Some newbish questions about Vista...

OniRyo · August 9th, 2008, 09:53 PM

Currently I use XP but with the hardware upgrades i'm looking at doing Vista x64 seems my best bet (athlon x64 and DX10 gfx) but I figure'd I'd gather some real info on the supposid 'OS from hell' from people who actually use it rather than the general anti-vista hype.

1) Will my games and apps from Win 9x and XP work on vista without too much headaches? (i'm assuming compatibility mode for the correct OS and 'run as admin' will be pretty standard for most everything when I ask this)

2) Will there be any additional issues trying to get x86 applications/games to work on vista x64?

3) From what I read in another post, to get full DX9 support all you need to do is install the latest DX9 on Vista to get the missing files (something about MDX?) then all DX9 apps/games will run perfectly with no further DX related headaches. Is that true or did I misunderstand in some way?

4) I hear that Vista locks down anything in the C:\Program Files\ directory, so what about if its installed to D:\Program Files\ as I tend to do?

5) If worse comes to worse and I need to set up a dual boot configuration with XP and Vista, is there going to be any kind of directory structure conflicts or file format issues between XP x86 and Vista x64 that I should know about? (they will be put on the same partition if i dual boot)

gen.Rage1991hrv · August 10th, 2008, 01:48 AM

1,3) all will work just fine (you gave your self a answare ) 2)well from win98 need to use compability mode but i play old fallout, fallout2 without any problems
4)i dose not lock anything
5)it is safe to run it that way, i dont have any problems for long time with vista and dual booting (90% of errors while booting was my problem and 10% was hardwares problem) but now all is just fine

Dyre Straits · August 10th, 2008, 04:38 AM

I dual boot my own system between XP Pro SP3 and Vista 32 bit SP1. However, I prefer to do it using two different physical HDDs and changing the Boot Drive in BIOS. I've gotten so used to, and do like, Vista so much that I don't boot into XP all that much except to do it maybe once per month to keep it updated. Otherwise, like gen.rage said, I've had no issues with games. I was quite suprised to find that the original Fallout even runs without using any special configuration.

OniRyo · August 10th, 2008, 09:12 AM

Thanks for the replies! Guess Vista is no longer the evil OS it was once infamous for being

(or at least not as as much as it used to be.....

)

The thing about vista locking C:\Program Files was from something I read on heavymetalpro.com (BattleTech software) where the creator said "Windows Vista will not normally allow you to write to the Program Files folders or sub folders." and went on about how it virtualizes the files or some such thing but the long short, it doesn't like you mucking about in the program files folder (or sub folders thereof) normally.

Any way thanks again for the help

gen.Rage1991hrv · August 10th, 2008, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by OniRyo

Thanks for the replies! Guess Vista is no longer the evil OS it was once infamous for being

(or at least not as as much as it used to be.....

)

The thing about vista locking C:\Program Files was from something I read on heavymetalpro.com (BattleTech software) where the creator said "Windows Vista will not normally allow you to write to the Program Files folders or sub folders." and went on about how it virtualizes the files or some such thing but the long short, it doesn't like you mucking about in the program files folder (or sub folders thereof) normally.

Any way thanks again for the help

just dont forget to put SP1