Joe's Epic Vista Adventure

[Joe]

Yeah. I'm running Vista right now but I can't seem to find a driver for my Intel 845G/845GL/845GE/845GV Graphics Chip (integrated graphics chipset). You seem to be good at finding random stuff, so wanna take a stab at this?

[Newby]

Integrated graphics? Vista? You're nuts.

[Eric]

Since Vista has yet to be released, it will be rather difficult finding any specialized drivers for it.  I've been waiting nearly a year and a half for Sony to release a 64-bit driver for my camcorder so that I can use it with my edition of Windows XP.  I'm sure there's a similar wait list for Intel's Vista drivers.  Check their web site.

[Joe]

Integrated graphics? Vista? You're nuts.

Well, I say that integrated graphics are better than a seperate graphics card because in theory I have up to 1GB of VRAM if I need it. Of course, it'd be ridiculously stupid to even assume that. . But yeah, it runs WoW alright, so I suppose Vista will be.. workable. Maybe not Aero, but I don't know if I'll use that anyhow (I didn't use XP's new skin).

Since Vista has yet to be released, it will be rather difficult finding any specialized drivers for it.  I've been waiting nearly a year and a half for Sony to release a 64-bit driver for my camcorder so that I can use it with my edition of Windows XP.  I'm sure there's a similar wait list for Intel's Vista drivers.  Check their web site.

Eh, their site is rather hard to navigate (or, idiot proof, too dumbed down for me to understand), but I'll give that a try.

[Warrior]

Integrated graphics? Vista? You're nuts.

Well, I say that integrated graphics are better than a seperate graphics card because in theory I have up to 1GB of VRAM if I need it. Of course, it'd be ridiculously stupid to even assume that. . But yeah, it runs WoW alright, so I suppose Vista will be.. workable. Maybe not Aero, but I don't know if I'll use that anyhow (I didn't use XP's new skin).

You can probably use XP WDDM drivers for 2D/3D accel but you won't be able to run Aero. Also theres a set amount of vram an integrated card can have. Mine max had 64MB. I doubt there are any integrated 1GB vram video cards.

[Joe]

Be shocked at me saying this. I know I am.

Microsoft has damn near redeemed themselves with Vista. Yes, that is not a typo.

I first booted up the installer and I was VERY impressed. ANY idiot could get through that (only hard part was partitioning, but I think there was a help thing for that). Then I got in and went to install drivers and realized that my sound driver was already installed! I had a huge grin, took me like 3 hours to find it and I don't know where I ended up getting it from last time. =p

Then, of course, we get some rain on my parade. I open up "My Computer" and see that both my drives are labeled as "DVD-RW Drive", where one should be a "DVD-ROM Drive". I'd be happy with Vista giving me new, upgraded hardware but I'm rather sure I can't burn a DVD with the latter drive regardless of what Vista says. And then when I opened up Command Prompt and typed 'dir', I found a few weird files toward the bottom. Both bugs have been reported, so I felt pretty good about myself.

The only missing driver, as far as I can tell, is my graphics driver. Congratulations Windows Update, you've redeemed yourself too!

Of course, I'm on 56k.. so.. afk, bed while I download some updates. =p

[Warrior]

Good luck.

[Chavo]

Well, I say that integrated graphics are better than a seperate graphics card because in theory I have up to 1GB of VRAM if I need it. Of course, it'd be ridiculously stupid to even assume that. . But yeah, it runs WoW alright, so I suppose Vista will be.. workable. Maybe not Aero, but I don't know if I'll use that anyhow (I didn't use XP's new skin).

Bios limits how much onboard RAM you can reserve as 'shared' video memory.  I have never seen this allowed higher than 64MB and even then, the IC responsible for the integrated graphics has to support it.  If you think that a graphic's adapter's quality is primarily related to the amount of memory it has reserved/onboard, you need to be cockpunched.

The DVD showing up as a DVD-RW is almost definately a driver issue.  I have seen this 'issue' on XP many times.

[Warrior]

Worst i had was my CDRW showing up as a CDROM, I forget what I did to fix it. It involved the registry though.

[deadly7]

The worst thing I had was BSOD right after a reformat on first boot.  <3 you too, Winblows.

[Joe]

Go deadly!

My harddrive met it's maker this morning. Auxilary Device Failure, quoth the BIOS. I'm using my 30gig now. =(.

[MyndFyre]

Well, I say that integrated graphics are better than a seperate graphics card because in theory I have up to 1GB of VRAM if I need it. Of course, it'd be ridiculously stupid to even assume that. . But yeah, it runs WoW alright, so I suppose Vista will be.. workable. Maybe not Aero, but I don't know if I'll use that anyhow (I didn't use XP's new skin).

Bios limits how much onboard RAM you can reserve as 'shared' video memory.  I have never seen this allowed higher than 64MB and even then, the IC responsible for the integrated graphics has to support it.  If you think that a graphic's adapter's quality is primarily related to the amount of memory it has reserved/onboard, you need to be cockpunched.

The DVD showing up as a DVD-RW is almost definately a driver issue.  I have seen this 'issue' on XP many times.

I've seen it go up to 128mb.  I've never seen the DVD-ROM/DVD-RW confusion before.  :O

I open up "My Computer"

I suspect this will go back to "My Computer."  The Users/ folder (as opposed to Documents and Settings/) and "Computer" and "Documents" has been something that Microsoft's done during beta in previous years (Windows 2000 had the Users/ folder in beta and Documents and Settings in release). 

[Joe]

The only remotely useful reason I can think of for doing that is eliminating spaces in their filenames. Oh well.

So, basically I just installed iTunes and it's working perfectly. Vista complained that it didn't think the installer worked right but I'm like "you're stupid Vista, of course it worked" and it's like "mmk". So now I'm listening to Ocean Floor by Audio Adrenaline in iTunes! =)

I opened up WoW earlier and it had some nice lag, but I suspect that was from the background downloader trying to find my line speed. The game itself seemed faster, actually.

[Joe]

My 120gig hard drive asploded, so I'm back to my 30 now. I guess it has horrible RPM's or something (don't care to find out) because it's a lot slower than my 120gig.

Anyhow, I'm pissed. Here I am riding my felsteed to Feralas and boom, Windows closes WoW and shuts down. No warning or anything.

[MyndFyre]

Check your setting under system properties, Advanced, Startup and Recovery.  Uncheck "automatically restart" and change "small dump" to "Kernel memory dump."  Next time it does that, send me windows\memory.dmp.  ZIP it if necessary.