Help me with Vista

Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 28 Mar 2009 13:39

I recently installed Vista but now I'm getting pretty frustrated because some things I frequently used in WinXP are nowhere to be found in Vista!

1) How do I search e.g. all my .script files for a specific sequence of characters (this was possible since Win2K but not in Vista?) I don't want to run indexing service just for that!
2) How do I get a Favorites menu in Explorer?
3) How can I change the colors in Explorer to be a bit less eye-hurting? or am I the only one who thinks that the colors in XP were more comfortable?
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby EggChen on 28 Mar 2009 15:16

Not sure about 1 and 3, but I can tell you indexing service is very good. I hardly have any shortcuts on my desktop these days, just press start menu and type first few letters of whatever I am after, and it is there. Once you start using some of Vista's features rather than trying to work like you would on XP, they start to make sense.

Number 2, there is a favourites folder that you add links to, check this screenshot.

http://www.mediafire.com/imageview.php? ... vi&thumb=6
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 28 Mar 2009 16:11

The indexer constantly thrashes the disk. It also seems to contribute to file fragmentation - at least my analysis window didn't look that bad before I re-enabled windows search :(

I found out how to search the files: apparently Vista is not smart enough to figure out that something that opens with Notepad can be searched using plaintext filter. I had to go into indexing options->advanced and setup all the extensions that I want to be indexed... I wish somebody would make a tool that does it automatically for all text files.

As for favorites: what I want is a menu like in XP Explorer where I can quickly get a list of all my bookmarked folders without scrolling.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby rockingmtranch on 28 Mar 2009 16:20

That looks to be a royal pain doing it that way nanderson :(
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby Grump642 on 29 Mar 2009 00:22

I would suggest you try System Explorer. I use it and love it. It also is a task manager, that is much better then MS's.
http://systemexplorer.mistergroup.org/
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 29 Mar 2009 08:54

Thanks :)

Can you explain a bit how it can help me?
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby Grump642 on 29 Mar 2009 23:51

It does many things well. And has a search function. Website can give you a better outline. One thing I like is the task manager. Before, when(if) SoC froze, quite often windows task manager could not even come up. I would have to do a full reboot. With this, it always opens so I can close programs.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby audioave10 on 02 Apr 2009 05:47

Grump...that's a good tip and it seems like a great utility. Even better, it's for Vista or XP. :thumbright:
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 02 Apr 2009 17:35

Guys I've found out that in order to search inside files I don't really need the windows search service to run. Simply having configured all the file types that I want to be able to search in is good enough. So for now I'm satisfied :)

NOTE: even after disabling a lot of services and startup programs Vista is still running 23 processes right after startup :-o
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby Grump642 on 03 Apr 2009 02:09

Vista can be a "pain". I used it for this build because I felt I needed to learn it. Win7 should be most of Vista's good points, and there are some, but most of the bad points will be fixed.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 01 May 2009 23:38

After a month with Vista 64 bit I must say that it feels like a very good OS. It does have some problems with the user interface (Explorer) but it runs very well and very stable.

I'm not sure if Vista x64 is any better at running memory intensive games like STALKER - on the other hand it seems to run it just as well as XP did. Application performance feels more or less the same as in XP. Some apps seem to start slower than they did on 32 bit XP and some apps start incredibly fast.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby EggChen on 02 May 2009 12:14

Agreed, people slate it, but how many have tried using it day in day out for a significant period of time? I'm very happy with it (64 Home premium), though it is not perfect I'll admit.

I struggle a bit on my dad's XP machine now!!
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby jamie1992 on 02 May 2009 15:55

I use Dual boot and i switch between XP and Vista Ultimate Pro, and my honest opinion is that XP is still by far the best, if you have a machine like mine, games run PERFECT on XP but in Vista they struggle.

Talked to my bro about it, and he agress that XP is best for gaming out of the 2 regardless of the PC's specs.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby nandersen on 02 May 2009 16:19

jamie1992 wrote:I use Dual boot and i switch between XP and Vista Ultimate Pro, and my honest opinion is that XP is still by far the best, if you have a machine like mine, games run PERFECT on XP but in Vista they struggle.

What's a "Vista Ultimate Pro"?

My impression is that games run just as well on Vista x64 as on WinXP. At least there's no noticeable difference.

jamie1992 wrote:Talked to my bro about it, and he agress that XP is best for gaming out of the 2 regardless of the PC's specs.

How can you say "regardless of the PC specs"? How many different hardware configurations have you compared these two OSes on?

I remember my first 3GHz P4 rig. I installed Win2K on it and what a disappointment! It felt slower than a Barton 2500+ (1.83 GHz). Then I tried installing WinXP on it and I could barely pick up my jaw off the floor! That "heavy and bloated" new OS ran at least twice as fast as Win2K on that hardware. I learned a lesson: never say that one OS is slower than another OS simply because it's slower on your rig.

Also, some people who upgrade tend to forget how long it took for them to tweak and customize their old OS setup. If you tweaked XP you will also want to tweak Vista.
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Re: Help me with Vista

Postby EggChen on 02 May 2009 16:30

Agreed it is slightly more demanding on hardware, but it can be optimised, check out this handy guide.

http://www.blackviper.com/WinVista/servicecfg.htm

There are also plenty of benchmarks showing it perform almost as well as XP on games, and in some cases better (cue Ket's ears pricking up). Before making the switch, I researched it for a while, and articles like this convinced me I would not see a big drop, and I didn't... http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=1390

There are already early comparisons of Windows 7 with Vista, and to all those expecting massive improvements, sorry... http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=68 ... pert&pid=1

Of course this is an early version of W7, it could be better (or worse) than these benchmarks suggest.

I can only speak as a long term user and lover of XP that finally made the switch. I was very hesitant, not only switching OS, but moving to a 64bit as well. I don't regret it and don't have any problems playing games (old and new). I do have a powerful system, and it would probably be a different story on a machine with lower specs.
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