Vista tips...

[Bobbias]

Yeah, I've made a couple hardlinks and such using various methods before. Mostly because I had 2 installs of StepMania (3.9 and 4.0) and I wanted to share songs between both of them without resorting to forcing it with the ini file. I wanted to be able to go to either songs folder and get to the same place.

I've encountered both of those issues as well, and they were VERY annoying, to say the least. When you're having networking problems and you're trying to verify if a certain thing is working, and explorer locks up like that, it's a bit of a pain.

[Spectere]

Yeah, I've made a couple hardlinks and such using various methods before. Mostly because I had 2 installs of StepMania (3.9 and 4.0) and I wanted to share songs between both of them without resorting to forcing it with the ini file. I wanted to be able to go to either songs folder and get to the same place.

Same here.  It makes things a lot easier.

If you do any of that stuff with XP, be sure to grab NTFS Link.  The version of Explorer in XP doesn't handle junctions properly.  Basically, if you delete a junction point, it wipes out the directory that it was pointing to (i.e. if you have C:\SM39\Songs junctioned to C:\SM40\Songs and delete the SM39 one it'll wipe out the SM40 one as well).  If you manage it with NTFS Link, it keeps track of where the junction points are so that things like that don't happen.

Vista, thankfully, fully supports manipulating junctions from within Explorer.  Deleting a junction no longer kills off any data.

I've encountered both of those issues as well, and they were VERY annoying, to say the least. When you're having networking problems and you're trying to verify if a certain thing is working, and explorer locks up like that, it's a bit of a pain.

It's even worse when you're using a laptop and take it to a place where your drive mappings and such no longer work.  Ugh.  It seemed to be okay when the UNC paths were mapped to a drive letter, but if you had a Windows shortcut pointing to a network resource, prepare to do a lot of waiting.  Not sure if SP3 fixed that particular thing, but at least you can do other things with Explorer if a single window is hanging with SP3.  It's not as good as Vista's Explorer (I've never had that one lock up on me) but it's better than pre-SP3 Explorer.

[Bobbias]

Yeah, luckily I've never had too many shortcuts to network stuff. I did know about the whole "deleting the link kills the data" glitch, but I never had any reason to delete it. My setup was that the actual folder was my 3.9/songs and the link was my 4.0/songs folder, and really, a single install of SM without songs barely takes up any space, so even though I never played on 4.0 (had some major performance issues when I was using it), I never had any reason to actually delete it.

And yeah, since I regularly travel between my home network (with Z:\ mapped to my 1TB storage) and the college network (and occasionally my GF's network), it would be a pain if explorer locked up all the time because of the location no longer being there. Plus, I bet that if the XP explorer had it listed in the favorites (or something like my trusty "Favorite Links" pane) it would lock up every time I opened a folder, which would basically cripple my machine.

Also, I'm not sure if this is as functional in XP, but I love the ability to tell Vista to remember and automatically connect to numerous networks. There is one thing I have been kinda wishing for though. I wish that you could have each network define it's own connection settings, such as IP address, DNS servers, etc. As it stands you're kinda locked into 2 options, and that only works if one of the networks allows DHCP. If I wanted to take my laptop into another network that had static IPs for every computer, I'd have to go in and change my settings, and that's a pain in the ass.

[Spectere]

I mainly have network shortcuts when I work on projects.  It's nice to be able to work on stuff while lounging on the couch or on my bed, but I like having a copy on my desktop system so I can have the convenience of a dual monitor configuration when I need it.  When I'm working in Visual Studio I love having the error list, task list, and output on the second display, it gives me a ton of room for code.

I haven't noticed as much of an issue with XP SP3 when it comes to networking in Explorer, thankfully.  I accidentally connected to my neighbor's wireless network and tried to contact my system and it didn't seem to take as long as it used to realize that the system wasn't there and it was actually usable while it was waiting to connect.  It still does that damn thing where it overwrites the contents of the address bar, though.  That irks me far more than the timeout issue.

Vista's network feature is pretty nice, though it can be a pain on desktop systems at times.  Our old router ended up biting the dust and plugging in a new device was enough to trigger the new network screen.  Granted, it probably only popped up because the gateway changed, but it was still a bit strange to have it pop up like that.  I'm pretty sure turning off the network monitor disables that, but it still seems a bit odd that they don't have different modes for desktop and laptop systems.

Yeah, XP has the alternate configuration feature as well.  I believe 2000 was the first version of NT to include that.  It kind of makes sense that it only works when the main configuration is DHCP, but I definitely agree that it would be nice if you could have it assign an IP based on the access point or network that you're connected to.  I don't know how much you're used it, but it also takes a good minute or two before it times out and assigns the alternate configuration settings.  Kind of a pain unless you're the type to hit the power button and walk away for a couple of minutes.

One of the reasons I absolutely love Gentoo's networking system is because you can easily assign an IP per access point.  Granted, you could probably do that with other distros, but Gentoo's system is the only one I've used that's been both built into the init scripts and is very easy to set up and get going.

[Bobbias]

I have noticed that it takes overly long to connect to my alternate settings at home, which is a bit of a pain. But I can usually find something to do for that bit before it connects.

And yeah, I noticed the alternate connection thing on my XP box. But I kinda wish that it wouldn't require the main config to be DHCP. I'd rather wait to connect to the college network, than wait to connect at home.

Do you think it would be possible to write a program that interfaces with windows and can change those settings automatically when it notices certain networks? That could bypass the default windows action and automate changing your settings.

[Spectere]

It wouldn't be possible for the alternate configuration to be DHCP.  The alternate configuration is only used if DHCP fails to get an address.  If you have it set up as a static IP it would never fall through to the alternate config.

Yeah, it's possible to write software to change network settings.  You can even use batch files to modify the settings.  Check out the netsh command for more details.

[Bobbias]

So, I think I've discovered a bug.

Normally, I change SpteMania to High priority when I play it. However, Today I tried, and for some reason Vista's Task Manager refused to change it.

Or, more precisely, it was happy to try to change it, but every time the Task Manager lost focus, StepMania was back to Normal priority.

So, if I kept the Task Manager on top, and right clicked the StepMania process to check if it had in fact changed priority, the Task Manager would say it was High, but as soon as I minimized the Task Manager, StepMania wouldn't be running at High. I can tell right off the bat because the frame rate was lower than it would be running at High. At High I get 200+ FPS, usually about 212ish. At Normal, it runs closer to 170.

This really poses a problem to me because anything below 200 tends to feel sluggish and unresponsive to me, and affects how well I do (by a fair bit on difficult sims, like Tamayura beginner ).

[Spectere]

That's caused by the program settings its own priority.  I don't think XP's task manager ever updated the program's running priority properly.

The main problem with running StepMania windowed under Vista is that Aero is a Direct3D application and StepMania loooooves to set itself to OpenGL.  If Aero is running and a windowed OpenGL application is started it has to do some sort of translation to get it to work so you always get a performance hit.  Forcing the video renderer in the INI file to d3d is the best way to go.  If a program must run in OpenGL mode (i.e. GLQuake, Doom3, etc) disabling compositing in the compatibility tab should do the trick.

[Bobbias]

Thing is, until today, and even earlier today, changing priority worked.

I checked if anything else was even running enough to take some processor time, and nothing was. So it's not like something in the background was interfering with it.

In any case, when I explicitly set the priority of a program to High, I damn well expect the priority to be High, so is there some way to tell StepMania to go fuck itself and run at High?

Running D3D gives some performance boost, but I'm still seeing just under 200 FPS ingame. The song select menu is 200+ FPS, but ingame is still running below 200 at more difficult parts.

[Bobbias]

So, apparently Vista DOES have some bugs.

I cannot right click a single file. Every single time I try, explorer crashes.

Not only that, but apparently DEP has something to do with it. Too bad I specifically set DEP to ignore explorer.exe and it STILL MAKES EXPLORER RESTART.

This is kinda a huge problem.

Oh, and my router is also shitty, because I can't even download 25 MB of windows updates. My router gets hit by something it doesn't like and crashes on me when I download more than a small update.

So yeah, I'm really not having a good night right now :/

Even system restore failed me. Mind you, My earliest option was 5:30 PM today, I installed a bunch of updates for vista hoping they'd fix it, but thanks to my router crashing for some reason, I installed them one by one, and each created it's own restore point :/

[Spectere]

So, apparently Vista DOES have some bugs.

I cannot right click a single file. Every single time I try, explorer crashes.

That's not a problem with Vista, that's caused by a faulty shell extension.  The same issue is extremely common in 2000/XP as well.

Use ShellExView to isolate and resolve the issue.  IIRC, Nero's shell extension has a nasty tendency of causing issues with DEP (particularly, in folders with media content), in addition to countless other buggy extensions.

Not only that, but apparently DEP has something to do with it. Too bad I specifically set DEP to ignore explorer.exe and it STILL MAKES EXPLORER RESTART.

Unless you disable it completely, DEP is forced on for all system components for security and reliability reasons.

[Bobbias]

That's not a problem with Vista, that's caused by a faulty shell extension.  The same issue is extremely common in 2000/XP as well.

Use ShellExView to isolate and resolve the issue.  IIRC, Nero's shell extension has a nasty tendency of causing issues with DEP (particularly, in folders with media content), in addition to countless other buggy extensions.

Unless you disable it completely, DEP is forced on for all system components for security and reliability reasons.

Holy shit, thanks so much for that link. I was ready to try fixing vista via my mom's Dell Vista CD, since I cannot figure out where the hell I put the one that came with the laptop.

I don't have Nero. I really have no idea what caused this problem, but I have a suspicion it might have been the DaemonTools extensions I installed.

However, the google toolbar extensions that were there were highlighted in red.. Any idea what that means? (they weren't what caused the problem though, since I disabled them and it still crashed.)

Also, what exactly is this StackHash? I've never gotten an actual answer to that.

[Spectere]

I'm not sure what the red highlighted entries mean.  My guess is that it might refer to applications that are known to phone home for any reason (Google Toolbar does so to receive updates, etc), ones that could potentially cause privacy issues.

As far as I can gather from postings by Microsoft employees, StackHash messages occur when a program tries to jump to a module that no longer exists.  It provides a means for debugging the issue if you're developing an application.  If this is what's happening, DEP is basically preventing your system from trying to execute data (which would probably crash Explorer anyway).  If the problem is caused by a faulty add-on, like I suspect, I doubt the Vista DVD would be able to help much.  I'm not sure if it attempts to disable those.  I know it's very good at resuscitating a non-booting system but I'm not sure how it handles issues with third-party add-ons to userland applications.

[Bobbias]

lawl, good at rescuing non-booting systems? I went through that "automatically fix my computer" thing one time when I messed windows up by accidentally forcing a shutdown during windows updates.

After fucking around for a good hour+ with that auto recovery thing, I went into the recovery console and ran chkdsk and in 2 minutes, the computer was booting properly.

Why the fuck can't they make it try to run chkdsk, instead of telling me "the system can't find certain OS files, and i don't know what to do".

[Spectere]

It does the most common solutions first and, failing that, it tries the next one on the list.  It's possible that you will have to run it multiple times before it'll work.  I've never once had it fail on any of the systems I've tried it on.

chkdsk doesn't correct anything that would suddenly make a system start booting again.  For one thing, aside from hardware failure, the odds of disk corruption preventing the system from booting in the first place is almost nil since that sort of thing never changes.  If there were a problem that chkdsk would be able to fix, such as bad indexes, the automated recovery would have detected that the necessary files couldn't be found and would have put them back into place.