Learned the Hard Way - Vista

rmack350 wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:11 AM

One of the things I run at startup is a program called "Jason's somethingorther Cookie somethingorother" (good memory, eh?) It basically sets up a list of allowed and banned cookies. It deletes the banned nes, asks about new ones, and ignores the allowed ones. Only runs at startup and closes when you're done with it. Doesn't actually protect during a session but I don't have a lot of tracking cookie trouble.

Tracking cookies are usually more an invasion of privacy than they are a threat. I don't think they're anything to panic over when adaware finds them.

I should probably run avast on a machine to compare it to AVG. AVG never finds Viruses and I assume that's a good thing, but having other software to compare it to seems like a good idea.

Some programs overblow the importance of the things they find, I think.

Probably the most important security measure is good habits. I know people who are very eager to open email and seem to be afraid they'll miss something. There is NOT a prize at the bottom of every email message.

The other thing that seems to save me a lot is that I actually read messages and install screens before clicking a button. Real Player taught me that more than anything else because you could only find the important information if you went deeper into the setup options.

Rob Mack

Jim H wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:20 AM

I can't help chiming in on a good Mac spat....

I don't use a PC and I don't use a mac. I use a rock. Yes, a plain old rock that I found in the woods out back.
Set up was simple... I just brought it inside and put in on my desk and it worked right out of the soil.
I never have security issues. There are no virus written for my rock.
No one is ever going to steal my credit card info from my rock.
There are no add-on compatibility issues with my rock, because there are no add-ons.
Your rock is what it is - you can't open it and mess it up.
Along the lines of the Mac, I pay for this simplicity and security with the fact that I can't really do much with my rock except for, ... well... "rock" things.
And if you talk bad about my rock I can bash your F'n head in with it.

rmack350 wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:21 AM

Well, yes, Vegas (and PPro for that matter) are going to have to work with Vista. The vast majority of the user base is using consumer or maybe prosumer gear. That's DV and HDV. Those people will be using Vista since most new machines come with it installed (not HP business laptops, I've noticed. Not yet, anyway).

At work we used to use Macs with Media100. The main thing that drove us away from Apple was our perception that we needed hardware based edit systems and the experience of apple changing systems specs in a way that could totally shut out a hardware reliant edit system. This had already happened once when Apple limited bus power on new systems to a level below what our hardware required.

The problem with Apple is that there are no hardware alternatives to their computers.

Rob Mack

rmack350 wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:33 AM

Well, the obvious advantage to the MAC is that you can run two or three OS's on it. If you need a little of both OS then that's a fine solution. If you find that you really need a more custom Windows system and also need a Mac then get a second computer.

The freakout has been about Vista. I suspect that 6 months from now there'll be quite a lot of people who are able to make things work quite well on Vista, and some of the histrionics will fade into the background. People who are having trouble will be able to talk to people who understand and have solutions to offer.

Rob Mack

vitalforce wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:33 AM

Jim H:

Make sure that rock isn't a piece of rock crystal, i.e. quartz. If it is, you could do a little testing, maybe run some current through it, and create a 3D mega-storage drive holding, what, 100 TB of data? The ultimate flash drive.

P.S. Me, I'm gonna hurry and buy an XP Pro system to replace my aging P4 non-HT Dell XP Home, before it goes outta style.

rmack350 wrote on 2/11/2007, 11:38 AM

LOL!

Wait! I think sticks are better! Rocks suck!

ROb Mack

ShawnLaraSteele wrote on 2/11/2007, 12:16 PM

"Media Manager doesn't work,..."

Uninstall media manager, download SQL Server express from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/download/ and reinstall media manager.

riredale wrote on 2/11/2007, 1:17 PM

I'm gonna get a rock, put a hole in it, and put a stick through it. Compatibility with both worlds.

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 2:22 PM

"I've been hearing people here saying it's "a bit" slower. It's not "a bit", the report claims 28% slower renders. That is not "a bit". "
=====================================================

There are conflicting reports on that:

http://techgage.com/article/windows_vista_system_performance_reports

Personaly speaking, I have Vista, and so far I have tested Pinnacle studio 9, and 10, Avid liquid7 (still needs some vista upgrading), and Sony vegas7... and I see NO speed difference at all in any of them. They all chug along same as in XP.

ADDED:

"#5 Strange, I can kill just about any task i want in XP - this is a NEW feature?"

I have the soundblaster x-fi elite pro soundcard. There is a process within that card that XP just can not kill properly. As a result, there are time when it takes up to 10 minutes to shut down xp. In vista, the hard -to-kill process is done pretty darned fast.

DrLumen wrote on 2/11/2007, 2:23 PM

jaydee,

Repeat after me... Oooohhhmmmmmmm. Mellllllllooooooowwww. Mellllllllooooowwww. Feel better now?

I too am about as resolute against Vista as you. While we may have the best intentions by trying to keep people from hurting themselves, they will do whatever they want to do. If they want to use Vista or buy Japanese cars, all you and I can really do is pity them and hope they eventually see the error of their way. Kinda like coming to religion.

With that in mind, IMO, calling them or their ideas ridiculous will only serve to alienate them and cause them to close their mind to alternatives. I would have thought your exchange with p@masters would have shown you that premise by example.

Just my $.02.

murk wrote on 2/11/2007, 3:14 PM

Jaydee, it sounds like you should not get Vista.

You can scratch 85% of those BS positives you listed.
"#2: then WHY BUY THE DAMN THING?"
RTFM: I said "Vista is a bit more more than glitz, glamor and security", so this falls in line with that statement

"#3 who gives a sh*t?"
Maybe you don't, but I find this to be a useful feature.

"#4 I've never had a tough time searching ANYTHING. From win3.1 to XP"
You must not have a lot of files.

"#5 Strange, I can kill just about any task i want in XP - this is a NEW feature?"
Threads that block waiting for device IO can take a long time to kill. Cancellable IO alleviates this problem. This is often caused by bad drivers or bad software.

"#6 shouldn't even be listed, part of 4"
Saved searches are definitely a separate organizational feature

"#7 "accessible" cd/dvd burning - LOL!! I sure wish I had "accessible" burning in XP."
Well, XP doesn't even ship with DVD burning

"#8 I thought we axed the AERO"
This feature has nothing to do with Aero

" #9 thru 11 - media center. So this is the #1 reason to jump into Vista? F'n Media Center?"
For me, this is huge. For many people, such as yourself, this may be an unused feature.

p@mast3rs wrote on 2/11/2007, 3:38 PM

"I would have thought your exchange with p@masters would have shown you that premise by example."

Maybe p@mast3rs wasnt the problem all along. First time it can be question....second time with someone else sharing the same view...nah, it cant be coincidence...can it?

p@mast3rs wrote on 2/11/2007, 3:41 PM

and Vista does not slow Vegas by 28%. By the test I had ran over the last week, I lost maybe 23 seconds total off render time. 23 seconds. Is life that precious that 23 seconds is the end of the world? On a better note, the newer Nvidia/ATI drivers under Vista helped shave off about 23 minutes of a render with Magic Bullet whereas the same GPU under XP took longer.

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 3:46 PM

"and Vista does not slow Vegas by 28%. By the test I had ran over the last week, I lost maybe 23 seconds total off render time. 23 seconds."

That's about what I'm seeing too. It's amazing the kind of untrue stuff floating around out there about Vista!!

p@mast3rs wrote on 2/11/2007, 3:50 PM

blink, I totally agree. The first couple days Vista ran slower but once it figured out what I use and when and finished indexing my drives, its been smooth sailing thus far. be careful, dont get baited by Jaydeee. i fell into that trap.

Brian Miller wrote on 2/11/2007, 4:01 PM

hmmm. . . . interesting comment here.

===
"Media Manager doesn't work,..."

Uninstall media manager, download SQL Server express from http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/express/sql/download/ and reinstall media manager.
===

Media Manager does not work in Vista because it relies on the underlying MSDE as its RDMS. MSDE is NOT supported in Vista as it is being phased out by MS in favor of SQL Server 2005 Express and above. How did you get Media Manager 2.0 to even recognize the SQL Express 2005 engine? ? ? You would have to crack the code, backwards engineer the program and pretty much re-write the program to do that. Am I missing something here?

In the vein of the original post in this thread, when is Sony even going to acknowledge Vista -- or if they have any plans whatsoever to support this platform? There is not nary an "Official" word from them anywhere on this web site that I could find. I have searched high and low through Google -- and nothing. I finally broke down and submitted a tech-support question to Sony (under the guise of it being an XP-related question – (because you cannot even submit a query about the Vista OS support issues)). Sony's response: "Since Vista is not a supported OS, we cannot answer your question".

Hello?

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 4:55 PM

"Media Manager does not work in Vista because it relies on the underlying MSDE as its RDMS. MSDE is NOT supported in Vista as it is being phased out by MS in favor of SQL Server 2005 Express and above."

YES... IT DOES WORK.

I almost came to the same conclusion as you.. I uninstalled media manager, downloaded and installed server 2005 express, then reinstalled M.M.... and I got nothing.

I spent 1/2 hour farting around with it when I discovered there is a server 2005 express SERVICE PACK2 (pretty big... a little less than 400Mb). I uninstalled M.M. again, installed the service pack then installed MM.... and it works, it works, it works!!! This means that vegas7 as far as can tell so far, is FULLY compatible with vista.

Brian Miller wrote on 2/11/2007, 5:46 PM

Thanks blink3times for the info. Now you’ve got my interest again. . . .

I had initially performed a completely new, virgin-install of Vista Ultimate 32-bit and then I installed SQL 2005 Express. I then installed Vegas 6d and Sony Media Manager 2.0 (update) on top of that and it did not work under those conditions. SMM kept returning install error messages that MSDE is not supported in Vista.
Let me try the “uninstall SMM 2.0” and then reinstall it and I’ll get back to ya with results.

BTW, every single other App that I am running under Vista (about 60 of them so far) run flawlessly. Vegas is the ONLY app so far that has given me any issues and it’s really just with the SMM. So, overall, I am quite pleased with Vista. I really like the Superfetch and ReadyBoost features as they make Vista “feel” a lot faster. Granted, I have 2GB of RAM and I’m using a 4-GB USB flash unit for my ReadyBoost drive. Works nicely so far.

I know that a lot of folks out there are ragging about Vista right now. It just makes me smile a bit. . . ‘cuase that’s EXACTLY what they said when XP-Pro first came out back in October 2001. Remember? Now, 400-million copies later – XP rules the world. Vista will be no different – in time.

I wonder what comes out next after Vista?

McVista? ; )

Thanks again for your help.

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 5:56 PM

Sorry! I should have given a link to the service pack!

You can find the srvice pack2 here:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D2DA6579-D49C-4B25-8F8A-79D14145500D&displaylang=en

Brian Miller wrote on 2/11/2007, 7:44 PM

Well, I stand corrected . . .

It’s not supposed to be working, but it works!

As noted in my earlier post:

1) I originally did a clean, virgin install of Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
2) I then installed most of my other 60+ software applications (but not Vegas yet) and configured everything, tested everything and ran most of my apps hard for a week. Everything is running smoothly. Note: (I am running as a full Admin)
3) Then, today I downloaded and installed SQL Server 2005 Express (Dev Edition) ~ 220mb. There is a smaller ver. available – but I figured that I might actually try to learn SQL someday, so I dl and installed the larger one. It includes a version of Visual Basic 2005 – for free!
4) Next, I rebooted the computer for safe measure
5) Next, I installed Vegas 6.0a. During install, you are prompted to install Microsoft .Net 1.1 and then the .Net SP1 for ver 1.1 – I said OK to both. Next, the Sony Media Manager 2.0 installer kicks in. I accepted the default prompts and it later gave me the “usual” error message: “Microsoft SQL Server MSDE is incompatible with this version of Windows” – and I CANCELLED the installation at this point.
6) Next, I downloaded and installed the Vegas 6.0d update with the exact same results from SMM 2.0 as noted from ver 6.0a. (Vegas 6.0d installs fine)
7) Next, I opened Vegas 6.0d and confirmed that the Media Manager is not functioning, but Vegas works fine.
8) Next, I checked my control panel (add / remove) programs and Sony Media Manager 2.0 is listed there! Hmmm. . . .I thought that I had cancelled its installation earlier and it certainly was not working in Vegas. But, I uninstalled it anyway as part of it obviously got registered in the Add / Remove Programs.
9) Next, I rebooted the computer again to ensure that the SMM 2.0 program was flushed
10) Next, I downloaded and installed Sony Media Manager 2.1 and installed it. During installation, I got the same “warning message” that: “Microsoft SQL Server MSDE is incompatible with this version of Windows” – however, this time around (instead of canceling) I chose the button to Run the Program. SMM 2.1 then installed successfully with no further warning / dialog boxes.

I opened up Vegas 6.0d and confirmed and verified that SMM 2.1 is running just fine!

I am realizing now that this does appear to be a viable work-around here! MSDE was, in fact, installed with SMM 2.1 as noted above. This is further verified by checking the installed Apps through the Add/Remove Programs, as it reads as being: Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (Sony_Mediamgr). Furthermore, in checking the Windows Services, I see two applicable Services listed:

MSSQL$SONY_MediaMgr (manual start up type) and;
SQLAgent$SONY_MediaMgr (also has a manual start up type)

So, I am wondering just how much of this really has to with first installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, as opposed to just ignoring the warning dialogs when installing SMM 2.1 and just allowing an “incompatible” MSDE to install on Vista anyway? I guess we will leave those answers to the Sony Developers.

In the mean time, I want to run Vegas really hard for a few weeks and see how several small-med-large projects go. For now, however, it looks real good and I’m a very happy camper (for now!)

You were right, though -- it took some real farting around to get this sucker on!

Thanks again, blinks3times!

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 7:58 PM

"So, I am wondering just how much of this really has to with first installing SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, as opposed to just ignoring the warning dialogs when installing SMM 2.1 and just allowing an “incompatible” MSDE to install on Vista anyway? I guess we will leave those answers to the Sony Developers."

Well... since you asked...

I did try to install MM the normal way by ignoring the compatable sign and and it didn't work. You end up getting run32dll errors every time you start vegas... but vegas itself still worked. So the answer is obviously in sever 2005 somewhere.

jaydeeee wrote on 2/11/2007, 8:02 PM

>>>Maybe p@mast3rs wasnt the problem all along. First time it can be question....second time with someone else sharing the same view...nah, it cant be coincidence...can it?<<<

Oh here we go, what is this...what sales pitch would you like to try next?
You think "I'M" the only guy raising and eyebrow about Vista?
Take your software tester turned M$ loving servant a** and walk the other way - I'm not buying. There is NO justification to move from XP/XP-64 to vista for any content creators here. None.
Period.

If YOU love it, then great...enjoy and s'cdaddle kids.
Nobody is saying you shouldn't like it, but as for justifying it's NEED....that's where you're simply lieing (to others and yourselves).

Nothing. Nothing you say will justify any NEED to move to Vista.
There's no benefit to any users here.
The OS is fluff and puff - It's garbage.
A product born of confusion.

You come to me when the words streamlined and compatible enter the equation. Then we can talk.

blink3times wrote on 2/11/2007, 8:04 PM

"You come to me when the words streamlined and compatible enter the equation. Then we can talk."

LOL... somehow there guy.... I don't think too many people will be coming to you for much of ANYTHING.

jaydeeee wrote on 2/11/2007, 8:06 PM

>>LOL... somehow there guy.... I don't think too many people will be coming to you for much of ANYTHING.<<

Perfect then! :)P
You can now talk on the "I-heart-Vista" forum till the cows come home.