Vista tips, tricks, and tweaks, redux

It may be little, but I'm loving the ability to set different volume levels for each program running. Try it if you haven't yet.
 
Anyone know how to resize the Windows logo in the start menu. So fucking annoying that its "Hangs" out over the edge.

Thanks.
 
aguire said:
Aha, so that's why fonts look a lot more "clear" in vista;) Loving it so far:)
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They made some improvements in this department. I love it so far. It's not the blurry mess that was in XP or the early betas of Vista. Something tells me they may also be using an improved set of fonts that render better.
 
I have a TFORCE 550 Board and I am having a lot of trouble installing AC97 Audio drivers. I went to Realteks site and downloaded the 32 bit driver, however; vista hangs up on install even during safe mode. I resintalled vista just to try it again.

I ended up buying a cheap sound card *sigh for the interim*

Anyone have a fix for this?
 
Vista Aero 'Glass" requires a DX10 compatible video card right? You can have the feature in DX9, but in order for it to be 'shiny' like glass you need DX10 I believe. Can someone confirm this..



 
That is false. All DX9 cards (except GMA900) will work with Aero Glass. However, the slower models might choke up a bit if you try Flip3D.
 
ChronoReverse said:
That is false. All DX9 cards (except GMA900) will work with Aero Glass. However, the slower models might choke up a bit if you try Flip3D.
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Let me clarify. The Aero interface is still 'transparent' with DX9 cards, just not glassy. There is a difference.



 
Dark Prodigy said:
Let me clarify. The Aero interface is still 'transparent' with DX9 cards, just not glassy. There is a difference.

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donno bout that one. Im reasonably sure the glassy ness can be accompleshed using standard DX 9 and standard SM3.0
 
Just installed Business x64 as well as 2 more gigs of RAM. Some motherboards (and thus 64-bit Vista) apparently will not recognize the 4 gigs before you go into BIOS and Remap the memory.
 
Dark Prodigy said:
Let me clarify. The Aero interface is still 'transparent' with DX9 cards, just not glassy. There is a difference.



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Vista has set requirements for their new aero theme. Here are the requirements:

* a 1 GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor
* 1 gigabyte of system memory
* a DirectX 9 compatible graphics processor, with a Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) driver, and a minimum of 128 MB of Video RAM
* 40 GB hard drive with 15 GB free space
* DVD-ROM Drive
* audio output and Internet access
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Not sure what you're referring to, but I recently had a laptop with a GMA950 in it and that chip is 100% Aero Glass certified by Microsoft itself. The "Glass" effect just gives the appearance of reflections on the window title bars and borders.

If Aero is enabled, grab a window by the title bar and move it left to right; you'll notice the seeming "background" texture on the title bar and borders stays put as the window glides underneath. That's the glass effect, and it works just fine with the GMA950 and any DX9 compatible card as long as it's using Vista compatible drivers.

Aero is Aero, period - it's either on or off, there's no middle ground. There is no special high end mode called "Glass" as there was in some of the middle-period betas. If you check and it shows Aero is enabled on your hardware, then Aero "Glass" is in effect also.

There's 2 "new" schemes in Vista: Vista Aero and Vista Basic. There's all the old ones too like Windows Classic, etc, but those two are Vista specific. There's no "Vista Aero Glass," just so you understand.

Hope this helps.

ps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uszzfAybmsI&eurl= <<<--- In the first few seconds, the first 10 actually, when Windows Media Player starts up, notice the title bar area and the lower right area of the borders on WMP. Those funky looking diagonal shaded lines? That's the "Glass" effect. If the person doing this video had grabbed the window at the title bar and started moving it left to right, those diagonal "lines" would have remained in place while the window itself moved back and forth - this provides the appearance of reflections, giving the impression that the window itself is solid and made of... yep, you guessed it... "Glass."
 
The suggestions regarding the Dual Boot issue and modifying the files on WinXP, will this solve my problem of WinXP not starting?

When I choose Vista it starts great. When I choose XP I get the following:

Couldn't Open Drive multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partiti on(1)
NTLDR: Couldn't Open Drive multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partiti on(1)

My XP is running on two Maxtor's in RAID 0 as SATA 1&2 on my Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe, and my Vista HP is on a new 150 gig Raptor running off the Silicon Image.

I have my DVD burner on the nVidia SATA 3, and could have put the Raptor on SATA 4 if that would have made a differance.

Please help.
 
cu2cool said:
Which antivirus programs are working with Vista? NOD32? I'm currently using a trial beta version of trend micro pc-cillin.

On another note, does anyone know how to remove the "Windows Vista (TM) Beta 2 Evaluation copy. Build 5384" label on the bottom right of the screen?
sshot.jpg
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Why doesnt my menu do that with a browser open ?......Your start menu is transparent in front of that webpage, mine doesnt do that, how can I enable that option ?......Just installed Vista64-Ultimate
 
Zorachus said:
Why doesnt my menu do that with a browser open ?......Your start menu is transparent in front of that webpage, mine doesnt do that, how can I enable that option ?......Just installed Vista64-Ultimate
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Depends what your specs are. What you are referring to is called the Aero interface, and only works with fairly good video cards.. so it really all depends on your system.
 
cirial said:
Depends what your specs are. What you are referring to is called the Aero interface, and only works with fairly good video cards.. so it really all depends on your system.
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Well looking at my signature I think my VideoCard should be able to handle it ?
 
cirial said:
Absolutely. I saw you made a new thread.. did you get it figured out?
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Yeah thank's I just needed to research a little more......looked up Aero Glass in the search bar for Vista64, and it had a step by step method of setting it up, I was surprised that it did not set up the glass look by default ?......But now it looks so nice the way I thought it should look......

Vista64 has been the toughest OS I have ever installed and to get it up and running stable is a workout, I have been building systems for almost 6-7years and most go smooth as butter and last for years, some have a couple hard things to figure out but I get it done, but this has been amazing how hard it is with the hardware, and crazy system shutdowns, and just getting it up and going is very tempermental, it seems my motherboard is not liked by it an nForce4, I am sure a newer board like an 680i or AM2 work much smoother, maybe Vista likes DDR2 better ?
 
I do not see this listed as an option under properties? Am I missing something?
"4. Under “Settings”, check “Disable the Desktop Window Manager”, and then press OK to dismiss the properties dialog."
 
CookieFactory said:
Just installed Business x64 as well as 2 more gigs of RAM. Some motherboards (and thus 64-bit Vista) apparently will not recognize the 4 gigs before you go into BIOS and Remap the memory.
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I had a similar problem with Vista 64 Ultimate upgrading from 2 gig to 4gig of ram. I think the problem is on an upgrade the old memory setting is locked. I found my solution was easy to fix.

Type MSCONFIG in the "start search"

Click the BOOT tab

Click the ADVANCED button

Uncheck the box that says "Maximun Memory" ( mine was checked with 2048 ) no need to set it just uncheck it.

Reboot and you should now see all your memory.

No need to go into safe mode !

Someone needs to make this a sticky

Thats right folks MSCONFIG still exists in Vista all versions.
 
Minor and possibly harmless thread hijack...okay, more of a question: is Windows Update somehow keyed to each build revision of Vista (I'm dual-booting with a preview copy of Ultimate x86 I got from an MS conference last week, build 5840), or are there really not that many updates available through WU itself at this point?
 
HardUp4HardWare said:
Anbody know of a way to get vista to display a toolbar with those nice jumbo icons?
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If you mean a "dock" then it requires third party software like RocketDock to accomplish that goal. If you just mean bigger icons, right click the Taskbar, unlock it, then click View and check off Large icons. Not the greatest thing like a dock but hey, they're bigger. :)
 
On the tip to improve game preformance by disabling aero during gameplay , when i right click i dont get a option to disable it as its shown in this tip guide , the only closest option is for disable desktop compisition ..is that the same ?
 
What about opening multiple Window Media Player's, like in Win2k and WinXPpro I could have a million Media Players open, but not in Vista only one at a time ?
 
Godmachine said:
On the tip to improve game preformance by disabling aero during gameplay , when i right click i dont get a option to disable it as its shown in this tip guide , the only closest option is for disable desktop compisition ..is that the same ?
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When you start up a full screen game, Aero stops working. There is no need to "disable" it because it gracefully moves aside all by itself until you close the full screen game you're playing.

Aero doesn't interfere with games or make them suffer a performance penalty - unless you're running them in a window, and even then it still disables and leaves you with the Vista Basic interface till the game is done most of the time.
 
Godmachine said:
Ahh then a correction to the guide is needed heh.
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LOL

Considering the stuff was last edited in June last year it's rather difficult to imagine why anybody would think that anything other than the pure 'How to do stuff' portions is still relevent. The 'guide' was written for early public Beta releases, not for the now available final product :D
 
How do I uninstall those useless program that came install by default installation?
 
Do you use all the buttons on your TV remote? If not, are you so bloody-minded that you take to the ones you don't use with a chisel, to remove them?


There is 'Turn Windows Features On or Off' functionality in the 'Uninstall Programs' Control Panel applet, just as always. If you want to go further you could always use vLite.
 
Ok well, been on Vista for a solid 12 hrs, here my first take....

Counter-Strike 1.6 issues:
I downloaded a few gadgets and it would seem suprisingly that they led to BSODs in 1.6. It was either, one of the CPU monitors (stock one works fine), A digital clock or, most likly, the server monitor.

As for why gadgets cause BSODs i donno, Sorta seems like it shouldn't work that way...

Open GL is also causing minor issues (vent textures wrong, partially correct floating point placement) that wern't apparent on my copy of XP. rendering in D3D seems to be fine.


Aero Interface troubles:
Aero Interface wouldn't enable for the longest times. I was suprised how it wasnt on when i installed, so I went into options and tried to turn it on, first thing it told me was my graphics card wasnt DX9 ready. One restard later it claimed that it had turned itself on, but infact hadn't. I got a registry thats supposed to fix the issue, no such luck.

After that i quit and left a couple messages with a couple people. When i booted it up a little while later, suprise suprise, Aero interface is on.
 
What about opening multiple Window Media Player's, like in Win2k and WinXPpro I could have a million Media Players open, but not in Vista only one at a time ?
 
Zorachus said:
What about opening multiple Window Media Player's, like in Win2k and WinXPpro I could have a million Media Players open, but not in Vista only one at a time ?
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You must be talking about Media Player Classic or 6.5, whatever the version is. You still use that? :) I've only seen multiple instances of the Media Player control object (Think browser plugin) not the main application. Anyone remember what the executable is for the old Media Player? I want to check to see if they did away with that version in Vista. I remember reading that it's not there anymore.
 
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