Omnimaga
General Discussion => Technology and Development => Computer Usage and Setup Help => Topic started by: Zera on April 03, 2010, 01:53:32 pm
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I'm considering reformatting my XP system and installing Windows 7. I'm a bit curious about software compatibility, though. Are there any notable incompatabilities I'm going to have? Off the top of my head, I believe that DirectDraw is emulated in Windows 7, so I'm not sure how video game emulators that use DD rendering will function. (if at all)
I'm also worried about installing some of my older games. When I was a Windows 2000 user, it was fairly easy to bypass OS checks by extracting the contents of a setup package and installing the files more directly. I'm not sure if this will work in 7, since the OS directories are much different. I imagine some programs are going to have difficulty merely locating files on the system.
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yeah i love win7 alot but ive seen a lot of incompatabiilities with older games and emulaotors as well
the main thing i would look out for though is that it doenst support unsigned drivers with out you chosing a option at boot it will just bsod other wise or somthing to that extent
sys dirs are very different and yeah it will have trouble finding this exspecially with older applications
in my opinion there really is no reason to upgrade from xp to windows 7 Xp still runs a bit smother and has a ton less nusances than 7 but there both good
if i think of any thing else ill let you know :)
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There are some incompatibilities sometimes, but some can be worked around. For example, if you play Starcraft, the old installer will not work, apparently. You must register your game on Battlenet site, they'll give you a new CD key and you have to download a 1.2 GB SC+brood war installer. Same for Warcraft III and its expansion. Warcraft II, for some reasons, works perfectly, though. TI-Nspire computer link software will crash on exit on Windows 7 unless you haev version 1.4 or later. TI Connect requires the 64 bit patch if you use the 64 bit version of Seven. In Opera, quicktime plugin will show a black rectangle. it still works but you don't see its gui so clicking buttons is hit-and-miss. Besides that, I didn't have much other issues. Everything else appears to work fine. heck I even play Unreal Tournament GOTY from 1999 on it without problems and I don't even have the latest version. I also can play RPG Maker 2003 games.
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What is this about driver support? I use some third-party drivers - mainly for my graphics card. Will I be able to enable third-party driver support at all?
Much of my hardware consists of legacy devices. (at least, I'm sure Windows 7 would consider them legacy) I'm still using an AGP graphics card, in fact. I'm not sure if Windows 7's default drive database will support some of these devices.
XP has been a good system. I don't have any major arguments with it; but I do think 7 is going to address some of the nitpicks I have with XP and earlier systems. For one, I just don't feel I can do much more to tweak XP out. I still feel there are a lot of shortcomings with XP's version of Explorer. There are a number of things you either have to hack with a resource editor, or have to go through convoluted registry settings just to change. I've actually noticed some quirks in Explorer. (possibly bugs) The desktop margin screws itself up from time to time if you use one or more custom bars along with the default taskbar. i.e., can't have a bar mounted to the top of the desktop, because programs will sometimes ignore its margin, or their control bars will appear underneath it in windowed mode. It's a bit difficult to explain. I think Windows 7 removed the ability to even mount your own bars in other parts of the desktop margin - possibly because it was so broken to begin with. Explorer (in XP) also completely disregards my folder view settings from time to time. After hours of configuring every folder view, the system just decides to erase all my settings one day.
I've messed with 7 on some other systems, but haven't installed it on my own before. I did like Explorer's features and customization. I also liked the fact that nothing in the system looked like it still belonged to the DOS era. XP is bad for that. :P
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I don't know much about drivers, but a lot of the drivers issues are with Windows 7 64 bit. SOme weird stuff have to be done to get them to work. Example:
http://ourl.ca/4200/77438
Btw in 7 I LOVE how we can customize the skin compared to XP and Vista. IN XP you chosen betweeen 3 colors, which sucked. I think in Vista you were stuck with one color or two, right? In vista you can change the color/hue/saturation/transparency and all. I have it in a blue similar to Omnimaga site atm (see desktop topic)
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I don't like the fact Windows 7 doesn't work with older cards as Linux does. For example, my nVIDIA GeForce MX card doesn't work well, even with the old nVIDIA XP driver (maybe because it doesn't support a recent DirectX version), it BSoD everytime I want to use the GPU. (i.e. launch a game = BSoD), unlike Linux, who is very happy with that hardware and use them to their maximal capacity, which Windows failed to do. I think Micro$oft made Windows to make people buy new (and expensive?) hardware on each new release, and that make people get pissed and make them stick with XP. Meanwhile, M$ and others hardware companies makes lots of profit using that strategy.
Anyway, I didn't wanted to hurt Microsoft and others with this post, Windows is an awesome system (when it works well). The problem is that too much people complains that it doesn't work. (Especially with legacy devices.) Therefore, Windows is bad. Unless you have the most awesome hardware ever, which will become obsolete in 3 years or so if you use Windows.
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Idk maybe Microsoft is affiliated with those hardware producers x.x
I guess it depends of preferences, though. Some people find Linux much harder to use, even the most user-friendly distros.
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Driver signing is only required on 64-bit, and can be permanently turned off.
Check http://www.killertechtips.com/2009/05/06/disable-driver-signing-in-windows-7-using-group-policy-editor/
for how to disable.
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nice, didn't know that. I heard about ways to do this temporarly (would need to disable everytime you reboot) but not permanently
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I'll be using the 32-bit version. My CPU is 64-bit, but it's backwards compatible with 32-bit architecture. I just think it's less hassle to go ahead and use a 32-bit OS. I really don't even understand what sort of practical advantage there would be to a 64-bit system. I don't think I'm going to have 16 GB of memory anytime soon, simulate particle physics or make any attempt to brute-force encryptions. 32-bit instruction sets are fine for now. :P
As for MS and hardware support - I don't think older cards are generally well-supported because Windows 7 is pretty robust. The newer versions of Direct3D, for instance, aren't going to get much performance out of AGP devices. It wouldn't make sense to include official support for these devices, when they're likely to buckle under the stress of robust software libraries like D3D. I could understand why they would just leave it out altogether.
The version of 7 that I'm installing was slipstreamed so I could strip-out components like the Visual Styles. My card just isn't going to support all the graphical frills. I'm only concerned about getting games and emulators to work, along with third-party card drivers.
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I heard several games didn't work in 32 bit, though, only in 64, but maybe those games were recently fixed to work on 64. I may be wrong, though.
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Well, at the moment I would highly recommend the Windows 7 32bit, since I used it for a long period of time on my Laptop (which was manufactured 2009) and had no Problems with it. (I never needed more than 3.25 Gigs of RAM btw)
Quite the opposite: e.g. my internal subwoofer works properly on win7 only. On XP, the subwoofer is either quiet, or buzzes something that doesn't match to the sound of the speakers. The curious thing about that Problem is: it only occures when playing Windows-Sounds, so I ended up with disabling the Windows-Sounds on XP. Secondly, any game I use that runs on XP, runs on Windows 7, too. The games that don't work anymore on XP (because of the Hardware, which is quite up to date), don't work on Win7 as well. (e.g. Dungeon Keeper 2, Cossacks)
Oh and you should take this into consideration: Windows XP Mode Download (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/virtual-pc/download.aspx)
lolje
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I'm back from reformatting. Things didn't go as expected. Although Windows 7 installed without any issues, (and the performance was fine) I had to get pretty creative with my drivers. I originally thought I had found a way to install my graphics card driver, but that was a deception. 7 kept separating it from the default display adapter instead of replacing it. The new driver was also denied access to any resources.
I ended up switching back to XP. Oh, well. I guess I'm not too disappointed. XP is like an old lover that I seem to keep coming back to. :P
On the other hand, I thought I would take the opportunity to try a new browser: Arora. It's based on WebKit, so I figured it would be more accurate than the version of Opera I had been using. Turns out it passes the Acid test fairly well.
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Ouch the first thing happened with my ATI Radeon 9250+ video card 4 years ago x.x, I had to setup a 2nd monitor and use it a primary display, but again, I had an impossible to remove integrated card as well. Nevertheless it sucked :S
I never heard of Arora before. I've been using Opera for a while and am kinda confortable with it. It seems to get later and later in web standards, tho (mainly rounded edges in CSS)
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I think the Presto engine is pretty accurate, but Opera is far too prone to random crashes. I believe this may actually be because Opera adheres to accurate standards so stringently that it encounters problems when it attempts to display sites or elements that do not adhere to accurate standards. I mostly kept using it because of its extensive customization. You could do practically everything with the interface.
Arora is actually pretty nice so far. You really can't extend or customize it, but it does cover the essential features: It has Ad-Block built right in, has an option to block all flash elements, (until you click a button to display the element) and you can define your own cookie policies.
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i never really had issues with crashes in Opera. your comp might have trouble running it or you had viruses. For me Firefox tends to freeze often tho
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I have a few random crashes with Opera here and there, mostly with Java stuff, though.
I don't use FF enough to notice any crashes.
I don't use IE, but it still crashes. :(
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I don't use IE, but it still crashes. :(
that made my day
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I don't use IE, but it still crashes. :(
lulz
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Many problems, one simple solution:
just. use. fire. fox.
:P lolje
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I was using Firefox as a back-up for some time. When Opera had a major page incompatibility, I would just go to FF view. Firefox is not a bad browser, but there are a couple of nitpicks I have that prevent me from using it on a permenant basis: Bloated interface, as opposed to utilizing the system's native API; Gecko is not as accurate as WebKit. Firefox memory usage can go into an excess of some 150 MB at times, and my system is only running on 512 MB RAM.
Though it is not necessary a problem with Firefox itself, Firefox's popularity also contributes to some of its security risks. You will notice that some sites detect Firefox, and attempt to override some of your extensions. (such as Ad-Block) This has happened to me on a few ocassions.
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Yeah true, altough I think Firefox team is doing a much better job than Microsoft at patching those security holes. It still has much less than IE. I am sure Opera has a lot too, but since it has a much smaller userbase trolls won't attack Opera users.
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Blah. I switched back to Opera; but I did update to the latest version. It turns out that it passes the Acid3 test with perfect accuracy. (although, I kind of question the methodology of that test, as it uses really obscure standards)
I kind of like the new interface, but the memory footprint is insane. I'm pushing 100 MB just browsing Omnimaga. :P
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I don't like the new Opera skin much. I just use Opera Classic 9 updated for 10.51, and I made the menu bar show up by default.
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I'm still tweaking my interface, but I like what I have so far...
(http://img534.imageshack.us/img534/2149/image2kl.png)
I had to add a number of custom buttons to extend the functionality.