[Dx4win] DX4WIN 7.03 is running on Windows Vista

[Kurt Zimmerman]

Hi Jim;
  Thanks for sharing your experience with 64-bit
Vista.   My night job I spend a lot of time installing
& configuring Vista workstations and have experienced
much the same as what you described with drivers (or
lack there of).  
  Deep dark little secret about specs for running
Vista, you will notice the hardware requirements have
been pushed up.  Although Microsoft claims that Vista
was a complete OS overhaul it still is a very "fat" OS
and requires a more robust machine to do it's thing. 
Vista Basic requires 512m of memory.  I've configured
quite a few of "low end" machines and have found it
isn't worth the time and effort.  I'm seeing lots of
memory upgrades from 1g to 2g just to get something
that runs reasonable.  

  I'm also seeing a lot of XP downgrades because of
the issues & problems with Vista.

  Keep us posted on any further progress.

73;
Kurt - W2MW

--- Jim Reisert AD1C <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu> wrote:

> Hi Folks,
> 
> Late last week, I received my copy of Windows Vista
> Ultimate 64-bit and I
> installed it this weekend.  I purchased the OEM
> version (for installation on a
> new machine) instead of trying to upgrade my
> existing Windows XP installation. 
> I was curious how my existing programs would work
> with it.  Note that while
> Windows XP came on a CD (~ 650 MB), Vista comes on a
> DVD (~ 4.7 GB).  But I
> digress...
> 
> I have a homebrew computer with an Intel Core 2 Quad
> processor (Q6600), 4GB of
> RAM, an NVIDIA 8600 GTS video card and a Creative
> Audigy 4 sound card.  Another
> reason for wanting to try Vista was that 32-bit
> operating systems can't see all
> of that 4GB of memory.  Even though they support a
> 32-bit (4GB) address space,
> some of that address space is taken up by hardware. 
> The motherboard/BIOS has
> the capability to remap that 4th GB of memory above
> the 32-bit address space,
> but older operating systems still can't see/use it.
> 
> Anyway, the installation of Vista went fine, and I
> was fortunate that my
> wireless networking device, video and sound cards
> all had downloadable 64-bit
> Vista drivers.  I was especially worried about the
> wireless networking, since
> everything else kind of depended on my having a
> network!  I still have a few
> driver issues but no show-stoppers.
> 
> As far as software, my main applications like Eudora
> Mail and Quicken are OK. 
> I can no longer install my Microsoft Visual .NET
> software, it's too old (2002).
>  I downloaded a free "express" version of Visual C++
> from Microsoft, but I am
> having some trouble converting my existing projects
> (file permission problems
> mostly).  Also, my Unix-like Cygwin environment is a
> little unstable, this is
> the environment I use to maintain the country files,
> etc.
> 
> Having said all this, I was able to get DX4WIN 7.03
> installed and running.  I
> installed the program as a user (myself).  Every
> time I started the program, I
> got a warning about the "vichw11" driver.  So I ran
> DX4WIN as an Administrator
> instead (right-click on the program icon and choose
> "Run as Administrator") and
> it was able to copy that driver into the Vista
> driver directory.  Now the
> program starts without errors (even as a user).
> 
> I can manipulate my log and connect to packet
> (Telnet).  I can't test radios or
> other interfaces because I am currently off-the-air.
>  Also, I don't have any
> real COM ports, just a microHAM (USB) interface,
> which does not have Vista
> driver support (yet).
> 
> Vista does not seem any slower or faster than
> Windows XP, even though I'm
> running the fancy "Aero" graphics desktop.  Some
> things are in a different
> place, "Add/Remove Programs" is now just "Programs
> <something>".  User Account
> Control (which warns you when
> installing/running/uninstalling programs) is a
> little annoying, but no so much that I need to turn
> it off.  I'd say the
> biggest problems are driver and application support.
>  Some program icons just
> disappear out of the system notification area on the
> taskbar.  It's not always
> obvious whether the program is still running or not.
>  I hope most of these
> issues are resolved in the coming year.  Intel is
> slowly killing off their
> 32-bit processors, so software developers will have
> to move into the 21st
> century sooner or later.
> 
> I hope this report helps someone.  I'm happy to try
> to answer
> (non-hardware-specific) Vista questions
> off-reflector.
> 
> 73 - Jim AD1C
> 
> 
> --
> Jim Reisert AD1C, <jjreisert at alum.mit.edu>,
> http://www.ad1c.us
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> 


Kurt W. Zimmerman





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