Windows 7 RC1 experiences

SUBMAN1 · 05-09-09, 12:51 PM

Figured I'd share mine - it won't install on my machine. Probably doesn't like my RAID or something. It almost completes but either hard locks (usually hard locks) or crash dumps at the exact same point in the install process - during the finalizing portion after everything is installed.

Just to be sure, I went through and disabled everything up to and including the Ethernet in the BIOS, unplugged all USB devices, and even pulled out my TV card and everything else I have stuffed into this thing. Only things left were 3 optical drives (CD burner, DVD_ROM, and Blu-Ray burner), 3 hard drives (2 in RAID 0), one 4870 vid card, and of course MB/CPU.

Still crashes during install. I install to the non-RAID drive too so as not to have that screw up anything - no dice still. Probably that the RAID exists is the problem.

I'd say it is definitely not ready for prime time yet.

-S

Arclight · 05-09-09, 01:00 PM

Beta seemed a lot more... easy-going. And stable.

I've experienced 2 lock-ups as well. For some reason when an .avi reaches the end and playback stops, system stops as well.

Pushing ctrl+alt+del gives black screen as it tries to load the log-on screen with options, but it never gets there. So weird, HD led keeps blinking indicating activity, mouse cursor keeps moving, no crash or error... it just stops responding.

I have a RAID array as well, and the page-file is on it, entirely (no portion on c: drive). Maybe the array goes to sleep due too inactivety during playback (playback is from second partition on primary disk). Will have to play around with the power options and page-file.

SUBMAN1 · 05-09-09, 01:32 PM

Yep! I'll wait for RC2 I guess.

-S

Arclight · 05-09-09, 01:53 PM

I just don't see how they can go from a beta that was good enough to release, to RC that is borked. I'm no software engineer, but that doesn't seem like progress.

CaptainHaplo · 05-09-09, 02:37 PM

Subman, what is the raid controller? Did you give the install a base driver for it? MB based?

As always, specs help in ts stuff.

Assuming the array controller is MB based and your using sata - check the modes. Especially if its some wacky dell......

When it crashes (vs locks) - what info does it give you - often it will reference either a file - or let you know a device (like disk0) is unavailable. That will also help point you in the irght direction

SUBMAN1 · 05-09-09, 08:40 PM

Logic should deduce for you that if I made it to the finalizing step that the RAID controller has a driver and it is functioning properly up until that point.

It is annoying that it crashed at the exact point every time. Nothing left to disable. Waiting on RC2.

And BTW - I would never buy a Piece of Sh*t Dell!

-S

Peto · 05-09-09, 09:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

And BTW - I would never buy a Piece of Sh*t Dell!

-S

I was kind of waiting for that response

. I imagine you've been building your own rigs for a long time.

Interesting info regarding the RAID

... You'd think that MS would have given it more consideration since it's becoming more common in systems. Then again--it is a MS product

. Looking forward to RC2 with SP1.

SUBMAN1 · 05-10-09, 11:47 AM

I've been building my own since about 1990. Got boxes full of old parts.

I can say I did own a canned IBM PC computer once - a Tandy 1000 EX, but man it was worth it. I had it decked out with 640K of RAM and I upgraded to an 8088-2 proc at 8MHz MHz, external 3.5" disk drive, the works. So even though I had a canned system, I still decked it out. I was the cool kid on the block back then too since everyone was running 4 color CGA graphics and I had 16 colors! I could play Starflight in all its glory! On top of that, I had 3 voice sound chip with a noise generator!

Bad ass!

But yeah, since the early 90's I only built my own PC. It is the only way to get what you want.

I do have this itch to dig in my boxes of old parts and throw together a PC with a 3dfx in it and Windows 98SE. Got some old 3dfx games I want to play that never worked right on the 3dfx emulators. This is one game - http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=2523 (I donated this unreleased 3dfx version to this site - it was never released to the public, but the devs decided to give me a copy after the company went bust. There was a non-accelerated version released in Europe to keep the company afloat but it wasn't enough) that I'd like to fire up again. Never worked right on an emulator - the colors got all screwed up. You had to play in software rendering mode which is not as smooth or good looking.

-S

Arclight · 05-10-09, 11:57 AM

Still have an P1 100MHZ to run old games on. Has been collecting dust for a long time though.

SUBMAN1 · 05-10-09, 12:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

Still have an P1 100MHZ to run old games on. Has been collecting dust for a long time though.

I have a P133, but I mainly used it for programming serial devices.

-S

Arclight · 05-10-09, 12:27 PM

Programming serial devices? Sounds interesting, please explain.

Also have 1 or 2 old 386 thingies (and Commodore), but they were stripped for components looong time ago. Man, I should really get rid of unusable cases taking up space. My bedroom looks like a PC graveyard, ain't got nowhere else to put them.

SUBMAN1 · 05-10-09, 12:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arclight

Programming serial devices? Sounds interesting, please explain.

Also have 1 or 2 old 386 thingies, but they were stripped for components looong time ago. Man, I should really get rid of unusable cases taking up space. My bedroom looks like a PC graveyard, ain't got nowhere else to put them.

Try and find a serial port on a laptop these days! That is why I keep it around! Runs Win95. I should upgrade it to Windows 98SE. I think I have ME around here too but that was a POS.

For example, here is one impulse buy I made once that I need that laptops serial port for:

http://cdecas.free.fr/robots/wonderborg.php

A lot of devices like routers and servers can only be talked to with a serial port too. So I need that little laptop for more than one thing.

-S

Arclight · 05-10-09, 12:40 PM

Oh, that's awesome! One of the things I had in the back of my mind was to use stuff from old PCs and build my own robot, but I have no clue how to do that. Don't even know if it's possible.

Last serial port I saw was on a P3 I think, but sadly that board died recently. CPU was fine (1ghz) and went to a friend of mine whose CPU just died, so some part of that system still lives on. I got that P3 board from a friend of mine, was my first "real" PC (was always far behind current tech due to lack of money), was still using a P1 100MHZ before that. I remember playing a lot of Ceasar II... good memories.

CaptainHaplo · 05-10-09, 08:38 PM

My normal job heavily involves devices that require pc serial ports. Most end users buy a pc - then go "where do I plug this 9 pin thingy in?"

I think my company probably has kept a couple of usb-serial adapter firms in business by ourselves.....

USB Serial adapters usually work fine for most uses, however avoid PCI serial cards.... they have gotten to be about useless....

Subman1 - why is it I have the idea that like me, you have spent way too much time in telnet and hyperterminal?

BTW - did anyone else notice that hyperterminal was removed in Vista and has NOT made a reapearance in 7?

Dowly · 05-12-09, 01:04 PM

Installed it today, havent had any big problems yet (ArmA locked up once, but that's most propably because there was heavy load on the HD from some other things), quite the opposite. My PC is now very fast and depending of the game there's been a BIG improvement on FPS (ArmA from ~35fps on normal on XP to ~40-45fps on high/very high on Win7).

05-09-09, 12:51 PM	#1
SUBMAN1 Rear Admiral Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 11,866 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Windows 7 RC1 experiences Figured I'd share mine - it won't install on my machine. Probably doesn't like my RAID or something. It almost completes but either hard locks (usually hard locks) or crash dumps at the exact same point in the install process - during the finalizing portion after everything is installed. Just to be sure, I went through and disabled everything up to and including the Ethernet in the BIOS, unplugged all USB devices, and even pulled out my TV card and everything else I have stuffed into this thing. Only things left were 3 optical drives (CD burner, DVD_ROM, and Blu-Ray burner), 3 hard drives (2 in RAID 0), one 4870 vid card, and of course MB/CPU. Still crashes during install. I install to the non-RAID drive too so as not to have that screw up anything - no dice still. Probably that the RAID exists is the problem. I'd say it is definitely not ready for prime time yet. -S __________________

05-09-09, 01:00 PM	#2
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Beta seemed a lot more... easy-going. And stable. I've experienced 2 lock-ups as well. For some reason when an .avi reaches the end and playback stops, system stops as well. Pushing ctrl+alt+del gives black screen as it tries to load the log-on screen with options, but it never gets there. So weird, HD led keeps blinking indicating activity, mouse cursor keeps moving, no crash or error... it just stops responding. I have a RAID array as well, and the page-file is on it, entirely (no portion on c: drive). Maybe the array goes to sleep due too inactivety during playback (playback is from second partition on primary disk). Will have to play around with the power options and page-file. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

05-09-09, 01:32 PM	#3
SUBMAN1 Rear Admiral Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 11,866 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Yep! I'll wait for RC2 I guess. -S __________________

05-09-09, 01:53 PM	#4
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	I just don't see how they can go from a beta that was good enough to release, to RC that is borked. I'm no software engineer, but that doesn't seem like progress. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

05-09-09, 02:37 PM	#5
CaptainHaplo Silent Hunter Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 4,404 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 0	Subman, what is the raid controller? Did you give the install a base driver for it? MB based? As always, specs help in ts stuff. Assuming the array controller is MB based and your using sata - check the modes. Especially if its some wacky dell...... When it crashes (vs locks) - what info does it give you - often it will reference either a file - or let you know a device (like disk0) is unavailable. That will also help point you in the irght direction __________________ Good Hunting! Captain Haplo

05-09-09, 08:40 PM	#6
SUBMAN1 Rear Admiral Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 11,866 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Logic should deduce for you that if I made it to the finalizing step that the RAID controller has a driver and it is functioning properly up until that point. It is annoying that it crashed at the exact point every time. Nothing left to disable. Waiting on RC2. And BTW - I would never buy a Piece of Sh*t Dell! -S __________________

05-10-09, 11:47 AM	#8
SUBMAN1 Rear Admiral Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 11,866 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	I've been building my own since about 1990. Got boxes full of old parts. I can say I did own a canned IBM PC computer once - a Tandy 1000 EX, but man it was worth it. I had it decked out with 640K of RAM and I upgraded to an 8088-2 proc at 8MHz MHz, external 3.5" disk drive, the works. So even though I had a canned system, I still decked it out. I was the cool kid on the block back then too since everyone was running 4 color CGA graphics and I had 16 colors! I could play Starflight in all its glory! On top of that, I had 3 voice sound chip with a noise generator! Bad ass! But yeah, since the early 90's I only built my own PC. It is the only way to get what you want. I do have this itch to dig in my boxes of old parts and throw together a PC with a 3dfx in it and Windows 98SE. Got some old 3dfx games I want to play that never worked right on the 3dfx emulators. This is one game - http://www.homeoftheunderdogs.net/game.php?id=2523 (I donated this unreleased 3dfx version to this site - it was never released to the public, but the devs decided to give me a copy after the company went bust. There was a non-accelerated version released in Europe to keep the company afloat but it wasn't enough) that I'd like to fire up again. Never worked right on an emulator - the colors got all screwed up. You had to play in software rendering mode which is not as smooth or good looking. -S __________________

05-10-09, 11:57 AM	#9
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Still have an P1 100MHZ to run old games on. Has been collecting dust for a long time though. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

05-10-09, 12:27 PM	#11
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Programming serial devices? Sounds interesting, please explain. Also have 1 or 2 old 386 thingies (and Commodore), but they were stripped for components looong time ago. Man, I should really get rid of unusable cases taking up space. My bedroom looks like a PC graveyard, ain't got nowhere else to put them. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

05-10-09, 12:40 PM	#13
Arclight Navy Seal Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Land of windmills, tulips, wooden shoes and cheese. Lots of cheese. Posts: 8,467 Downloads: 53 Uploads: 10	Oh, that's awesome! One of the things I had in the back of my mind was to use stuff from old PCs and build my own robot, but I have no clue how to do that. Don't even know if it's possible. Last serial port I saw was on a P3 I think, but sadly that board died recently. CPU was fine (1ghz) and went to a friend of mine whose CPU just died, so some part of that system still lives on. I got that P3 board from a friend of mine, was my first "real" PC (was always far behind current tech due to lack of money), was still using a P1 100MHZ before that. I remember playing a lot of Ceasar II... good memories. __________________ Contritium praecedit superbia.

05-10-09, 08:38 PM	#14
CaptainHaplo Silent Hunter Join Date: Apr 2007 Posts: 4,404 Downloads: 29 Uploads: 0	My normal job heavily involves devices that require pc serial ports. Most end users buy a pc - then go "where do I plug this 9 pin thingy in?" I think my company probably has kept a couple of usb-serial adapter firms in business by ourselves..... USB Serial adapters usually work fine for most uses, however avoid PCI serial cards.... they have gotten to be about useless.... Subman1 - why is it I have the idea that like me, you have spent way too much time in telnet and hyperterminal? BTW - did anyone else notice that hyperterminal was removed in Vista and has NOT made a reapearance in 7? __________________ Good Hunting! Captain Haplo

05-12-09, 01:04 PM	#15
Dowly Lucky Jack Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Finland Posts: 25,005 Downloads: 32 Uploads: 0	Installed it today, havent had any big problems yet (ArmA locked up once, but that's most propably because there was heavy load on the HD from some other things), quite the opposite. My PC is now very fast and depending of the game there's been a BIG improvement on FPS (ArmA from ~35fps on normal on XP to ~40-45fps on high/very high on Win7).