if your not moving huge files or apps on and off your hdd that you would not need to defrag each week. But he persisted and I agreed to shut him up (hp tech support). He sent me something that somewhat " Helps ", a tutorial to shut off apps that run in the background, and Windows Aero. Apparently it takes up resources alot too. Thats the one thing I liked about Win Vista, "Gosh!!" (N.D.) lol . I dont know though, your just talking about start up and shut-down, what other problems have you noticed with vista? I have only seen minor stuff, which I think is due to using uncompatible software with vista.


Jensen

[MilesAhead]

As I mentioned, if you can tune your PC like mine depends if you use
it like I do. AFA defragging goes, I defrag manually probably 3
times a week on average. But, I tend to keep my drives 70% free space
or better. So defrag only takes about 20 minutes max. (If I have large
files on the drive I wait until I'm done with them, delete 'em, then defrag.)

I don't know if other people would call it a problem but if I'm
waiting on my computer instead of it waiting on me, then to me it's
a problem. I don't like my HD running on for no purpose.

Unfortunately out of the box Vista has a bunch of stuff hooked into the
scheduler. However, unlike a "real multi-user operating system" it only
looks at CPU usage to find out if the machine is "busy." So, when I first
got this thing I was running a third party defragger when, guess what?
Windows defrag came on!!! Please!!! If you're going to schedule stuff
during slack times, make sure the hardware you're going to use isn't being
worked before you take it over!

Another example is Lan shadow, monitor, sync whatever you want to call
it. If I'm working in an office on the company network, then I probably
would want the system to automatically browse around on the network to
see if the file I'm using is the latest version or scan for files in
shared folders and see if they change. If I'm at home, I'm the one
changing the files, so I don't really need a service to keep running
my HD to find out if a file has been updated... and yada yada.. :)

I guess I'm an older timer "control freak" PC user type. I like to
control the PC rather than the other way around. :)

[Chewy]

I have been studying up a little on vista, ran accross the superfetch where vista tries to
anticipate your program use and preload some of them, they claim alto it uses a heck of lot of ram than vista instantly releases it for other uses, seems like a quick launch on steroids, but gone amock.

And that use of a usb drive for readyboost feature where vista makes a ram drive on a 5MB/s thumb drive is about the craziest thing I have ever heard of.

because it has been shown that small random reads and writes on flash RAM can be 8-10 times faster than caching them to one of your hard drives.

Bullhockey

[MilesAhead]

I have been studying up a little on vista, ran accross the superfetch where vista tries to
anticipate your program use and preload some of them, they claim alto it uses a heck of lot of ram than vista instantly releases it for other uses, seems like a quick launch on steroids, but gone amock.


I agree. The last settings modifications I tried out were disabling
ReadyBoost and Superfetch. The ReadyBoost was no problem
but I found that if I disabled Superfetch my boot ups took a lot
longer. Turns out in the Windows\Prefetch folder there's a subfolder
called ReadyBoot. So what I've been doing for the last few days
is set Superfetch on Automatic and let it run when I first boot up.
Then after a while if I know I'm going to be doing intensive stuff
I just stop the service using the Services applet and leave it off.
That way the next time my machine boots Superfetch starts up
and I have a smooth bootup. That scheme seems to be working
very well.

The other thing I noticed was even though I did the registry hack
to reduce the wait time for services to close on shutdown to
8 seconds, my shutdowns were still taking between 20 and
30 seconds. Since I've been running with no swap, the
shutdown takes about 5 seconds consistently. I guess
somebody was impressed with Linux caching of everything
under the sun but a swapfile apparently isn't as efficient
as a swap partition. It seems like Vista is compelled to
rummage around in the swapfile doing something or
other for 20 seconds if you have one or else it isn't
happy. What it does with what's in there I have no
idea.
:lightbulb

[Chewy]

Miles,
You seem way ahead of the game for someone who has a HP media center pc, are you running a dual boot? Do you have a secondary hard drive? Sooner or later we'll need a vista power user guide, altho that's a "contradiction in terms".

An old super power user trick is to have a swap file set up in a dedicated partition on a seperate hard drive/controller/cable from the system partition. That might be the way to set Vista free to do what it needs to efficiently

[MilesAhead]

Miles,
You seem way ahead of the game for someone who has a HP media center pc, are you running a dual boot? Do you have a secondary hard drive? Sooner or later we'll need a vista power user guide, altho that's a "contradiction in terms".


(I won't say "like military intelligence" because I don't want to be shot!) :angelgrn:

Heh. I'd like to have a hot machine. I'm thirstin' for one of the quad core
PCs to be honest. I guess from back when PCs were very expensive I got
in the habit of being "one step behind" the curve so as to get reasonable
performance for an affordable price. But, after I watch these quad core
PCs come out for a while I don't think I'll be able to hold off. Esp. if I was
to earn some extra money somehow. :)


An old super power user trick is to have a swap file set up in a dedicated partition on a seperate hard drive/controller/cable from the system partition. That might be the way to set Vista free to do what it needs to efficientlyI knew someone who serviced and configured mini-computers and his
rule of thumb was one physical HD for executables, one for data, and one
just for virtual memory. I wish I had 2 physical drives so I could experiment
but I think there is some glitch in Vista because that slow shutdown is just
bizarre. The other thing that disappeared when I eliminated the swapfile
was that "calculating time to..." hanging dialog when doing file drag & drop.
Something is definitely weird. :)

I sort of have an unusual setup in that I've been using a Gateway monitor
and speakers from a Gateway Pentium III machine I had. I got a Belkin kvma
switch to save space on the desktop and run 2 machines on Lan.
When I buy a new machine I throw out the oldest. The new "old" machine
has most downloaded junk on it instead of the new "new" machine. So
I guess that's how I got in the habit of keeping my HD with a lot of free
space. I don't know how useful my guide would be since most people run
one machine(maybe not in this forum though I dunno') with 80% or more
disk space occupied?

Maybe something along the lines of "I'm doing this on my system and it
hasn't blown up yet" kind of informal tips might be good? I'm open to ideas. :)

[MilesAhead]

To answer your question on dual-boot... right now I'm in "run 'em as they are preinstalled mode." I used to do a lot of multi-OS setups on my machines but
I got into an "endless reinstall every 2 weeks" syndrome that got very tedious.
After that the feeling was "been there done that." :)

[Jensen]

So ready boost is bad???

[MilesAhead]

What's "good" or "bad" depends on what you want to do. When my HD is working I want to know why. So I turn off the stuff that makes it run on. That's how I like to run. You may have different ideas.

[Chewy]

If you don't have enough ram and vista keeps paging out small bits to the swap file on a slow hard drive and you have ready boost on a fast usb2 drive setup, it's probably good

are you sure you aren't talking about superfetch instead?

[MilesAhead]

Yup. Superfetch definitely runs my HD on. I can't say what RamBoost does because it won't let me try it out on any USB drives I happen to own. From what I read on other
forums the effect is negligible. It's just another thing not to load into memory since
I can't use it.

[Chewy]

with 2 gigs of ram, superfetch is gonna load the kitchen sink and then some into physical ram, just have a frontal lobotomy and let vista think for you

[MilesAhead]

I already noted earlier in the thread how I set Superfetch to automatic, then Stop the service a bit after bootup. Otherwise the boots are horribly slow. This one-liner kills
Superfetch without having to load the Services Applet:

C:\Windows\System32\sc.exe stop SysMain

It seems too that if you run with a swapfile, the system pages out more of the kernel.
That's probably why response seems snappier without the swap. Most of the kernel is
in ram. At least by casual observation. I haven't really analyzed it. It feels faster so
I'm happy. :)

[subsang]

Posting after a gap in this forum

I finally assembled a PC for my home use including video editing.

The configuration is

Intel Core 2 Duo E6750 proc
Intel DG33BU Mobo (GPU planned later)
Kingston 2 x 1GB PC6400 Cl 5 RAM
WD 80GB SATA, 7200RPM HDD for programmes
WD 500GB SATA, 7200RPM HDD for files
LG 20X DVD Super Multi
GIGABYTE GZX2 case
AC Bel 500W PSU

I chose VISTA Home Premium as the OS.

All things installed properly.

When I tried to download DV from the cam through the Firewire the DV Cam is not detected. Camera is Panasonic NV GS80. the port is enabled in the new PC. Right now the video is getting downloaded in my laptop with XP Home without any problem.

Any clue?

Thanks
Subbu

[Jensen]

disk defrag - I use Auslogics free one but that's cuz I'm cheap :)



Is there a way to set Auslogics to defrag all HDD's?

[MilesAhead]

Is there a way to set Auslogics to defrag all HDD's?

They say upcoming in next version:

http://www.auslogics.com/en/faq.php?name=Auslogics%20Disk%20Defrag&file=%2Fen%2Fproducts%2Fdisk-defrag%2Fproduct.faq&question=4&backlink=%2Fen%2Fsoftware%2Fdisk-defrag%2Ffaq

[cynthia]

There is also JkDefrag (http://www.kessels.com/JkDefrag/index.html)- this program will defrag all disks.

A nice GUI can be found here (http://www.emro.nl/freeware/).

:)

[dr_ml422]

[quote=MilesAhead;548688]As I mentioned, if you can tune your PC like mine depends if you use
it like I do. AFA defragging goes, I defrag manually probably 3
times a week on average. But, I tend to keep my drives 70% free space
or better. So defrag only takes about 20 minutes max. (If I have large
files on the drive I wait until I'm done with them, delete 'em, then defrag.)

hi miles. 70% is about where i keep my free space at, but that's just been by coincidence. i still have xp sp2, and will continue to do so because of the mere circumstances, and total proof of how much of a pita Vista is, and how Billy Boy just threw it out as a beta. that said, how many gigs you have on your hd w/the 70%? i only have 80gb on my hd, and i don't use anything except the more popular burning, copying, apps., and my security which includes zonealarm, spybot, and the real hog of them all avast. it's working fine, especially as i just put 2 gb of ram, but i can imagine if i was using more apps., and had more space, if that 70% would still produce the way it is now?

[MilesAhead]

A previous machine running XP Home SP 1 had an 80 GB HD. I probably used about 40 to 45% capacity on it, but I had software development packages on. The only point of the large freespace is defrags are quicker. Since they are quicker you can easily do them more often. Since you can easily do them more often, you don't have to be as thorough, making them even quicker... if you pack up your HD 80% capacity then defrags are tedious, so you don't want to do them... so when you do, you tend to try to be thorough.. which slows them down... it's a cycle both ways. If you can run with lots of free space it just makes keeping things tuned less of a chore.

[dr_ml422]

hi miles. is there a different way of defragging then just going to properties, tools, then clicking on defrag? once you click it starts defragging unless you click cancel. i would expect that at 40 to 45% you're machine must of been pretty slow, unless you had a great mobo, processor, and more than the usual 512 of ram. the more space you use up w/the processor, and ram you have would determine speed, and efficiency. if this e310 dell i have now w/the 2gb ram i put in were to be 40 to 45% full i'd doubt i'd b able to back up videos, and anything else as fast as i do now. i'm just trying to get a benchmark as to how i'd fare if i was to add some extras on my machine. i'm even hesitant to add adobe to read pdf files, or even put my webcam back on. 80% on this machine i have would paralyze me. guess you're just giving that as an example?

[MilesAhead]

There are some pretty good free and paid 3rd party defraggers around. I make the point about not needing to be thorough because I usually use Auslogics free defragger. It doesn't do a lot of stuff that others will, like putting boot files at the front of the disk etc.. but I do one of those super thorough defrags every few months. The rest of the time I just do a quick and dirty defrag with Auslogics. But I usually do it at least 2 or 3 times a week. Right after I delete large files is the best time. Then it often completes in less than 10 minutes. No drudgery. :) I'm not trying to say you should use your machine like I do. The only point I'm making when I post my tweaks is they work for me and this is how I use my machine. If you use your PC differently, they may not work so well for you. It's just educated trial and error.

Before I try out a defragger I try to look around to get a whiff of PCs getting hosed. A good place is if they have a support forum on their page. Sometimes you'll see a lot of problems with one particular version or PCs that sound similar to yours or whatnot. Nowadays it's not as tricky since XP has APIs for defrag functions built into the OS and most of the XP defrag programs use them. In the old days it was pretty much just an exe file with maybe a dll to get by user level privilege and it just did whatever it wanted to your disk. In any case a backup that you're sure actually restores is a good tool to have. :)

[dr_ml422]

i'm just curious as to the storage, processor, and ram you have as well as the % free space that is causing you to take 10 min. even w/the dirty defrag. can you give me a heads up on that? believe me the tips i've taken from you guys have all panned out when relative. if i could avoid headaches by the experience of others it saves me one too. if you know what i mean.

[MilesAhead]

The particulars are in my sig.

The main factor is HD free space rather than memory or speed.
Esp. if you delete gigantic files, such as multi-gb video files,
right before a defrag, the defragger can put lots of stuff in
the freed up space instead of moving it to the interior of the
HD first, then shuffling it back. If you require super thorough
defrags that position applications at particular places on the
drive that's going to slow things down.

Anyway, try a few different schemes and see what works for you.

[dr_ml422]

i get you now. i probably missed the hd you had. yeah i figured you was working w/something way more than 80gb. also your processor, and ram make a helluva difference performance wise. i guess that defragger just keeps things cleaner, and maximizes all the space available on your hd. that's cool. 70% free space leaves you w/about 350gb of storage. more or less. depending on where your processor is benchmarked will also determine how much more efficient your pc is together w/the occupied space, and the amount of ram your total processes are occupying. well now i have a general idea. would you mind posting a benchmark from everst home so i could compare it to mine? that'll really give me an accurate picture of where this e310 stands. thnx.

[MilesAhead]

My XP machine only has 1 GB ram and 200 GB HD. I get similar results. Another thing I mentioned before is just before doing a defrag I create a Restore Point, then clean off all the old restore points using the Windows Disk Cleanup utility. You don't need a superfast PC to get quick defrags. afa benchmark I don't have that installed. About the only thing I bother to benchmark is HD performance using HD Tune and that mainly because I used to build a kernel module in Linux to get the UDMA66 to kick in.

[dr_ml422]

good. thnx. i have to take time out, and check out the threads in the forum dedicated to pc performance. not going to go too techie w/all the extra goodies available 4 tweeks. tons of stuff. definitely agree w/tuning it up 4 what i want it for.