I’ve installed Vista with the “new” ATI drivers that support OpenGL. The process has been less “fun” than I’d like thus far, and I don’t yet have my favorite games working. Here are a few of the little problems I’ve encountered
- Vista doesn’t include support for file system backups made with Windows XP/2000. You have to download an optional piece of software to add this support [1]. For a moment, as I looked at the “this file type is not recognized” error message when I tried to access my backups, I was a wee bit worried
- I’m still experiencing problems with having my computer recover properly from Standby mode. After upgrading to the latest BIOS for my ASUS M2R32, at least I was able to restart from standby. Unfortunately, my display is horribly corrupted after such a restart, suggesting there is something not-quite-right with the Jan 29/V7.1 ATI Vista drivers
- The embedded ADI sound card on my motherboard didn’t work initially, and the drivers from my Asus install CD simply failed to install. I downloaded beta drivers from Asus that seem to be working now
- Once I got audio working, I discovered that perhaps I was premature in assuming that it wasn’t working to begin with. Something is different with the supported audio output from the SoundMax- to get adequate volume, I had to disconnect the digital connector and use analog wiring
Once I figured out the basics, I started installing/testing my games
- EverQuest 2 works! I was able to successfully log in and wander around a bit; I have sound and working graphics, so it’s looking good
- EverQuest didn’t work initially- it failed while it was trying to patch Launchpad, then again when it tried to patch the game itself. I ultimately “corrected” this by taking/forcing ownership with full rights on the EverQuest directories (I.E.: I right-clicked the Sony directory, selected Security tab, Advanced, then selected the Owner tab, made myself the owner of the directories, then back to Permissions to grant myself full rights)
- I *suspect* that I may have caused this problem myself. I installed EQ2, then over-wrote the directories from my backup thinking this would reduce the amount of updating necessary. I believe that all this did was change the directory/file permissions…and when I finally got EQ2 to launch, it went out and did a full (2+ hour @ 3 Mbps) update anyway.
- EQ2Map Updater does not work 🙁 At least not on my machine
- Second Life does not work; it installs, but crashes at the main login / status screen. Apparently, NVidia card owners are working fine with Vista + Second Life, but ATI cards are causing the Second Life client to crash. Presumably something wrong with ATI’s OpenGL implementation- not surprising, really, since the first release ever of OpenGL support from ATI was in the most recent (January 29th) driver set- no beta, straight to release- smart move, ATI.
- Vanguard works without a hitch- but I applied the same ownership changes to the Vanguard directories that I did for the EQ2 directories. See also the note above re: I’m likely at fault for the permissions problem