Remove search bar in Vista Explorer?

[Borgschulze]

I want this bar gone, I don't use it... but it's getting frustrating looking for info on how to do that...

I just installed Vista yesterday so I could see if Gears Of War would run, and it does.

 

[TechieSooner]

May I ask why?

Do you just not like looking at it or something?

The new search functionality of Vista is more "built-in" the system than a third party application like Desktop Search. Getting rid of it won't be easy, and unless there is a very good reason... you probably don't want to go through the trouble of removing it.

Most people are fine with it, so again: what is wrong with it being there?
Helping folks understand the reasoning would also help fine-tune the responses and suggestions you will get

 

[lopoetve]

May I ask why?

Do you just not like looking at it or something?

The new search functionality of Vista is more "built-in" the system than a third party application like Desktop Search. Getting rid of it won't be easy, and unless there is a very good reason... you probably don't want to go through the trouble of removing it.

Most people are fine with it, so again: what is wrong with it being there?
Helping folks understand the reasoning would also help fine-tune the responses and suggestions you will get

I'd guess it's because it's ugly.

at least, that's why I'd want it gone.

FUGLY. BEGONE.

 

[Borgschulze]

I like my computer to be very minimal, which Vista is not, obviously.

Very picky as well

It kinda of ruins the look of my system I think.

I'd guess it's because it's ugly.

at least, that's why I'd want it gone.

FUGLY. BEGONE.

Exactly.

 

[Martyr]

do you need to run windows? the amount of customization you seem interested in is there in linux, you can make it look pretty much how you want.

 

[TechieSooner]

^^^ That is exactly what I think too.
If you want something that you can pretty much do whatever the heck you want to... It ain't Windows.

 

[TheGamerZ]

Whatever the heck you want to, except 80% of the software, especially games. He stated he installed Vista to try Gears of War... which doesn't run on Linux.

Linux has its place, but its not the universal solution to everything.

 

[lopoetve]

do you need to run windows? the amount of customization you seem interested in is there in linux, you can make it look pretty much how you want.

linux doesn't play games.

 

[provoko]

Vista's new search is the best thing ever. You don't have to open up another window if you want to search the internet or your computer, just be in the current folder.

As for getting rid of it, have you tried right clicking a space near it and unchecking search? Or how about pushing the "alt" button and going to view/explorer bar/search?

I don't have vista yet, but when I use my friend's computer w/vista I use the built in search constantly, for everything, from files to games to control panel settings. Just push the windows key and start typing; I'm sure you'll love it, everyone does, even mac users.

 

[Borgschulze]

Vista's new search is the best thing ever. You don't have to open up another window if you want to search the internet or your computer, just be in the current folder.

As for getting rid of it, have you tried right clicking a space near it and unchecking search? Or how about pushing the "alt" button and going to view/explorer bar/search?

I don't have vista yet, but when I use my friend's computer w/vista I use the built in search constantly, for everything, from files to games to control panel settings. Just push the windows key and start typing; I'm sure you'll love it, everyone does, even mac users.

Thanks for trying, but I do have a custom window manager installed, which would lead you to think I have at least tried all the basic things to try to remove that search.

Also, if I search for something, I press the "My Home" button on my keyboard and type it in Google. Which renders that dialog obsolete. I also don't search for files on my computer, I know where everything is already.

If it wasn't for the games I play, I would be using Linux.

Update: I found a fix, use XP instead.

Seriously, Vista still has issues like sound acceleration after this long...

I also can't get ICS to work, and it works in literally 5 mouse clicks with XP.

Nearly 500mb RAM used when I just logged in? Caching randomly?

I'm done with Vista. Yeah I foresee the replies, blah blah Vista = XP 5 years ago, no it's not.

 

[provoko]

Thanks for trying, but I do have a custom window manager installed, which would lead you to think I have at least tried all the basic things to try to remove that search.

Also, if I search for something, I press the "My Home" button on my keyboard and type it in Google. Which renders that dialog obsolete. I also don't search for files on my computer, I know where everything is already.

If it wasn't for the games I play, I would be using Linux.

Update: I found a fix, use XP instead.

Seriously, Vista still has issues like sound acceleration after this long...

I also can't get ICS to work, and it works in literally 5 mouse clicks with XP.

Nearly 500mb RAM used when I just logged in? Caching randomly?

I'm done with Vista. Yeah I foresee the replies, blah blah Vista = XP 5 years ago, no it's not.

An OS can't get smaller with more features.

Vista's start menu search is more advanced than finding files, it finds game/program shortcuts and even control panel settings just by typing the first few letters.

For example type "net" and you get "network connections"; type "add" and you get "add or remove programs". No clicks, only a few keyboard buttons (winkey, name, enter). It's like newegg's new search.

I'm not trying to convince with the merits of Vista's search, I just hate it when someone passes up something new without even trying it.

By the way, Vista doesn't cache randomly, look up Superfetch.

Lastly sound acceleration is better in Vista (it's designed for no BSODs or bugs which XP suffered from, trust me if you ever had that problem you'd hate XP), yet it has it's own bugs.. yea ironic. But Creative has OpenAL for sound acceleration which works.

Of course there are bugs, they will be fixed. If you can't take them, then just use XP in the mean time; there's nothing wrong with that.

 

[Martyr]

Thanks for trying, but I do have a custom window manager installed, which would lead you to think I have at least tried all the basic things to try to remove that search.

Also, if I search for something, I press the "My Home" button on my keyboard and type it in Google. Which renders that dialog obsolete. I also don't search for files on my computer, I know where everything is already.

you may know where it is, but the search will get you there faster than the 3 or 4 file levels you would go through to get to it.

 

[DeaconFrost]

you may know where it is, but the search will get you there faster than the 3 or 4 file levels you would go through to get to it.

Not to mention the fact you can run applications from it. The Vista search is an awesome feature.

 

[TechieSooner]

Nearly 500mb RAM used when I just logged in? Caching randomly?

I hate it when folks B**** about something without A) Knowing what they are B****ing about or B) Not thinking about the reason it is there.

Superfetch is a wonderful thing. I won't go into specifics (look it up- tons of info), but when someone gripes about the RAM being used, I have one question that normally closes the sums it up:
What is unused RAM?
The answer? Wasted RAM.

you may know where it is, but the search will get you there faster than the 3 or 4 file levels you would go through to get to it.

Exactly. As a long time user of other operating systems (as this does not just apply to XP), I am still continuing to learn this fact for myself.
Whereas (this even applies for Office) in XP years you had to go through menu levels to access a function or item- Vista has it either right at a mouse click- or with a few keystrokes.
I often find myself digging through menu items, and later thinking "Why in the world am I doing this? I could've been there already if I typed in a few letters!"

As someone already stated- give it a shot. I'd be interested to see if your own window manager does any better.

 

[feek]

I like my computer to be very minimal, which Vista is not, obviously.

Very picky as well

It kinda of ruins the look of my system I think.





Exactly.

fucking lol

 

[lopoetve]

Vista's new search is the best thing ever. You don't have to open up another window if you want to search the internet or your computer, just be in the current folder.

As for getting rid of it, have you tried right clicking a space near it and unchecking search? Or how about pushing the "alt" button and going to view/explorer bar/search?

I don't have vista yet, but when I use my friend's computer w/vista I use the built in search constantly, for everything, from files to games to control panel settings. Just push the windows key and start typing; I'm sure you'll love it, everyone does, even mac users.

Some of us don't like it cluttering there and would rather just have a keyboard shortcut (see: Quicksilver on mac) to open it. We'd like the option to get rid of the bar, that's all.

I hate it when folks B**** about something without A) Knowing what they are B****ing about or B) Not thinking about the reason it is there.

Superfetch is a wonderful thing. I won't go into specifics (look it up- tons of info), but when someone gripes about the RAM being used, I have one question that normally closes the sums it up:
What is unused RAM?
The answer? Wasted RAM.

Unused ram is ram that is free and ready for me to use for the program I'm about to open that's going to want something close to 12gb free.

As long as there's a way to turn it off, and I'm pretty sure there is with superfetch, I'm ok with the concept.

 

[provoko]

Some of us don't like it cluttering there and would rather just have a keyboard shortcut (see: Quicksilver on mac) to open it. We'd like the option to get rid of the bar, that's all.

Here's a description of Quicksilver: "Quicksilver allows you to navigate to what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it. "

Here's a description of Vista's search: "Vista search allows you to navigate to what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Vista search with a keystroke (winkey), type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it."

Yea, completely identical, except you use windows key in vista to activate it.

Unused ram is ram that is free and ready for me to use for the program I'm about to open that's going to want something close to 12gb free.

As long as there's a way to turn it off, and I'm pretty sure there is with superfetch, I'm ok with the concept.

Superfetch unloads used ram faster than XP did to the point where it's unnoticeable meaning it doesn't affect performance. It's a very responsive and intelligent system. It's the best thing that's ever happened to Windows, yet many people are naive about it. Please look it up as I did with quicksilver.

 

[Borgschulze]

I don't care about speed of going through my files honestly, I would rather just browse through my D:\, e.g. D:\Music is where my 30gb of Music is... all listed alphabetically, which isn't hard to find now is it? All my games and such are in my Blackbox start menu, right click desktop, Start, Programs, Games, there they are, 1 click to get there... I think Vista is lacking in the least amount of clicks department.

I love how Hellgate London not only has working sound with no crackling now, it also runs 40fps on average MORE than Vista.

Haven't installed Gears Of War yet though, found a wicked bug while playing Hellgate and exploited the hell out of it, was a very fun night.

Anyways, I think I fell asleep writing this, good night 4:16 am.

Yay for XP Pro. My computer also logs into Windows ready to use significantly faster.

 

[markt435]

Yay for XP Pro. My computer also logs into Windows ready to use significantly faster.

you'll find that will change over time lol

one of the good things about vista, it doesn't get as slow as XP did even after you fill around half the hard drive up. i got 79GB free out of 119 and vista still starts up in 7 seconds after the GRUB screen.

 

[Finn]

Heh Vista search is utterly useless like most other 'great' new functions in it.

9 times out of 10 I try to search something using it it won't find it even though I know it resides on the HD. At first I was confused, why did this happen?

Then I found out that certain files do not get indexed and you have to manually extend the search lol. If I wasn't 100% sure that the files resided on the HD I'd never realize the search just didn't display everything. Stupid as hell, as the whole OS is.

 

[TechieSooner]

^^^ I agree.
I bought a brand new Dell system (for work) back in June. Higher end system, modern hardware, the whole works. It is already bogging down, and I am wanting to reinstall the darn thing (5 months).
Getting new Dell systems in almost every week and setting them up- I am constantly reminded how snappy XP is when you first configure it (even after installing all the apps you will use). It simply degrades over [a short] time.

However my Vista machine has been in use since February and hasn't slowed down at all (9 months).


I will say Vista takes longer (Some people report much quicker... not in my case) to start/shut down than XP did for me. I won't argue that point too much, but for 95% of people, they can care less. The folks dual booting or shutting their machines off every time they leave for a few hours- they notice. If you are like most folks and leave it on- you don't care so much.


Superfetch- I 100% expected your response to that. Almost said something in my post, but figured if you did as I suggested (and look it up) you wouldn't ask the question. Guess you didn't bother looking it up before making another ignorant statement about it?
It works much faster than XP does. The system's cached RAM (that makes Superfetch so great) is at a very low priority. The second a user is calling something that isn't in RAM- the system unloads it for the user. The user has the highest priority in the system.


FPS problems in such a big margin like that (as well as audio issues) are more often than not caused by faulty drivers or misconfigured hardware. If you want to work on the problem (rather than just b**** about it), start a new thread and folks around here would be happy to help.

 

[lopoetve]

Here's a description of Quicksilver: "Quicksilver allows you to navigate to what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Quicksilver with a keystroke, type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it. "

Here's a description of Vista's search: "Vista search allows you to navigate to what you need quickly and easily, while keeping your hands on the keyboard. For example, if you want to launch an application hidden in the depths of your file system, simply activate Vista search with a keystroke (winkey), type a few letters of the application's name, then hit Return or Enter to launch it."

Yea, completely identical, except you use windows key in vista to activate it.

Then give me a way to get rid of the bar in the windows to keep things clean. User modifiable UI for the win.

Superfetch unloads used ram faster than XP did to the point where it's unnoticeable meaning it doesn't affect performance. It's a very responsive and intelligent system. It's the best thing that's ever happened to Windows, yet many people are naive about it. Please look it up as I did with quicksilver.

It still has to unload, and when you're dealing with something that you know is already going to thrash the disk because you can't get enough ram in the box (cough, Oracle DB manager), you want as much of it free immediately. Anything it has to dump to ram or release is stuff that is going to delay the request, and is simply annoying. It made enough of a difference that our company passed on Vista for the year again: Too many things had performance impacts.

you'll find that will change over time lol

one of the good things about vista, it doesn't get as slow as XP did even after you fill around half the hard drive up. i got 79GB free out of 119 and vista still starts up in 7 seconds after the GRUB screen.

Delete the prefetch directory and it'll go back to being fast People don't realize that XP does just what vista does, in a less efficient way, and stores the info in a directory. clear the directory ot clear the cache, and you get a fast boot again.

^^^ I agree.


FPS problems in such a big margin like that (as well as audio issues) are more often than not caused by faulty drivers or misconfigured hardware. If you want to work on the problem (rather than just b**** about it), start a new thread and folks around here would be happy to help.

There are tons of benchmarks out there that show that Vista is often still a bit slower in games than XP. HG:L happens to be the game itself: It forces a DX10 mode, and the DX10 mode is slow as hell. That's not a vista problem though, that's Bill Roper being a douchebag programmer.

 

[Borgschulze]

My XP system was up since December last year.

The only problem I had was with explorer.exe, Blackbox wouldn't be able to skin the explorer windows all the time, so I planned on a reinstall and thought I would try Vista.

I don't know what kind of messy XP install you guys had, but my XP install booted in about 20 seconds after that 11 months (Including security such as pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, and typing in my password)

Oh well, I don't reboot very often anyways... I'm going to enjoy clear sound, as well as extremely clean looking windows.

 

[provoko]

Delete the prefetch directory and it'll go back to being fast People don't realize that XP does just what vista does, in a less efficient way, and stores the info in a directory. clear the directory ot clear the cache, and you get a fast boot again.

A lot of people don't realize a lot of things. Like I'm gonna to tell me my mother and cousins to do that, yea right.

After a few months they complain about Windows XP taking over a minute to load! What am I supposed to do, to it for them every single time, or explain it over the phone and have them mess something up.

It still has to unload, and when you're dealing with something that you know is already going to thrash the disk because you can't get enough ram in the box (cough, Oracle DB manager), you want as much of it free immediately. Anything it has to dump to ram or release is stuff that is going to delay the request, and is simply annoying. It made enough of a difference that our company passed on Vista for the year again: Too many things had performance impacts.

WTF are you bringing Oracle DB manager into this discussion for? We're clearly talking about desktop performance and issues here. I love how someone says "our company passed on product X" and it's supposed to mean something. Do you play Gears of War on your company's computer? No! Then don't say such stupid nonsense.

Superfetch is superior to any other OS's prefetching memory system. It's been tested and it does not slow performance, it only increases the responsiveness and reduces load of your computer's programs. If Oracle DB manager can't handle it, too bad.

My XP system was up since December last year.

The only problem I had was with explorer.exe, Blackbox wouldn't be able to skin the explorer windows all the time, so I planned on a reinstall and thought I would try Vista.

I don't know what kind of messy XP install you guys had, but my XP install booted in about 20 seconds after that 11 months (Including security such as pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, and typing in my password)

Oh well, I don't reboot very often anyways... I'm going to enjoy clear sound, as well as extremely clean looking windows.

Still boots in 20 seconds after almost a year, that's impressive. My cousins are a family of 4, after a few months, their XP boot starts to slow to a crawl, over a minute to two minutes. For my personal computer, it goes from 25 to 40 seconds after a few months.

Blackbox is ugly. Vista and it's themes look much nicer.

-------------Solution Attempt #1-------------

I've been doing some searching (haha), this guy's blog had a solution to remove IE7's search bar using a registry entry here:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/remove-the-built-in-search-bar-on-ie-7/

That registry entry is:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions" Dword "NoSearchBox" value of 1

The same method can be applied to the folders, I think... hehe.

It would like this:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions\Explorer" Dword "NoSearchBox" value of 1

and/or

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions\ShellBrowser" Dword "NoSearchBox" value of 1

I'm not exactly sure if that will work. The reasoning behind it is IE7 and Vista's folder look virtually the same. Address bar with a search bar next to it. So the registry entries should be virtually the same. They may also look like this:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Explorer\Infodelivery\Restrictions" Dword "NoSearchBox" value of 1

and/or

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Policies\Microsoft\ShellBrowser\Infodelivery\Restrictions" Dword "NoSearchBox" value of 1

Try those, if they don't work, sorry, maybe someone else can do some brainstorming for a while.

 

[Borgschulze]

Still boots in 20 seconds after almost a year, that's impressive. My cousins are a family of 4, after a few months, their XP boot starts to slow to a crawl, over a minute to two minutes. For my personal computer, it goes from 25 to 40 seconds after a few months.

Indeed, it did still boot in about 20 seconds after a year, and I have to re-tweak it now because I reinstalled. But you should know, my computer runs 24/7 without reboots. I rebooted probably 15 times if you exclude the first couple days of using it.

Blackbox is ugly. Vista and it's themes look much nicer.

So just because you don't like it means it's ugly?

Try those, if they don't work, sorry, maybe someone else can do some brainstorming for a while.

I am back on XP, Vista still has way too many problems besides unease of use.

 

[lopoetve]

A lot of people don't realize a lot of things. Like I'm gonna to tell me my mother and cousins to do that, yea right.

After a few months they complain about Windows XP taking over a minute to load! What am I supposed to do, to it for them every single time, or explain it over the phone and have them mess something up.

Yes?

WTF are you bringing Oracle DB manager into this discussion for? We're clearly talking about desktop performance and issues here. I love how someone says "our company passed on product X" and it's supposed to mean something. Do you play Gears of War on your company's computer? No! Then don't say such stupid nonsense.

Superfetch is superior to any other OS's memory system. It's been tested and it does not slow performance, it only increases the responsiveness and reduces load of your computer's programs. If Oracle DB manager can't handle it, too bad.
.

I bring it up because it is a desktop app that has an adverse reaction to vista's superfetching memory system. It's hardly stupid nonsense, it's an example of something that runs better with superfetch off. It's not that oracle can't handle it, it's that it can't handle oracle, especially with our patient DBs. I'm sorry that you are not familiar with every major desktop app out there. There are any number of edge cases that will cause problems with superfetch. Yes, most people don't hit them, but they DO exist.

As for superior to any other OS's memory system, don't make me laugh. AIX, HP-UX, SLES, ESX3... there are any number of operating systems with a better memory management system.

Vista is not a BAD os. It's just not the be-all of existence either.

 

[Scali2]

It still has to unload

Unloading takes virtually no time, it just has to mark the pages of memory as empty (then again, it will just directly reallocate them on demand).
Since all executable images are read-only by definition, on a Windows system, there's no need to write anything back. The original data is still on disk in the actual .exe and .dll images. Windows has worked like this for ages, it has never written back unmodified data when swapping out memory.

Delete the prefetch directory and it'll go back to being fast People don't realize that XP does just what vista does, in a less efficient way, and stores the info in a directory. clear the directory ot clear the cache, and you get a fast boot again.

There are tons of benchmarks out there that show that Vista is often still a bit slower in games than XP. HG:L happens to be the game itself: It forces a DX10 mode, and the DX10 mode is slow as hell. That's not a vista problem though, that's Bill Roper being a douchebag programmer.

DirectX 9 and 10 are the only things where Vista is structurally slower than XP.

DirectX 9 has gotten better with hotfixes from Microsoft and new drivers from nVidia and ATi, but there are technical reasons why it will probably never be as fast as in XP, because it works in a completely different way. The current state of affairs is however that in general Vista gets within a few % of XP in DirectX 9 performance, so it's not really a big deal. You can still play games in Vista just fine.

DirectX 10 is still quite immature, probably mostly because of nVidia's drivers.
Bioshock proves however that when you have pretty much identical shaders, textures and everything, that DirectX 10 outperforms DirectX 9, as it was designed to do. Aside from that, it also has slightly better image quality because of better shadowmap and HDR rendertarget formats in DirectX 10.
Most other games either have an immature and unoptimized DX10-engine, or simply overdid the DX10 eyecandy, so it runs slower than DX9 after all. Or they could be bugs in the driver (or a combination of all factors). One thing I notice with Crysis is that in Vista it plays pretty well in DX10-mode, even on Very High detail, as long as the sea is not in view. Now either that water effect is far heavier than the DX9-equivalent (visually it doesn't seem a lot different though), or my driver is having some kind of trouble handling it.
I'm convinced that DX10 will eventually deliver the best gaming experience. It just needs time to mature and get solid drivers and 3d engines (and perhaps better hardware... The geometry shaders on both the GeForce 8800 and Radeon 2900XT are horribly slow, to the point where you might just avoid them altogether, and solve things the old-fashioned way).

OpenGL games don't suffer from the immature drivers and modified behaviour that DX9 and DX10 have, and performance of OpenGL is on par with XP, so there's no reason to suspect any kind of structural performance problems with graphics, gaming, or high-performance applications in general.

 

[provoko]

I am back on XP, Vista still has way too many problems besides unease of use.

Aw. Could someone else test my registry tweaks to see if it works? I'm curious. Next chance I get I'll test it at a friends house.

As for superior to any other OS's memory system, don't make me laugh. AIX, HP-UX, SLES, ESX3... there are any number of operating systems with a better memory management system.

I didn't mean to say Vista's memory system is superior, only superfetch at prefetching data (corrected my post).

I'm not aware of the mentioned OSs, and when searching them I found too much information, so you'd have to explain how they're better at prefetching compared to Vista.

 

[Borgschulze]

Aw. Could someone else test my registry tweaks to see if it works? I'm curious. Next chance I get I'll test it at a friends house.

Believe me, if I didn't format I would have tested them faster than you can think about thinking.

 

[lopoetve]

Aw. Could someone else test my registry tweaks to see if it works? I'm curious. Next chance I get I'll test it at a friends house.



I didn't mean to say Vista's memory system is superior, only superfetch at prefetching data (corrected my post).

I'm not aware of the mentioned OSs, and when searching them I found too much information, so you'd have to explain how they're better at prefetching compared to Vista.

They're all enterprise level Unix or Linux environments, all of which I've used in locations that would cause Vista's mind to boggle.

Last ~big~ SLES box I used was a customized BlueGene/L system: 2500 processors, 400gb ram, 4.2 PB distributed filesystem. I don't honestly know how it was prefetching, but the memory management itself was far more powerful than Vistas (I could assign memory blocks and relocate them entirely on the fly, from disk to RAM to mass-store, plus many other options). The last AIX box was similar: 2200 processors, 1TB Memory, and 5.5 PB filesystem. Her name was Blue Sky, and she lives at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where I worked

 

[Scali2]

Last ~big~ SLES box I used was a customized BlueGene/L system: 2500 processors, 400gb ram, 4.2 PB distributed filesystem. I don't honestly know how it was prefetching, but the memory management itself was far more powerful than Vistas (I could assign memory blocks and relocate them entirely on the fly, from disk to RAM to mass-store, plus many other options). The last AIX box was similar: 2200 processors, 1TB Memory, and 5.5 PB filesystem. Her name was Blue Sky, and she lives at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, where I worked

Yet you don't know that unloading/reallocating prefetched memory doesn't take any time?

 

[lopoetve]

Yet you don't know that unloading/reallocating prefetched memory doesn't take any time?

I play video games on a windows system. Coding for them is like coding for something stuck up where the sun don't shine: it's smelly and messy and things make odd sounds

I'm a Unix/Linux Admin/dev.

And it does take time: Any process that the system has to do takes clock cycles.

I'm just pointing out a fallacy in his argument, that's all. I'm not saying it's a bad system, just that there are times it is not welcome, and it certainly isn't the OMG BESTEST SYSTEM EVAR!

 

[TechieSooner]

OK- it takes time.
But the time it takes is faster than a blink of an eye... you are missing the point.

 

[lopoetve]

OK- it takes time.
But the time it takes is faster than a blink of an eye... you are missing the point.

No, I'm not. Theoretical limitations become actual limitations when you're using the system at the edge of its capabilities: See, oracle db manager on a large tablespace.

I'm just pointing out a limitation of the system.



Not to mention that last I checked, the copy command was still broken in Vista, but that's a whole different ballgame.

 

[Scali2]

I play video games on a windows system. Coding for them is like coding for something stuck up where the sun don't shine: it's smelly and messy and things make odd sounds

Right, and you want to be taken seriously?

And it does take time: Any process that the system has to do takes clock cycles.

No it doesn't. A precached page has the same status as an empty page to the allocation routine.
It can be allocated to a process at any time, because its contents don't need to be preserved.
So it takes no longer to allocate pages that belong to precache than it would take to allocate pages that belong to disk cache or pages that are completely empty.
Hence it takes no extra cycles compared to a non-precaching OS.

 

[lopoetve]

Right, and you want to be taken seriously?

I really don't care if you take me seriously or not. Go get a comp sci degree and then we'll start talking

No it doesn't. A precached page has the same status as an empty page to the allocation routine.
It can be allocated to a process at any time, because its contents don't need to be preserved.
So it takes no longer to allocate pages that belong to precache than it would take to allocate pages that belong to disk cache or pages that are completely empty.
Hence it takes no extra cycles compared to a non-precaching OS.

You're still spending the clock cycles on precaching in the first place: Even with the lowest priority setting, you still have that process running in the background at some point, if only in a 0-nice loop. Vista does not terminate the precaching process when memory fills.

Nothing is free.

 

[DeaconFrost]

Is anyone else getting a massive headache trying to figure out how a question about a search bar degraded into a debate about cycles? I need a nap.

 

[heatlesssun]

Nothing like another episode of "Vista Sucks!"

First off, didn't seem like too many people tried to answer the OPs question. There are a lot of explorer replacements for Windows: http://www.simplehelp.net/2006/10/11/10-windows-explorer-alternatives-compared-and-reviewed/

After all, Windows Explorer is just another program, you don't have to use it. Windows Explorer is a simple and easy to use computer navigator, its not meant to be customizable or powerful.

I always find it funny when people like to make something as simple as finding another program turn into "Windows sucks, switch to Linux". Might make sense to just find another app first!

Vista's copy command is broken? Are you referring to copying speed? I do know that Microsoft has released some patches for this already and is supposed to add some more tweaks to SP1.

To be honest, certain file operations do seem a little slower in Vista vs XP like unzipping, but nothing drastically bad.

Lastly, search is Vista is very cool! One thing that gets me is all the techie type who like to dis the feature. For all of the guys out there with tons of source code, Vista search is great at finding stuff in code. And there a a number of third party extensions (free and commercial) that search OpenOffice files, PDF's, JPEG's, etc: http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/06/new-filters-for-vista-search/

 

[Scali2]

I really don't care if you take me seriously or not. Go get a comp sci degree and then we'll start talking

Haha, I already have one.

You're still spending the clock cycles on precaching in the first place: Even with the lowest priority setting, you still have that process running in the background at some point, if only in a 0-nice loop. Vista does not terminate the precaching process when memory fills.

It works exactly like a disk cache, with one exception: it doesn't wait until your application is actually started for the first time. It's not a process that is running, it's a feature of the kernel, closely tied in with the virtual memory subsystem.
Granted, it may cache things you don't need, but this caching is all done in idle time anyway. It's not going to take cycles from your system when you demand them yourself.

I'd expect someone with a compsci degree to know more about this kind of basic thing.

 

[TechieSooner]

I'd expect someone with a compsci degree to know more about this kind of basic thing.

You'd think so...

At any rate- it amuses me that we are (were) talking about a desktop OS setting with Vista. Then, to supposedly make a point I guess, the OP starts talking about Oracle databases and how the tiny, minute usage that Superfetch uses makes an impact on the system.
It's apples to oranges.

And quite frankly, if you are running something that such a tiny amount of resources would make an impact on the whole system- you are doing something seriously wrong and need to rethink your strategy.