Updated Compilation of Vista Issues/Fixes

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thanks... any explination why its that one?

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First process of elimination.

<ul type="square">[*]You say you have a 7800GT so clearly the GeForce 8800 series can't be it. [*]The GeForce Go 7 series is for laptops, only the ones that nVidia has agreed to support directly. [*]Quadro is nVidia's line of professional CAD workstation graphic cards. [*]RIVA 128 / 128ZX was nVidia's chipset that came before the first TNT card nearly 10 years ago.[/list]That and nVidia subscribes to the "unified driver" concept of one driver per OS that covers all their desktop video cards. Usually. They have sunset support for some of their older video cards like the GeForce and GeForce 2 (but strangely not the inferior GeForce 2MX) in XP. The Vista drivers only support series 6, 7 and 8 cards and their Quadro equivalent cards.

Also it's not unusual for them to have "special" drivers for brand new models when they first come out, currently the 8 series falls into that category for XP support.

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thanks... any explination why its that one?

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First process of elimination.

<ul type="square">[*]You say you have a 7800GT so clearly the GeForce 8800 series can't be it. [*]The GeForce Go 7 series is for laptops, only the ones that nVidia has agreed to support directly. [*]Quadro is nVidia's line of professional CAD workstation graphic cards. [*]RIVA 128 / 128ZX was nVidia's chipset that came before the first TNT card nearly 10 years ago.[/list]That and nVidia subscribes to the "unified driver" concept of one driver per OS that covers all their desktop video cards. Usually. They have sunset support for some of their older video cards like the GeForce and GeForce 2 (but strangely not the inferior GeForce 2MX) in XP. The Vista drivers only support series 6, 7 and 8 cards and their Quadro equivalent cards.

Also it's not unusual for them to have "special" drivers for brand new models when they first come out, currently the 8 series falls into that category for XP support.

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Yup, they're just breaking it down a little on the selection menu cause the driver versions the website serves up are different depending upon your choices (97.92 for 8800, 84.63 for Go 78/7900, and 93.71 for all the other GeForce models.)

Beta drivers for Vista are available here too, just click the "BETA Drivers" link above the "Start Here" box on the website. Currently they're offering 101.41.

And just in case anyone actually reads this post, there is a general point y'all need to understand about these Vista issues:

99.9% of them are driver-related, and won't get fixed until the respective companies (ATI, nVidia) hammer out the particular bugs. Without having a batphone to each of them it's impossible to say when this is going to happen; it could be tomorrow, next week, next month, or next quarter -- we just have no clue.

For some problems there are workarounds (like the cursor issue), but for most there aren't -- it's simply a matter of immature drivers. I don't like it any more than you do, and personally I don't really understand why we still have lousy drivers more than 7 months into Vista, but the only ones to blame are Microsoft, ATI and nVidia. Alas, they are also the only ones that can fix this mess.

So my only suggestion is this: if you find an issue feel free to report it both here and to either ATI and/or nVidia. If someone knows of or develops a workaround for that issue it'll show up here. If not, it basically means there isn't one, and you're gonna have to suck it up till there is.

To the adventurous types, one way to solve this problem altogether is to dual boot Vista with XP. Fairly easy to do, but of course you need an XP disc (preferably legal), and some kind of non-destructive partitioning software like Partition Magic (never install 2 OSs to the same partition!!) This way you can easily switch between OSs depending upon what you need to do.

The only reason I suggest this is cause it could very well be a LONG time before all the driver problems get hammered out, and it's unlikely that any of the bigwigs involved are going to care that you just spend hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new machine that can't adequately play your games.

I get a UAC prompt whenever I launch CoX. Any ideas how I can prevent that (other than switching UAC off, of course?)

Also, CoX crashes whenever I quit the game - I'm guessing it's a problem with the Nvidia drivers I'm using (101.41, x64) although I'm surprised that I haven't seen anyone else mention it, if that's the case.

Cheers for any help guys,

Kal

I believe if you set the shortcut to the updater to run as administrator you won't get the prompt. But don't hold me too it, one of the first things I did in Vista was turn off UAC.

The crashing could be driver related, it also could be cause you're running 64-bit Vista. And cause I'm feeling pretty laid back today I'm not going to ask why; just nod, look at you quizzically, and go "uh-huh..."

Giving applications administrative rights which they do not require is not really an acceptable solution to me I'm afraid. I guess my question really should have been - is this request for admin privileges and the ensuing UAC prompt a result of an incorrect request for rights by CoX (in which case I will have to live with it until Cryptic patch it out) or do I have some kind of misconfiguration on my system? I would guess the former but I was hoping for the latter.

I had UAC turned off for a while too because it was so damned annoying; however as I have learned more about it, I have come to believe that in it is adds a massive layer of additional security to a system - far more than my anti-virus software, for example, and I wouldn't be without that - so I have switched it back on and am just training myself to get used to it's foibles. IT security is actually what I do for a living, fwiw, so believe me I've had the "opportunity" to do more than my fair share of research on the subject

Crashing: I don't believe it's x64 - one of the guys I play with is also an x64 user, has a 7900GT (I have a 7950) and is running the 101.41's, and he doesn't get the crash on exit. That one really puzzles me.

I do have good reasons for running x64, believe it or not I also hold out hope that within a few years, the reasons for running x64 will become much more compelling and we'll have a new standard for these things - in the mean time, consider me an "early adopter"

Thanks for your answer,

Kal

Sorry to say I can't help you with your UAC problems. I turned that crap off as soon as I realized what it was.

Additionally, there are new drivers released. I just loaded the 101.70 from LaptopVideo2Go.

New drivers haven't helped - it still crashes on exit. Dammit.

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Giving applications administrative rights which they do not require is not really an acceptable solution to me I'm afraid. I guess my question really should have been - is this request for admin privileges and the ensuing UAC prompt a result of an incorrect request for rights by CoX (in which case I will have to live with it until Cryptic patch it out) or do I have some kind of misconfiguration on my system? I would guess the former but I was hoping for the latter.

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I think I read somewhere that if you reinstall the game from the original discs under Vista it eliminates the UAC prompt. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say if it does indeed work.

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I had UAC turned off for a while too because it was so damned annoying; however as I have learned more about it, I have come to believe that in it is adds a massive layer of additional security to a system - far more than my anti-virus software, for example, and I wouldn't be without that - so I have switched it back on and am just training myself to get used to it's foibles. IT security is actually what I do for a living, fwiw, so believe me I've had the "opportunity" to do more than my fair share of research on the subject

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Well, I really don't want to get into the pros and cons of UAC, especially not in this thread, but as an IT pro myself I've always believed knowledge and training to be a much better weapon against malware than any software. Teach your staff not to surf to places they shouldn't (like porn sites, illegal movie and music download sites, torrent sites, etc.), not to open ANY email attachments from ANYONE without verbal confirmation even if they know the sender, and to never, ever transfer files from the secure office network to an insecure location (such as a laptop or home computer) without explicit permission and/or without following a strict, controlled security regimen for such transfers.

The problem with UAC is that it just blindly asks for confirmation to continue, and once the retardedness of the system sets in it's all too easy for ignorant and/or untrained users to simply click OK or blindly enter an administrator password without thinking twice about what they're doing. And once that's happened, it's over.

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Crashing: I don't believe it's x64 - one of the guys I play with is also an x64 user, has a 7900GT (I have a 7950) and is running the 101.41's, and he doesn't get the crash on exit. That one really puzzles me.

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There are many ways your systems can be different that could be cause of the crash. It might not be related to your video cards. Check to see if there is a crash log available and/or the event viewer to see if it tells you in what module the crash occured. His 7950 might love the 101.41s and your 7900GT might not. It might also be the way you have the driver configured (e.g. texture compress on=crash; off=no crash). The variables involved are nearly endless.

And right now when you quit the game it fires up the I9 pre-download. Perhaps this is what's causing the crash.

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I do have good reasons for running x64, believe it or not I also hold out hope that within a few years, the reasons for running x64 will become much more compelling and we'll have a new standard for these things - in the mean time, consider me an "early adopter"

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There are 2 reasons why 64-bit OSs are not the norm, and probably won't be for at least 3-5 years, if not longer:

1.) The vast majority of PCs in use today don't have 64-bit processors. And the advantages of having one for the casual user are virtually nil. With no compelling reason to upgrade, these machines are going to stick around as long as they continue to perform adequately the tasks required of them. 64-bit will get its shot as soon as those old workhorses become the minority. Unfortunately that probably won't be any time soon.

2.) There is painfully little native 64-bit software. And it's very much a catch-22. Software and hardware developers aren't going to devote many resources to 64-bit projects as the installed base is very small. And the installed base won't grow without new and "better" products to entice users to switch to a 64-bit platform.

If you're in a business where you can truly take advantage of what 64-bit offers in terms of larger memory spaces and faster data crunching, and have no wayward 32-bit code stuck in there to muck things up (64-bit machines, OS, applications, and drivers) then you SHOULD take full advantage of it. But for most of us this isn't the case, and running 32-bit software in a 64-bit environment actually hinders performance as well as negate nearly all potential benefits.

Thanks for the replies.

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I think I read somewhere that if you reinstall the game from the original discs under Vista it eliminates the UAC prompt. I haven't tried it myself, so I can't say if it does indeed work.

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Sadly not - this was a clean install of Vista followed by an install from the original CoV discs followed by patching, and I get the prompt.

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The problem with UAC is that it just blindly asks for confirmation to continue, and once the retardedness of the system sets in it's all too easy for ignorant and/or untrained users to simply click OK or blindly enter an administrator password without thinking twice about what they're doing. And once that's happened, it's over.

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Of course, user education &gt; all. But regardless of the level of education you give your users, you still wouldn't let them run riot across a system completely unprotected by anti-virus software, would you? Personally I don't use a resident scanner, but I have AV software installed so if I need to download something from a source I'm not 100% confident of I can scan it - and of course I run a scheduled file scan too, because I know damn well that while I do have nearly 20 years experience as an IT professional and most of it is specifically with PCs in Microsoft environments, I'm still fallible and I want to be sure my system is secure.

Having the prompt and more importantly that the prompt appears in the secure desktop layer is surely far better behaviour for a system than simply not having any prompt or warning at all when some untoward action is being attempted. Yes, if people get into the habit of just clicking ok, then it becomes less useful - but the same is true of anti-virus alerts, windows update messages, and so on, and that doesn't make those components any less important. We're back to user education again - education &gt; system security, but education + system security &gt; education alone. UAC is a step in the right direction and you do yourself a disservice by dismissing it out-of-hand.

Forget about the crashing - although if you like we can have a conversation about egg-sucking methods later too. I was hoping that by posting here I might find someone else who was having the same problem (maybe even someone who had had the problem and fixed it) because comparing my system with someone else's who *is* having the problem is going to be a much more efficient way of tracking the problem down than comparing it with someone who isn't.

As regards your comments about x64, I think you are confusing the business market with the enthusiast/gamer market, which, in context, is the market I care about here. In my experience, most gamer/enthusiast machines have 64-bit processors these days, not 32. I can't even recall the last time I saw someone posting on the forums for a recent game about the problems with their system which included a 32 bit processor. Hell, sometimes I feel a bit behind the times because my processor is only single-core! Regardless, I don't think your assertion that "most machines these days have 32-bit processors" is true for the demographic relevant to this conversation. I should add however that I haven't actually seen a survey that gives solid data either way, so I will concede the possibility that you might be correct, but my gut feel is that if we're talking about gamers specifically and not "all PCs in use in the world", you are not.

Yes, it is a chicken and egg situation. Until fully 64-bit environments have a greater penetration, we won't see those "killer apps" appear, and until the "killer apps" appear, some people won't be persuaded to move to 64-bit environments.

However I would rather be on the side of those encouraging the progress of these technologies, not on the side of those holding it back, hence I have adopted early and I would encourage anyone else running a 64-bit processor who is considering Vista to do the same. The more of us who adopt 64-bit early, the faster application developers will be to get to work on that "killer app". Again, do not confuse the business demographic with the enthusiast/gamer demographic, they are very different markets.

Lastly:

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running 32-bit software in a 64-bit environment actually hinders performance as well as negate nearly all potential benefits.

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That statement is pure FUD. Unless one or the other is coded extraordinarily badly, you should notice no performance decrease whatsoever when running a 32-bit app in a 64-bit environment. The only thing you might notice is the 32-bit app takes up slightly more memory than it did on your 32-bit system, and yes, this could feasibly affect performance if that extra memory constitutes the "last straw" for your system, but it is a bit of a stretch.

Using a 64-bit environment can in fact confer a number of performance benefits even to 32-bit apps running in it - these include a more efficient/scalable method for process mapping especially relevant for DLLs, and vastly, vastly improved memory mapping for large files. 32-bit memory mapping struggles with big files and ends up having to write them in and out of the address space several times (slow). 64-bit memory mapping does not have this problem and can comfortably address in one "chunk" the 4GB+ files which have become more and more common as DVDs have become a preferred media for distribution. This means that a 32-bit app that makes use of such large files will actually get a performance *increase* from running in a 64-bit environment.

The only argument I will concede on 32bit vs 64 is that 64bit currently lacks driver maturity, and if that is an issue for you with your specific configuration then you should stay away from 64 bit for the time being, however this being the case you should probably stay away from Vista entirely and stick with XP instead. Many of the manufacturers who are having problems with their 64-bit Vista drivers are having similar problems with their Vista drivers as a whole - I personally use both a Nvidia graphics card and a Creative sound card so I have experienced many of these problems first hand.

Apart from few specific problems though I have otherwise found this setup to be completely acceptable. I just get a single UAC prompt when I don't expect/want one, and CoX (and only CoX) crashes on exit for no immediately obvious reason. I was hoping by posting here I might find others who had either problem and could offer advice, but the lack of any replies of that ilk also tells me something - my problem is not a common one, and so I should delve deeper into issues that might arise from my specific configuration.

If you'd like to continue the advocacy discussion, I don't mind taking it to PMs, but I don't think we should continue it here. Honestly though, I don't think either of us will persuade the other, so I'm equally happy to just drop it.

-k

Is anyone having "rubber banding" issues with Vista? On both my Vista Business machines (PC and laptop), there seems to be a lot more "rubber banding" than I remember on the same machines running Windows XP. For sake of argument, I will only ask about the PC.

AMD 64-bit 3500
1.5 GB Crucial Ballistix RAM
Radeon X1300 512 MB (dxdiag says 766 MB but I dont know why as I havent OC it)

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If you're in a business where you can truly take advantage of what 64-bit offers in terms of larger memory spaces and faster data crunching....

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It's real nice to have two gig with Cryptic's "old" City Of games. What do you think the "real nice" level will be for their next game?

The game DOES need Admin rights. Screenshots and demos get saved right into the program directory. This game is a bit too old to play by the new rules of saving to the user's directory somewhere. (Oblivion has the same problem with screenshots.) I'm still not clear yet on just how these permissions work but I think you could get around it by making a directory right in the root with your user account then installing from CD. Installing via the updater SHOULD work but the stupid thing has an ancient bug that switches slashes around and ends up braining the thing when you try to select a directory to use. Or you might make the new directory then change the registry entry for the game to point to that new directory. Something along those lines, anyway.

Matt - Rubber Banding is a network thing. There's a good chance going to Vista was just a coincidence and your problems are being caused by wiring going bad or your ISP. However, better make sure. What do you have turned on in Vista Business? You don't have a web server on that machine, do you? Have you got a HiJack log you can post for us? (Instructions on HiJack are in the 'before you post' sticky topic.)

Hey all. I've gone on record for my disdain of Vista . . . but I am building a new PC, and the neophile in me is just dying to try it out - if only for a little bit. But before I waste my time, does anyone know how well (or not) the NVidia 8800GTS plays with Vista? Thanks.

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Hey all. I've gone on record for my disdain of Vista . . . but I am building a new PC, and the neophile in me is just dying to try it out - if only for a little bit. But before I waste my time, does anyone know how well (or not) the NVidia 8800GTS plays with Vista? Thanks.

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I've just played around with Vista a bit, but haven't noticed any specific issues with the 8800.

Works fine. 8800 has issues in Arachnos maps but that's under all OSs.

Do be aware that you can't run CoX with 8800's in SLI unless you use the 101.70 beta from Guru3D. Otherwise, you'll crash during login. And all 8800's with all drivers have the "black fuzzies" texture corruption in Arachnos bases and bank heist missions.

Plus, you may or may not be able to fix the invisible cursor problem using "compatiblecursors." I still have to play in windowed mode to avoid that.

But I'm now gettiing smooth-as-silk SLI framerates with all settings maxed out, and the black fuzzies are a minor annoyance, little affecting gameplay. Nvidia sez the fuzzies are an application problem.

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And all 8800's with all drivers have the "black fuzzies" texture corruption in Arachnos bases and bank heist missions.

Plus, you may or may not be able to fix the invisible cursor problem using "compatiblecursors." I still have to play in windowed mode to avoid that.

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The fuzzies aren't just a Vista issue. I get them with XP as well. And I didn't have any problem getting a cursor with the -compatiblecursors 1 switch. But then again, I don't have SLI, so perhaps that's making it not work for you.

That's correct, the black fuzzies appear to be a 8800 problem, both GTX and GTS, all OS's.

The missing cursor for me was a problem also when I had to run CoV with just one GPU. It's been consistent for me through all drivers, as well.

Anybody know what kind of hit performance takes by running a game in windows mode? I read somewhere that it does take a beating (in frame rate?), but I can't find the reference. And my widowed performance seems pretty good.

I've read the entire thread, and if I've missed the answer to this, I do beg your pardon, but I've looked here, on the internet, and I'm just coming up blank. If you can help, I'd appreciate it.

I upgraded from Windows XP, to Vista Home Premium. I've updated my NVidia drivers to the latest available.

This is what happens:

I load COV, and the screen goes black, except, at the very top of the screen, I see the Windows Taskbar, and I see that City of Villians is running, I can hear the theme music, but ...

The machine at that point is basically locked up.

Any thoughts or suggestions for a solution are welcome.

Thanks.

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I load COV, and the screen goes black, except, at the very top of the screen, I see the Windows Taskbar, and I see that City of Villians is running, I can hear the theme music, but ...

The machine at that point is basically locked up.


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And what exact machine and equipment are you running on?

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I've updated my NVidia drivers to the latest available.

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Define "latest"...

The latest official drivers as of right now are 100.65. The latest beta from nVidia is 101.41 and can be found HERE. The most recent beta known to mankind (well, at least to me) is 101.70 and can be found HERE

Yes, sorry for asking for omniscience from you all:

I'm running a Gateway AMD Athelon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600 2.4 GHz
2046 MB Ram

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Nvidia GeForce 7600GT 256 MB

Driver is 101.41

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Yes, sorry for asking for omniscience from you all:

I'm running a Gateway AMD Athelon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4600 2.4 GHz
2046 MB Ram

Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit

Nvidia GeForce 7600GT 256 MB

Driver is 101.41

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Did you have any issues at all with getting the drivers installed? I've seen problems trying to upgrade to beta video drivers from the default-installed Microsoft WDM video drivers. Typically you might get an error during installation, or the installation goes much more quickly than you would expect, or you didn't get the "are you sure you want to install these non-Microsoft drivers" warning, etc.; not necessarily something obtuse, but perhaps just, well, odd.

I would try this: uninstall the nVidia drivers, reboot into safe mode and run driver cleaner, go back into Vista without letting it install the default WDM drivers, and reinstall the nVidia betas. That's what I had to do to get my spare machine running right after an upgrade installation.

BTW, I didn't have this problem with a fresh install, just an upgrade.

Hello all i was wondering if any one can help me out with my problem i am having. I just resently got a new dell inspiron laptop with vista on it and brought it to my college dorm. I do have the option for wireless internet connections but i am not picking up any signals from the connections here in my dorm so i had to connect to the internet through the campus resnet ethernet connection. So my problem is after i installed the game and clicked on the icon to start up the login this so it is updated and then take me to the login screen it does not connect to the login thing at all. So i was wondering if any one can help me out with getting around using campus resnet ethernet connection so i could get back into the game.

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Hello all i was wondering if any one can help me out with my problem i am having. I just resently got a new dell inspiron laptop with vista on it and brought it to my college dorm. I do have the option for wireless internet connections but i am not picking up any signals from the connections here in my dorm so i had to connect to the internet through the campus resnet ethernet connection. So my problem is after i installed the game and clicked on the icon to start up the login this so it is updated and then take me to the login screen it does not connect to the login thing at all. So i was wondering if any one can help me out with getting around using campus resnet ethernet connection so i could get back into the game.

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Were you able to connect to the game before on your old system/laptop using this connection? Cause it sounds to me like the school might be blocking gaming ports to keep kids from rotting their brains out playing games instead of doing their homework

no before this i was onlying playing coh/cov when i was home on my home pc. Now i got a laptop to have while i am on campus.