Vista RC1

[Craig]

I managed to get Vista RC1 installed today.

I've been using it for a few hours, and have started getting to grips on how things work.

It is alot more stable than the previous beta's, which is good considering MS are going to release to manufacturing next month.

I will post a review on it over the weekend, but to get started, here are a couple of images (desktop screen grab with some windows open, and an image of the built in Media Centre).

[Gandalph]

Looks quite interesting Craig. I was reading an article last night by two of Americas Beta testers and they said that it was a very stable OS. However, the biggest problem they had with it, and in their words, was the Drivers. Microsoft still have a long way to go to get the drivers into the OS for peripheral equipment.

[dagwoood]

I downloaded the ISO this morning, just got to burn it to DVD and I'll give Vista another try.

I found the 1st Beta problematic to say the least, especially the 64bit version.

As per Gandalph's post, I'd read this version was a big improvement. I want to see if it performs better now I have a dual core CPU.

[Craig]

I have installed this release to act as my main setup (got a drive image ready to wind me back to XP within 5 mins of disaster though!).

So far so good.

Drivers, as "normal" are a problem.

I've found so far that the majority of XP drivers work, but because they are not digitally signed they will not install on Vista unless you follow this very simple step...

Press F8 before Vista starts booting and select to allow unsigned drivers. Apparently you will need to do this on every occasion you boot your PC in the knowledge that you are going to install an unsigned driver. Bit of a pain, but easier than a reg hack or not being able to install them at all.

Also, although the majority of drivers work, it doesn’t mean that the accompanying software will, as the following examples show.

To get my Logitech webcam to work, I had to run the installer that installs both the drivers and the software. In device manager, the camera had the yellow exclamation mark stating something was wrong with the drivers. I pointed the "update driver" dialog to the same directory where the installer installed everything, it updated the drivers, and the cam worked (very strange, after all, they are the same drivers). However the Logitech software can’t see the cam, but every other piece of software that uses the camera can. (no great loss, I only use it on Skype and Messenger).

Another example is my Digital TV card. The drivers are unsigned but installed fine, but the software wont work as it was only designed for XP. Again, not a problem as the TV card works perfectly with the Media Centre that’s part of the Vista build I am using.

For those that are about to try RC1 and get annoyed easily, turn off User Account Control (UAC for short). It will stop the annoying pop ups asking if you are 100% certain you want to perform a specific task over and over again (msconfig > Tools > Disable UAC (click launch once selected)).

Tip - The run command isn’t shown by default on the start menu, but you can treat "Start Search" dialog box as the run command!

[dagwoood]

For those that are about to try RC1 and get annoyed easily, turn off User Account Control (UAC for short). It will stop the annoying pop ups asking if you are 100% certain you want to perform a specific task over and over again (msconfig > Tools > Disable UAC (click launch once selected)).

I thought they'd changed UAC in the release so it wasn't so annoying. With the first BETA it was the first thing I went looking for; how to turn it off.

Are you running the 64bit version Craig? I ask as I found the 32bit version a lot better with regards to drivers.

[Craig]

For those that are about to try RC1 and get annoyed easily, turn off User Account Control (UAC for short). It will stop the annoying pop ups asking if you are 100% certain you want to perform a specific task over and over again (msconfig > Tools > Disable UAC (click launch once selected)).

I thought they'd changed UAC in the release so it wasn't so annoying. With the first BETA it was the first thing I went looking for; how to turn it off.

Are you running the 64bit version Craig? I ask as I found the 32bit version a lot better with regards to drivers.

32bit!

[dagwoood]

32bit!

Thanks Craig.

I download the 32bit version purely for compatibility reasons. Still sounds like there's a lot of work to be done; if they can't get 32bit drivers functioning properly, it doesn't bode well for the 64bit users.

[Chris]

But NEW Vista drivers will work just fine :-d

[dagwoood]

Well I've installed it and I must admit, I'm really impressed B)

The install, from start to finish, just took 20 mins. When it was installed, there was only 1 driver it didn't have. It picked up and installed everything; network and chipset drivers, the works.

The only driver it hadn't "got" was the audio driver, which I'd already downloaded form Nvidia, and that installed without a hitch.

I've found it boots a lot quicker than the last public BETA and generally is a lot snappier as well.

AVG now works . On the last version it would install but wouldn't load once you'd rebooted.

The only niggle I can find that's carried over from before is the constant hard drive activity once you've got to the desktop, and this carries on for a couple of minutes. I never got to the bottom of what's doing this; it's either something to do with the indexing service or the prefetch/Readyboost functions. I'll wait to see if this settles down over the next few days; fingers crossed :)

It looks like Microsoft have pulled out all the stops with this release.