Installed Vista on the weekend

Posted by Christine Tham (R) on February 11, 2007 at 14:08:24

The installation process was a lot more difficult than I thought, and ended up taking most of the weekend.

I think a straight consumer install should be relatively straightforward (apart from the difficulty of finding supported drivers and applications - I spent half the weekend just hunting around for updated versions of apps and drivers).

However, my home environment is probably atypical in that it is a fully Active Directory managed environment, with a Windows 2003 domain controller, software deployed through Group Policy, roaming user profiles plus heterogeneous items like a Linux based MythTV server and a 1.2TB NAS.

Installing Vista turned out to be quite challenging because so many things have changed from an administration perspective. Group Policy admin templates have been vastly enhanced, making it impossible to configure policies on anything other than a Vista workstation. I had problems with Group Policy permissions before I could get the server to push software onto Vista. Also, user profiles have changed dramatically, and Vista can not share user profiles with XP. With some folder redirection hacking though (with the help of Microsoft) I can make Vista user profiles share common data (like My Documents, Desktop, Favorites etc.) with XP profiles.

So those of you running a managed environment, be warned. Installing Vista is not a trivial exercise.

The user interface is very pretty - I like the translucent look on taskbars and window borders.

What about audio? My experience is limited to Windows Media Player 11 and the RealTek HD Audio driver, since I'm too chicken to install non-Vista certified players.

There are some NICE improvements in the RealTek drivers - I can finally configure SPDIF out to support sample/bit rates other than 48/16 (anything from 32 to 192 kHz is supported at both 16- and 24-bits). Also, room correction is supported.

And finally, we are not locked into 48kHz 16-bit in Windows Media Player. It's possible to change the default sample rate (to 44.1kHz for instance). So, there's no more need to bypass kmixer for bit transparency. Also, it's possible to configure audio post processing (such as Dolby Virtual Speaker) directly in Media Player.

So far, I have not seem many Vista certified audio applications, apart from Sonar 6.2 (which I may install and play around with).

Driver availability and stability is a real issue. I can't find Vista drivers for any of my pro audio devices, and some of the drivers appear rather unstable (eg. the NVidia display driver keeps crashing whenever I play videos).

So anyway, Vista seems promising, once drivers for pro audio devices and certified audio apps become available.

PS - I'm posting this from a Vista PC.

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Topic - Installed Vista on the weekend - Christine Tham 14:08:24 02/11/07 (35)

Bottom line: looks like it is time to wait unless you are a computer geek - hermanesque 20:05:05 02/14/07 (0)

Bottom Line CAN VISTA BE USED FOR PURE 44.1Hz digital out to a DAC??? - Dynaudio_Rules 08:20:45 02/13/07 (8)

Yes, and yes - Christine Tham 13:33:33 02/13/07 (7)

Do we need ASIO under Vista? - bobp 06:42:28 02/14/07 (6)

There's already been a lot of discussion ... - Christine Tham 10:54:11 02/14/07 (5)

Re: There's already been a lot of discussion ... - Dynaudio_Rules 13:50:01 02/14/07 (4)

Re: There's already been a lot of discussion ... - Christine Tham 14:58:26 02/14/07 (3)

Wow... - Dynaudio_Rules 15:26:27 02/14/07 (2)

Sorry, I didn't mean to come across as as a "know it all" (nt) - Christine Tham 17:26:53 02/14/07 (1)

no that was a respectful bow out....I know when its time to listen nt - Dynaudio_Rules 17:58:21 02/14/07 (0)

Re: Installed Vista on the weekend - prpixel 07:13:37 02/13/07 (1)

Re: Installed Vista on the weekend - Christine Tham 17:56:06 02/13/07 (0)

Which Version of Vista? - richs 11:43:08 02/12/07 (9)

Re: Which Version of Vista? - Christine Tham 12:51:44 02/12/07 (8)

Re: Which Version of Vista? - richs 17:57:12 02/12/07 (7)

How do you plan to control selection of audio to listen to? - Christine Tham 18:54:27 02/12/07 (6)

Re: How do you plan to control selection of audio to listen to? - richs 20:14:14 02/13/07 (1)

Gee, thanks (blush), and Happy Valentine's Day! (nt) - Christine Tham 10:55:10 02/14/07 (0)

Christine does going through WMP impose any audio penalty? - dave in gva 22:59:03 02/12/07 (3)

Re: Christine does going through WMP impose any audio penalty? - Christine Tham 23:34:42 02/12/07 (2)

Thanks Christine! - dave in gva 03:56:48 02/13/07 (1)

Thanks for the compliment! Let us know how your system progresses (nt) - Christine Tham 13:29:43 02/13/07 (0)

Installed Vista on a P4 1.7ghz - marco916 10:06:19 02/12/07 (0)

Exclusive mode questions - Gordon Rankin 08:19:34 02/12/07 (4)

Re: Exclusive mode questions - ThomasPf 23:21:02 02/12/07 (2)

Re: Exclusive mode questions - Gordon Rankin 07:06:44 02/13/07 (1)

Re: Exclusive mode questions - ThomasPf 22:54:57 02/13/07 (0)

My limited understanding is that ... - Christine Tham 12:45:40 02/12/07 (0)

the key is to install Schista on a Mac... ;-) - danny kaey 20:03:03 02/11/07 (0)

Re: bit perfect settings - freaknhell 14:38:36 02/11/07 (2)

Re: bit perfect settings - Dynaudio_Rules 17:10:33 02/11/07 (0)

Go into Windows Media Player options - Christine Tham 14:47:54 02/11/07 (0)

Oh I forgot, Vista understands UPnP! - Christine Tham 14:11:34 02/11/07 (2)

UPnP - Finally - jbmcb 06:24:46 02/12/07 (1)

Dunno - haven't played with UPnP much - Christine Tham 12:55:20 02/12/07 (0)

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