Windows Vista Beta 2 (Build 5384.4)

[Khayman]

Not yet it seems, I guess MS need to roll this out like they did with SP2 ... but then this is 10 times bigger than SP2... could kill the web if it was just unleashed

It gives us testers the chance to get rid of any last minute showstopping bugs, the public CTP could well be a newer revision.

Now my observations of another clean Vista install:
- Windows Search no longer crashes, so I don't have to kill it in services.msc anymore -- woo..

Didn't in 5381 either

- WMP doesn't pull album art from my player, maybe if I have the album art on the PC and all setup might be different will check on that later as my Vista rig is off the network at the moment.

no idea

- The clock on the sidebar now has lots of different funky faces, was this in 5381? Got the chronograph now, funky.

yes it was, its neato

- Install quicker? No idea as I wasn't watching. I am the best tester ever although I will say that someone using a UK keyboard and setting their location to the UK isn't really going to want to have their time offset to the USA. Whats stranger is that this default offset removes several hours from my system time. So I have to set it to GMT and then fix the time. Why?

Last 3 builds have installed in about 45 mins from clean so, pretty good. The time issue is a major pain in the ass. Theres huge threads on the beta newsgroup about it and everytime someone bugs it it gets set to "by design". God damn it.

Network seemed to be a bit of a pain this time, might have been the router I was using, will try again and hope and see if it just connects like it does at home.

No problems with it here. Connected to network right away, i changed the workgroup so i can see my other machine and did it no problem, can see shared folders right away

- AVG free now refuses to install although it would on 5381. Bugger.

Never tried an av on any recent builds

- Still a bit of a black flicker when starting up and shutting down, I know there might always be but would be very cool if the transition was as smooth as silk.

Hmm, not noticed myself. only flicker iswhen UAP screen comes up andit flicks to grayd out rather than fades like it should

- Still no logo on bootup, I am sure there was some bizarre workaround that showed "something" in 5381 but I never got around to trying it.

Didn't know there was workarounf for 5381. no that bothered about this though

- I am a bad person and keep disabling UAP via msconfig, disabling doesn't seem to fully work in this build tho as it keeps pestering me even after I have disabled it and rebooted. I don't think I will ever use this feature at home as I am pretty smart browser, obviously going to be useful in a work environment though.

There is an option in the GPE for UAP, not sure if its the same thing as the msconfig option, so you can try that. As long as it is turn offable (or disabled) by admin users then thats ok. As an admin i realy don't want to be asked if its ok to copy a file i just dragged and dropped.

Other than that it seems pretty good, installed all the hardware ok. last time i had to go into the device manager and install some drivers for sound card, but this time it worked when you click the option to install hardware not installed during setup (on the welcome box/window).

Installed office 2007 on the vista box, all went fine not had a chance to use it though, will try to play with it later perhaps copy my outlook pst from the main box and see how it copes with 6 years of emails

 

[ming]

er, can we ask MS to get rid of the so-called 3D UI coz it's flippin FLAT!!!! Can't see any depth in the cascaded windows and I guess this new '3D' layout is a resource hog!

 

[NetRyder]

Man, the display drivers for nVidia GPUs in the x64 build are utter garbage. This machine has a 256MB GeForce 6800GT (PCI-e). The whole system is choppy and the window animations don't even work. It's a huge step back from 5365 x64, which was working beautifully on this system.

If I switch back to the non-Glass theme, performance is back up to what it should be, but it looks like crap. I wonder if there's a way to pull the nVidia drivers out of the 5365 DVD and install them in this build. The old x64 drivers for 5308 on nVidia's site didn't work with 5365 and they don't work with this build either, and the new ones are x86 only.

Does anyone still have 5365 or 5381 x64 installed?
That might be the only way to get the old drivers...

If I don't find a solution to this in a couple of days, I guess my only option is to download the x86 build and try that. Are these people ever going to start taking 64-bit seriously? =\

 

[LordOfLA]

does that mean I potentially wasted 4 horurs getting the x64 buikd was well as x86?

 

[NetRyder]

does that mean I potentially wasted 4 horurs getting the x64 buikd was well as x86?

Maybe. You could potentially waste another hour installing the x64 build to see if you have the issue as well?

 

[Brad]

That IS what beta is for....for testing issues...

 

[GEN3RIC]

I have this build installed and I have not notice any performance enhancements. I get the same crappy choppiness from a 6800GT on the x64 build. NOT impressed with performance. I got a 3 rating, and my GPU and GPU memory scored nearly 6. Its like the drivers just don't work!

 

[NetRyder]

I have this build installed and I have not notice any performance enhancements. I get the same crappy choppiness from a 6800GT on the x64 build. NOT impressed with performance. I got a 3 rating, and my GPU and GPU memory scored nearly 6. Its like the drivers just don't work!

It's funny. 5365 x64 was running like a dream on my machine, and I was getting a performance score of 4. 5384 gives the same machine a rating of 3 and runs very poorly with Glass enabled. Didn't get a chance to install 5381, so I don't know if that was affected or not.

My guess is that either the new drivers have issues, or something changed for the worse in the DWM between the two builds (which would really suck). Trouble is, the old drivers are in the WIM file on the 5365 DVD, and I'll need ximage to pull them out. There's a WAIK on Connect which should have ximage, but it's for 5308, so I have no idea if it'll work or not.

 

[NetRyder]

Ah, nVidia just released the new 88.61 set for x64 now as well!
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winvista_x64_88.61.html

Time to test these out!

 

[Brad]

argh, i cant wait until I can download this.

 

[GEN3RIC]

Im downloading it now, but I wont have a chance to install/test until I get back from my run. NetRyder, Im sure you'll have already posted your results so I look forward to seeing your post.

 

[Brad]

I'm not special enough to have access.

 

[kcnychief]

****ing ****

I haven't been home for like two days and won't be home until Sunday

The stuff is downloaded, but I can't touch it! Not fair!

 

[NetRyder]

Im downloading it now, but I wont have a chance to install/test until I get back from my run. NetRyder, Im sure you'll have already posted your results so I look forward to seeing your post.

Well, it's a little better, but certainly not even close to how smooth 5365 x64 was. =\

The DWM CPU usage keeps spiking up everytime I minimize or maximize windows. That shouldn't be happening if the effects are properly being offloaded to the GPU.

Can someone on the x86 build with Aero Glass enabled do a quick test for us? Open up Task Manager and switch to the Processes tab. Leave it open, and check the CPU usage of dwm.exe when you maximize and minimize windows. Does you see it spiking up too?

 

[GEN3RIC]

Yeah, I noticed that too.. I put the CPU meter "widget" (i forgot what it really is called..) and just happened to notice whenever a graphical effect was displayed, the CPU went pegged to almost 100% briefly. You're right to say that should NOT happen. Its like it is software rendering everything.

Does this have anything to do with Direct X 10 not being utilized? Or what does it use for an API?

 

[GEN3RIC]

By the way, it pains me to look at my page file usage..... it sits around 900mb on idle. I dont dare try to play games.....wow. I have only 1.0 GB of RAM and its definitely not enough for that "smoothness" I get with XP at the same memory size.

In XP right now with a bunch of programs open, I am sitting at 600mb... I thought that was a lot. Do they plan on addressing these issues, or are they just hoping that the average consumer's PC is more beefy by that time?

One thought I often have while testing Vista.. I cant help but compare it to OSX, since everybody else does.. If Apple is using a fully 3D environment and has all kinds of great effects, why is it so smooth on crappy G4 or G5 desktops? Yet we have major issues with our rather monstrous computers running Vista?

I cant put my finger on whether or not Vista is way more advanced graphically, or is technologically deficient...

 

[kcnychief]

The minimum RAM for Vista is 512MB, while 1GB is recommended. I think it's only like 128MB minimum and 256MB recommended for XP, so do the math

 

[GEN3RIC]

The minimum RAM for Vista is 512MB, while 1GB is recommended. I think it's only like 128MB minimum and 256MB recommended for XP, so do the math

True, I cant see how you guys can run Vista on 512 though.. its ridiculous how much seems to need to be pulled from the HDD because there isnt enough room in RAM to keep it all there.

Makes me want to get 4 GIGS...lol

 

[NetRyder]

You don't need that much RAM for it to run well. There's just something wrong with this build. As I said, 5365 x64 was running really, really well on my machine, and I have 1GB of RAM too. In fact, I was barely ever booting back into XP x64 because everything in Vista was so fluid and quick.

I'm going to keep an eye on the beta newsgroups to see if people with ATi GPUs are having similar issues with this x64 build. Since the latest nVidia drivers didn't help all that much, I'm starting to think there might be something else involved.

 

[GEN3RIC]

That would explain the build releases on such short intervals... must be a rather complex issue if they are still diagnosing it. Nothing more to do than to keep on reporting the bugs.